I’ve just come back from a rather pleasant ride out with my partner, his cousin N, and his partner U, a good time was had by all and we only got a little bit wet, but N did tell me about an musing conversation that he had with my partner, P and another friend J, in the pub a couple of weeks go. This was a male only drinking session when the men just have two topics of conversation, one, who’s round is it next? And two bikes. So on the topic of bikes J who has recently acquired a bike poses a problem to the more experienced men. Whilst out with his girlfriend they were struggling with directions, with much arm waving and shouting, now me and P have an effective system where we study the map beforehand, the map is placed in a polypocket thingy and sellotaped onto the tank. We also have a signalling system, a poke on the right shoulder – turn right, a poke on the left shoulder – turn left, simples. But for J and his girlfriend this turned into a bit of a disaster, so he asks the two cousins…
J – “P, do you and Cath have an intercom? (You can buy these from Motorcycle accessory stores, motorcycle trainers always use them, lovey dovey couples sometimes have them - intaride.com/motorcycle_com...
N – “Ha-ha, no, Cath would be telling P to F*** OFF all the time!”
J – (Looks puzzled!)
P and N found J’s reaction a bit odd, and laugh, but then whenever I speak to J he is the master at blocking out my tics, despite coming along to our open mic nite last October he’s only just realised I have TS (!!!????). It just shows really how different people react to other people’s tics and how other people are more sensitive than others. P is quite easily disturbed by my tics, and this does tend to make my tics worse at time, particularly in public. J is an absolutely lovely guy. He’s very softly spoken and is completely unfazed by tics when you speak to him, I just thought he was just being nice and polite by not drawing attention to my tics by not flinching or mentioning them, he didn’t actually realise until recently at some gathering or other when U joked about one of my tics when I spilt some of my drink over myself, “I didn’t realise you have Tourette’s, oh, that must be awful” he said, I was really quite surprised by this as my speech is completely littered with ticcing expletives, he hadn’t noticed! Wouldn’t it be nice if there were more people who have the same ability as J to block out ticcer’s tics?
Going back to the issue of motorcycle intercoms, why would anybody want one? Why would you want to hear some man moaning in your ear spoiling your ride? I’ve only ever used one once and that was when I did my CBT (compulsory basic training for motorcyclists), essential for that, but it is nice to have a break from listening to P (can’t you tell we’ve been together for nearly 11 years?).