Speed Awareness

This weekend just gone, I went on a speed awareness course.

The first irony of many to be encountered across this post is that I was aware of precisely how fast I was going when I got nicked, back at the end of July – ie 37 mph.

What I was not aware of was that Truvelo Combi (pictured) cameras take pictures of you from the front if you pass them at a speed above the limit. I had always thought they were the ones that took your number going in to a “measured mile” type of speed trap and then got you on the way out if you’re too quick. 

Naturally, I had intended to slow down sharply right before passing the second camera.

So I had already learned something valuable a long time before going on the course.

I shall spare you any further details of my lawbreaking. Suffice to say I was eventually faced with the following options:

• A £60 fine and 3 points on my licence
• Go on a 4.5-hour speed awareness course, which costs £75

Considering the price of car insurance these days – and the risk of recidivism on my part (to which we will return later) – it was a no brainer.

Not only that, I thought it would give me something funny to write about here for you, my beloved readers. I was hoping for:

• A “scared straight” police lecture to take the piss out of;
• A local government health and safety boreathon to take the piss out of; or
• At least one or more foul-tempered 50+ Yorkshire arseholes who think that arguing with the poor schmuck giving the presentation will lead to the law being immediately changed in their favour and their course fee returned, with an apology for wasting their valuable time. To take the piss out of.

My hopes in these regards were to be dashed, although there was (inevitably) a little dash of each. Just not enough to really get stuck into.

Potentially ironic photograph

It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, innit? That is to say, debatably ironic but primarily just a little bit disappointing and wearing.

To give them their due, the pair who ran the session were very entertaining – given the subject matter and the fact that most people there were being forcibly detained under pain of punishment for the first time since school. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, no less.

I did also learn a couple of things:

• Unless there’s a sign to say otherwise (or you’re on a motorway or dual carriageway) the presence of street lighting = 30 mph speed limit. “Built up area” means nothing in this regard.
• A multi-lane road is only a dual carriageway if there’s a central reservation – and this is important because there is a different national speed limit for single carriageways and dual carriageways (ie for cars, 60 mph and 70 mph, respectively).

I expect you knew all of that, right?

As you would expect, we also heard some harrowing stories about how cars going too fast had killed people, saw some harrowing videos of cars going too fast killing people, collectively imagined what it would be like be driving a car too fast that had killed some people etc.

For me however the problem was this. Even after 4.5 hours of listening, nodding along and generally taking it all in, I didn’t really feel as though I had done anything wrong.

I got done driving past a speed camera around 7pm in the evening. There was nobody around.

On one side of the road beyond the pavement, there was a brick wall with woods on the other side of it. The wall is approximately 6 feet high on the other side of it. So nobody is about to dive into the road from that side.

On the other side is a grass verge, a pavement, a small wall, a big open lawn and finally a block of flats.

The view is very good; there are no junctions or other hazards. There are streetlights. I’m checking all this on Google StreetView as I write, so this is not just how I remember it.  

I am not saying that I shouldn’t have been done because of all these things. I’m saying I can’t understand why there is a speed camera there, unless it is just an instrument of revenue-raising or tyrannising drivers with the threat of constant surveillance.

I just cannot see a real safety reason for that camera to be there - or for a lot of other cameras to be where they are. Which makes one think: "Yes, I understand and agree with everything you've said. But what has it got to do with the situation I found myself in, which was completely unlike everything you've talked about?"

Honestly, I wanted to come out of that course a changed man. For £75 you expect an epiphany, not just a couple of cups of coffee and a free pencil. I’m not sure I was even supposed to take the pencil.

But I didn’t.

I’m not an habitual speeder – on a scooter one rarely has the opportunity to break the limit. But I still believe in my stomach that the risk of getting caught or having an accident is sometimes outweighed by my need to be somewhere, fast. I can’t help it. It’s pre-rational.

I’ll probably still believe that right up until something awful happens.

Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

You can wear what you like

When I see politicians calling for debate about banning burqas, I have to agree with this bloke – there’s nothing to debate, because this is Britain and people can wear what the hell they like.

The ostensible reason that this tiresome old chestnut has been hauled out of the fire once again is that some judge has said a Muslim woman can’t enter a plea in court wearing a veil on the grounds that her identity could not be verified without seeing her face.

