For the last three weeks, I’ve been revisiting my childhood as the kid who can’t wait to get downstairs and open his Christmas presents, only to be frustrated by an entirely unreasonable (in my self-obsessed juvenile view) parental moratorium on leapings around before 5:30am. This time however the problem is not adult whim but the non-appearance of Santa’s sleigh — the one carrying my new Ducati. I’m fed up, the dealer is fed up and the ever-helpful Ducati UK are no doubt fed up with my plaintive — and no doubt still self-obsessed — phone calls. My bike was the second UK order and, apparently, was built as such, in the first batch of black 1200S Touring spec bikes. It was then loaded onto the trailers that were to go to the UK. No problem so far. What has apparently happened is that the shipping company have picked up the trailers in the wrong order. And, to judge by the 14-day lead time from Bologna to the UK, they bring them here via Central Africa. Guys, I could CYCLE from Bologna to the UK in less than 14 days…

Very frustrating indeed, especially with my ST4s still off the road. And if you’re on the site trying to find out the details of the spat twixt myself and Martin Rees of Ducati Glasgow, he and I have agreed to shelve what was becoming a very public and mutually unproductive online slanging match and try to work things out: we both feel very strongly about the matter but we’re going to try to put it behind us and, as they say, move on.

But, back to our regular programming: I may not have my bike yet, but I have at least managed to download the 200+ page owner’s manual from Ducati’s web site. That’s a good start to the ownership of a machine that rivals a Space Shuttle for control complexity. What’s even better is that the PDF of the manual is perfectly formatted for reading on an iPad, which makes life much easier, not to mention cooler. Now I see that Hyundai will be shipping their new Equus saloon (sedan if you’re west of Newfoundland) with its manual on an included iPad. Ducati, are you listening here?

One of the great things about reading on an iPad is that, if things are too small to read, you can just zoom in and rest weary and ageing eyes. Which is why I was trawling through the Multistrada’s wiring diagram — I’ll say “Sad git” now to save you the trouble — to find that the bike’s central nervous system is pre-wired for a quickshifter, an accessory that has not so far made an appearance in Ducati’s shiny toys catalogue.