Have you ever dreamed yourself an adventure, one so exciting you wake sighing, 'If only....?' I'd cherished such a one for years. I never particularly wanted to navigate the Nile in a felucca, or see the jungle when it's wet with rain, or anything so lyrical. No - ever since I could reach to put coins in a juke box I've wanted to make the classic rock n'roll journey, and travel the length of old Route 66, '...from Chicago to LA', as the famous song by Bobby Troupe puts it.

Countless singers have recorded the simple enough lyric, which lists a few place names, tells you to 'get your kicks' - and that's it. So why such resonance? Because the road Americans used to call 'Main Street America' is itself a highway of dream . It carried travellers from Lake Michigan to the Pacific, from the Windy City to the City of Angels, from pines to palms, snow to sunshine. It was the fabled highway to heaven during the Depression, when over 200,000 penniless dirt farmers migrated in their clapped out old jalopies, in search of the good life in California. Poverty awaited them, as anybody who has read John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' will know. To cruise the 2,500 mile highway Steinbeck called 'The Mother Road' would be to tune into part of America's history, as well as countless songs. But my fantasy didn't stop at the road itself. I love the USA, so what better way to trace small town America than on the back of a great American icon, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle? A great family friend, photographer Robin Allison Smith, would drive the glorious, rumbling monster, while I perched on the pillion having fun. 'If you ever plan to travel west.......'Oh yes, I planned all right!

We picked up the bike from one of the largest Harley dealerships, at Woodstock Illinois, and soon I was on my knees on the floor, trying to work out how to pack the panniers - much to the amusement of the friendly staff. Surrounded by rows of gleaming motorcycles, I surveyed my pitiful collection of clothes for one month, and wondered where to stash it. With cameras, laptop, guide books and shoes, the brand new, 1450 cc Road King was soon laden, and we set off to ride into Chicago - the magificent city where Route 66 begins. When the skyscrapers loomed on our left, flashing sunlight, my spirits soared. This was the start of the month-long journey.

You could spend a week in Chicago, but all we had time for was a whistlestop tour of shops, the elegant architecture of the financial district and the fine collection at the Art Institute. We took in night-time blues and Cajun food at Buddy Guy's own club, 'Legends', but the road was already beckoning - and we forced ourselves to leave, knowing there was a lot of it ahead. Incidentally, people often ask me how you plan a trip like this one. The answer is - with difficulty. Whether you're travelling by motorcycle or by car, you still need to work out how many miles you can do in one day, looking ahead and working back from your flight home. It is tedious, but unavoidable - or else you'll find you're rushing dangerously at the end. A little time spent planning means you can choose special places to linger.

South of Chicago, Illinois is dull; the small towns merge - Joliot, Bloomington, and the aptly-named Normal. It was grey and chilly, and started to rain. Hopping around by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, trying to get your legs into your rain gear, while water splashes on the Harley seat - then, believe me, a car sounds a good option. But you forget the discomfort when you see famous Route 66 landmarks, like the crazy 'Gemini Giant' spaceman, outside the Launching Pad Drive-in at Wilmington. Such eccentricities were designed to catch the eye of travellers in the days when the road was really busy, not just a heritage route..

The sign above the entrance to Dixie Truckers' Home, on the way to Lincoln (birthplace of the great President) is suitably retro. The Dixie was established in 1928, when a certain Mr J.P.Walters bought a garage and turned it into a cafe, serving fod to weary Route 66 travellers. Now the diner is run by the fourth generation of the same family, which makes it one of America's oldest truck stops. The breakfast buffet offers all you can eat for $5.99: crispy bacon, hash browns, fried potatoes, sausages, eggs, french toast, tomatoes, beans, pancakes - you name it. You soon put on weight in America. 'Live the Legend' invites the menu, trading on nostlagia. And that's the point about Route 66.The thirties architecture you see along the way, zappy neon, and fabulous 'fifties motel signs, make you think you're starring in your own black-and white movie.

You meet living legends too. One of them is Bill Shea, who has dedicated his life to offering nostalgia to 66ers. He's 74 now, and landed at Normandy in the Second World War, returning to run a garage at Springfield, Illinois, for fifty years. When he retired he decided to turn the place into a museum, complete with vintage petrol pumps, 'fifties and 'sixties clothes and signs, and other memorabilia. It's his private passion, he charges nothing, and loves chatting to travellers - who stop by in scores. As we were leaving a frnech family pulled up, saying 'Oh regardez!' in high excitement at the vivid, vintage spectacle of Bill outside his beloved garage museum.

The first highspot after Chicago is St Louis, Missouri , birthplace of TS Eliot and Chuck Berry. It's a handsome city, distinguished by the world-famous arch which curves gracefully over the skyline, dwarfing even the Mississippi paddle boats. The waterside area buzzes at night, but equally good is the old Soulard Market, full of funky bars and restaurants, with musicians jamming in corners -and a completely unthreatening atmosphere. In town, the Forest Park neighbourhood is packed with late night drinkers and diners - and you know you could spend ages in St Louis and not run out of things to do.

But not us. This first part of our journey was to take us down through Illinois and Missouri, and into a small corner of Kansas. At times it is hard to find the old road, with the Intertstate thundering nearby. By 1970 the end was in sight for Route 66, as almost all the old segments were replaced by the wider, faster freeways, and as the main route moved away, many of the old towns just died. It was like a light being switched off: no visitors, no business. Things got worse. In 1985 Route 66 was de-commissioned, and entered the realm of American myth. The tarmac was left to the potholes; in places the undergrowth actually grew across the road. But nowadays the Route 66 Historic Association is doing its best to preserve what's left of the route, and in many places business is booming again. But when it's not, there still poetry in dereliction. You pass through little ghost towns in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, thinking of what it must have been like when these deserted diners and gas stations flourished along with the dreams of the people who built them.

Rain, rain, rain....stinging, spattering, slicing across your skin. Still we rolled on, into the wide plains of Oklahoma. On a motorcycle water will always run down the back of your neck, no matter how high you zip your rain-gear. Yet the air was soft, and the grey-green colour of the landscape were beautiful. Travelling this way you're in the air, you smell the grass, you feel the wind on your face, you're a part of the land you're travelling through. And it is wonderful. But during our month we were to encounter chilly breezes, drenching rain, blazing heat and (worse of all) savage, battering cross winds, making it an endurance test, as well as an adventure.

We rolled into Tulsa (famous to me because of the Gene Pitney song, 'Twentyfour hours from Tulsa'), and admired the towering art deco architecture - which wasn't at all what I expected. So many American cities are ugly sprawls with dead centres, but Tulsa was a delight, with plenty of good restaurants and one of the best small art galleries I have ever visited - the Philbrook, an elegant mansion set in romantic garden. Outside the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame is the most stylish wall art I've ever seen, and the display inside tells you about the terrible race riots that destroyed the Greenwood area in 1921, as well as celebrating all the briliant musicians who hail from the State. So much to see....yet after two nights in Tulsa ever we had to hit the road again to Oklahoma City, which in the words of the song, 'looks mightly pretty'. Ha, I thought, I bet it's ugly...

