London’s Earl’s Court is a rabbit warren of very narrow streets packed with towering, multi-level, Georgian terraced houses, long since divided into flats or hotels. I lived in one such edifice. One morning, as I left the building for work, my entire visual field was filled with a gleaming wall of white metal. A huge, 52 seat tourist coach was parked outside the hotel opposite. It was like seeing an ocean liner berthed in some tiny canal. I looked up to see the rows of tourists, who, judging by their sagging expressions, had been sitting there for quite a while, waiting for the stragglers to board.
I was kitted out for autumn London traffic; black helmet, full black leathers, steel-plated motorbike boots, long hair, unshaven, sun glasses, earrings, the full-on, urban Mad Max nightmare. Was I a motorcycle courier or a patch wearer? Nope, I was a desk-bound advertising copywriter. With a head full of deadlines, and, I hoped, a more than equal amount of appropriate ideas, I hooked my helmet over the handlebar of my big, shiny new motorbike and nodded my head forward to grab my hair to ponytail it, but I saw something, which stopped me dead. Oil was pooling on the road around my gleaming front wheel.
Now, I’m no motorbike mechanic. Not even slightly. I once bled my brakes to improve their stopping power and roared off down the road, impatiently trying to get past a Range Rover. The Rangyy hit the brakes. And I hit mine, but nothing happened, and my front tyre hit the back of the Rangy. I catapulted up the seat and ‘gumphed’ to a halt, using my testicles as little airbags between me and my petrol tank. The Range Rover drove off and left me bent over the petrol tank, sweating, and breathing like an asthmatic hamster. I rode home and spent the night, periodically sighing, in front of the TV with a bag of frozen peas down my pants. So that’s me and simple mechanics.
And today, oil coming from the bike’s front brake – that was bad. On a motorbike, your life depends on the front brake. With the eyes of the tourists boring into the top of my head, I crouched down to fathom where the oil was coming from. The bike was new, so the oil was unsoiled and clear. I dipped my fingers in the oil sliding down the tyre’s spokes, and it was cold, but not particularly viscous. I sniffed it. And it didn’t smell of much – not that I knew how it should or shouldn’t smell. The seal at the gaiter looked dry, and there was no obvious origin or well-spot for the drippage. So, as so often in life, I asked myself, ‘what would someone, who knew what they were doing, do now’?
Still on my knees and still wondering, something in my peripheral vision jolted me out of my investigation. I turned my head, to be greeted by the blackness; the big black nose of a big, apparently happy, dog, who was sniffing at me. It took a second for me to get it, but one look up at the tourists’ now smiling faces explained everything; they’d seen everything. Apparently, it was this very dog’s freshly deposited wee, which I was erroneously investigating as spilled oil. Mr Cool has left the building. What a twat.
I was kitted out for autumn London traffic; black helmet, full black leathers, steel-plated motorbike boots, long hair, unshaven, sun glasses, earrings, the full-on, urban Mad Max nightmare. Was I a motorcycle courier or a patch wearer? Nope, I was a desk-bound advertising copywriter. With a head full of deadlines, and, I hoped, a more than equal amount of appropriate ideas, I hooked my helmet over the handlebar of my big, shiny new motorbike and nodded my head forward to grab my hair to ponytail it, but I saw something, which stopped me dead. Oil was pooling on the road around my gleaming front wheel.
Now, I’m no motorbike mechanic. Not even slightly. I once bled my brakes to improve their stopping power and roared off down the road, impatiently trying to get past a Range Rover. The Rangyy hit the brakes. And I hit mine, but nothing happened, and my front tyre hit the back of the Rangy. I catapulted up the seat and ‘gumphed’ to a halt, using my testicles as little airbags between me and my petrol tank. The Range Rover drove off and left me bent over the petrol tank, sweating, and breathing like an asthmatic hamster. I rode home and spent the night, periodically sighing, in front of the TV with a bag of frozen peas down my pants. So that’s me and simple mechanics.
And today, oil coming from the bike’s front brake – that was bad. On a motorbike, your life depends on the front brake. With the eyes of the tourists boring into the top of my head, I crouched down to fathom where the oil was coming from. The bike was new, so the oil was unsoiled and clear. I dipped my fingers in the oil sliding down the tyre’s spokes, and it was cold, but not particularly viscous. I sniffed it. And it didn’t smell of much – not that I knew how it should or shouldn’t smell. The seal at the gaiter looked dry, and there was no obvious origin or well-spot for the drippage. So, as so often in life, I asked myself, ‘what would someone, who knew what they were doing, do now’?
Still on my knees and still wondering, something in my peripheral vision jolted me out of my investigation. I turned my head, to be greeted by the blackness; the big black nose of a big, apparently happy, dog, who was sniffing at me. It took a second for me to get it, but one look up at the tourists’ now smiling faces explained everything; they’d seen everything. Apparently, it was this very dog’s freshly deposited wee, which I was erroneously investigating as spilled oil. Mr Cool has left the building. What a twat.