As usual, the accompanying media hoo-ha is not actually about the legal arguments involved. Though not a lawyer myself, I am not aware of any legal precedent saying that people in court have to be identified facially. We have such marvels of the 19^th century as “finger-prints”, for example, which I am told many judges are these days inclined to accept as real evidence when imprisoning people, let alone confirming who they are.

I live in West Yorkshire so most days I see at least one fully-veiled person. I can say with some confidence that it is a rare day on which they are the most remarkably-attired person I will see. It bothers me no more than when I see a Sikh man wearing a turban, a Jewish man with ringlets or a student dressing like a ridiculous clown.

That’s nothing to do with being PC or “culturally sensitive”. I believe that it is a matter of being true to “proper British values” (whatever they are) to not give a toss what anyone else wears, thinks or does unless or until it impinges on others.

Sumptuary laws were one of the first things to be dumped in the move from feudalism here in the West, so it is staggering to me that anyone would think of bringing them back today.

As a motorcyclist, I cover my face in public places a lot. This should not lead anyone to regard me as a security risk or a source of suspicion.

I accept that when I go into private places – like petrol stations – the “terms of use” of that place often require me to take my crash helmet off. If I don’t like it I can buy petrol somewhere else where they have different rules.

I do not accept, however, that when I am in a public place I should have to prove anything to anyone by verifying my identity by means of showing my face, presenting my papers or scanning a barcode tattooed onto my forehead.

I am a citizen and the source of law and political authority in a democracy is the citizenry. The state is there for our convenience and protection, not the other way round. The law is there to protect citizens from each other AND FROM THE STATE, not the other way round. A woman with a bit of cloth over her nose and mouth poses no threat to me or you by virtue of having a bit of cloth over her nose and mouth. If she thinks it’s important, that trumps your aesthetic preferences or what is easier for you to deal with. End of.

Only one of these is a burqa

There is, of course, the argument that women are being coerced into wearing veils by the actions of men, supported by cultural norms within the relevant communities.

But banning veils doesn’t tackle that problem. It’s the equivalent of treating pneumonia with cough medicine – addressing an outward symptom only.

If you think that someone else’s culture is “wrong” about something like the treatment of women, then confront that point directly – not through some ridiculous sublimated proxy like banning items of clothing.

I suspect, indeed, that forcing women to remove their veils in public is unlikely to do much to promote the cause of feminism amongst outraged men who impose it on their wives and daughters because they think it is sacrilegious. It will just alienate them from the law and convince them that it regards Islam as an enemy.

And I suppose that the idea that “Islam is our enemy” is really what is at the bottom of a lot of this; that burqa-banning is a way for Islamophobes to indulge their prejudices while pretending that they are promoting some sort of liberal values.

What people wear is none of the state’s business and none of the law’s business, no matter what their religion, their gender or their race. 

Barcelona: It was the first time that we met

Elvira and I have just come back from a long weekend in Barcelona, which has just leapt to the top of my list of favourite cities in the world.

Here are some of my pensées arising.

More whining about airports

As I mentioned last week, coming up with blog material is – for me – dependent on having time and space to mull over an idea continuously, until it has been mulled out of all proportion.

This is why I have written so thoroughly on air travel before. There is always a lot of waiting, and there is always something absurd happening or about to happen to think about.

For example – is the whole “take your shoes off to go through the scanner” now a permanent thing? On the basis that once ever – 12 years ago - some fucknut put a bomb in his shoes, which failed to go off?

I know that real life terrorists tend not to be the brightest, but is anyone really likely to try this again – when everyone’s shoes have to go through the scanner?

As if the superiority of pretty much every other culture to the British was in need of any evidence, Barcelona airport has accommodated this state of affairs by carpeting the walkway through the scanner. That, my friends, is a real sign of civilisation.

La Sagrada Familia

This, for those of you who don’t know, is that funny looking church.

Seriously – I thought it was the most impressive building I have ever seen. It is like nothing else on earth. And it’s not even finished yet.

The exterior is simply astonishing. From a distance it looks organic – like something HR Giger would have drawn or HP Lovecraft would have written about. The towers in particular look unchristian, like something that has risen out of a crack in the ground during an earthquake. I was particularly struck by how they have "Sanctus" written around them in exactly the same font as hotels have "Marriott" written on them. 

