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| notes & pictures - story 2 |
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The R1 has a mode-mapping switch which
acts like three different throttle cams on the twist grip.
This effectively means you can select a different power
delivery for a given amount of throttle. 'B' mode provides
a lazy slow gathering of speed whilst standard for me
is below par for a bike of this class. 'A' mode pushes
your eyes to the back of your head while your testicles
disappear to God knows where. As you approach the speed
of light, the colour spectrum alters, the bike starts
to shorten and there is true fear in your stomach as you
meet yourself on the way back from a place you haven't
yet reached. As I slow down with a 'squishshsh' from the
brakes, I notice over the hedgerows how flat fields lead
to a very big sky.
In 1951 The People newspaper did a survey of its readers
and several tenets and beliefs proved common among the
11,000 respondents; these included 'a love of freedom,
a low interest in sexual activity, a strong belief in
education, consideration for the feelings of other people…and
a strong attachment to marriage and the institution of
the family'. As the paper's statistical analyst, Geoffrey
Gorer concluded, 'the English are a truly unified people,
more unified, I would hazard, than at any other period
in their history. When I was reading, I found I was constantly
making the same notes: 'What dull lives most of these
people appear to lead!'
Perhaps this no longer applies. Then, the population had
just emerged from a war, were used to discipline and had
little experience of mass migration, so societies were
in a real sense insular, and the media had not yet created
the global village. So unworldly; Englishness (or Britishness)
in that very different era was clearly a lot different
from Englishness now.
That morning I am sitting in a café where the server
tells me he's originally from Manchester. His tattoos
stretch up his arm and it is not difficult to imagine
them continuing down from his neck to his feet and back
up the other side. He has a flat nose and said think
with an 'f'. He has no front teeth so spoke with a lisp,
but this is not a man you would tease. Once you've had
your teeth punched out, it can only hurt less to do it
to someone else.
"I fink Ronaldo should go to Madrid, win nuffink
for four years and then come back when ee's cheaper,"
he said. This nasally Mancunian intonation is stiff with
attitude. In its home town, such an attitude leads to
loud telephone calls in crowded places to give a dreadful
impression. He has an accent, which, until the onset of
inexpensive flights to the Spanish Costas, belonged
to eight million of Lancashire's working classes who took
charabancs to Blackpool on their once a year holiday.
So many of us are still one of those eight million. When
I tell him this he makes me a cup of tea and suggests
he leave behind his digestive biscuits. He counts out
three and one of his hands has 'mum' etched into
his knuckles, obviously a hand-made job, something rudimentary
and loaded with ink. "This is the one wot will hit
people first," he says, looking me in the eye, "and
this is the one wot will hit people next," and shows
me the one that said, 'dad'.
North of the Broads and this is a landscape of flatness
and my view of the day. Cattle graze on meadows reclaimed
from the sea, and protected by a defensive barrier of
sand and shingle, marsh grasses lead to the road across
from which lush meadows appear to move like the arms of
a Mexican Wave. Beyond the wall, sand spits are toyed-with
by high tides, re-forming the coastline twice every 24
hours leaving behind salt flats that form estates of waders,
avocets and marsh harriers. For the most part it is a
land of flatness and big skies. It is a space bounded
by fences and gate posts that look as if they've been
there for hundreds of years.
Turning left and downhill into Wells, the street narrows.
People, clearly familiar with each other, suggest a general
air of ease. When the sun pops out from behind a cloud,
it burnishes out the grey to highlight carefully painted
primary hues. Traders' signs are an array of blues and
reds, some in yellows and greens but all highlight the
'bucket and spade' approach to colour close to the seaside.
At the bottom of this cobbled street, the amusement centre
and rock-sellers line the small main road adjacent to
the town harbour. Alongside fish and chip shops and cheap
cafés, 'pay and display' car parks have become
a quintessential feature of a functioning seaside town.
These English villages have barely changed since I last
rode around the coast in 2004. Such is the brittleness
of modernity it's like marching into the future backwards
hoping everything doesn't change; an Englishness for which
newness is a mutation for the worse. |
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