Merry Christmas to all Blog Readers

Today is Christmas Eve and apparently yesterday, the day before Christmas Eve, is the busiest shopping day of the season – but between 12 noon and 1 pm today will be the busiest shopping hour, as lots of blokes rush out to get their ladies something at the last minute.

This has sometimes been my style in the past and I have also had a fall back system when short of ideas involving a friendly local jeweller, who is always willing to exchange whatever I’ve chosen for something she would actualy like to wear – a bit like buying a gift voucher but you get something in a box, all properly wrapped up in Christmas paper with ribon and a fancy bow. Only takes about 10 minutes start to finish and it probably doesn’t matter what you pick as long as the money is about right for her to choose something nice.

I’ve seemed to be able to get into the right ball park by picking earrings or braclets or necklacey type things by turns so it’s not the same thing each year. And she always seems to say she likes what I’ve chosen for her – although of course I don’t really remember what I did buy her, so I wouldn’t know if she’s gone back to change it or not anyway.  As a fallback plan it’s always seemed to be a fairly safe bet.

This year however I’ve taken a bit of a risk and steered clear of the jewellers altogether in favour of armchair shopping with Amazon. Too late to do this on Christmas Eve of course, unless you can think of a credible excuse for having nothing wrapped up to hand over on the actual day and a printed off copy of an Amozon Order propably wouldn’t cut the mustard.  But with a bit of forward planning I’ve saved myself having to go anywhere near an actual shop this year – except when on escort duty, when I can usually contrive to escape to the coffee shop while she does the browsing. continues………

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Dave Partridge, who over the last couple of years has established a new type of local and mobile GoldWing servicing and repair service, AwingAway, has circulated his customers and friends with this Christmas Greeting, which I thought was a nice idea and worthy of passing on.

He does his bit for the GoldWing community by volunteering as the Federation’s Technical Adviser, in which capacity he’s been answering all sorts of questions, including in foreign languages, so well done Dave.  And thank you on behalf of UK Wingers for your unfailing helpfulness.

Thankfully he hadn't yet grown this beard

Being a senior member of the Royal Family is widely seen as involving both perks and burdens of duty and although royalist supporters might be more likely to see the balance between duty and perk leaning further in favour of duty than abolitionists, even the most ardent anti-royalist will be recognise that the role isn’t all a bed of roses.

For example although Prince William and his new wife probably had a lot more freedom of choice about their partnership in life than any preceding royal couple, it would be naive to think that either of them had anything like the freedom of choice which us ordinary folk  enjoy.

I might have used “commoner” instead of “folk” in that last sentence except of course that the Duchess of Cambridge (or if you prefer Princess William of Wales) was a commoner until about 11am on April 29^th, but that doesn’t mean she was “ordinary”.  Prince William seems to have found himself (and thankfully has been allowed to marry) a really lovely young lady who, because of their long courtship, has also been given a reasonable opportunity to understand and acclimatise herself to what she has got herself into.

As my elderly Mum said, having spent the day of The Wedding absolutely glued to the telly, the Middleton family did us commoners really proud on that day; they were much more credible as royals continues………

This is off topic for a GoldWing Blog but it’s topical because there is a bit of a price battle going on at the moment, from which consumers may be able to benefit.

I was with TalkTalk for some time but switched back to BT a couple of years ago. They were only a little bit more expensive and I got fed up with poor customer service from TalkTalk at the time, especially when it came to actually getting hold of someone and dealing with faults.

If a line fault was suspected they would test the line from their end and if it was within tolerance (by whatever testing means they use) they would simply say it must be your end – the alternative being for them to pass the problem on to BT (who own the lines) for you to request an engineer visit, in which case if no fault was found there would be a call out charge of £130.

There were so many uncertainties of who was responsible for which bit of things (home equipment, internal house wiring, local telephone line, exchange etc) that I decided that at least if I went with BT continues………

This little girl was abducted from a holiday resort in Portugal four years ago and her parents and their family haven’t given up looking for her.   They are still searching with all the energy and commitment they can muster.

As motorcyclists we get around a bit and we use our eyes.

Madeleine has a very distinctive defect in her right eye which looks like a black mark, bottom left.

It’s is easy to remember and would be easy to recognise, providing you look.

She will now be four years older, so she will look like a 6 to 9 year old.

If you see a young girl in this age range with a right eye defect like this one do not hesitate to contact the police, wherever in the world you might be.  For more information click here.

Attractive Check In Staff

Having surrendered my Tax Disc at the end of November and (eventually) got a refund, I now need to tax my bike again from the start of next month, March, so I can get back on the road.

