That is what it says under the number plate of my Ninja. The Ninja I have owned since 2009.

I remember vividly, as if it was only yesterday, getting a lift to Daytona Motorcycles in my Dad’s Audi, my friend Max popping down to take some photos, feeling like the whole thing was a dream, a reality that could never happen to me. Then wobbling off the forecourt and realising I really couldn’t quite reach the ground on this damn bike.

I remember riding home, incredibly slowly, and after that initial wobble, once I’d worked out where the ground was, feeling more comfortable than I have ever felt on any bike before or since. Jinba Ittai, as Mazda say, you don’t ride the bike, the bike is part of you. You don’t steer round corners, you think round them. Ever ridden a bike you’re so comfortable on that happens? It’s quite an experience. Even still, today, every time I ride that bike it feels like that very first time. I keep wondering when this extended test ride is going to end and someone’s going to call me and tell me its time to bring it back. They never do call. And I’m permanently surprised.

It hasn’t exactly been a deliberate choice to own the same bike for this long, it’s just something that’s sort of happened. I have test ridden other bikes, I’ve just never really liked any of them. Every couple of years I decide I really ought to think about upgrading to a thousand, go try a few out, and generally speaking, hate them. Occasionally I find one I quite like, but then after I’ve arranged a second test ride, I get on my own Ninja to go home. It’s like sinking into your favourite armchair after a long day, its just, well, better. Natural. Familiar. I always cancel that second test ride.

I bought my first Ninja brand new in the October of 2009. And promptly took it to Germany two weeks later, in the cold and the rain, and did the Nurburgring.

Then some little sh*t stole it.

Anyone who’s ever lost a bike, will know exactly how much that hurts. It took me two months to replace it. With an identical Ninja 600 from 2009.

Years of happiness ensued.

I know that bike better than I know myself. I know precisely what I can get away with- and what I can’t. I know its capabilities in minute detail. I’ve been everywhere on it, from Brighton to Scotland. I’ve taken countless passengers for their “first ride on a Sportsbike” because I know the gears and the brakes so well I can be sure I won’t get head-butted. I’ve done more training courses on it than I care to count. Anyone who so much as shows an interest, I’ll offer a go on it to. Because it is just such a damn good bike, in my mind, everyone needs to experience that.

I could have met you five minutes ago in the Ace Cafe, and I’ll be like “HERE RIDE MY BIKE ITS BLOODY INCREDIBLE.”

The passion I have for that bike cannot be overstated. It’s a part of me, and a part of my life. I always said when the zombie apocalypse comes, she’s the one I’ll save. It is the perfect combination of rider and bike.

Now, I am quite aware its not actually the perfect bike for everyone. If there was such a thing, there’d be no need for all the different manufacturers, we would have one manufacturer and one model, and everyone would buy the same thing. But this one? This one is without any shadow of a doubt, perfect for me personally.

And then, in October 2016, some little sh*t stole it again.

It was like someone had died. It was, and there really is no other way to describe this, F**king Horrific. To go through it once was bad enough. To go through it a second time? I went straight to Hell. And stayed there for nearly a year and a half.

I’d run out of money, you see. So I sold precisely everything I owned, and eventually, in early 2018, I was on a train to Yorkshire, crash helmet in hand, to finally get my life back.

And back I got it. I ride that bike in and out of London, every day, twice a day. She’s never missed a beat. I can get through the traffic with very little effort because the bike is so light and narrow. The tiny fairings provide a surprising amount of protection from the rain and wind. I have, quite literally, got everything I need from life. And, even now, every single time I ride it, it’s just like that first time all those years ago. It still never fails to scare the sh*t out of me at every opportunity it gets. And I love it for that.

And then, in October 2022, no little sh*t stole it. But it did pack up. Quite totally and completely. Stranding me in London in the middle of the night.

I took it straight down to my local bike shop in the van. They couldn’t fix it. So off to Kawasaki it went. The diagnostics said throttle bodies, and Kawasaki said two grand. I said bugger that and promptly got on eBay. Two hundred quid later, I had new throttle bodies. And about two weeks later, it stranded me in London. Again. Thirteen years without a single issue with one of these bikes, thirteen bloody years, and within the space of a few short weeks this thing is in the back of a van twice. I was less than impressed. Back into Kawasaki it went under explicit instruction that there it was to stay until it could stop pretending to be a dodgy fake Apple Watch bought on Wish, and begin acting like a reasonable motorcycle again.

There it did stay, for what seemed like an eternity. I checked in once a week or so. It was definitely a wiring issue, they told me, but they were having worlds of trouble tracing the actual broken wire in the bowl of spaghetti that is the internal wiring of a tiny little Sportsbike without much space under the seat.

Meanwhile, I am stuck getting to work on a borrowed Bandit 1250 which I am Eternally Grateful For The Loan Of, despite the fact that I’ve had shopping trolleys in Aldi that handle better, or that it’s entirely too far off the ground, or that it gave me horrific backache, or that I needed to request a road closure from the council every time I needed to turn it around, or that I probably should have got planning permission to store it in the garden, since it didn’t actually fit in my tiny garage. No, no, despite all this, I am Eternally Grateful for the loan of the Bandit!

In December 2022, it was finally game over. I could take that damn bandit No More. One slightly rainy Wednesday afternoon, with nothing better to do, (well actually, with lots of things better to do that I was avoiding doing) I rang up the Sportsbike Factory, just out of interest, of course…

“My Ninja’s broken,” I told the very patient salesman, “I want a new one”.

