Beach Babe: a box brownie snap of someone’s love. Both two-legged and two-wheeled. Back when you just drove down to the waters edge and had a ride along the damp sand. You can smell the salty air and feel the gritty sand in your toes.
Saint George
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’
Will Shakespeare – Henry V.
Contemporary Harry on a Triumph Daytona. Different steed- British blood.
Earth Day
Top Speed
The progression of fast. This chart represents the fastest production motorcycles over the last century. The decades long plateau reflects a half century reign of two British Greats: Brought Superior SS100 (TE Lawrence’s ride of choice) and the veritable Vincent Black Shadow. The steeper section have the early racing developments and the latter competitive superbike wars. My 1985 Ninja 900 takes up a few years in the late eighties.
Everybody loves a Cowgirl
Sunday Best
Peterson Avenue
Plastic Figure
Doll Face: someone’s idea of fun. Propping an articulated figure onto scale model Triumph Bonneville. Shades of Marwencol, the model town fabricated by Mark Hogancamp (look up the documentary on Netflix). This acrylic lass is called Tamara Cool Girl Harley. She has leathers too.
…not that there’s anything wrong with it…
There’s a lot of it about
Goon, poet, artillery signaller, Irish. That’s Spike Milligan who would be 98 today. His off kilter buffoonery was fresh air in a world of stale comedy.
Say Bazonka every day
That’s what my grandma used to say
It keeps at bay the Asian Flu’
And both your elbows free from glue.
So say Bazonka every day
(That’s what my grandma used to say)
Don’t say it if your socks are dry!
Or when the sun is in your eye!
Never say it in the dark
(The word you see emits a spark)
Only say it in the day
(That’s what my grandma used to say)
Young Tiny Tim took her advice
He said it once, he said it twice
he said it till the day he died
And even after that he tried
To say Bazonka! every day
Just like my grandma used to say.
Now folks around declare it’s true
That every night at half past two
If you’ll stand upon your head
And shout Bazonka! from your bed
You’ll hear the word as clear as day
Just like my grandma used to say!
He sits on a Wooler motorcycle. Some publicity shot from the Veteran & Vintage magazine in 1968.
Monkey See Monkey Do
Orange is the new Black
With the little blue bag
Blokey bloke Guy Martin got in a little high speed practice last weekend at the supersport event around Donington Racetrack. Dusting off skills for the upcoming road racing season. He was aboard the Smiths 675 Triumph. Not to win but put some high velocity mileage under his wings. Salt is optional… (The sponsor is in construction, not thinly sliced fried potato products)
Bueno Tamales…
Lion of God
Blue-Sky beauty: I spied a glorious Ariel motorcycle whilst passing through Evanston earlier today. The glossy light blue color-scheme glinted in the corner of my vision.
It is of course the Square Four, a double parallel twin designed by Ed Turner in the 20’s. An unusual arrangement which made sense for compactness, however cooling the rear pair is a necessity. Which this owner has undertaken with a small oil cooler just behind the down tubes.
A real head-turner that cried out to be photographed..
Ariel
BY SYLVIA PLATH
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks—
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel—
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child’s cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
























