SYMPATHY FOR MR CRAWFORD

This is a Thank You to N Green of Austin, Texas for posting the following on Amazon last week:
Love bikes? Love travel? then you will love this book.
Simon Gandolfi has a humble, gentle writing style that captures your interest and your heart on the first page. This is the best motorcycle journey I have read since ' Jupiter's Travels'. He paints such beautiful images of the people and places he encountered. The only improvement I could ask for would be lots more photographs, but they are really not necessary, his words provide all the pictures you need...

I have only posted one other review from Amazon - from a Mrs. S. M. Crawford "Suzanne Crawford" of Hampshire, England.
I bought this for my husband at his request. He was fired with enthusiasm from an article he read in The Telegraph. He is totally disappointed in this book and literally had to struggle through it. He sums it up as a description of breakfast in many places. It is therefore not recommended.

My apologies to Mr Crawford and my condolences. How tragic to suffer an antipathy to breakfast.

SQUID AND CHORIZO - YUM!

For lunch on Wednesday cooked squid and cHorizo with chickpeas in a tomato and basil sauce - lots of chili, lots of garlic. Washed down with a bottle of Rioja Alto. YUM!
Today glorious Spring, trees in blossom, daffodils and primroses in our woodland garden. Ate outside in the sunshine, cold trout, cheese, baby tomatoes. On such a day England is heaven.

JOSH

Our eldest son, Josh, is down from Leeds for a week. He has ripped up the vile carpet in the back sitting room, disassembled and removed an equally vile sofa bed. Today he is out in the garden cutting the lawn, pruning. I wish he and Jen were here for the summer. What joy it would be to watch Josh play cricket again and have his friends dropping by of a summer evening, cold beer, good Herefordshire beef sizzling on the coals.

OBESITY INVESTMENT ADVICE

Visit a bike show, witness evidence of a future diabetes epidemic, invest in manufacturers of Insulin...

SCOTTISH MOTORCYCLE SHOW

Thank you to all those fearless Scottish bikers who donned their snow shoes and, braving blizzard and avalanche, ploughed their way to the bike show. A special thanks to readers who sought me out and to those who bought books and contributed the extra £1 to my Round The World Petrol Fund!

BIKE SHOW

I am off again next week - to Edinburgh and the Scottish Bike Show (12/13 March). Find me on the Travel-dri stand, standard dress of denim overalls and battered straw hat Big pile of books ready to be signed...!

GRAVLAX AND GNOCCHI

February was a good month in the kitchen First the gnocchi were a success. I feared that the Gravlax was too salty - however I washed off the salt and the result was perfect. Tuesday I cooked a coli and prawn pie, definitely yum!

GRAVLAX + PASTA

Number Two son + julia and divine granddaughter, Anna, are arriving this afternoon to stay the night. They don't eat meat. They do eat fish. Hopefully they will enjoy my first attempt at Gravlax. The salmon has been marinading in a press in the icebox for the past five days: rock salt, Demerara sugar, orange and lemon juice, English mustard and lots of dill. I unwrapped and skinned the salmon this morning. Too salty...bummer. However should be edible when accompanied by good brown bread and lots of butter.
No disaster should the salmon fail, I have a pasta sauce prepared for the main course: vine tomatoes, shallots, one stick of celery, one carrot, three cloves of garlic, plump raisins, small black Spanish olives, black pepper, one chili with seeds, basil, thyme, two glasses of red Rioja.

THEY ARE ONLY ARABS

In these days of turmoil, let us be proud when our European and American leaders warn Arab Governments that they earn reprobation for their treatment of the innocent. For Arabs, sanctity of human life is an outlandish concept. Torture is commonplace. Police shoot unarmed protesters in Bahrain, in Lybia, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt.
Arabs may counter by protesting the innocent hundreds and thousands killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They might mention water-boarding. But what do they know? They are only Arabs...

CAPABLE OF PULLING YOUR SOCKS ON WHILST STANDING?

Definition of youth = that you can pull your socks on while standing unsupported.
Adolesence = capable of hauling your trousers on while standing.
Maturity = having to raise your foot on a step to tie your shoe laces.
Old age? I'll inform readers when I get there.

GNOCCHI LOGIC

B isn't a picky eater. However she does have her dislikes (as does Jed). Though misguided, disliking offal is understandable - however why would B dislike gnocchi? Roger Gill's partner is both picky and a vegetarian. He and I cook each other lunch week and week about, dishes unwelcome on the family menu
Thus yesterday was my first attempt at preparing gnocchi - mixing Stilton cheese into the potato, flour and egg mix; sauce of vine tomatoes, spring onion, garlic and basil.
Delicious.
Roger and I ate the lot.
B came home and complained that I hadn't saved her some.
Odd...

