Author: Richard

Royal Wedding Public Holiday

| Richard

I took the opportunity of an extra public holiday this year to make the most of it and headed out to Epsom to see GT, arriving just in time to see the ceremony itself on the BBC.

The British do this sort of thing so well and the happy couple looked just that: happy.

Then out to do some shopping: a new LBD for GT to go with her Jimmy Choos as it’s the start of formal dinner season again for me; the first one is coming up in less than two weeks’ time. I actually enjoy going out shopping for clothes with my partner: my chance to play Gok Wan and choose dresses, bags and shoes for occasions. GT is a tall, leggy athlete with a great figure so choosing the dress was relatively easy and we soon ended up with a great ensemble: an asymmetrical, above the knee black dress and a black clutch bag with silver clasp and chain that will go very well with those Jimmy Choos, some silver drop earrings and her long, black hair curled over to one side. For good measure, we also bought a stylish black raincoat that we’d been trying to sort for a while. And yes, the coat and heels go very well without anything else on 😉

Travelling back this morning, I decided to take the Victoria train instead of the Waterloo train as I wasn’t in a hurry to head back and felt like a change of scenery for my route home. London has plenty of that and my new route on such a beautifully sunny day reminded me why I love living in London. London is a great place to live and work and my frequent visits to see my partner of four months are enjoyable and hassle-free, especially when compared to the weekly 7 hour round-trip drudgery (let alone the hideous expense) I used to have to endure to see the cheating, lying, slut ex-girlfriend I had the misfortune to have up in Grimsby, itself a horrid and depressing place to have to visit, let alone live.

The Royal Wedding and my thoughts about those wasted years reminded me that the ex-girlfriend had always been really keen to get married and was always banging on about it: the identity of the unfortunate groom is less important to her than actually being married which is her true priority – anyone will do! Must be the cakes and flowers she’s so keen on 🙂

Right! The call of a nice pub lunch on the Thames calls! I love my life!

Arthur

| Richard

So Warner Brothers decided to remake “Arthur“, the 1981 hit film,  and then try to sell it to the public (according to an interview I saw on Sky) as having a novel twist: instead of a butler, the new film has Arthur’s Nanny!

Wow! What a fabulous comic turn that is! This is sarcasm, by the way, for the hard of understanding and Hollywood movie moguls.

To make matters worse, they decided to use that completely over-hyped and under-talented Russell Brand for the lead role and trout-lipped cardboard ‘actress’ Jennifer Garner for one of the other roles. Two more reasons to avoid this like the plague.

I wish this would be a complete flop at the box office but I never underestimate the stupidity of the (particularly US) cinema-going public and I expect it to do fine and encourage the studios to make more piss-poor attempts at remaking classics, like they did with Psycho, The Italian Job, Get Carter, Taxi, The Wicker Man, et al.

Traffic Planning

| Richard

From March until mid-June 2011, Jamaica Road in Bermondsey is partially dug up whilst Thames Water replace some of the main water mains along there: you’ll see this if you watch the London Marathon this weekend.

This has been causing lots of congestion for a while with traffic usually backed up onto and around the roundabout by the Rotherhithe Tunnel.

So can someone explain the thinking behind the decision to close the Rotherhithe Tunnel to Northbound traffic for the period from 21:00 on Thursday 21 April to 05:00 on Tuesday 26 April? This is to allow refurbishment works to be carried out on the Blackwall Tunnel, but traffic that would ordinarily use the Rotherhithe Tunnel to head North will be diverted over Tower Bridge …which means they’ll also be diverted along Jamaica Road!

I’m glad I’ll be away!

TLC at PDQ Update

| Richard

A quick update on Blue Rex’s progress: it turns out that reprofiling my standard cams would have been experimental and Larry wasn’t prepared to experiment on a customer’s bike, so we agreed to buy a new set of ZZR1200 cams after all along with stronger valve springs.

As the clutch had been slipping on track for a while, I also asked Larry to upgrade the clutch plates and springs whilst it was apart.

In the intervening period, its MoT has expired so it’s been MoT’d and passed.

Worse was yet to come: PDQ have been awarded the sole concession for Dymag wheels worldwide and was offering an introductory deal … so a set of 7 spoke magnesium alloy wheels in satin black are going on with a new, slightly larger section Bridgestone BT016 tyre (which should be fine for our planned Ardeche Valley trip in June) rather than a full-on trackday tyre. Oh and as my secondhand Akrapovic full system would be looking out of place now, I’ve upgraded to a new hexagonal system with carbon fibre end can to set it all off – the removed parts will be for sale on the OC when I collect it. As that won’t be for a week or two, PDQ will run the engine in on the dyno and do a pre and post run-in dyno run for a reading as to what the engine is putting out.

