And that is the power of being in love with my bike, and having a burning need to escape from a life I just don't recognise as being my own.

This may always have been the power of the Road.

At these times serendipity often strikes. I'd not long ago rediscoved Two Lane Black-Top with Taylor, Oates, Bird and Wilson. On Sunday morning, on the Moray Firth, some 40 years later, I found self eating breakfast in the diner near the end of the movie just before 'the Girl' fucked off with a younger good looking dude on a bike, and the Driver & the Mechanic set of to burn for ever.

You get to recognise lonliness, yearning and hurt - especially, after a night with the 21-81 year old souls washed up on the Moray Firth roadside.

It all don't mean a thing man - it don't mean a thing.