Got the “old” computer back together, it turned on fine, then on the second turn on it refused; “computer says no” so I think it is knackered (sorry about he technical jargon there).

Quick dash to Sheffield on Sunday to stay with Andrew, my brother. The plan was to go over to Manchester on Monday where my niece Em was getting some of her art up in a bar. Sunday afternoon was warm & sunny so when walking back to Andrews flat we decided to have a drink, just to stave of dehydration you understand. Four bottles of Magners, perfect summer drink, later we return to his flat with fish & chips in hand to eat & watch “Die Hard” on telly. I should have known something was not right when we became convinced that Bruces’ masterpiece had the best cinematography of all time. Went to bed still feeling fine though I will admit, merry. To cut a sordid story short I didn’t sleep that night & lost nine pounds in weight.

Ems work was great – but she is a lazy so & so… alarmingly travelling down a path I trod so many years ago! Her new beau is okay though, well he humoured me by listening as I rambled on, that good enough for me!

Emily in camping chic.

I am perpetually angry. I suspect there’s a good chance I’ll end up the muttering tramp wandering high streets. And recently things got worse. Not only the broken motorcycle but the completely bust work computer. This time I had no-one else to blame; I built it myself, a water cooled completely silent wonder. Work computer, television, music centre all in one – what could possible go wrong?

A few weeks ago it began to not to want to start, needing sometimes to be left for hours before it would turn on again and one day it didn’t come on at all, okay, I’m a technical guru, easy to sort. Bits came out, nothing, it must be the power supply. One new power supply later, nothing. So the answer is, as I must be able to work reliably, buy a new Dell. And get a new motherboard for the broken one so I can have it as a backup. The new Dell arrives & after a day setting it up and installing all the programs I’m back in business. The new motherboard turns up. I leave it for a few days till my computer DIY enthusiasm returns.

This evening I start, first thing is remove the old motherboard. As I’m doing this a screw drops out that shouldn’t be there, in fact it looks as if it’s been laying on the motherboard, no, surely not. Attach a power supply just to quickly test it – it come on fine. Attach the old bits to it and put it back in the case – it come on fine. Nearly £900 down the drain, grr… now where’s that high street.

Your hero in a rare calm moment. Photographer: Mike Carroll

Over to Ninfield with Patrick to a pleasant summer evening barbecue. There’s always a bit of an edge when Patricks about middle class company, especially when children are present, as he not one to tailor his bawdy Irish delivery. In the event things went fairly well and the hostess didn’t throw anybody out. My diet is taking a bit of a hammering of late and this didn’t help as politeness made me have at least three helpings of everything. The Popes representative in Ninfield, Neville, was there but not quite on top form though in truth as Patrick & I left early we didn’t give him time to get into his stride.

Patrick trying to impress Rosie with his bike.

I thought I’d seen how sad middle aged men can get, but no, you think you’ve reached the core but you’ve hardly scratched the surface. The new IPhone has a motion sensor built in so naturally some bright spark came up with an application for it to make it sound like a Star Wars light sabre as it’s scythed through the air. Which brings us to the sight of two men in their forties playing sword fighting with their brand new phones. It was quite impressive, for about ten seconds. To be fair to one of the participants, he did refuse Waynes (the virgin drummer) challenge so I had to exaggerate his part in this spectacle.

The virgin drummer about to slay another dragon.

Yesterday I helped Steve Smith re-erect his old shed. He has taken to describing everything in his back garden as the this and that of lurv as I have a soft spot for his wife, the grumpy angel, and he likes to raise the green mist behind my eyes. He started out with a “lurv seat” then the “walk of lurv” now it’s even got to the “pumpkin patch of lurv”. Mind you, seeing the fear the grumpy angel instils in both of us after she gets home from a long days work and we’re relaxing with another drink I’m not sure “lurv” has much to do with it! The shed went up easily allowing us to “re-group” many times for tea. The worst bit was the Ninja spiders waiting to dive into my hair as we disturbed their afternoon nap. There’s something satisfying in hard work when it’s kept as a rare novelty but that all it should ever be.

