Rush hour.

I'm writing this on Sunday evening and the smell of roasting crown of duck is wafting in from the kitchen. The reason that the smell of roasting duck is wafting around is that I didn't make any progress on the BMW. In TV land, when motorcycles are being built, there is always a deadline, and somehow that idea, along with "themes", seems to have attached itself to the subconcious of the viewing public like some variety of psychological leech.

I'm a little suspicious of self imposed dead lines for leisure activities. I'm working on the BMW because I quite enjoy the process of working on the BMW, so why should I be in a hurry to finish working on it? I can understand that some people may build motorcycles because they want other people to admire their handiwork, and that they're building motorcycles because they like showing off. Some people even seem to confuse having their handiwork admired with being admired themselves, I've noticed. In that case I suppose the need to have the motorcycle finished for this, that, or the other show, gathering or event where people congregate in large enough numbers to admire the finished product makes a certain sort of sense, and the inevitable, "we nearly didn't make the dead line..." anecdote is all part of that too.

I find enough stress in the course of a day to keep me well supplied in that department, so I'm not going to start applying it to my main leisure activity, which is building the BMW. As I've mentioned before, much of what I want to do is indistinguishable from what I have to do to an outside observer, but the main difference is that it's doing what I have to do that keeps a roof over what I want to do.

So, my point is, that at six thirty on Saturday evening, having done most of what I had to do, I decided that the BMW can wait until next week before I get on with the frame, and as a consequence of that decision, I made it to the supermarket in time to snag the last crown of duck they had on the shelf.

Quite what the moral of that is, I'm not sure, but I'll give it a little thought as I enjoy my duck, with roast new potatoes and garlic, washed down with what promises to be a half reasonable claret.