No-handed Cherry Picker

I was out at the high school dropping Freya off for Beavers. As I headed back to the car, I was caught by an intense bout of nostalgia for the BMX days: a dry car park, an autumn night. I could imagine the sodium lighting making the chrome of my bike glisten and the colours turn to shades of grey.

There’s hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about BMX. In my AA meetings in Brodick Hall, I imagine a quarter pipe at each end of the hall, or doing airs over the brass bell that sits on the table. When I’m walking through the village, I’m doing tailwhips off kerbs or smith grinds on the benches.

What I should do is to take all that passion and direct it into something that I can do, which is play guitar and mandolin. But for the past couple of weeks, all I’ve been doing is reading by the fire, which is nice and enjoyable and relaxing of course, but it isn’t feeding a passion. Or am I passionate about books too? Perhaps that’s it. I used to worry about these fallow musical periods before I moved back to Scotland, but I know from experience that the passion will return and I’ll soon be playing a lot once again. What I do wish is that I had the discipline to follow a practice regimen, or at least to see something through. I’ve got so many books and DVDs that I’ve started to work through. If I could see them through, I’d be a much better player for certain. I just don’t seem to have the discipline though; the fireside is just too inviting. Of course playing by the fireside is just as appealing as reading, so what’s stopping me from doing that?

So I guess what I’m saying is that, even if I were able to ride a bike, it would probably be in the shed while I sat by the fire. All that I remember when I think back is the nights up at the station yard, or at the ramp at Prestwick puddle, or street riding wherever. What I don’t remember is the dry, autumn nights when I sat home while the bike was in the shed.