But it wasn't. Anyway, one good reason to visit the State capital is to see the Oklahoma National Memorial, commemorating those killed in the 1995 redneck outrage, when the Murrah Building was blown up by Timothy McVeigh's bomb. The memorial garden on the site is impressive - two huge dark walls (one marked 9.01, the other 9.03) stand each end of a thin black lake of water, which represents the 'dead' time when the bomb went off. And on smooth grass to one side are the chairs, made of perspex and glass, one each for the American citizens of all ages who died in the outrage. There's a solemn, intensely moving atmosphere of respect, and people travel for miles to share it. For me, since Route 66 is a journey into the heartlands of America, seeing the Memorial was one way of sharing the grief as well as the fun of this great, complicated nation.

After a while the great distances of Oklahoma grow tedious, and I was looking forard to entering another State. But at Clinton we stopped at the Route 66 Museum (many more of these are springing up along the route), opposite the Trade Winds Motel where they say Elvis once slept. There's an original Wurlitzer in the Museum's foyer, plus a scarlet Thunderbird - and again I was in retro-heaven. The exhibition takes you through decades of 66 - a roadie's dream, complete with buttons to push to access music of the time. Americans do these things really well - and here I have to add that everywhere we went people were warm and friendly: 'We're so pleased t'have y'all visit', and so on.

We'd been on the road for 9 days when we crossed the state line into Texas. By now I felt as if the Harley and I were one, and was used to packing and repacking my 'half' with skill, everything in place. You wash clothes as and when you can, and don't care too much about being scruffty. After a long day's ride your bottom feels as if it's died, but a shower and a beer soon revive you, and the motels are fine, with no need to book ahead. The cheapest place we stayed was $18.50 for a single room. As we cruised around Amarillo, wearing bandanas and waving at other bikers, I felt part of a very special club - wild and carefree. All my responsibilities had receded, although because of the mobile phone and the laptop I could be in touch with home most days. No matter - riding out of town to find the world-famous installation called Cadillac Ranch (set up by the millionaire Stanley Marsh 111 as a comment on car culture), I felt I could roll on forever, with only a small bag of clothes to my name. A sign said, 'Jesus is King of the Road'. OK, I thought- but I'm the queen.

We were about to hit the halfway mark. Emptiness for miles under big blue skies and clouds driven like a flock of demented sheep by the hot wind. In the middle of nowhere, Adrian, Texas, consists of the 'Route 66 Midpoint Cafe and Gift Shop' and nothing much else, exactly halfway between Chicago and LA. You pose by the sign and they give you a sticker - and yes, childish though it is, you feel a sense of achievement. In the cafe sat a gentle-looking old hillbilly, wearing a baseball cap which said, 'No More Gun Laws'. That, I thought, is one side of America. The other side was the beaming owner who assured me they would mail whatever Route 66 souvenirs I chose, since there was no room to carry them on the bike. She guessed at a miniscule amount for postage, and I wondered if the package would ever get to England. How could I go back to protest if it didn't?

It did; my trust in human nature vindicated. But that was much later - after the next, most seductive lap of the great road journey which is a destination in itself.

Next: Santa Fe to Los Angeles.

Travel Information Harley Davidson Authorised Rentals is the only motorcycle rental programme endorsed by the company. The service includes roadside assistance, helmet loan etc. It is also possible to join an accompanied tour along various routes. Visit www.hdrentals.com for all information. Bel Mooney and Robin Allison Smith flew to Chicago, returning from Los Angeles, on Virgin Airlines, courtesy of Travelbag - which also offers a programme of flights, accomodation and rental of japanese motorcycles. For information contact 0870 737 7859 or www.travelbag.co.uk.

The chic blonde 'greeter' at one of the best restaurants in Santa Fe, La Casa Sena, looked at us slightly snootily when we turned up at her desk in our motorcycle leathers. She said, 'Well, we have the cheaper Cantina over there, where the staff sing, or here..which is fine dining.' Her emphasis made it very clear which direction she wanted to push us. 'Oh, I like fine dining', I smiled.

And indeed it was good. But that made a change. Travelling Route 66 from Chicago to LA we faced some truly disgusting meals and realised why so many Americans are so horribly overweight. Small town, blue collar America munches on mounds of steak, hash browns, fries, eggs, salad, cottage cheese and gravy - al l on the same plate. I wondered why Americans seem so greedy, and also why they choose to wear shorts day and night, no matter what age, or to what extremities their eating habits have pushed their shape.

But all such curmugeonly thoughts were banished once we'd crossed the Texas border, through more melancholy derelict towns, into New Mexico. This was to be my favourite state, full of sultry, hispanic glamour. Before we reached Santa Fe we'd stopped in Tucumcari, a small town famous for the number of its motels, dating back to the fifties when Route 66 was a thriving highway. Now you can get a cheap room in Tucumcari very easily, the most popular landmark being the Blue Swallow. Tucumcari is paradise for the connoisseur of neon, but that's the only reason you'd go there.

Ah, but Santa Fe... You'd want months to appreciate the atmosphere, the adobe architecture, the Cathedral, the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, countless small art galleries - and the shops. Oh, the shopping....Santa Fe is a cornu copia of Navajo turquoise jewellery, inlaid and silver-studded belts, tinware, pueblo pottery and funky clothes. A sort of madness overtook me, especially once I decided to mail a pile of shopping home since it couldn't possibly fit on the Harley. Travel route 66 by car and I guarantee the boot will be full to bursting once you leave Santa Fe. Around the pretty main Plaza native American craftspeople sell their wares - and you want to buy everything.

Yet New Mexico retains its spirituality. America's foremost woman painter Georgia O'Keefe chose to live there and DH Lawrence visited Taos, north of Santa Fe, three times. Taos isn't on route 66, but creative travelling must mean diversions, and so we set off on the Harley early one morning, heading for the hills, shivering with cold under a pale golden sky. In Taos the temptation of more wonderful shops and galleries is offset by the church of St Francisco de Asis. This is a perfect example of the adobe style, but you find the 'miracle' in one of the church offices, where there is a painting of Christ on the shores of Galilee by a French Canadian artist. This, we were told, changes its nature in a way not yet explained by science. When the lights are out the painting glows, and Christ is seen to be carrying a cross not visible in the light. My photographer friend Robin is a total cynic...but even he could not deny the evidence of his own eyes. I was disconcerted by the whole experience. Why does one long for miracles?

