It was always going to happen

 It is fair to say that I was very keen to visit the BMW dealer in Cheltenham, but they do say "don't wish your life away". 

So let's start with this morning's visit to the Cotswold Shooting Ground in Childswickham.  I met up with Bubbles and Ben, and had a fun morning smashing a few clays. I managed to hit more than I missed, scoring 41/80. It's not a great score, but I was reasonably pleased, considering that I haven't shot much in the past six months.

On the final three stands we developed a new variant of English Sporting Clays by presenting the clays in any order and even releasing a simultaneous pair rather than on report* clays. We found it amusing ... after all, clay shooting can get a little too serious for me.

Back at home, we lunched and I checked to see that my tax rebate had finally arrived in my current account. It had, so I called to check that the bike was still available. It was, so we headed down the M5 towards Cheltenham.

It's pretty obvious that buying the bike was a foregone conclusion. It was in beautiful condition having covered only seven miles. It had a specification more comprehensive than that detailed in its on-line listing and I even managed to negotiate a lower height seat in to the deal.

We estimate that the bike was around four thousand pounds less than the "new" price, simply because it had been pre-registered in September last year.

Now I need to arrange insurance and, to quote 30%, get my act together and sell off a few unused possessions.

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* When shooting on report clays, the shooter calls "pull" and the trap operator releases the first clay in to the air. As soon as the shooter fires, the second clay is released ... on the sound of the shotgun's report