Some people are born stupid but others have to work at it.

You’d have thought at my age I would have got the message.

     A long time ago in another life people shot at me or tried to blow me up. Other people have tried to do me in, in a number of ways but I’ve always managed to get away with it – clearly since I’m not writing this from beyond the grave.

    However, after fourty years of riding a motorbike I’ve nearly been killed so many times I can barely count. Smashing through someone’s windscreen face first on the motorway is not something I‘d ever like to repeat and heartily recommend others not to try. Sliding down the road at seventy miles an hour was not my happiest experience and hot engine oil pouring over me whilst trapped beneath a smashed bike didn’t do it for me either.

    So why do I keep doing it? Just four days ago I was on a major arterial road leaving London when someone decided to change lanes (illegally) without warning and slam into me, sending me hurtling down the road on my hip beneath the bike; and when we finally came to rest and I realised I wasn't dead, cringed in terror as I waited for the following truck to drive over my heard. Happily it swerved.

    And the reason I repaired my bike and still didn’t sell it? The underground/tube prices are so incredibly expensive in this city that I simply cannot afford to use it.

   I hear there’s a sale of ex military vehicles in Salisbury in a couple of months.

   I wonder how much a tank would cost.