ed's air-cooled ducati ss, lovely, see more at http://www.fingymoto.blogspot.com/ wish i hadn't sold mine now, bummer.....

ralph bryans,  'facoia d'angelo', [angel face] 1965 50cc tt.

respect due, we are not worthy, pain.......

wendy james.

lazy day at the loveless hq today, up late, [0800hrs], breakfast, tea, read a couple of back issues of classic racer, more tea, better take the dog's for a walk, skin out 1100hrs, over the ancient portway route, the southern most edge of the peak, used as a trading route from prehistoric times, the romans, [as usual] incorporated it into ryknield street, past the pringle clad golfers on the chevin, over to far laund and drop back down to follow the river derwent, gus is in like a shot, me and ted sit on the bank watching him doing that mad- terrier- swim- thing, ted dips a paw into the freezing water and has a drink then comes back and sits next to me, gus eventually has enough and we make our way back onto the road, the railway line follows the same path and i'm taken by surprise when a steam train bursts out of the tunnel under the chevin, wish i had bought my camera to capture it, make the climb back to home, ready for a brew and we've covered eight miles, into the shed, got to get some of the boring, run-of-the- mill jobs out of the way, decide to fit the clutch cable, bollocks, the standard harley cable will never fit the japper lever, what to do?, cut the standard sporty cable, hacksaw, file and wet and dry to form a nipple that will fit the japper lever, no-one ever said life was going to be easy mate.........

the supertrapps are great pipes but you always end up leaving half your boot melted all over them, i ride with my toes on the footpegs so usually end up with the acrid smell of burning leather/rubber/socks after a ride, dug an arai sticker out of my toolbox and traced it onto a piece of carbon fibre, hacksaw and grind to shape, knock a bracket up out of a piece of ally angle and mill to shape, two holes drilled and mount it off the exhaust clamp, still not happy with the rear light/reg plate bracket so milled a piece of flat to fit inside the mudguard mounting bracket on the frame, centre drilled and turned up a spacer to get everything lined up, the numberplate arrived this morning, yes, it's black and silver, yes my bike's 02 so it's illegal, yes, the plates a 7"x5", yes that's illegal, yes, the numbers are too small and not the correct spacings, that's illegal too, ask me if i give a fuck.....

'wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats', yep, the government thought that people dancing in a field represented the downfall of public decency and the fall of civilisation so bought in a wide ranging and sometimes oblique law to control the menace, the criminal justice bill, glad i was a soldier, fight the power....

sally james, today is saturday watch and smile.....

 from 1966 until 1974 my summer holiday was spent at butlin's holiday camp at filey on the east coast, my mum was a dinner lady and my old man a fitter at bemrose, the big printing firm, if you were from derby you were in engineering, rolls royce, celanese, international combustion or the carriage works, [british rail], ley's malleable casting foundry, or, one of the hundreds of small support units that supplied the big factories, we used to go to butlin's for a week, my mum and dad, nan, my auntie cath, uncle roy and two cousins, louise and david, the minute we got through those gates was like entering another world, we waited at the reception to receive our enamel year badges and chalet key's, [worn proudly around the neck on a nan provided ribbon], one week, seven day's, one hundred and sixty eight hours of fun, amusement park, chair lift, beach, swimming pools, [one heated indoor with loads of plastic tropical birds and jungle greenery hanging above it] and one outdoor, [freezing, but with a fountain at each end, i gave myself an enema sitting on it one year!], three square's a day in the canteen, crazy golf, my nan arguing with the other pensioners in the 'gaiety' theatre before each night's performance, [we used to sit with her on the front row which was reseved for disabled people], we got to know the coolest bloke in the world ever, he worked 'the whip' on the amusements, he must have been in his late thirties and he let us sit in the garden shed that doubled as the control room for the ride, regulation long greasy hair, dirty levis and 'steely's', [toe 'tecter boots with an external steel toe-cap], a nylon 'butlin's' jacket with sleeves rolled up to expose a skull and dagger tattoo on one forearm and  a tombstone and rose on the other, i was fascinated by his knuckle tattoos as he made a roll-up,' a.c.a.b.' on the left and 'hate' on the right, i'm sure he was more interested in the budding teenage charms of louise than me but when he told us about his bsa, that was it, [i really don't think now looking back that he actually had one but....], blissful long summer's, in 1974 i was 14 and i met a pretty brunette from glasgow, gillian and i spent the week swimming, playing football and listening to the groups playing in the 'beachcomber' bar, i had really never seen anything like it before, a tropical island theme, complete with streams running through it, little wooden bridges and a shipwreck, the sky would darken and there would be a tropical rainstorm complete with thunder and lightning, the last night of the holiday gillian kissed me, my first proper kiss, i thought my head was going to explode, we wrote to each other for about three months afterwards, life would never be the same again, eight months later in tha april of 1975 i left school and started my engineering apprenticeship, we never went back to butlin's again and i got my puch three-speed moped.......

ey up, don't know what happened there but a few of the latest post's have disapeared into the ether, dangerous is away touring the highlands in his motor caravan so i'm left to hold the loveless fort, first thing was a good clean up, lathe and miller cleaned down, shed swept and tools back in their rightful place, with that out of the way i drilled and tapped the tail light bracket and used a couple of button head screws to fix it to the bracket that i made to fix it to the frame under the seat, as i said before, the seat unit is a 'race weight' pattern item and not particularly sturdy so the mounting strap adds some support to the back of the seat unit, i used a couple of pieces of tool drawer liner rubber to act as a cushion and evo-stuck them to the mounting to damp out the vibration, the strap need's some support, i'm not happy mounting it off one bolt as it could 'yawn' if the bolt slackens off.