I have been incapacitated. Forced to recognise evolutionary adaptations involved with walking upright, combined with growing older and slumping over desks, are not conducive to a healthy neck. All summer long, considerable “discomfort” (as crippling agony is commonly referred to within medical circles) has thwarted any attempt at writing. Bugger. Unable to wave my arms about, unable to bang fists on hard surfaces, unable to take to this page to challenge local and national nonsense has been a frustration for me (if a relief for others).

But at last, I am on the mend, back in my writing chair, bursting with angst and ideas, perched at an ergonomically improved workstation (plus taking regular movement breaks). But where to begin?

Perhaps a reassuring report of a rapid and positive journey through our understaffed NHS system? Sorely tempted to lambast our Editor’s philistine intervention into poetry (he is wrong, his poem was rubbish, and worst of all, he refuses to publish my masterpiece). Or maybe a timely attack on the increasingly Gotham City instincts of Dyfed-Powys policing; intrusive and counterproductive overreach that has resulted in an astonishing 240 per cent year-on-year upsurge in stop and search. Then there are those pesky Tories, still maintaining a virtue of being on the wrong side of everything.

Or Welsh Labour’s mealy-mouthed reaction to incoming service cuts due to a £900m shortfall in budget — ‘not our fault, Guv’.

But for now, trifling concerns must wait.

Priorities being priorities, I feel I must recommence with an overdue rage against an increasing blight of boomers on motorbikes.

As a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, I subscribe to politics in which we are each permitted to engage with our mid-life crises in whatever way we choose. However pathetic, testosterone deficient, and try-hard it may appear, if senior citizens wish to squeeze themselves into leather catsuits, fantasise about what their life has come to, and peacock through the Welsh countryside in a prepubescent look-at-me manner, then that is up to them. However, what does invite challenge is gatherings of largely white, largely middle-class boomers being privileged in ways other groups and demographics can only dream of.

For instance, while cars, caravans, dogs, skateboards, and beer cans are warned away from the Aberystwyth seafront, the most annoying of all, elderly d***heads on ear-splitting motorbikes, continue to be embraced with incomprehensible enthusiasm. I mean, which utter moron thought it a good idea to site a motorcycle posing park right next to an operational bandstand? The mismatch is immediately clear to any creature with ears.

A bright and looked-forward-to Sunday morning in early summer, for I am not likely to miss the promise of an American gospel choir performance on the prom. A performance accompanied by unnecessarily over-revving Harley Davidsons.

If relentless and competitive interruption were not enough, there suddenly appears an overweight, leather-clad pensioner striding belligerently through the audience, uninterested in quality music, intimidating folk out of his path, and eventually getting up in my face. I won’t step aside, I’m like that, and do well to send the wannabe bully on his way with crystal-clear Anglo-Saxon instructions ringing in his ears rather than toss his old bones in the sea. But I am frowning, and my uplifted mood has vanished.

If any other noisy, occasionally antisocial demographic, be it young people, eco-protesters, or God forbid, Black people, deigned to descend in such numbers upon Aberystwyth, I suspect they would be greeted at the Dyfed-Powys border by a formidable, confrontational and interventionist police presence. If any other group spent the weekend seeking out the cheapest beer, binge drinking like adolescents (Irie’s has never sold more Red Stripe lager than the last scooter influx), then jumping Sunday morning onto boy-racer machines ill-designed for Welsh roads, I predict that there would be cops everywhere. The number of stops, searches, tyre checks, paperwork checks, drug tests and breathalysers undertaken would likely satisfy even our eager Police and Crime Commissioner’s and enthusiastic Chief Constable’s insatiable appetite for uplifting their proactive policing statistics. And all without the strain of tackling more persistent criminality, such as domestic violence, the distribution of Class A drugs, and our region’s disappointing reoffending rate.

Of this massive intensification in regional stop and search, I am dubious that a proportionate number, if any, of these stops were inflicted on hungover white boomers on bikes. While reports of fatal traffic accidents involving motorcycles on mid Wales roads appear with terrifying frequency, reports of charges and convictions of this privileged cohort are all but non-existent. Who could sensibly dispute that noisy bikers on a drinking spree would be treated entirely differently were they overwhelmingly Black, or in their teens?

I know not every boomer on a bike is a complete arse.

Despite full-throated disclosure of my entirely justified assessment that old-man bikers are an all-around pain, several genial groups of senior enthusiasts adopted our bar for their recent weekend away. I can confirm that many, perhaps most, though having patently obvious insecurity issues, are perfectly lovely human beings. We now display a Ceredigion Scooter Club sticker, proudly, though a touch ironically. But however adorable the members of Clwb Sgwter are, and however profitable they might be (not very), my new scooter pals should not be permitted to block the pavements, pollute town centre air and dominate the prom just because they buy a few cheap beers. Motorcyclists should be neither privileged nor protected. Like everyone else, they should be made to leave their ridiculous toys on the edge of town and catch the bus in. Perhaps use the opportunity to get a few thousand steps under those voluminous leather belts. At our age, believe me, daily exercise is far more important than schoolboy posing.

While on the subject of two wheels; more people on bicycles, good thing; more bikes flying along town-centre pavements, bad thing. Let us not wait for a flurry of serious accidents before clearing the pavements of fast-moving traffic. And one more avoidable catastrophe for less thoughtful cyclists to consider; blinding oncoming traffic with one of those increasingly popular supernova-like front lamps really is Darwin-Award-winning foolishness.

Just saying.