Plastic martians come out of it

Close up though, it is as ornate and religious as Notre Dame or Chartres cathedral. Above is a picture from the Nativity facade. This is presumably the first and only turkey featured on a major religious building.

For all its organic, sensuous curves, the Nativity facade is recognisably a more-or-less conventional church door. Contrast that with the modernist Passion facade, which is terrifying in its own way. 

I have to say that, while it was still very impressive, the interior of La Sagrada Familia didn’t move me like the exterior did. My first impression was that is resembled the set of a 1960s sci-fi, particularly when I saw the lifts going up and down the towers.

But what impressed me more than anything was the sheer ambition of it. Gaudi and everyone else who has worked on it knew they would not live to see it completed. Yes – that is true of cathedral builders throughout history, but to think that 20^th century people thought like that as well? The work, I suppose, is itself a collective act of devotion – very difficult for us individualists to comprehend. And yet there it is, being built with the money from the hordes of visitors paying 13 euro 50 a head to go and look.

If you go to Barcelona, you MUST go and see La Sagrada Familia.

Barcelona itself

It’s never a fair comparison to put somewhere you go on holiday alongside somewhere you live and/or work.

But let’s do it anyway.

Barcelona has a warm welcome for sailors

The weather was beautiful. Everyone we spoke to was friendly and helpful – despite my having gone there with the belief that it was simply a matter of time until we were pickpocketed. Everything was clean. Families were doing things together. Generations and nationalities were getting along just fine together. The food was good. Nothing was overcrowded. Even the many dogs seemed polite and relaxed.

I saw none of the waddling, tracksuited urban peasants one sees everywhere in the UK. Maybe they were all at home watching “Javier Kyle” instead of wandering about public spaces like grotesque overweight zombies.

LOL: "Quim"

OK, we did see a fair sample of that uniquely Iberian phenomenon - the man with long hair up in a bun - but then even the beggars were picturesque... ;)

No-one seemed to be doing anything purely for the sake of pissing everyone else off – apart from the (mostly, but thankfully not exclusively, British) stag and hen parties.

It almost made me think that living in a city need not be a hell on earth. And the scooters!

OK, on the last night on the way home we saw (i) needles, (ii) vomit on the Metro and (iii) a broken bottle on the station steps – but the fact that this was remarkable rather than entirely commonplace seems important.

Like I say, it’s probably not a fair comparison. Tourists who jet in and do the sights for a few days only see the theme park Barcelona. I’m sure it has its problems. But my god, its best side is so much better than the best side of any city I’ve ever seen in the UK.

So THAT is where I am retiring to.

¡Visca Catalunya!

A Block of Ice

Most of my ideas for blogs come to me while I am riding my scooter. My commute gives me a good 25 minutes or so of chewing a thought up, swallowing it, digesting it through my many stomachs before finally regurgitating it to chew a bit more.

And so I feel I must blame the recent sparsity of my posting on the dismal weather we have had for WEEKS ON END NOW.

Following the ghastly experience related in The White Caterpillar trilogy earlier this year, I have become rather more wary of taking my bike out in snow and ice. And being older now than I ever have been in the past, I am finding myself less and less willing to get cold or wet unnecessarily.

So I have been taking the train a lot more recently. And I can’t just sit and think on trains. So I read.

Reading is all very well and good, but it hasn’t furnished me with that many ideas for blogs. Not ones I can pass off as my own, at any rate.

I’m on a train home from London as I write this, and I am experiencing what I suppose proper writers would call writer’s block – insofar as, in spite of having a few basic ideas for posts, I haven’t had the opportunity to masticate them properly; to grind them up between the molars of my mind into the pulpy, glutinous paste I need in order to make the ODHSNM magic happen.

I’ve started writing a couple of things, and then deleted it after a hundred words or so.

As long-time readers will attest, considerations of quality have never stopped me writing before. And so I am writing this instead to tell you all about it.

Perhaps the weather has turned and we are finally going to get some kind of spring, which will in turn see the green shoots of things to write about begin to poke their heads out of my frozen brain-soil. Or maybe I’ve just run out of decent ideas. Or maybe I’ve lost the ability to express them. Or maybe I just don’t want to do this any more.

