GREENWICH PARK,  SOUTH EAST LONDON,  ENGLAND

MAY 8 2008

The early morning summer warmth permeates my open leathers, as stepping into the garage I am greeted with a glorious aroma of fresh rubber, engine grease and resin polish.

Thumbing the starter, I clamber aboard as thirteen hundred cubic centimetres of raw power surge into life, a bellowing cacophony of induction howl and mechanical harmony.

We are as one, my two wheled goddess and I,  bound for destination Greenwich Park, an old childhood haunt of mine.

I park just near the General Wolfe statue, already beseiged by rampaging hoardes from the first two morning coachloads of tourist schoolchildren, who clamber freely over it as though it were a climbing frame. Perplexed teachers desperately attempt to reinstate interest with tales of the Royal Observatory and the significance of Greenwich Mean Time, but deaf ears care so little for such nonsense.

Though my German is poor, I make out the laughter and jokes at the expense of a tiny wooden fast food shack, strategically placed to capture the foreign pounds, and conspicuous by it's absence on my last visit, some years previously.

What a glorious name, what a novel idea, what an absolute gold mine during the coming months.

Let the eating commence