S-Westerly

Very rarely ride a bike in London. I collected my current bike from Vauxhall and rode it home. No problem in London. A sports bike though? I'd rather poke pins in my eyes!

It all depends how quickly our infamously sclerotic bureaucracy manages to roll out the vaccine programme. Right now I'd predict normality in about 2121 all going well.

If you're in a small boat and someone starts barfing loads of people feel like joining in. I've never been sea sick in my life on any size of boat or ship. One of my grandsons gets queasy but none of the rest of us. Among the living adults there's 3 serving seafarers and 2 former. Among the recently deceased (last 15 years or so) there's another 4. Proper seadogs us!

Sitting with a cask strength 12 yo whisky myself. Dry January can, along with veganuary go and f**k itself. A cold day in hell when I'm home and not able to have a drink if I want. Spend enough months dry aboard ship!

Down here it's not so bad. It's this constant freeze / thaw though. At least with snow you can see it and to a degree plan for it. Black ice is just horrible as its really hard to see early enough to do anything sensible about. I've written off a car and bent a bike thanks to unexpected black ice.

Not really, the TCS wasn't noticeable at all and I tend to use engine breaking and use the brakes sparingly. On the way south I had unpleasant black ice experiences but only in service area car parks. Braking but still sliding wasn't great but I was at slow speeds anyway so just wore off a bit of boot soles by dragging my feet.

Give me a comfy old man's saddle rather than one of these horrid things that makes you feel at serious risk of being sodomised if you come to a sudden halt.

Exactly! Be ripping TV (literally perhaps). Just need some way of keeping the buggers from swimming away. Genetically modified geat white sharks perhaps.

MOTY 2021.

I'm 63 so ought to know bloody better!

Fortunately the parents live in a nice small flat with a decent support network. My cousin lives locally and walks her dogs to my parents place regularly. More concerned about my daughter trying to look after me. When she was 7 her classmates described her as a bossy blonde bitch. Not much has changed since except the hair colour. Her heart's in the right place but I'm not quite in my dotage yet.

Bit on the small side but we could make it the new reality TV. Hundreds of cons in a small space left to their own devices. What could go wrong?

There's one from 1999 with less than 1300 miles on the clock for sale in Kent- a snip at £25,990. As I didn't win the lottery this week I'll not be buying it just yet.

Where? we haven't got any colonies. Personally I'd quite fancy being exiled to Australia but doubt the aussies would be too keen. Rockall is a bit small. Suppose we could try and rent Spitzbergen from the Norwegians but can't see it myself.

True enough, but sometimes it's distance too. Through no fault of their own my parents live in mid-Northumberland but I live in Gloucestershire and work at sea, one brother lives in Munich and the other in Houston. Even without covid its not practical for us to pop in to just have a cup of tea and help out a bit. With covid it's totally impossible. My brother in Munich has had to cancel 4 flights to the UK this last year.

Good luck with that then. May as well buy a lotto ticket as you've probably got a better chance of winning it than getting a wife allow a bike into her house.

Bloody hell, they had zombies then too?

Read some excerpts of that on line. Hard on him.

That I could go along with. It could even be some kind of online test a bit like I belive the theory test is. Hazard awareness or reflexes.

Piss off. That's only 7 years away and if you think I'm doing a bike test you can take a flying f**k at a rolling donut

Allegedly.

My dad only gave up driving when he was 89 and that was because the car failed its mot. Didn't have the heart to tell him I'd have got in touch with the DVLA to pull his licence if he hadn't. He's half blind and when I last saw him told me that he hadn't had any peripheral vision for years. He used to worry about hitting cyclists.

The issue as I see it is that judges, juries and police are human and fallible. A really vile crime is going to disgust any normal person and anyone who is in the Dock with a decent case against him/her is going to be convicted and sent down. If we topped an innocent person then we've basically added to the actual criminals rap sheet but we can't give a life back. A full life term in harsh conditions would satisfy me personally more. Years of staring at four walls and knowing you'll never get out must be pretty grim. If you are innocent and eventually that's proved then at least you can get some kind of life back and ideally some compensation. Not ideal but better than being dead.

www.onherbike.com She's now in Africa. She started in Australia and rode a BMW 650? backto Poland.