Another Lost Weekend (or Two)

| Richard

The last weekend of March saw an unexpected visit to see GT on the Friday night then going home to shower and change before heading off to photograph Marlyn: her outfits were mainly rubber dresses – photos to follow!

Then change and back to meet GT at Waterloo as we were going to the Blueprint Café for a romantic meal for two. They were taking part in lastminute.com’s London Restaurant Week so I thought we’d give them a try and we were impressed: great food for both of us (a meat-eater and a pescatarian).

A nice drive back to Epsom where GT and I went to the pub for lunch … before heading off to another pub for the rest of the afternoon in the sun.

This weekend started with me going straight from work to collect GT from Waterloo: yes, we were going to another participating restaurant, Le Pont de la Tour overlooking Tower Bridge; a restaurant I’d been to before with colleagues. Obviously, when you buy a decent bottle of wine and a few liqueurs, it adds up to a few quid, but the food and service were excellent and our romantic meal was made all the more special by us sitting outside in the warm summer evening on the Thames.

Instead of heading back to Waterloo, GT decided to stay over at mine, so we grabbed a taxi and headed back and spent the next few hours getting to grips, shall we say, with a Lush Fever massage bar – it’s really a plus to go out with a qualified masseuse and sports therapist! After grabbing just a couple of hours’ sleep, I drove GT home, we grabbed breakfast and then I headed off to Norfolk to see my ‘kids’.

Pre-match lunch at Nando’s as usual then on to watch Norwich completely overwhelm a bunch of under-performing men from North Lincolnshire (hmm, who does that remind me of?) by way of their 6-0 victory over Scunthorpe. And yes, there I was standing loud and proud at the front of the Barclay on the telly later: pity my Sky box didn’t record it!

Sunday saw Jack score an excellent goal with a header before we headed off into Norwich for lunch at John Lewis before buying some more luggage for our forthcoming holiday in the sun.

Then back to the apartment to watch MotoGP and a decent film with a big dinner and wine.

Life is good!

Le Weekend

| Richard

Well that was a great weekend! Friday evening saw me over at GT’s for a lovely meal out and a few drinks afterwards.

An early start on Saturday heading back to mine before going down to Hastings to meet up with “the Kreiga Krew”: a bunch of mates all heading off for a biking holiday in the Ardeche Valley in June.

Lots of drinks and a Nepalese meal before an atrociously poor couple of games of pool in the pub and back to Yox’s for more drinking and a very late night!

Sunday morning and Yox did us a huge breakfast with eggs to rival even mine. Diverted on my way back to go to GT’s.

She had just completed a 15 mile race in a new Personal Best! I’m so proud of her!

Cuddles in front of the telly watching “Being Human” on BBC iPlayer before heading out for a meal: walking into town! Where does she find the energy?

Great weekend!

Stolen

| Richard

A week to the the day that I brought it down to London, it’s been stolen from Rotherhithe: locked and chained up in the garage at my flat.

It’s a red and black 2006 Honda CBR1000RR-6 Fireblade, registration number RV06MVL, VIN: JH2SC57A46M204191 Engine Number SC57E2204623

Thieving scum. I hope they get killed on it.

Crash!

| Richard

Well after driving in to the car park at the London flat last night, having been let down by @tweetalondoncab on Twitter this morning, I got the RX8 out to go to a meeting. Crawling out of the crescent at no more than 2 or 3mph, I got to the off-camber, downhill left turn and immediately slid sideways on the ice-covered snow … and slid into the metal bollards. Ouch! I wasn’t the first either as one of them had been knocked over already. So now Blue RX is a tad dented:

Rear Panel Rear Bumper Rear Bumper Rear to Front Front Wing

TLC at PDQ

| Richard

Well after Robspeed Motorcycles at Grimsby serviced Blue Rex and left it misfiring within 3 miles of their workshops, I decided the time had come for Blue Rex to get some fettling and proper setting up.

I’d been keeping a set of cams I’d been sold a few years ago which I was told were ZZR1200 cams. So I rang Larry Webb at PDQ in Berkshire to ask him what he suggested. He recommended fitting those cams, gas-flowing the cylinder head, fitting high compression pistons (in the existing bore sizes) and then fettling it all together properly, so I dropped it off and have left them to it.

Bad news came recently: the cams I’d been sold were actually standard ZRX1200R cams so I now have the existing ones plus a set of new ones. Larry is going to send them to the States to get them re-profiled instead as that’s what they used to do back in the day. This will add a few hundred pounds more to the existing quote, but is cheaper than buying new ZZR1200 cams which are silly expensive.

We’ll see what results we get.