The most astonishing thing about travelling across route 66 is the bizarre familiarity of places you have never been. Albuquerque, Gallup, Flagstaff....for me they always conjured up small town blues, with the 'lonesome whistle' of trains hooting mournfully through the night, going somewhere, but leaving you behind. Staying at the El Rancho hotel, Gallup - a magnificent edifice stuffed with signed photographs of all the film stars who've stayed there, from James Cagney to Jane Fonda - I experienced once again the sensation of taking part in my own dream scenario as the mystery trains kept rollin' all night, evoking country and western angst. These small towns can't disappoint, because disappointment and loss are an intrinsic part of the mythology of 66 - when getting your kicks becomes an act of defiance.

It would be crazy to travel west in search of the American dream, and not make two big detours to iconic sites: Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon. It's three hours from Gallup to 'Four Corners', where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado meet, the landscape becoming increasingly scrubby and wild all the way. And it was hot. When we reached Monument valley, mute 'star' of countless westerns, I was moved to think of the thousands of Navajo who were driven off their land on the 'Long March' and suffered cruelly. Now this parched landscape of pink, ochre and orange strata, and vermilion buttes rising like fingers into the azure sky, belongs to the tribe once more, the jewel of Navajo nation. The route through the valley is for four wheels drive only - but still, in keeping with the rock-hard biker image, we did some scrambling on the enormous Road King, sending up clouds of dust. The air shimmied. I couldn't believe I was actually there.

The next day we spent a bottom-punishing nine hours on the Harley, getting lost in Navajo Nation, trying to find our way back to Route 66, in search of more landmarks. It was rather like being a child again with an 'I-Spy' book: 'Oooh - there's the Elvis mural in McLean!' - tick; 'There's the Jack Rabbit sign!' - tick. And here's Winslow, Arizona! - tick. Anybody who loves 'seventies rock will know that this town's one claim to fame is a song by the Eagles called 'Take It Easy'. It begins 'Standin' on the corner in Winslow, Arizona....' Each year the people of the town gather to sing it by the commemorative 'park' - complete with a statue of a guitar-toting young man.

Our second 'must see' detour was an hour and a half's ride due north of Flagstaff. The Grand Canyon lives up to all expectations. Nobody could feel let down by the first glimpse of those eons of rock layers, the dizzy depths and the impossibly misty distances, while majestic eagles whirl overhead above pines and ancient junipers. Awed silence is the only suitable response. At its widest this gash in the earth is 18 miles across; at its narrowest 600 feet. The Colorado river churns 3,000 feet below. You can take a bus along the south rim, alighting to walk for a while, then picking it up again to reach a different vantage point. Mercifully, tourism has not spoilt the Grand Canyon and its wonders remind you why so many people come to America for holidays. Route 66ers are, by definition, captivated by the past (why else travel an historic route when the interstates are so much quicker and easier?) but recent human time is a grain of sand compared to the deep history of the Canyon. I contemplated it to a mental accompaniement of Navajo flute: mystical and timeless.

With one week to go, we had to cross the rest of Arizona, makig the obligatory Seligman where the Route 66 association was started by a charismatic ex-barber called Angel Delgadillo. Outside his shop are lifesize images of Elvis and James Dean - in fact the whole place is another nostalgia trip. Angel is visited by coach loads of Europeans and Americans who shake his hand for refusing to accept the death of Route 66. A living legend of the road, and 'star' of radio and TV he beams, 'I'm so happy Seligman didn't die and we helped save a bit of American history, and people come in here smiling because they've found Route 66'. I was smiling too, heading onwards to the Garden of Eden and my 'California Dreaming'.

But there's an obstacle to conquer first. Those dustbowl refugees who managed to come this far during the great Depression, seeking a better life, must have been desperately downcast to see the Mojave desert stretching ahead. Monotonous and bleak, it glitters pitilessly: a wilderness of rattlesnakes, petrified larva, and empty, retro eateries like 'Roy's' and the legendary 'Bagdad Cafe' in the middle of blazing sand and rock. Mouths parched, eyes dazzled, we yearned for Los Angeles.

The city sprawl is daunting. On and on along Santa Monica Boulevard we rode, past the famous Hollywood sign on the hillside, always thinking we would crest the next brow in the road and glimpse the ocean - only to see miles of skyscrapers stretching ahead under a suggestion of smog. Traditionally, 66ers fixed on Santa Monica Pier as the end of the road, although there's no logic to it. So that was our destination. We'd travelled in eight states, and although the song describes Route 66 as 'More than two thousand miles all the way', we'd done over 4,000 miles on that beautiful red Harley because of getting lost, cruising around, and making detours. Now - there was the Pacific at last. The journey was over.

I felt quite emotional - sad that we would have to deliver our fabulous red steed to the Harley dealership at Marina de Rey, to be crated all the way back to Illinois. Listening to the waves and the fairground sounds from the pier, I perched on the bike for the obligatory snap which says, 'Made it!' . It was the day before my fifty fifth birthday, and I rejoiced that I was still learning, as well as having fun. Travelling Route 66 for a month taught me how much power can reside in crumbling concrete, and that bothering to stop, look and chat in small town America can bring you closer to the life of the nation than a New York weekend. Route 66 is still the highway of my dreams, but now I know for sure that the 'kicks' are out there for the getting. You just have to believe it , then do it. Hit the road.

Travel Information Harley Davidson Authorised Rentals is the only motorcycle rental programme endorsed by the company. The service includes roadside assistance, helmet loan etc. It is also possible to join an accompanied tour along various routes. Visit www.hdrentals.com for all information. Bel Mooney and Robin Allison Smith flew to Chicago, returning from Los Angeles, on Virgin Airlines, courtesy of Travelbag - which also offers a programme of flights, accomodation and rental of japanese motorcycles. For information contact 0870 737 7859 or www.travelbag.co.uk. Those wishing to travel Route 66 by car can, of course, arrange this with any of the national car rental companies. For example, visit www.hertz.com or www.budget.com for rental changes.

George Bernard Shaw was gifted (or cursed) with the ability to craft statements for maximum effect and minimum usefulness. The chief source book for sixth form debating topics is his 'Maxims for Revolutionists', at the end of 'Man and Superman': precepts which owe more to specious wit than truth. There with old chestnuts about marriage, royalty and democracy, we find this, on domesticity: 'Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.' Those of you who are immediately crying 'Yes!' should consider his, 'When domestic servants are treated as human beings it is not worth while to keep them'. He only did it to annoy....

