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Continue reading →: Episode 4 – and so it ends
So, my month of self-imposed watch austerity is up. I’ve done it. No watch but the F has passed my wrist in the last 31 days. What have I achieved? Well, clearly absolutely nothing. This is first-world stuff. Wearing a £7 Casio is not deprivation in even the remotest sense.…
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Continue reading →: Episode 3 – The Devil’s Watch?
A little over a week ago, I decided to lock my watchbox and forsake my usual vintage mechanical, and high-end quartz serious tickers for just one watch. And not any old watch at that – I chose, from Amazon, a £7, resin-cased Casio F-91W, the cheapest of the cheap. A…
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Continue reading →: Episode 2 – The Arrival
One thing is guaranteed to brighten up a standard, nose-to-desk sort of day. The arrival of a new watch. Our postman (for we still have such things in Burford as ‘our’ postie) handed over a package this morning, with his usual grin. “Another five mill thinner and it’d have gone…
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Continue reading →: Episode 1 – Living on the plastic – for a month.Episode 1 – July 9, 2013 And so it begins… As a self-confessed watch addict, I know I spend too much time, money and effort pursuing the latest Ideal Watch. I spend hours talking with watchie friends, comparing ideas and thoughts on new and vintage watches. I even spend too…
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Continue reading →: Slow Train
There’s not been a lot of time for two or three-wheeled ambling recently. Instead, a pretty solid wall of work-borne rush, stress and frustration has kept me off the bikes. So, with an unaccustomed free Sunday afternoon and some sun, I decided to stop beating my head against it, hoiked…
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Continue reading →: MMC Musings in Cotswold Life
When I popped an e-mail over to Cotswold Life offering them a few snaps and some airfieldy musings, I didn’t really think they’d publish them. But they have. May edition and a whole double page spread too. I’m delighted. It’s so good to see some of these old WWII bases…
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Continue reading →: A spring evening’s bimble, being scared and perspective.
I fancied a ride this evening. It’s spring. It’s light. It’s Wednesday. It’s been a bitch of a day in the office. That’s good enough for me. I had to drop our entry fee for the Village Quiz in at a neighbour’s house so thought I’d call by on the…
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Continue reading →: It’s not Urals that are unreliable. It’s their owners.
It was the rain that did it. That, and me buggering off for Christmas, leaving the Ural alone, outside under its cover. By the time I’d got back, half the UK’s annual rainfall had found its way into the carburettors. The Ural has two, one for each cylinder. Most of…
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Continue reading →: The past. Very much present.
All across the Cotswolds, if you stop for just a few minutes on hilltops, you can find strips of broken concrete, grass growing in the jumbled cracks. Red brick buildings with peeling, grey render and steel framed, glassless windows. Today, they’re derelict, but these World War II RAF bases were…
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Continue reading →: The smell of coffee, jasmine and two-stroke oil.
As I sit here, waiting for my molten-hot Turkish coffee to cool to a temperature that won’t induce third degree burns, I’m watching my teenage years ride past. More accurately, it’s the smell of the passing two-wheeled scenery in the fluorescent lights from the restaurants that’s most evocative. Mingled with…




