TALES FROM THE SHED

Optimism is a wonderful thing. I've suffered from it for as long as I can remember, especially when contemplating acquiring a motorcycle, a motorcycle voyage, a motorcycle rebuild ... in fact most things involved with motorcycles. I've occasionally wondered whether the Reliant was invented for motorcyclists who've lost their essential optimism.

Yearsago, when I was relatively new to motorcycle scribbling and was packed with self-confidence and optimism, folk would ask me for advice. Talk about false optimism ... However, with that easy self-regard with which many of my kind are inflicted, I would hand it out - advice, that is, not self-regard. That would be silly. Among the advice I would glibly dispense, probably while swilling cheap cider and stroking my beard - which used to be black, I think - were several recurrent suggestions. Like ... never buy a bike in boxes, because lots of it will be missing; never buy a bike as a project unless you're completely familiar with the model and know that it's all there, because if it's not all there finding the missing bits will prove to be a right PITA This is a family magazine, so you can look that up.

Later in life, when for no comprehensible reason folk started to ask me advice about magazine publishing, among the idiot sagacity I supplied was a gem about never, ever start running a rebuild series until you already have the final episode. That way The Reader (that's you!) is never left wondering