A question of Judgement

I have awful taste when it comes to women. Terrible, cataclysmically bad taste. In short I should not be allowed to pick girls for myself as I cannot be trusted to pick nice ones.

Thankfully I have managed - through luck more than anything else - to accumulate lots of excellent female friends. Female friends who care. Since the last girlfriend was such a nightmare (and believe me she was - I really should get around to posting some of the nonsense she did) they (my friends) have decided that I'm not allowed to date anyone else until they give me the thumbs up.

I trust their judgement because when I was blinded a wave of pheromones they instantly took a dislike to my last girlfriend. They could tell she was a bad egg, when I was too busy swooning.

It's worth pointing out that these female friends are mostly married or in proper grown up long term relationships, and thus have no ulterior motives. They just want me to go out with someone nice and be happy. So my chums have decided that I can't date anyone else until they have given them the seal of approval which I think is terribly wise, if a little tricky to engineer.

I like the idea of any future girlfriends having to pass an independently verified test. I wonder if it will have a hazard perception section where they will have to click furiously when they see danger just like in the bike test I took.

A cunning array of stunts

While in the midst of the now almost traditional 'furious pitching Monday' I happened to mention in passing that last week I'd passed my bike test. It was slightly in context as I explained why I hadn't pitched many ideas last week because I was off doing manly things with motorcycles.

Anyway, the editor said congratulations and then offered me a biking assignment. I said yes without realising what was really involved, so next week I'll be screaming around a racing circuit on proper racing bike. To put this in perspective lets look at my road riding career so far.

Day 1 - Compulsory Basic Training - A morning spent riding around a car park and then an afternoon ride onto the roads.
Day 2 - Direct Access Course Starts - First time on a 500cc motorcycle on the road.
Day 3 - Ride around some more, then do a mock test.
Day 4 - Morning of practice, then motorcycle test.
Day 5 - Borrow road going sports bike that can go at 142mph, wobble around South West London grinning like a loon

So the next day (assuming I don't do any more test rides this weekend) will be

Day 6 - Race 1000cc motoGP bike around race circuit.

I'm just glad I'll be borrowing someone else's trousers.

Lime pickle and music collections

My dad ate a lot of strange things. When he was still living in the family home I'd sometimes find him having a midnight snack of cheese and half a raw onion. When he spread butter on bread it was about half an inch thick and marmalade was the only thing to have on toast. He also really liked pink wafer biscuits, which is what he wanted served at his memorial.

One of the things he really liked was Lime Pickle, I can remember eating it in Wales quite a lot while we sat awkwardly around a table. The house in Wales was freezing most of the time so we would be hunched over in coats with hot cups of tea eating a selection of cured meats off wooden boards. It wasn't exactly a happy time but now I'm content to have a dash of Lime Pickle on something and be reminded of him, and his silly braces. The cancer and treatment had ravaged and warped his body and so he was a weird shape, it was almost impossible for him to get trousers that fitted properly so had to buy strangely large jeans and wear them with braces. It (combined with his white beard) made him look like Father Christmas during the off season. That's what I think of when I eat Lime Pickle.

When I was working on my car test I spent quite a bit of time carefully selecting the music I was going to play in the car on my first solo drive. The car was an ancient Mark 2 Escort from '78. It was a bit of a muscle car as it had been modifed, this combined with rear wheel drive and fairly shabby looks made it a lovely car to drive around. It was sickeningly fast but looked a bit rubbish (okay, really rubbish but I can only remember it fondly) so you could burn up surprised people in BMWs and Mercs.

After hours of selection this was the opening tune to my first ever ride in a car on my own. It was a lovely summers day and I can still remember every moment of it. The feeling of the warm breeze coming in through the window as I drove, the strange sensation of being alone in a car and the total sense of freedom.

I've got my first proper ride on a bike coming up now, well once I decide which one to get and so I'm starting to think about soundtracks for that too. The opening track can't be too aggressive the road near the flat is swathed in speed cameras but once I get on to the engaging roads outside of London it would be nice to have something you can really lean over to.

Victory

Well all that furious clicking and revision paid off. I passed the theory part of my bike test first time and aced it. I even managed to do with a personal best compared to the mock tests I was doing and I'm feeling rather chuffed.

Right I've got to go and interview some not terribly thrilling people for a piece. I'm furiously trying to get as much work as possible to pay for all of this.

Some of you may have noticed that there hasn't been much mention of fun with girls recently. This is because I have decided to get a motorbike instead. Girlfriends cost about the same if not more and there is just as much testing involved (or 'dating' as it is also known) so I think it's a fair comparison.

Plus when a bike is dirty you can clean it with a hose, girls get angry if you do that.

The Danger click

I have been doing a lot of revising for this test, especially the hazard part. I've spent countless hours watching videos of people in slightly shabby looking Northern towns (somewhere near Leeds judging by the road signs) go about their lives while I get a driver's eye view and click in the face of danger.

It's like being an insect, or some other creature with a survival system that can be triggered. Now when I walk along the road I'm working through the dangers in my head as if I was riding.

Someone reversing.
*click*
Young kids on bikes.
*click*

And now it's spilling over into my private life.

Meet a dark-haired woman in while out shopping for food. Who while talking about the relative merits of potatoes manages to mention she is single but her ex-boyfriend cheated on her.
*click*
Discover female friend has been telling mutual friends she has decided to seduce me.
*click*
Being tempted to 'invest' in a lime green three piece suit
*click*

Hazard perception and winkle pickers

The bike (and car) tests have got rather involved, now one has to take a theory test and a hazard perception test as well as the practical test we all know and hate.

The theory test doesn't bother me too much, I'm quite good at memorising useless facts and so knowing the stopping distance in ice when you are travelling at 70mph isn't presenting much of a problem. I brought a practice DVD anyway and I've managed to get to the point where don't have much to worry about.

The second part is the bit that troubles me. The Hazard Perception test involves watching a series of clips from a drivers view and and clicking the mouse when you see a developing hazard. I'm not completely sure what their definition of the hazard is. Buses turning right is a hazard, but a chap pulling a wheelie on his bicycle was gleefully ignored. Anyway I've brought a DVD and now I'm spending hours watching videos and clicking frantically when something even mildly threatening appears.

The other problem is I keep getting distracted by the other people in the videos just strolling along the side of the road. There was a lady who really shouldn't have been wearing winkle pickers with those trousers (click). A very ill-thought out mullet (click), a puffa jacket combined with shorts (click) and we shall not speak of the denim top and bottom combination that as far as I am concerned is definitely a hazard (click, click, clickity-click).

So I've had to take a break and look at something else for a while. All this hazard spotting is very tiring. I do wonder though, who ever actually picked some winkles in winkle pickers? Or creeped across a brothel in brothel creepers?

I can't really talk, I've never smoked a cigarette in my life but I've got a plethora of smoking jackets.