But thirty years ago I'd have bought Shaw's notion. Certainly, there was truth in it in 1903, but not now. You cannot unthink ideas about the status of women, nor (more important) disinvent the washing machine or the vacuum cleaner. It was necessary and healthy that the feminist movement should question the whole concept of domesticity which kept women tethered, as Shaw said, to home and family. But still to embrace Shaw's limited definition implies a misunderstanding, and undervaluing of what the word 'home' implies. The old feminism urged women out of the home and into the workplace, and although it served its purpose, arguably it sold us short. My feminism embraces men equally, and refuses to devalue nurturing skills. On the contrary, old-fashioned thought it might sound, I believe we should teach the young (of both genders) to value those arts which are essential to the creation of a home - with all the values implicit within the word.

There is no complacency here. I know that 'home' for many people is a place of poverty, violence, misery, but the gentle retort would point out that those things are a contradiction of my ideal/ideal of Home, and therefore have no bearing on what follows. To make this clear, I shall use the latin Domus to mean the concept. Nor is this revisionism; no middle-aged road to Damascus to delight those who ascribe all modern ills to working mothers. No, my home has always been the centre of my life, as it was for my grandmother, and like her I have always worked. But at the moment my reverence for the Domus is overwhelming, and Christmas lends an even deeper resonance. Every so often one is forced to analyse a certain mood; a subtle shift in the psyche which both calls one's priorities into question , and confirms deeply held beliefs.

On September 11th I was on a plane to Chicago, diverted to Toronto. My colleague and I decided to hire a car and head for the border we were told was shut, but which we crossed easily. In the meantime, my 21 year old daughter (in London) heard that four planes had been highjacked and crashed in the United States. With no details, she was distraught with worry. When we spoke on the phone she said in tears, 'Mum, you mustn't ever go away from home again'. Now, of course she wasn't trying to put me in prison. She was using the word' home' to suggest, simply, safety and human love. Over the folowing four weeks, travelling over four thousand miles across the United States, I met ordinary Americans who murmured, again and again, that the terrorist atrocities made them value all the more their 'homes and families'. There, the word home has little to do with real estate, no more than the phrase, 'He came from a good home' is code for a number of en suite bathrooms. No - 'home' is love, sweet mundane habits, shared values. 'Home comforts' - the solace of home.

I flew home (meaning, to my country) the day after the bombing began - which itself prompts the dispassionate reflection that when people have their homes destroyed, and/or become refugees, they lose far more than the roof over their heads, vital to survival though that may be. The loss of a family dwelling, no matter how humble, can inflict a profound psychological damage. We have no appropriate translation for the German 'Heimweh', which transcends mere 'homesickness' to describe a condition of the soul. The Domus contains within it a rich cluster of emotions and needs, bred in blood and bone.

Since I returned from the States on October 9th I have only wanted to be at home and 'potter'. With the second draft of a novel to finish and several articles to write, not to mention projects to discuss, I have been wasting time - clearing out cupboards, tidying, measuring, setting things in order. I don't want to go out. Self-deprecatingly, I tell friends, 'All I want to do is arrange flowers', and since my taste in floral displays is a bunch plonked in a pretty jug, it's obvious flower-arranging is no more than a metaphor. No vestal virgin, I am amazed to find myself content to tend the sacred flame.

The Romans would commonly raise a glass 'to Vesta' before a meal. Her Greek equivalent was Hestia, the revered goddess of hearth and home. But we've neglected Hestia, too obsessed with Aphrodite and Minerva: women aspiring to be lovers or achievers, or both at the same time. It was telling that Nigella Lawson attracted such virulent mockery for daring to call a cookery book 'How To Be A Domestic Goddess.' Leaving aside the delicious light irony of the title, it struck me as a perfectly worthwhile aim - a Divinity of hearth and home, why not? There's nothing sexist about the idea. Housewifery and good husbandry were always two sides of the same coin, neither activity seen as inferior to the other, both essential to the equilbrium both of home and community. When, in 1982, Susan Hill published a book called 'The Magic Apple Tree', it received some of the nastiest reviews it's ever been my misfortune to read. Why? She wrote of the rhythms of her home against the backdrop of the seasons, and her delight in the whole. But that wasn't 'allowed.' Susan Hill was supposed to win prizes for fiction, to write plays and short stories.... but not to embrace the virtues of the WI.

Yet to regard the home as the still centre of all things is not to embrace drudgery, but to put yourself in touch with all peoples, all classes, all cultures. The Mongolian family which travels to new pastures with its yurt keeps a place rigorously designated for everything, from food to God, with the (practical and symbolic) stove in the centre of the round tent. Romany families take a pride in their beautifully equipped caravans (not so much painted decorations nowadays as microwaves and lace curtains) - since the idea of home is just as important to nomadic peoples. The Domus does not require tangible foundations; its meaning depends on creating a space in which will be placed a set of objects both useful and decorative, mundane and sacred, to form a framework for family life. Or (of course) a fulfilled single life.

The home, then, is more than just a place. When you visit somebody and exclaim, 'You've made a lovely home' the praise is not for what they have spent but a more for more intangible thing: atmosphere. I have visited grand houses created by the over-rated tribe of interior designers (or decorators as they prefer to be called) and the atmosphere has been zilch. The Domus can't be imposed. You cannot create a home 'for' somebody because home is an organic growth from somebody.

Just as the Domus implies more than place, so it makes fashion - even taste - irrelevant. To create a home you do not need much money, just a feeling for the spirit of place and people alike. In my childhood, working class families used to redecorate every twelve to eighteen months, because coal fires and damp took their toll on the wallpaper. But slaves to style redecorate because they've read somewhere that 'we're' not doing borders/chintz/ William Morris patterns/stippled paints any more. But that's not home-making, it's 'lifestyle': a conspiracy to make us uneasy - and spend more money. It is receiving ideas and keeping up with the Joneses, without reflecting that the home you create should be a mirror for your own soul.

I couldn't care a flying duck about fashion. In one room we have hand-cut stencils, done over twelve years ago by a dear friend. Hopelessly old hat now, you know. A kitchen designer visited recently to measure for an island unit and remarked that the paint effects we chose (only six years ago) were now 'dated'. Just as consuming cookery books and TV shows has done nothing to increase the culinary ability of the populace, so the neo-game-show popularity of programmes like 'Changing Rooms' does little to instil domestic skills. At the same time, I suspect that the extraordinary proliferation of magazines and newspaper articles about cookery, furniture and design indicates a collective yearning towards an idealised image of home.

