A common feature in a Sunday newspaper supplement is the one in which some person of significance describes his or her typical day. You know the sort of thing: get up at such and such a time, unlock the kids' bedroom, eat this, do that, meet these people, and so on.

These articles drive me up the wall. For one thing, no one important ever seems to do anything, which makes me wonder how they came to be so influential that a newspaper wants to talk to them.

Secondly, they're always thinly disguised boasts about how free-trade the coffee is, or how sophisticated the home appliances are. There's always far too much mention of the juicer for my liking.

So, by way of contrast, I bring you a life in the Sunday of a slightly sad middle-aged bloke with a debilitating enthusiasm for mechanical items powered by internal combustion engines. It's not good and is intended as a warning.

The plan was simple. Make my way to the local flying club, using one of the nine modes of personal transport available to me, and go for a flip in the 10th, my little light aircraft. So, we begin in the garage with my modest collection of classic motorcycles.

Most recent addition to this lot is my 1968 Honda CB250 twin. I like old Hondas a lot, and had been looking for one of these for a bit. Eventually, I found one that a bloke had restored beautifully, but couldn't make run properly, and so, exploiting his despair, I knocked him down substantially on the asking price on the basis that I'd be able to sort it back home.

And I did, after about three months, eventually tracing the fault to a tiny missing rubber bung inside one of the carburettors. The 250 burst into life, after a spot of fooling about with jump leads and a booster pack. It was even running on both cylinders! So, off I went.

But within a mile, I was rewarded with a damp leg, the result of petrol spouting from the carb assembly like some ornamental fuel fountain. But not to worry, because I have two more old Hondas.

My early Sixties C200, for example; a simple machine of 90cc and an uplifting, prosaic experience. The least a motorcycle can be while still technically being one. This turned out to be as dead as Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, that is, as a doornail.

So I turned to the 1972 CB500 Four, one of the finest products ever to come from Soichiro Honda's bid for two-wheeled world domination.

After reassembling it and extracting it from the back of the garage, I pressed the starter button and something exploded in the bowels of its complex four-pot motor. But at least moving that out of the way had given me access to the Moto Guzzi V11, which I've owned from new for many years and maintained fastidiously.