So I went along to my local DVLA Office again to buy myself a new tax disc.  I went there well before the end of the month, eight days before it in fact, although only six working days, to avoid what I knew would be DVLA’s busy period.  With luck the Office would be fairly quiet.

I also timed my arrival to be late in the day (they close at 5pm) to try out my theory that even if it was busy, they would be pulling out all the stops to clear the queue in order to avoid delaying their own commute home.

There was no queue at all for “Check In” and hardly anyone in there at all apart from staff.  The glass door which had suffered the ram raid during my previous visit had been given some new glass but the door was fixed in the fully open position; either they hadn’t had that part fixed or they weren’t going to risk another attack.

Much to my pleasant surprise there was a free Check In desk and it was being attended by an absolutely beautiful young lady with a lovely welcoming smile and long blonde hair.  As I walked straight up to her at the desk I thought I was dreaming and, since I haven’t tried to use anything remotely like a chat up line for several decades, resorted instead to jocular comment on the absence of a queue.

“Have you been bribing people to stay away?” I asked cheerily.  ‘Silly old fart thinks he’s being funny’ she probably thought, but she kept her lovely smile in place anyway, for which I was grateful. continues………

Sunshine and a clear sky in Suffolk

I’ve been in deepest Suffolk for the past week or so, with only occasional internet access, hence I’ve not been posting much.  Nor of course have I done any riding recently because my bike has been laid up for the winter.

Since the turn of the year I’ve been fairly heavily engaged in refurbishment of a bungalow which has been our holiday home for the past eleven years, since shortly after our first grandchild materialised nearly 300 miles from our home in Lancashire.

Families are relatively scattered these days, or at least ours is, so this was a way of having better contact without imposing too much on their family home.  Since then we’ve acquired another eight grandchildren, located in four well separated geographical clusters so we couldn’t keep buying extra homes to get close to them, but we did keep this one and it has been a great place to go for a break from a busy working life.  Suffolk people seem to live life at their own pace and are rumoured, although I’ve yet to see one myself, to have bumper stickers saying “Don’t rush me I’m from Suffolk”.

And the bungalow more or less looked after itself; we could go and go without even having to worry continues………

This article is aimed at those brave ladies who ride pillion on GoldWings and really it would be better if the blokes skipped it, although of course I can’t actually make them do that.  Let’s just say you blokes might be more comfortable leaving this one to your good ladies.

So, dear, long-suffering GoldWing ladies, this one’s for you.  If he’s still with us after that clear warning, on his own head be it.  He’ll be sorry.  The picture has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter of course.  I just thought you might like it.

I’ll just prattle on a bit for a couple more paragraphs, to get him to lose interest in the article, then we can start the real business.

Got all your presents have you?   That nice little packet of hankies for him that are really for you when you’ve got a cold and your nose is running?  Don’t want to waste new hankies on him when he’ll use them to wipe the shiny bits on the bike do we?  He can have them back when they’ve been washed a few times; they’ll be kinder on his sensitive nose then won’t they?  And those nice man socks that work well inside your riding boots?  Does he get a box of chocolates too, which he won’t really want, so you’ll have to eat them in the New Year – which is why you might as well get him your favourites.  Not that he would know that they were your favourites of course.  Had to be told what to get you for Christmas again this year did he?  Then forgot and had to ask you to remind him? continues………

Don't expect just to be handed one of these, they have to be earned!

There hasn’t been much snow here in Central Lancashire but it has been very cold during the past few days and since building work on the new gatepost had to be suspended I’ve spent too much time in a chair and on the keyboard.

I know, I said to myself, I’ll go and visit the local DVLA Office.  That’ll be a painless excursion, even if it does mean a bit of queueing.  And it might even be interesting to see how things go there these days – and strangely enough that’s exactly what it turned out to be, interesting.

I didn’t really go there purely in search of amusement of course.  There are better places for a retired man to take refuge when necessary from his wife’s instructions and admonitions than a DVLA Office but some of them involve contraband foods so in the interests of keeping my options open for the rest of the winter I’ll keep those to myself.

It was the last day of the month and I’d been thinking for some days that with this unseasonally early and unusually cold spell we’re having at the moment my biking season was well and truly over.  So why don’t I surrender the tax disk on the bike this year and save myself a few quid, instead of kidding myself that there will be a few winter days on which I could enjoy a nice ride.  They never are quite nice enough or salt-free enough to be tempting, so why pretend otherwise?  The last day of November would be my last chance to get a refund for December so off I went,  damp tax disk in hand, to claim my refund.  I have never yet managed to keep a tax disk dry on a motorbike.

As I arrived, at about 3.30pm on what would inevitably be a busy end-of-month day for a DVLA Office continues………