Why? Everybody I know is getting busier. I returned from the States to observe precious little peace of mind in my friends and none at all in myself. Was it that the world-shattering atrocity, and subsequent fear, called the quotidien frenzy of our lives into question? Whatever - in a deep gloom I contemplated the reflection of a woman who has spent the last year skittering, scrabbling, scurrying, scrambling.....and screaming. My home rebuked me for getting the work-life balance all wrong. In the last twelve months I finished the first draft of a big novel as well as a children's book; made a TV series for 'Artsworld' about paintings and a Radio 4 series about God; continued to work on an on-going animation project, 'The Mouse With Many Rooms'; edited three issues of a glossy arts magazine 'Proof', wrote a monthy column for Saga Magazine, reviewed books and wrote articles. But what was that all about? I also bought cook-chill meals, let mess pile up in corners, and ceased to feel at home in the chaos of my study. Workholism had me in thrall, and the truth is, it cannot co-exist with homemaking. People who spend all their lives working see their homes as places to rush back to after a hard day, and places to leave in pursuit of social life or weekend respite. They are not places to be. And gradually it wears you down.

No wonder I want to arrange flowers. I can come out of the closet now, and confess I look forward to visits to 'Homebase', and derive pleasure from buying two sale cushions which so cheer the ancient sofa it need not be recovered. I mend clothes, and stitch bits of lace on to old garments to make them like new. I cook soup, and reflect that the sneers (in some quarters) that greeted 'How To Be a Domestic Goddess' indicated a sort of miserable and miserly terror. People reject the old values of hearth and home because they are afraid of their own lack of skill - and here I am not referring to wizardry with the paint roller or the sewing machine. For at the root of the Domus is the most essential skill of all: giving.

A homemaker is somebody who makes a home. I like to roll the phrase around my tongue: home-maker. No domestic slave or prisoner, a homemaker is a creator, a craftsperson, a weaver of magic. That this concept is still associated with the oppression of women dimisnishes the value of the activities involved, and demeans those who take pleasure in them. It is partly to do with definitions. I take issue with my shortert Oxford Dictionary which defines homemaker as, 'a person, especially a housewife, who manages a home.' Rubbish! Why 'housewife'? The 'house' element implies the building, whilst 'wife' is inescably female. Why 'manages', with all the dreary connotations of that word? Thus has the worship of Hestia been reduced to a harassed woman trundling a trolley and balancing a budget.

Whereas the homemaker ....He or she regards time watering the plants, or putting peanuts out for the birds, or chopping an onion, or pottering in and out of rooms gently tidying as time for contemplation. And do not tell me that this is the privilege of the wealthy, because it is not. The children may be a nuisance and the ironing pile up.....but it is still possible to find that deep centre, as long as you reject Shaw's axiom, and choose to make the time. The homemaker knows that the ecology of the planet is healthier if we fix, mend, make. Better scrub an organic carrot than pick up the supermarket bag of pristine, pesticidal orange sticks. The homemaker is a true creator, at ease in small studio apartment or large house, as long as the place is a reflection of the soul - a bit worn at the edges maybe but beautiful for all that.

If I close my eyes I can summon up an image of my grandmother- the first and best homemaker I knew - walking up the long path to the block of flats where we lived, bent under the weight of her shopping bags. Her life was devoted to home and family; to earn money she worked as a dinner lady (serving, again) and was glad to clean other people's homes, taking a pride in beauiful objects that were not hers. One of my happiest memories (c 1955) is of sitting with her to make cushion covers out of old blackout material, of which there was an abundance in postwar Liverpool. She showed me how to cut petals and stamens and leaves out of brightly coloured felt, and glue the patterns while she stitched the squares. My mother knitted and sewed everything we wore. They made meals from leftovers and soup from carcasses....Was that mere thrift , or wondrous creativity? After all, the embroidery they taught me had nothing to do with necessity. Everything in my childhood shone - from the brass hearth set to our shoes.

Am I wrong to feel nostalgia for the time when families like mine sat round the kitchen table for every single meal, chatting and squabbling in equal measure? And homemaking wasn't considered a second-class activity but an achievement? When I went to girls' grammar school in 1958 all of us had to learn 'housewifery.' Later, of course, the 'clever' girls like me could drop domestic science, but no matter, three years of it did the trick. In a full curriculum I learned Latin, French, History and the rest - but alternated cookery and sewing, and domestic arts like cleaning too. Did you know that you cannot put polish on until you have scraped the mud off a shoe? I learned that at home, and at school too. It was a useful science.

Such skills should be taught today, in school to girls and boys alike - because they are useful and achievable to all. They teach the value of taking care. More than that, they contain within them an ineffable good which is hard to define. Without them there is an inbalance, breeding discontentment, in generations that do not know how to settle, how to be. If your children see you taking care (whatever form that takes) then they will learn to take care too. They will learn that making a meal and serving it well (even if it's pasta and home-made meatballs and sauce) can allow you all to partake of Ms Lawson's 'divine'. My daughter comments that she is 'turning into' me, because she eschews student squalor and likes to light candles at the table and cook a meal for friends. It sits very happily with her readings of women's literature. She sees no contradiction at all.

The homemaking skills - and pleasures - need to be passed from generation to generation, and celebrated. I am my grandmother's granddaughter. I like my harmonious house to shine, and be tidy. The girl who could transform grotty 'sixties bedsits with beads and shawls, is now a confident woman - proud that the home I have created is perhaps my greatest achievement, inseparable as it is from the family itself. OK, so I've written things and interviewed people, and earned my own money.....but so what? What matters is this Domus I've made, where people like to be. Maybe they don't notice that the house is full of subtle shrines for, agnostic as I am, I have evolved my own careful rituals for the worship of Hestia. Since September 11th they have grown all the more important - and that's why Thanksgiving had such a deep symbolic significance in the USA, and why I am looking forward to Christmas with more than usual intensity. Each night, even when alone, I light candles and burn scented oils, because I know that these things permeate the very walls, pleasing the household spirits and helping to keep the darkness at bay. And their meaning will go on - even when the lights are out.

This is the famous piece that was commissioned and bought by the Sunday Times Magazine in the summer/autumn of 2000, only to be 'pulled' at the last moment by Sunday Times editor John Witherow. He said he didn't want to read about bikers - and this caused a huge correspondence on my site. Make up your own mind. Read it here.

Sonny Barger has flown in from the States and is signing books. The queue winds back over the grass - as it has for two and a half hours already - as orderly as a gaggle of matrons at a literary luncheon. But this is no conventional publisher's event, no gathering of best-seller-devourers. We are at the 14th Annual Bulldog Bash, the great biker-fest organised by the Hell's Angels, which gets bigger each year. Tattooed, pierced, some almost toothless from fighting and neglect, the bikers edge forwards to buy the 'Chief's' autobiography - a blunt, brutal account of Barger's fortyfour years as a Hell's Angel.

As they draw near to the founding father of the notorious motorcycle club, huge men look overwhelmed. Tattoos quiver. Some confess they can't read but have 'waited for this for twenty years'. One wants a book signed to his son, but can't spell the name. Shuffle, shuffle....and at last the moment arrives. Wow, man - he's really there, 62 now, with a face that's made enemies weep, and a body tuned from bench-pressing. The thumbs-upwards hand clasp, a mumbled greeting, lean forward to hear the icon whisper (throat cancer has left Barger speaking through a valve), 'Good to see ya, man'. Then the inexorable movement of the queue pushes yet another biker outwards - dazed, moist-eyed, blown away by meeting his hero.