READERS EXPECT MORE

Writing is OK when it goes well. I have been rewriting the opening to the second book in the biker travel trilogy, OLD MEN CAN'T WAIT. The first chapters didn't work. The tone was too flippant. Flippancy is suitable when giving a talk to bikers who've been on the beer. They are on holiday. They want humour. Readers expect more. They deserve the truth. Digging out the truth from one's experiences is often painful. Uncamouflaged, what really happened?
How scared was I on the ride north from Ushuaia?
Very...

CHARITIES? HAH!

British Charities are in uproar over Government cuts. In my youth charities were funded by charitable gifts. Financed by Government is financed by taxpayers without option or choice. Therefor no longer charities. Better call them NGOs. NGOs are a plague. Too many of them with overlapping and competing remits and hierarchies. Career structures are the norm. Waste is standard as is moral arrogance. Add hypocritical pretense of working for a Charity when they are simply Government employees by another name, then good riddance.

THE MET AND THE NEWS OF THE WORLD

The police investigate pedophilia. First act to confiscate the suspect's computer.
Four years of the Metropolitan police investigating telephone hacking by News of the World journalists and the Met hasn't yet confiscated News of the World hard discs.
Odd?
Or does Murdoch frighten them?
Or do they fear that the hard discs will provide evidence of police collusion?
Why does this concern me today of all days - when I should be enjoying my birthday?
On our last meeting in Mexico, Cliff Irving asked why I got so angry over matters outside of my control.
My answer: cease getting angry, why bother writing?

ANCIENT OVERWEIGHT TOAD HITS SEVENTY-EIGHT

Thoughts when in bed this morning whilst Bernadette wrapped my birthday gifts - each gift a romantic treasure: firstly how blessed I am in Bernadette and in my four sons, my daughter, my daughters-in-law and out-of-law, my son-in-law. And how truly blessed I am in my divine grandchildren (of whom Shane is baking a chocolate birthday cake which he will eat as I am home in Herefordshire UK, and he is home in Duchess County NY).
SHANE AND GRANDPA OOPS

Second thought: 78 seems so much much older than 77.
Third thought: 79 will feel old old old. However 80 will feel young again (if I make it), a new beginning. Hopefully I will be completing the final lap of a planned celebratory circumnavigation of the planet - probably on a Honda 125. So here is a Happy Birthday to me, Brmmmm Brmmmm!

COMIC MEXICANS

Normally I would ignore the prurient Top Gear team and their attention seeking. However I have described in the past visiting high schools here and asking students for their image of a Mexican. The reply: Fat, sweaty, big hat, droopy mustache, comic accent.
Top Gear presenters pander to this conception born of Hollywood.
The result?
A Brit failure to recognise or develop markets in Mexico for British goods.

BIG BIKES AND TEARS

Joy and sadness to meet a Bolivian woman and her daughter at the Excel. The mother is married to a Brit on the Yamaha stand. The daughter is newly arrived in England. The daughter speaks no English. My speaking Spanish somehow emphasises to her her linguistic isolation and loss of friends. She lays her cheek against my chest. I fear that she will cry. I fear that I will cry. Unfitting behaviour at a bike show, even for an Old Toad...

LA LINDA DE COLOMBIA AND AN OLD TOAD

A charming young Colombian woman served at a coffee shop at the entrance to the Excel.
I greeted her each morning with, "Buenas dias, La Linda."
She replied, "Buenas dias, Avuelito."
She treated me to breakfast on the last day. I remarked, "Oh that I was younger."
She laid a delicate hand on my arm, smiled sweetly and said, "Much, much, much younger."
Ah, well...

ROAD TESTING FOR A FINAL JOURNEY

Small bikes suited me for long distance travel. The Honda I rode round India averaged 160 miles to the gallon. However something bigger might be more suitable for a final journey. Consider this Triumph...

BIG BAD BIKERS

Home from the London Bike Show. Fun to meet new people, good to meet old friends. Best is to be made welcome in a community and to discover that my travels encourage others.
However why must a section of the biker community revel in ugliness? Tattoos on shaven scalps and across rolls of fat that pass for a neck - and those massive wobbly beer bellies, especially amongst the Sunday crowd - gross. Where but at a bike show could an ancient overweight toad feel slim?