I need to get back on my bike and find out. 

The White Caterpillar – Part 1

I am reading a book called “The White Spider” at the moment.

Yes, a book! Not an out-of-copyright free Kindle ebook. It was a birthday present.

It is the story of the first ascent of the north face of the Eiger, by one of the party that did it in 1938. By all accounts, it was a pretty unpleasant experience – mollified only by the fact that they, unlike a lot of the other people who attempted to climb it, did not die.

Well, yesterday I experienced my own snowbound odyssey. It wasn’t perhaps quite as steep, or cold, or risky, or indeed historic as Heinrich Harrer’s – but at the time, it felt not too dissimilar.

Even though I did end up on a bus for quite a lot of it.

So I am calling my own adventure “The White Caterpillar”, for the following reasons:

• Caterpillars are less dangerous than spiders (unless eaten)
• Caterpillars are a bit fat and generally unsuited to strenuous physical extertion – like me

I should point out at this point that the White Caterpillar has nothing to do with the “white slug” referenced in The Inbetweeners movie... I was fully trousered – double trousered in fact – the whole time.

Part 1 – The Ascent

I don’t know if anyone else saw it yesterday morning (February 13) but the sky was uncommonly red when I was walking the dogs around 7am. So red, in fact, that everything took on a pinkish hue, much as I would imagine it would in the aftermath of an atomic blast.

In both these sets of circumstances – red sky in the morning and immediately after a nuclear explosion – shepherds are exhorted to take warning. Some people say sailors – I say shepherds.

Alas! I did not take the hint. I merely commented on how pretty the sky was, hopped onto my oft-mentioned scooter and zipped away to work. As per my undertaking at the end of “Horsforth and my balls...”, I was wearing full waterproofs.

Now, it’s about 10 miles by road from my house to my office and the journey in was uneventful.

Part 2 – Leeds to Kirkstall

It soon began to snow. I wasn’t worried. It does that a lot around here, and usually it’s only the last 100 metres of my journey home (ie the road I live on) that causes a problem. Everything else is a main road and they tend to stay clear.

I kept an eye on a planter in the middle of the road outside my windows to monitor the progress of the snow.

First, the soil was coated with snow. That’s nothing to worry about, I thought.

Then the leaves of the flowers went white.

By lunchtime, the cobblestones between the two carriageways was getting a dusting, but the roads themselves were still clear. I had no cause for concern.

I had intended to leave about 2pm, so I could get home before it started to get colder/darker/snowier and so I could get some work done when I got back. I didn't believe that there would be a problem. After all, snow had been forecast - the gritters would have been out...

By about 1.45pm, the snow was encroaching onto the road from the edges and it looked like a blizzard was in progress. I decided that it was now or never. The main roads would still be fine.

I jokingly said to some colleagues as I left that I would probably be dead in 30 minutes.

As soon as I was on my bike, I realised it wasn’t fine.

Visibility was appalling – my helmet was continually steaming up, and even when I could see through it, my vision was impeded by the barrage of snow.

But worse still was the road surface. Maybe half a mile out of Leeds city centre and the snow was being compacted into ice. I was on Burley Road, which is very undulating (not unlike the motion of a caterpillar). I should have gone down Kirkstall Road. Maybe that would have been better.

Vehicles with front-wheel drive were swishing their back ends left and right. Vehicles with rear-wheel drive were only going forward at 10-20 degrees off straight. No one was going more than 10mph.

I was soon going along with both feet on the ground to try to steady my fishtailing back wheel, stopping repeatedly to let anyone coming up behind me pass, so that if I came off there would be no one to run me over and so as not to have anyone lose control and run into the back of me.

By the time I got to Kirkstall Hill, I was – for want of a better expression – shitting myself, as cars and lorries skidded around and ploughed into one another. I gave up on Kirkstall Lane, rang Elvira – who was expecting me to get home so she could leave Tancred with me while she picked Roger Jr up from school.

There was no way I could make further progress. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of losing control and coming off my bike – which I was. I was more worried about someone else losing control and hitting me.

