Dirty A Listers.

Just re-watched Ewan Mcgregor and Charlie Boorman’s epic trip round the world on BMW R1200 GS Adventurer motorcycles. At 256Kg most people’s biggest adventure is to hospital for a hernia operation but they did it with 50Kg of luggage too. They would have been better off with Yamaha XT’s though. Episode 4 was in Kazakhstan where the roads are as suitable for wheeled motor vehicles as the Pennine Way. They were around ten days in and had left asphalt behind days ago. After three hard 20mph days Ewan does a piece to camera. He had lost sight of were they were going, where they were, their schedule, family, friends and the rest of the world. All that was left was the holes, mud and sand and not falling off. All that was left was the here and now. From much lesser trips I know that feeling. It’s wonderful. It’s like all the fibres that connect one to people and places, plans, even time have stretched to breaking point and one is clean. Fleeting conversations consist of gestures, expressions and footballers names; life is passing scenery and getting petrol. And then there comes a moment when that here and now throws a whole heap of what it’s got at you and in a fit of hysterical laughter you realise the wonder of simply surviving. As Ewan Mcgregor put it, “I could have been in Canne” but his being said that would have been a poor second best to lying exhausted, wet and dirty in the middle of the middle of nowhere. So this bill of goods we’ve been sold, glamour, celebrity, red carpets and a thousand products? If you like, but remember they’re all second best, and that’s from an A lister.