Mr Smith forces back a herd of spiders trying to make an escape

I have been informed by callow youth (a Mr Dominic Rider) that having a blog is uncool! Now, if I didn’t have the natural fluency of Shakespeare and the story telling ability of J K Rowling I might agree but as anyone with eyes can see JK might as well start checking her pension now.

A critic contemplates his evil work.

Went to pick up the loan bike yesterday. Was shown my BM in bits; the damage is fairly extensive around the clutch/gearbox area. They think the gear box is a replacement that has not been fitted well. This is worrying as the bike had only done 9000 miles when I bought it from them. It will take 5 days for spares to come from Germany then they have to be fitted, on their current track record I would be surprised if I saw it back within the fortnight.

The loan bike is a 650 “semi-trials” machine without any kind of fairing. It weighs almost nothing and after my initial wobbling ride I realised that this could be “top fun” – as you ride you can feel youthful hooliganism crawling from a long buried teenage subconscious. It’s half the power of my bike but this is unnoticeable in normal town riding where all it’s 50 horsepower has to do is propel a fat guy and a few bits of steel about. Anything over 60 is pointless due to wind pressure, under that it shoots forward like pips from an orange when the throttles opened.

Patrick pontificating on how crap the small BMW is at this mornings sunny breakfast.

Well, Steve at Coopers didn’t call this morning, I had to call them late this afternoon. The story I got was “I had yesterday off and when I got in this morning they hadn’t started to strip the bike down so as there was no news I didn’t call” He said that they had now started the strip-down and that I could have a loan bike the next morning. In these situations it’s always difficult to know what to say as I’m a bit of a timid bloke when it comes to complaining. There are rarely “bad people” involved and “Steve” sounds like an “okay” kind of guy, also he’s on the mechanical/services side of things but… Customer service is about reassurance and communication, the feeling here is, possibly wrongly, that there was a lot of “care” pre-sale but now it is all a bit haphazard. There is a sense that there are no, to use a modern phrase, business processes in place to keep a disappointed customer on board and reduce the inevitable bad-mouthing that a less than optimum experience creates. I would not be surprised by this level of service from the local man in a shed but BMW? And as the local motorcycle garage is Hastings Motorcycles, a small family firm, who give great, friendly service I find myself comparing the two…

This Seagull does not own a motorcycle.

Last Sunday my BMW R1150RT died in Rye, the sound of mechanical sickness emanating from the clutch/gearbox area. Fortunately I had kept the Sunday Times with me so the wait for the AA sponsored bike recovery vehicle was bearable. I ended up parked in the car park of V-Twin Custom Cycles. They had a rather unnerving sign in the door; “Parking for Harleys, all other bikes crunched”. The owners actually turned up and were as nice as pie, offering facilities and giving me bottled water, it almost made me regret not having a Harley!

Next day BMW recovery took it to the dealers I had bought it from (BMW approved used) a four or five months ago, Coopers of Tunbridge Wells.

I phoned up to check it was there and was told they’d get to it as soon as possible but they were “busy”. Okay I thought, play the nice guy. A week later they had not got back to me. Very disappointing and not the reason you get a BMW. Even used ones are not cheap and the dealers don’t “do deals”, but you get them for, amongst other things, reliability and service. I really like the bike and it’s a lot more enjoyable to ride than the Pan European it replaced but the Pan never let me down in 72,000 miles.

I’ve phoned Coopers this morning and got “Steve” in service who said that the BMW was due to be stripped down tomorrow morning to ascertain the extend of the damage and he would, “without fail” call me Wednesday morning. The possibility of a courtesy bike was mentioned. I hope things now run smoothly, whatever happens I will report back here.

It looks good stationary, which is lucky under the circumstances!