I pushed the bike on foot into a car park – approximately 300 metres and it took me at least 15 minutes as I had no grip from my shoes and the bike weighs about 18 stone. It was like dragging an unconscious fat man on a skateboard across an ice rink, with a runaway Zamboni careering towards you.

I locked up, and set off on foot.

Come back tomorrow for the second exciting episode of Roger of Sicily’s attempt to get home in bad weather!

I am Growing as a Person

There’s a great line in Neal Stephenson’s book Cryptonomicon where he says that for a certain kind of person, any statement of fact by another is an implicit challenge – coming with the unspoken epilogue “...and you didn’t know that”.

I’m afraid I don’t know the precise wording of the line or whereabouts in the book it is – I actually read it, rather than Googling for quotes. Nevertheless, for me it sums up perfectly a very widespread human trait which, until I saw it set down in print, I was aware of but not quite able to put my finger on.

I used to be one of those insecure people who always felt the need to assure interlocutors that I already knew whatever they were telling me, as if I was in some way diminished or belittled by not having known every possible piece of information anyone else might happen to know.

Yesterday, I realised that I had overcome this particular weakness - finally breaking out of the sleep, homeostasis, excretion layer of the Maslow pyramid. 

I was unlocking my bike and getting ready to set off home, when someone shouted across to me that they were surprised to see me riding a scooter and that they had assumed I would be riding something bigger.

Now, this is fair comment to a degree. I do tend to dress like I riot policeman. My defences are:

1. It’s cold and body armour is pretty warm.
2. It’s usually raining and body armour is pretty waterproof (only, of course, if one wears the trousers).
3. If I come off my scooter at 30mph or Valentino Rossi comes off his Ducati at 30mph, we are both going to get pretty badly messed up unless we’re wearing protective clothing.

So anyway, this guy – who also had a scooter – starts talking to me about bikes and matters bike-related. I go along with it because, hey, we bikers have to stick together, right?

Several minutes later, I realise that this person is just regaling me with every single fact about motorbikes he has ever heard.

And many of his assertions are COMPLETELY WRONG.

I can’t remember all of them, but specifically he insisted that it was legal to ride a 250CC bike on a CBT. Which is simply untrue. I should know, because I had to retake my bloody CBT not ten days ago (you have to do it every two years unless you upgrade to a higher category licence).

By this time, I was not only wondering what it is that makes apparently normal people burst forth with incontinent logorrhea to complete strangers who have been fooled into making eye contact with them, but also fighting back an irresistible urge to argue with him.

Had I not been wearing body armour I might have been less willing to engage in conversation – let alone controversy – with an unknown, potentially knife-wielding party. The temptation to say “I don’t think that’s right” was strong...

Reader, I conquered it.

I realised that the quickest route out of the conversation was to say “really?” and go along with it, even though I knew it was incorrect – and even though it gave the impression that I did not know something.

I really am growing as a person. I wished him "the best of luck" four times before I got away, but I did eventually get away. 

Oh I found the quote:

Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an assertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances.

I Googled it.

Horsforth and my balls are drenched

Yesterday, I got completely soaked on the way home from work. When I set off in the morning on my trusty scooter, it was a beautiful sunny day.

When I say “beautiful sunny day” you will of course interpret this relatively.  

By the time I arrived at work, it had started to rain and it pretty much didn’t stop from then on. In fact, I don’t think it has stopped yet.

That morning, I did not put my waterproofs on. For some reason, I have developed a bizarre aversion to putting my heavily-armoured and waterproof overtrousers on. It has just become another one of those things I avoid doing even though I almost always feel better after having done so – like shaving or touching ham.

So I just had on normal work trousers and a leather jacket – of a style one might refer to as a “blouson”. Plus helmet and gloves, OBVS.

A brief aside to follow up on and qualify the rave review I gave the Nolan N103 crash helmet back in February 2011.  

1. If you put the helmet on and your hair or face are already a bit wet, the whole “won’t steam up” pinlock magic doesn’t work.
2. The pinlock insert itself has, over the course of a year, wriggled itself a bit loose from the visor being put up and down – and where it has ground against the windscreen, both have scratched at the top and bottom, leaving me with two regions I can’t now see properly out of.

I don’t suppose you get too many reviews of wear and tear on crash helmets, but that, dear friends, you can have for free.