To straight society Sonny Barger is an unholy thug, a convicted felon, a man whose life has been devoted to violence and crime. But here at the Bulldog Bash his presence is a visitation - as if the Pope dropped in to give his blessing to a gathering of the faithful. In this sunny place of worship, the priests are back-patch hell-raisers, holy communion is beer and burgers, and the religion....? Of course, it's the machine

whose praises we sing: all hail Harley and Honda; halleluia - and we'll ride out together to a chopped, chromed heaven. Mind you, I know a woman who knows a woman who used to come to the Bulldog Bash each year to get laid. It was not the bikes, but the bikers themselves that drew her - thousands of them in a field just outside Stratford-on-Avon, so many without women you could take your pick. Though there are plenty of female riders now (proud of their leopard-spotted Harleys and super-charged japanese rockets) and the usual contingent of those who like 'packing double' (not a sexual feat, but riding pillion) - still, the Bulldog Bash is predominently masculine. You stand at the gate and count the solitary riders, and about one in twenty is female, if that. The ancient, aggressive, tostesterone-fuelled ethos of the Hell's Angels and other clubs filters down through biker culture, and though the men may applaud women who ride and race, their old obsession with breasts and buttocks in icongraphy, fashion and entertainment would do Hefner proud. The puniest boy racer dons his leathers and fills out to fit the image, growing, expanding, deriving all power from the machine between his thighs. Looking around at the men at the Bash it's hard not to think of lads and their mutual teasing: 'His is bigger than yours'. The different biker tribes come together to look at what the others have, and parade their own. First come the tough Angels and other outlaw clubs: Satan's Slaves, Nomads, Double Deuces and so on. Next in the sauntering machismo contest are the more mainstream clubs: Ogri MCC, Chopper Club, United Bikers of Britain, followed by the upmarket Harley Owners Group - whose leather waistcoats are soft and clean, who might run their own businesses but enjoy cuttin' loose on the glorious V-twin at the weekends, making like Marvin, Fonda, Hopper and McQueen. The Japanese bike tribe takes itself very seriously: high-octane performance (they wouldn't take a Harley as a gift), on monstrous, aerodynamic Yamahas, Suzukis, Hondas and Kawasakis. The blue, white and red-leathered boy racers line up beside older riders who spend a fortune to clip fractions of seconds off their personal dragstrip best. In between all these wander those who flogged along the motorways on clapped out old Jawas, and MZs to look, yearn, and get drunk. Normally none of these groups would mix - indeed, there's a sneery rivalry between devotees of Harleys, 'rice rockets' and classic British bikes. But for one weekend, on a disused airfield just south of Stratford on Avon, the brotherhood of bikers comes together - a closer gathering than at any pop festival. All classes, all ages - all (and here I return to the sisterhood of bikers too) drawn together by a secret knowledge that the act of riding is itself a statement. It says, 'Look at me - I'm different to all those people safe in their cars and houses.You can't cage me because - hey - I don't give a damn!' * They start arriving late afternoon on Thursday, zip, zip, zip, along the B4632, to hand tickets to the phalanx of Angels at the entrance to Long Marston, before rolling on to find a camping spot, and spring the little tents. Unpacked, they wander to explore the site: the stalls selling burgers, pizzas or chinese, the rifle range, the shopping village offering everything from tie-dyed babygros to exhaust pipes. You can assault your stomach on the terrifying bungee capsule and your knees on the mini road-racing circuit, or inhale the gentle cannabis smoke in the rave tent which looks as if it flew like a spacey butterfly over from Glastonbury to settle in this field. There's a vast beer/stage marquee, and two tattoo parlours where you submit to the whining needle in full view of the other punters. Already a pretty blonde called Linda is having something drawn on her buttock, smiling when I ask if it hurts. I imagine a butterfly or rose...but no. This work of body art depicts a biker hero: Dennis the Menace. 'I thought of Minnie the Minx, but me and my boyfriend - we like Dennis. It's the Beano, y'know?' She hugs me briefly and walks off, somewhat gingerly, to the beer tent - where wine and spirits sell only by the bottle.

Now Hazel Stewart arrives from Frome in Somerset - 3 hours' slog on on the over-loaded Honda 400 Superdream she's had for three years, with her tall 12 year old son on the back. Athol looks distinctly nervous - as anyone might be, first confronted by the sights and sounds of bikerdom. Scottish Hazel works part time, studies part time, and writes stories and poems. Atholl may wonder what his mum's brought him to, but she feels at home already. She likes the idea of showing her son a glimpse of part of her past. 'It's so long since I've spent time with a crowd of bikers. I've changed - yet a part of me remains the same, hedonistic girl I was in my twenties. It was her who motivated the trip. The sensible mother side of me is horrified at the risk of putting my son on the bike, and spending all the money...' Thursday night on the hard ground, and Hazel and Ath can't sleep. All around, the noise of shouting, people arriving late, looking for loos and falling over, engines revving. But on Friday morning (when the action starts properly) they sit watching the drag racing in hot sun and Atholl, like most twelve year old boys, is in his element. There's a long, long queue back, two by two, of riders waiting to test themselves and their matchines on the quarter mile strip.With every conceivable type of person and bike there, competion is absent. This is about seeing how fast you can clock it along the quarter mile stretch from a standing start - that's all. I spot a woman who looks as if she could be a teacher. This is Julia - a Personnel Manager from Plymouth, and a biker for twenty years. She's riding a Suzuki Bandit 1200 which she's had dyno-ed, so now, much money later, all the flatspots are ironed out and it goes. Julia's observed more and more women riding really fast bikes: 'It's got to be done', she grins. When it's time she holds on the front brake, lets rip with the throttle, disappears in a blue cloud of smoking rubber to make the tyres hot and sticky, moves up to the drag lights, hunched, tense, watches them change, and .....eeeeerrh..uh.. . eeeerrrh...uh .... She screams the stretch in 12.4 seconds, then cruises back to the queue to go for 12. Speed is all.

