Work is a prize jackass sometimes and for this reason alone it doesn’t do to be too wedded to it. You can pull your hair out all week and get to the weekend tired and, frankly, pissed off, but does Work appear at the foot of your bed on Saturday morning and say, ‘hey, you’ve given it your all this last week, so you just stay right there and I’ll get you a cup of tea. Oh, and don’t worry about the kids, I’ll get them up, give them some toast and take them to the pool. How’s that?’ It’s a rhetorical question, of course.
Since returning from holiday I’ve been hammered for one thing or another, including my invoicing, but the omission to pay me an agreed over, as compensation for two Sundays that I worked last month, is of no interest to anyone but me. It’s goddamn one-way traffic. And who looks after the kids when you’re working on weekends, the person who occasionally does actually bring you the cup of tea in the morning. And what do they get out of it? Work sucks too (except maybe on payday).
After lunch, feeling a trifle undervalued, I roll the Black Bullet out and go for a blat up the lane, taking the long route round and back to the office. It’s a beautiful day and the bike burbles contentedly past black fields of rape set in light ochre and green. Dappled shade licks over me while insects sting and click off my face and glasses. The last bit is open road and the heat comes up off the blacktop in waves, I bathe my face in it, trying to make the memory of it a physical thing that I can take out and reuse in the winter. It’s a beautifully wasted, overly circuitous journey.
I have to decide it it's worthwhile re-insuring the bike next month, with the plans afoot to take her off the road for maintenance purposes. It seems a shame not to ride through the bright days of Autumn, though, so I think I'll have to 'reallocate' the pounds I've saved here and there and make the best of it. I don't know if it's just me, but the exhaust note sounds different these days, more bass, perhaps the baffles are shot. Another thing on the list for further investigation.