Anyway, back to yesterday morning when I was deciding what to wear. The sun was shining (see disclaimer above) and it is June. How bad could getting a bit wet be?

As the day wore on and the rain came down more and more heavily, but instead of becoming gloomy at the prospect of a soaking my inner Stoic took charge.

“You’re going to get very wet going home, but there’s no way you can avoid getting wet;  you can only get so wet; and as soon as you get home, you can take the wet stuff off. C’mon it’ll be fun,” Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius was whispering into my ear.

Knowing that it was an unavoidable certainty rather than something I had to worry might happen, off I went home rather more cheerful than pathetic fallacy might have suggested.  

By the time I got to my bike, I was pretty soggy. By the time I had cleared Westgate, my trousers were wet through.

Well, I thought, if this is what I’ve been fretting about – if this is as bad as it gets – getting wet really is something only IDIOTS are afraid of.

O reader, knew I then what I now know of the extent and hideous process by which one can become even wetter I would have balked at my overconfidence.

I trundled merrily along, zipping in and out of traffic and laughing maniacally (in my head) at the poor benighted car-drivers who would have to sit in their queues for an hour or more – just because they were scared of a little bit of rain!

Soon, though, a cold discomfort spread to my inner thighs...

At this point, I suppose I should warn you that if the thought of my inner thighs is upsetting to you, it would be advisable to stop reading now – as further, more graphic reference will continue to be made to those regions which, if I were an aircraft, would be generically titled “undercarriage”.

That is rather unpleasant, I thought. It’s not unlike that feeling you get after you’ve been swimming and then sat around in your trunks for a while – you think you’re dry, you stand up, and you realise that certain areas are in fact still very wet. Unpleasant, but tolerable.

But shortly afterwards, as I drove through Horsforth (I had decided to go home a slightly different way! I know! Mi vida loca!) I felt what can only be described as a clenching sensation – reminiscent of a prodded snail retreating into its shell.

I don’t know if anyone here has ever dipped their testicles into cold water, but it is not something I can recommend. Gradually, the rain seeped through my undergarments and dug its icy talons into my beleaguered nutbag.

At the same time, let me add, I was grappling with the fact that I had put my helmet on AFTER getting wet – and so my visor was steaming up from the inside, as well as covered with droplets of rain on the outside. Seeing the road and traffic ahead was already pretty difficult, without the added distraction of intense scrotal chilling.

But, man’s capacity for enduring suffering is great. And soon I got used to it. I won’t say that I liked it – but, hey, adversity breeds strength of character, doesn’t it?

Plus, water goes down. Once it’s there, it’s got nowhere else to go.

OR HAS IT?

I shall spare you too detailed a description of what happened next, suffice to say that under certain, possibly very specific circumstances, water can move upwards. How?

CAPILLARY ACTION!

My face froze as I felt the rainwater creeping up my bumcrack. Slowly but inexorably – like a glacier – it made its cold passage.

-------

Epilogue:

In the intensely frustrating manner of HP Lovecraft, I dare not – must not – say any more. You would all go mad from reading it.

But, I for one will never NEVER leave my waterproofs at home again, and when I look into the cloudy sky forever more will I struggle to suppress a shudder. 

Five tips for shitty drivers

I know a lot of you out there are really terrible drivers, who ought never to have been allowed behind the wheel of anything faster-moving, heavier or more expensive than a Cozy Coupe.

So, I have put together these top tips to help you – if not to actually become a better driver – then at least to minimise the threat your fundamental incompetence poses to other road users.

No biscuit for going slow

If you are driving past a speed camera in – say – a 30mph zone, there is really no point in slowing down to 20mph while you pass it. It’s not going to “accidentally” go off if you’re doing 25mph.

Yes, it’s true that bad things happen when you go past one too fast.

That doesn’t mean that good things happen when you go past too slow.

The cameras do not photograph you going past below the speed limit in order to send you a present for being a good boy.

Don’t force people to be polite

OK, sometimes it can be difficult to right pull out of a junction into a busy road. Here is a tip though: don’t pull out halfway and block the traffic coming from the left while you sit and wait for someone to let you in on the right.

If this was the sort of blog where you get other people’s jokes recycled, I’d say something about tiny women in massive 4x4s at this point. Or BMWs.