But the number of people in wheelchairs or on crutches at the Bash, not to mention Dave, the handsome boy racer who pulls a wheelie at over 100mph along the full stretch with his useless left arm strapped down....all remind you that this is a dangerous game. The drag racers know that to boost an engine with nitrous oxide is to shorten its life. That the buzz of riding fast is living for real; doing a ton alongside death and hoping your precious machine can outrun him a while longer. * This year's Bulldog Bash is overshadowed by the death of Dr Maz Harris, the biker-writer PhD who was UK spokesman of the Hell's Angels. Maz was a founding member of the Bulldog Association, one of the Angels who thought it would be a good idea to put on this unique event for all bikers. Each year he watched it grow from 2,500 people people to this year's expected 23,000, and worked to make sure its organisation was impeccable, its image good. On May 31st he died on his Buell, and the classic Hell's Angel funeral made the front pages. In Arizona Sonny Barger was devastated by the news. Hell's Angels here, in Europe and in the US wept at the loss of a brother. 'Wouldn't you?', asks Bilbo - the Bulldog Bash administrator (Wessex Chapter) who was one of Maz's closest friends. 'The weather's the best it's ever been for the Bash - that's for Maz' says Angel press officer, Ken - showing a soft side surprisingly common among bikers. He says they intend this Bash to be the best ever : 'It's the only memorial Maz'd want.' Spend more than a few moments with wild, vermilion-haired Indi Archdale, who was to be married to Maz Harris just weeks after he was killed, and you realise the extent to which the man's spirit haunts the event. She talks about him all the time; her hands shake; proudly she shows her new tattoo: arrows sweeping from a piston through a Death's Head, and the words, 'IN LOVING MEMORY - MAZ - 1949 -2000'. Indi's passion for motorcycles started when she was 7, she's been an HND student in business studies as well as an apprentice motorcycle mechanic, and now makes a living from test-driving motorcycles and writing about them: the most glamorous biker in the business. At 18 she ran away with Maz who was seventeen years older. They were 'off and on' for fourteen years, as long as the Bulldog Bash they worked on together' . Finally, Indi says, they were ready to settle down. Then came the phone call.... She couldn't live without bikes and is finding it hard to live without Maz. 'When he died I went on working at the press releases he'd started. I think he'd be proud of me'. Her back displays 'Maz's favourite tattoo'. It's a Grim Reaper, striding forward, scythe at the ready, staring with empty sockets from her smooth, tanned skin. If Indi is aware of the irony she does not show it. Everywhere at the Bash there are skulls: air-brushed on tanks and helmets, dangling from necks and ears, inked on flesh, printed on tee-shirts, painted on leather, engraved on air-cleaners and timer covers, shaped into candles and ashtrays....grinning and whispering, 'Hey, I'm just around the corner waiting for you, Biker - like I was for Maz'. The video in the beer tent shows terrifying spills, the riders miraculously getting up and walking away. A man's tee-shirt has FEAR emblazoned across it. All this cranks up the same message - revving it into the red: Live now and pay now, party on down because time is running out. Indi says she'd like to test drive a car at 500mph, because if the skull called your name at that speed, 'You wouldn't know about it, wouldn't feel a thing' - it would be just screech and bang into the blackness and hallo! to the old Grim Reaper. In truth - what committed biker wants to die slowly in a bed, grovelling to pain? * It's fitting the Bulldog Bash is held on the disused airfield which, in 1944 served as a base for the Tomahawk fighter planes that escorted the American Flying Fortress long-range bomber raids into Germany. since the Hell's Angels derive their history and ethos from a military past. The term 'Hell's Angels' was first used by a squadron in WW1; from then on bomber units and divisions of solders thought up cool names to indicate their toughness. In addition, motorcycles played an important role in both wars. Then after World War 11, the cameraderie of military life was missed by the young men who returned with a swashbuckling taste for danger, 'unafraid to ride full-throttle and kick ass', as Barger puts it. The ground was ready for the Hell's Angels. The (copyright) winged Death's Head that appears on the back of every Angel jacket can be traced back to similar insignias on the 85th fighter squadron and the 552nd medium bomber squadron. Those men flew into the likelihood of death each time they pulled back the joystick and rose into the equipoise between heaven and hell. Their pose was rough and tough; their swaggering sense of brotherhood the means by which terror was kept at bay - even laughed away. Similarly,Hell's Angels see themselves as the epitome of toughness, masculinity, freedom - the image of the frontiersman or anti-hero. This idea is deep within the American psyche. Sonny Barger's book shows how the biker finds identity through the club and through the Harley: 'motorcycles are the be-all, end-all of what this club is all about'. At 100mph-plus, with nothing between the rider and the road surface, a patch of wet might mean instant oblivion, and there is transcendence in the danger. The fact that the Angel must (according to the rules) ride out together means the danger is often shared. That ethos of brotherhood annihilates alienation. Wearing the patch, the colours, necessitates acceptance of a system as strict as any masonic lodge, with the same guarantees of support. Hazel Stewart confesses she feels far safer, 'as a lone woman with her son' at the Bulldog Bash than at Glastonbury (say) or any other festival. It's the Angels' gig: they devised it, they organise it, they meet daily with the police, fire service and council, and they police it 'with zero tolerance' - as an ex-policeman-turned-security man whispered to me with approval. In fourteen years there hasn't been one arrest, and no crime, unless you count the hash cookies and fudge being hawked at a couple of pounds a pop. Rob somebody's tent and risk of a couple of Angels taking you to task? I don't think so. Though an elderly biker from Devon moaned to me that the Bash was too expensive (£30 for the weekend) because 'the bloody Angels are all about money now', and a woman on a Ducati told me, 'Let's face it, they're all drug-dealers, money-launderers, and arms-traders, and - don't quote my name - they scare me'......most others seems to hold the Angels in esteem, if not affection. Though image management has gone on in a big way and HAMC is now an international corporation, with websites and mechandise, you don't become a member through service to the Rotary Club (which happens to sell fruit and milk on site). Still, Andy and Baz , the London Angels 'minding' Sonny Barger, have no need for their prize-fighter stances here. It's as onerous as looking after Cliff at a convention of matrons: the biggest danger death by hugging. * On Friday night a small posse of Surrey HOG members arrive on their Harleys. There's Vera Sommer and Anne Leguen de Lacroix from the Surrey Ladies of Harley. Vera (riding a 1340 cc Heritage Softail) has her own Marketing Consultancy, Anne (on a Hugger) works for the UK and International Press. With them are Ernst (Vera's partner and a financial broker), Harry ( a designer), Chris (who works for a company dealing in office infrastructures) and Kit (retired now, but used to work on an oil rig). They've been to the Bash before - for people-watching, bike-watching, and bopping. Vera loves 'the atmosphere, the cameraderie'. The woman with 'Biker Chicks Rule' on her chest hates the anachronistic sexism of the Hell's Angels, but thinks they're 'commercial and clever'. She and the gang have come to have a good time - and after lolling in the evening sunlight by the beer tent, they move on to dance most of the night beneath a magical revolving light-show which transforms everyone into a performer. Elsewhere, Indi Archdale is up until dawn, drinking smoking, getting her hottest high from hurling into the air in the bungee capsule at £15 a go. But Hazel Stewart and her son turn in early again - worn out by sun and noise. The beer tent rocks and heaves. Hundreds of Bulldog-Bashers pour into the site for Saturday alone, and the campers whizz out to stock up on booze and food. A few miles away, bewildered tourists in Stratford-on-Avon ask what's going on. The bikers have landed. A rotund, beaming policewoman, supervising the parking of dream machines, tells me, 'I've been doing this for fourteen years and they're great people. There's never any trouble'. Later, on the site, I hear exactly the same thing from Steve Newman, Environmental Health and Housing Officer for Stratford Council: 'I've been co-operating on this with the Angels since it began and they're delightful. They get things done'. Twice I'm told a tale from two years ago: man loses his wallet with £200 in it, goes to the lost property office with no hope of recovery, gets it back. 'Wouldn't happen at Glastonbury, would it?', asks venerable Angel Bilbo, adding proudly, 'People come here to party, to share a run with the Angels and feel part of a biker family'. Meanwhile Sonny Barger is signing yet more books for more well-behaved devotees (1,628 copies shifted) as well as posing with his mean-looking brothers for a fashion shoot. What? This is too squeaky clean and safe - like a day out in Skegness in the fifties..... Sleaze is what's needed here - real, get-down greasy stuff like you associate with bikers, the honest-to-badness whiff of dirt. It doesn't come with the topless car-wash, where (in the absence of cars or bikes) four jolly girls hoik up their cropped t-shirts and push their breasts into the happy smiling faces of lads who've paid £5 for five minutes of mammary delight in soapy water. It doesn't come with the slick 'Fun Lovin' Criminals', who headline on Saturday night in a crammed tent. It doesn't even come with the before-midnight strippers who prance about the stage, strutting, kicking, teasing - and leaving their G-strings in place. No - real sleaze stalks the stage after midnight. It isn't witnessed by Vera Sommer and the Surrey HOGs, grooving in the trance tent again but not drinking because they're leaving early in the morning. Nor by Hazel Stewart who is partying all night with new friends, while Atholl (confident now and loving the whole thing) sleeps in the tent dreaming of Aston Martins. Earlier Indi Archdale had said to me, 'You've got to see this band, 'Impotent Sea Snakes' - you'll love them'....but she doesn't bother in the end, retiring at midnight for a change, like a good girl not a genuine biker chick. I'm left to sup white cider (big mistake but the bar is almost dry, only one brand of beer and cider left) and feel doubly queasy at the antics of the act which suddenly puts the sh** back in the Bash. A heavy rock band with four exotic dancers and a man on stilts sounds innocuous enough, but soon the 'Impotent Seasnakes' draw 'yuks' from men and women alike. A mixture of rock, vaudeville and sheer perversion, they take you places you really don't want to go - I mean, your average biker is happy to slaver over normal strippers but gawks in open-mouthed disbelief at a naked woman threading syringes through her own breasts and upper thighs. Masks, whips, a cross drawn across a guy's back with razor....not to mention clothes pegs clipped on nipples and on shaved labia. At least the skinny lead guitarist gets his cock out too - but you rather wish he hadn't. I think, who is this for? The answer is - it's 'for' The Extreme, that's all - pushing out the boundaries so far even the hardcore bikers peer into the darkness with trepidation. The Hell's Angels may be family men, and the Bulldog Bash oh-so respectable - but hiring the 'Impotent Seasnakes' keeps them ahead of the game. Which means over the edge. Worse is to come. At 1am 'Kamakazi' takes the stage. This bunch deals in straight-up S&M - the presence of a dwarf on stage an added guarantee of non-politically-correct shock-horror. Standing alone in the fast-diminishing crowd I watch one performer drive a nail through another's tongue, who swings a weight from his new metallic acessory. 'Oh, that is gross!' I call out to nobody in particular, and, 'It's worse than gross', says a Scottish voice beside me. Andy from Fife, veteran of ten Bulldogs explains his theory that these late acts are a ruse to make everyone flee to their tents, so the noise can shut off and the well-heeled folk in the area won't give the council a hard time. 'Just wait 'til they stick meat-hooks in his back and drag him along the ground', he adds.