He asked me what size Ninja I was looking for, and in some sort of fit of rage, disappointment and creativity I replied, “A thousand.”

A WHAT NOW?

A THOUSAND?? I HAVE HAD A 600 FOR THIRTEEN YEARS AND SHE IS THE VERY PURE IMAGE OF PERFECTION, WHY THE HELL AM I ASKING THIS MAN ABOUT LITRE BIKES??

“Yup, definitely a thousand” I heard myself say. It sounded like someone else was talking. I wasn’t altogether convinced it actually was my own voice I was hearing.

My very patient salesman spent a solid half an hour on the phone to me, googling seat heights and discussing the merits of the various different years of ZX10Rs, and I finally settled on a 2010 as being the year that would suit me best. “I’ll have one of them then please” I told him, “You got one? In green?”

“Urm, no.” Came the tentative reply. B*gger.

So off to Autotrader I went.

And there she was. A green performance edition ZX10R from 2010, late registered with a 2011 plate, a full Kawasaki service history, low mileage, a full Akrapovic exhaust, and a sensible price tag. In fact, it was the very bike a colleague of mine had shown me some days before. I rang the dealership immediately;

“I’d like to put a deposit on the ZX10 please.”

“Oh sorry, it’s sold.” Said the not so helpful salesman.

“Well can’t you un-sell it?” I asked, half joking, half deadly serious.

“Actually, that might be a possibility” came the somewhat unexpected reply. Turns out they’d sold it to another dealership. Presumably, they could make more money selling it to me. That, or I was about to become the victim of literally the best sales technique going and find myself in a position where I was completely unable to convince them to knock a few quid off the price. But either way, it was looking a whole lot more likely I was going to find myself with a ZX10 at the end of this conversation, and that was all that mattered really. He said he’d call me back and let me know.

The longest half hour in the history of humanity went by. He didn’t call back. So I called back instead and started bothering him. Then another 20 minutes went by, which somehow managed to feel even longer than the preceding half hour. Then, finally, after an eternity in which alien worlds had found time to be been born in distant star systems, grow to maturity, build new civilisations, and then inevitably die away again into dust, finally, he said those magic words to me every girl longs to hear, “Can I get the long card number please?”

Sh*t. I’ve bought a ZX10. I was supposed to be buying a new battery for the Mazda today. How did that turn into accidentally buying a ZX10 instead? I’d better ring Mum.

“Mum, I’ve bought a ZX10.”

“You are aware no one is surprised by this, right? We were taking bets on how long it would take. When are you picking it up?”

“Friday.”

“And where is it?”

“Sh*t. I don’t know.”

I rang the dealership back for the eleventy-hundredth time that day, “Afternoon. Yeah, I just bought the ZX10 from you, collecting it Friday, really sorry mate, but, urm, where actually are you?”

Yorkshire, apparently.

Of course it bloody well is.

No matter what age you are, I think when your mother puts her foot down about something, you find yourself in a position where you are simply unable to argue, and if you do make an attempt to do so, its inevitably futile. Well that’s precisely what happened to me. Despite my greatest entreaties, I was not permitted to take the train up Friday morning and ride the bike home, but was unceremoniously bundled into the back of the van Thursday night, informed we’re staying with her friend in Ottley, and left there to sulk about the fact I was sitting cross-legged on a mattress in the dark, with a packet of biscuits from the petrol station, rather than sitting in a nice comfy chair in first class with sunlight streaming through the windows, eating the free snacks.

I woke up in Yorkshire. In a bad mood. But her friend gave me more biscuits, this time with chocolate on, and so that passed off eventually.

Friday morning, we awoke to the icy landscape of West Yorkshire, where Winter truly Is Here. In fact, I’m not convinced winter ever actually leaves West Yorkshire, even in July. Every blade of grass was standing up stiff on end and wearing a tiny white hat and the wind was merrily howling through the naked trees trying to tear off what few leaves still clung tenaciously on. We stumbled through the cold back into the van, where the dashboard gleefully informed us it was -5° outside and showed us a little picture of a snowflake, just for good measure. Despite the roads having given up any pretence at being actual roads, and decided they are, in fact, all replicas of the ice rink at the Natural History Museum at Christmastime, we made it to the dealership without incident. I was allowed one little go before we left, around one specific sunlit bit of the industrial estate, before the bike was loaded safely into the back of the van.

“So we’ll stop at the first services and I’ll ride it the rest of the way home, yeah?” I confidently suggested. My mother gave me more biscuits and proceeded to ignore me. I tried again, about a quarter of the way home, “how about this services? We’re close enough to London that its warmed up a bit?” This time, she presented me with a chocolate chip cookie, and continued to ignore me. I was just preparing a fresh assault filled with descriptions of how lovely Watford Gap is as a service station, and how it’s the perfect place to stop with its proximity to London, and its abundance of coffee etc etc, when the phone rang. It was Kawasaki’s. I glanced back at the ZX10, all tucked up behind me, and answered it.

“Hi, yeah, just to let you know your ZX6 is ready to collect. We found the problem, turned out it was a badly fitted Datatool alarm pressing on the wires. Nothing wrong with it now at all.”

Well, f*ck.

“Mum,” says I, “You’re never going to believe this. My Ninja’s fixed.”

I know she’d run out of biscuits at this point, because if she’d had any left, she would have thrown them at my head…

Faith Merrett,

Extract from Faiths brilliantly entertaining book, 'A Journal of Bad Decisions Made In and Around London...Most of which involve Boats (or Motorcycles)' which is available here