But this is Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind. and everything here is fresh. Or if it isn’t, I can assure you, I came to the same conclusions independently.

Know your limits

When I am dictator, one of the first things I will do is make lorries straying out of the left-hand lane on the motorway a capital offence.

If your vehicle is restricted to, say, 55mph and the speed limit is, say, 70mph, YOU HAVE GOT NO BUSINESS OVERTAKING ANYTHING! Stay in the slow lane and do not block the whole frigging carriageway up until you have dragged your sorry arse round.

If you have a caravan, just stay off the motorway altogether. In fact, just stay at home. And don’t ever leave it.

Make other drivers aware of your idiocy

The best way to signal your lack of any kind of redeeming sense to other motorists is to buy a Porsche Cayenne or Range Rover Sport.

If you cannot afford one of these gold-plated wanker beacons (or if, despite being a congenital imbecile, you nevertheless have a vestigial degree of taste), your options are as follows:

1. Take a normal car (preferably an affordable Japanese model for authenticity) and put stickers in the front and back windscreens saying “Minicab”. On seeing this tell-tale sign, other drivers will not be surprised when you make a U-turn in front of them, mount the pavement to hit a cat or do something similarly deranged.
2. If you would rather be thought of as an arsehole than a maniac, buy a van.

And finally...

If you see a large man in black on a small, battered white Honda scooter, let him do what he wants. Get out of his way, cheerfully wave him past and try not to run him over. 

Wasps of the road

When Piaggio named their new scooter model the "Vespa" back in 1946, they were definitely onto something.

Because scooters are indeed the wasps of the road. We're noisy, agile and very irritating.

Plus, if you hit us, we're almost certainly going to die instantly and leave a big sticky mess.

On my scooter, I like to imagine myself a graceful Mediterranean teenager zipping in and out of the traffic along the seafront in Cannes, even to the point of singing the "Papa/Nicole" Renault Clio music to myself.

It helps draw my attention away from the awful fact that I am an overweight man in his mid-30s, going to sit in an office all day, crawling up to some traffic lights on an industrial estate in Leeds.

That's not me on the right (no helmet), but it's slightly more suggestive of what you see out on the roads in the UK than the other picture.

Postscript:

"Vespa" is Italian for wasp - in case that was not clear at any point.

Praise the pinlock!

I bought a new crash helmet last week, and it has one significant advantage over my old one – the visor doesn't steam up AT ALL.

It's a Nolan N103 and while it is packed with groovy features – like a flip-down sun visor, space for the installation of a Bluetooth system, flip face – what I have to tell anyone who cares, and indeed those of you who don't, is that if you don't have one already, get a pinlock attachment for your helmet immediately if not sooner.

It comes fitted as standard in the N103, but you can buy them separately for other helmets. I didn't believe that it would work and I have no idea how it works, but no matter what the temperature, no matter how heavily I breathe, I can't get the visor to steam up.

My old helmet – decommissioned after one of West Yorkshire's legion of uninsured drivers knocked me over and sped away back in November – forced me to practice yogic breathing while driving.

It was of Japanese manufacture, and so perhaps the focus on remaining calm at all times was a deliberate feature. It certainly made you hold your nerve when speeding up or increasing the depth of your breathing immediately resulted in zero visibility.

Rather than risk death by concentrating exclusively on my breathing rather than the road ahead, I generally rode around with the visor up – in rain, in snow, whatever. I'd put it down when I was eventually blinded by the elements, and put it up again when I was blinded by my own breath.

I just rode in to Leeds for the first time in my new helmet and it blew me away.

OK, the sun visor steamed up when I put that down, because it's not double-glazed like the front visor.

And ok, there is an advantage in having your visor up for a good proportion of your journey time, because while the pinlock stops the visor steaming up, it does not stop the atmosphere inside quickly becoming like the depths of a tropical rainforest.

A rainforest that smells of one's own morning breath, I might add. I still have to open the visor from time to time to dry my face off.

But it's a small price to pay, particularly as I like the wind in my face. And the rain, and the snow, and the fumes, and the gravel. If you value my opinion and you ride any kind of motorbike (a vanishing small segment of the population, I appreciate), get yourself a helmet with a pinlock TODAY.