Too close to the stage, I retreat to the bar - where an Angel, socialising with his friend in a wheelchair and their two glamorous wives, is getting fed up with a liquor-addled fool who leers over to chat to the women. Twice he's sent packing, but makes the mistake of returning to apologise. The Angel's had it up to here ..... so a fast, ferocious shove sends the man cannoning back, flying to the ground in a clatter of empty beer cans. He scrambles up and wisely flees while the Angel turns to explain to me, with utter reasonableness, that any man would do the same. If a guy can't have a drink with his wife......? Up on stage unspeakable things are happening, and it seems to me that the drunk got off very lightly. After all, he might have met a fist. Or worse... Saturday night collapses towards dawn in a haze of smoke, booze, raunchier strippers, crashing disco, trippy rave music, and the noise of a hundred little parties around flares flickering dangerously in the night air. In the morning the site wakes to a rocking, collective hangover which makes the prospect of packing up and straddling the machine as welcome as a blown gasket. The rain comes too - grey clouds massing after two hot days, and great drops spattering down on the squashed food debris, mountains of cans, and drifting paper containers. Hazel Stewart and I meet up - both wearing shades against the punishing grey daytime, moaning 'Never again' for the nth time, then cackling - what the hell, we had fun. In the press cabin Indi Archdale is already packing up papers and computer, her tribute tattoo covered now with a leather jacket against the chill. It's over. Something else casts a pall. The Hell's Angels are shocked and 'down' because death did arrive at the Bulldog Bash this year. Quietly, the police have come to the camping area reserved for HAMC and friends. A five month old baby suffered a cardiac arrest - a cot death - in the early hours, and the family is at the hospital. Bulldog organisers huddle with the police. It's quiet, well-organised. Sadness increases with the rain - richocheting off tanks painted with the winged Death's Head, puddling on stitched leather seats, and dancing along the plastic ribbons cordoning off the site where the baby died. It's as if there is always a reckoning, somewhere, for someone - but who'd have thought innocence would take the punishment? The Angels don't believe in God or justice, just fate. And, mercifully ignorant of this event, the Bulldog Bashers wearily fold tents and roll up sleeping bags, pulling the bungees tight. It's over for another year, and we wave goodbye - nothing in common except the motorcycles that transported us to a couple of days of freedom. Ah...the beautiful and the ugly bikes, the whining ones and the rumbling ones, the top-fuel monsters, customised Harleys, and rough little rat bikes - all given equal style just by lining up here. One by one they buzz their booted, jacketed owners from the bleak airfield: hunched black figures on laden metal, visors down against the rain, reborn to ride the risky wet tarmac back into real life - whatever that may be. And sharing the confidence of the 'club' - that whatever you ride, it's a full tilt boogie.