Category: Uncategorized

  • Odyssey, Pt. 4

    Disaster And Defeat “Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches.” Hyman G. Rickover The time had come. The band was breaking up. P was heading back North, to begin a new adventure in Leeds, Kevin would stay in Southampton with his fiancé, Rob would eventually wind up back in his beloved Wales, and I was…

  • Odyssey, Pt 1.

    Southampton I left England on December 22nd 2011. My day would start in Millbrook Rd East, Southampton, and by evening would finish at College Avenue Pittsburgh, USA. I can’t tell that story without telling the story of my time in Southampton. This is the move from the North of England, and some of the reasons…

  • Flashbacks Of A Fool

    This review contains spoilers. Daniel Craig was peak Bond in 2008. Still warm on the success of Casino Royale (which is a fucking banger of a film) he did the slightly shit Quantum of Solace, and around the same time, this got released. I’ve only just seen it, having wanted to watch it for a…

  • Death and all his friends

    February 16th, 2005 I’d got the call I was waiting for, from my older sister. “You’d better come”. It was time. My mum had been fighting terminal cancer since the previous August, over the new year we were waiting for the other shoe to drop. She’d become increasingly frail and had lost a shocking amount…

  • 45 pt. 2

    Eyes By March my vision had continued to deteriorate to the extent I was becoming quite afraid. I made an emergency appointment to try and figure out what the hell was going on. I got a visit with an ophthalmologist that just happened to be a retinal specialist. She is French, had only been in…

  • 45

    December 27th, 2018 On the morning of my 45th birthday, I stood before the bathroom mirror’s harsh, yellow light, looking at a lump where my armpit should be. I’d felt something under my arm in the shower, a bulge where the hollow of my armpit is, the ‘axilla’ as I would learn to refer to…

  • The continuing saga of my Eyes

    The rough with the smooth It’s about six months following surgery for the rhegmatogenous retinal detachment of my left eye. The good news is that the retina has recovered very well; at four months an Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) scan of my eye showed nominal recovery. I was somewhat relieved. A complication of the surgery,…

  • Why Scoobi Is Probably Doomed, In One Picture

    UpdaTE: March 2023: I was revising a lot of these posts from the previous WP blog and found out that Scoobi have ceased operating, as of August 2022: https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/inno/stories/profiles/2022/08/01/scoobi-shuts-down-electric-moped-operations.html It is deeply unfortunate when any business shuts down – it’s jobs and people’s livelihoods, and even if I wasn’t enthusiastic about this scheme I’d rather…

  • Fitting The 'ebay' Exhaust to my TT250

    N.B. this post originally appeared in edited form at chinariders.net I bought my stainless ‘ebay exhaust’ – the one everybody uses – months ago but never had the chance to get it fitted. These kits almost fit the TT250, but there’s one definite modification required; you have to widen or cut the flange as it’s…

  • Eastern Promise

    Eastern Promise

    Part One As winter got underway, I started to consider whether I should get a second car. My reasoning was it would cut the mileage on the family Toyota (I don’t use the bike on snow or ice days, I might be British, but I’m not that crazy) and would limit inconvenience to the family…