ulster gp, 1963, mz, bike number 7, centre of the road in third position just about to overtake for the lead......

mad john finally finished the paintwork for the bonneville in the early hours of sunday morning, 1500 hrs sunday afternoon he was sat in our shed hand compounding and polishing the finished tank and sidepanels, i'm making up my front brakeline for the sporty, dangerous is turning up a couple of aluminium mountings for the sidepanels to replace the galvanised items that come with the sidepanel mounting kit, 'bastard', me and dangerous look round, mad john is oblivious, 'shit job', we look at each other, mad john is lost in his work, 'fucking rubbish', i'm trying to stifle a giggle, dangerous is suddenly concentrating very hard on his turning, 'right, that's it, fuck it, i'm taking them back and doing them again', i make a brew and we seriously have to talk him out of taking them back and repainting the flawless finish, mad john, painter, legend....

toots and the maytals.

still waiting for the wheel rims, always jobs to do so nipped down to racing lines to pick up a couple of brembo fluid reservoirs off rob that i'd ordered a couple of weeks ago, on my way home i called in at a van hire place that i had seen many times but never got around to asking about their rates, got chatting to lee and michelle the owners  who are keen racing fans, they were really interested in the mz and struck me a deal, 28 quid a day, i was paying over a ton for a weekend so thats a great saving, dangerous and mad john were already in the shed when i got back, kettle on and down to work, dangerous making up a rear brake line for the bonny, mad john discussing the merits of two-pack paint over cellulose and me fabbing up a carbon bracket to mount the front brake reservoir, i drilled the master cylinder perch and tapped it 5mm, made up a spacer out of 10mm aluminium round stock to off set the hose, cleaned up the stainless fasteners on the boxford, took me the best part of 20 minutes, then spent two hours trying to get the spring clips on to hold the hose, sticking a screwdriver down the back of my thumbnail in the process, cue, swearing, pain and claret and much laughing from mad john and dangerous, it's always funny until someone gets hurt, then it's fucking hilarious.........

had a day off today, me and dangerous went to the race retro show down at stoneleigh near coventry, michael dunlops manx winning gs 1000, gold star, peter williams norton, the eight cylinder bill lomas guzzi racer, [doing laps of the carpark, oh, my, god], sammy miller, [gentleman, laugh-out-loud banter and an enthusiasm for motorcycles that would shame us mere mortals], aermmachi's, austin healey's, jaguars, seeley g50's, £2000 oil paintings of guzzi racers, pott's desmodromic norton race engine's, big, big money cars and bikes, thought we had dropped a bollock at first, not like stafford or classic race meetings, big, big, big  money, you could almost taste it but everyone had one thing in common, racing,  racing, racing, ............................................. and an appreciation of the internal combustion engine.

tonight, i am mostly listening to lcd soundsystem, drinking red wine and dreaming of mz racer's.......

got home from work to discover the dog's had wreaked havoc on my brand spanking new copy of sideburn, don't know if it's some sort of dog-punk thing where they de-construct the contents and reform them in the old sex pistols/jamie reid blackmail letter form, or perhaps they just don't like kawasaki's?.......