Normal 44 (A 12" on Normal Records)
"When people from fookin' Hampstead are drowning, all their previous furniture passes in front of their eyes..." (Alexei Sayle)
I'm not sure what prompted this. Partly
El Bat reminding me of vehicular malarkey and the holes in my memory, partly
Cat asking an obvious question (What's this for?) and the fact that I'd forgotten my original mission statement. It's also something I've been meaning to do for quite a while.
Casal Something-or-other. 1979(ish). We lived on a large farm, and like any other normal teenager who's uncle had been a works trials rider for Cotton in the sixties and who's favourite smells were 2T, Swarfega and diesel (and new-mown grass, wheat on the turn, freshly burnt stubble, newly-ploughed earth, softwood sawdust, creosote...) I wanted a motorbike to play with. Small Brother had already bagged a Honda 50 step-through (88 BDD, I think) which was thrashed mercilessly by the pair of us. Since the leg-shields looked terrible, they'd been unscrewed and thrown into the shed with the lawnmowers (Five, in various states of nearly-working. Seven, if you counted the electric Flymo and the boring push one that didn't have enough dangerous parts.), the huge box full of random nuts and bolts and the wardrobe full of lawnmower bits.
Anyway, after a couple of glasses of cola, it seemed like a completely brilliant idea to tie the legshields to the back of the Honda with a length of rope and tow the thing as quickly as possible across a lumpy field with a passenger hanging on for dear life and yelling 'Faster! Faster!' as loud as he could. Better versions of the game involved attempting to swing the 'sled' sideways against ruts such that the entire assembly became airborne and/or the passenger was flung off into clumps of stingers. I suspect that one or other of us had seen parts of 'Rollerball'.
For reasons of sibling parity, or because as yet we'd displayed a remarkable ability to not kill ourselves, mother found some cheap moped in the back of the Gloucestershire Echo and it was duly hauled up a plank into the back of dad's SWB and transported home. It was quite big for a (properly motorcycle-shaped, but with pedals, as was the fashion for unrestricted 50s) moped. It was also Portuguese and designed to be fixed with a big screwdriver and half a brick. Finally, it slid an awfully long way into a hedge with me underneath it when I got it horribly sideways on wet grass at full welly. I'm not entirely sure those jeans were ever quite the same again. (Grass stains, I was laughing to hard to be scared, and still had that teenage attitude of complete indestructibility).
That bike resisted all my attempts to break it, though the exhaust fell off regularly and it became obvious that it was doomed when the fork-seals exploded during some over-enthusiastic hacking across a ploughed field in the dark. It's probably still in the room with feed-mill in one of the Cotehay barns where I abandoned it next to the dismembered James Plover (SB's first 'restoration project').
There was also mother's Suzuki AP50 (1981) that I borrowed within seconds of getting a provisional licence at sixteen. However, after the mighty Casal, something that only worked properly at the howling end of the rev-range wasn't as much fun, and unfortunately co-incided with school banning all pupil-piloted vehicles because the teachers couldn't park anywhere.
Pretty soon after that, I ended up being kicked off my A-level course... Well, what really happened is that I persuaded my father to let me live in one of the more remote farmhouses for the summer (Whitehill. No mains electricity - there was a hand-crank Lister generator instead, but it was getting on and was only really a lighting plant, so something like a telly pulled too much juice. Not that you could get a stable frame out of one if you tried.), where I was quickly joined by my best chum from school, Jon Miller. We were having such a fine time of it that neither of us could be arsed to go back to school, so, um, didn't. I think I stuck it out 'til November before caving in and beetling off to the DHSS to sign on.
The buggers put me on a YTS in Gloucester, which meant a Proper Motorcycle (Well, a Suzuki GP100. 1983.)...
(Tired now, time for bed)
I'm not sure what prompted this. Partly
El Bat reminding me of vehicular malarkey and the holes in my memory, partly
Cat asking an obvious question (What's this for?) and the fact that I'd forgotten my original mission statement. It's also something I've been meaning to do for quite a while.
Casal Something-or-other. 1979(ish). We lived on a large farm, and like any other normal teenager who's uncle had been a works trials rider for Cotton in the sixties and who's favourite smells were 2T, Swarfega and diesel (and new-mown grass, wheat on the turn, freshly burnt stubble, newly-ploughed earth, softwood sawdust, creosote...) I wanted a motorbike to play with. Small Brother had already bagged a Honda 50 step-through (88 BDD, I think) which was thrashed mercilessly by the pair of us. Since the leg-shields looked terrible, they'd been unscrewed and thrown into the shed with the lawnmowers (Five, in various states of nearly-working. Seven, if you counted the electric Flymo and the boring push one that didn't have enough dangerous parts.), the huge box full of random nuts and bolts and the wardrobe full of lawnmower bits.
Anyway, after a couple of glasses of cola, it seemed like a completely brilliant idea to tie the legshields to the back of the Honda with a length of rope and tow the thing as quickly as possible across a lumpy field with a passenger hanging on for dear life and yelling 'Faster! Faster!' as loud as he could. Better versions of the game involved attempting to swing the 'sled' sideways against ruts such that the entire assembly became airborne and/or the passenger was flung off into clumps of stingers. I suspect that one or other of us had seen parts of 'Rollerball'.
For reasons of sibling parity, or because as yet we'd displayed a remarkable ability to not kill ourselves, mother found some cheap moped in the back of the Gloucestershire Echo and it was duly hauled up a plank into the back of dad's SWB and transported home. It was quite big for a (properly motorcycle-shaped, but with pedals, as was the fashion for unrestricted 50s) moped. It was also Portuguese and designed to be fixed with a big screwdriver and half a brick. Finally, it slid an awfully long way into a hedge with me underneath it when I got it horribly sideways on wet grass at full welly. I'm not entirely sure those jeans were ever quite the same again. (Grass stains, I was laughing to hard to be scared, and still had that teenage attitude of complete indestructibility).
That bike resisted all my attempts to break it, though the exhaust fell off regularly and it became obvious that it was doomed when the fork-seals exploded during some over-enthusiastic hacking across a ploughed field in the dark. It's probably still in the room with feed-mill in one of the Cotehay barns where I abandoned it next to the dismembered James Plover (SB's first 'restoration project').
There was also mother's Suzuki AP50 (1981) that I borrowed within seconds of getting a provisional licence at sixteen. However, after the mighty Casal, something that only worked properly at the howling end of the rev-range wasn't as much fun, and unfortunately co-incided with school banning all pupil-piloted vehicles because the teachers couldn't park anywhere.
Pretty soon after that, I ended up being kicked off my A-level course... Well, what really happened is that I persuaded my father to let me live in one of the more remote farmhouses for the summer (Whitehill. No mains electricity - there was a hand-crank Lister generator instead, but it was getting on and was only really a lighting plant, so something like a telly pulled too much juice. Not that you could get a stable frame out of one if you tried.), where I was quickly joined by my best chum from school, Jon Miller. We were having such a fine time of it that neither of us could be arsed to go back to school, so, um, didn't. I think I stuck it out 'til November before caving in and beetling off to the DHSS to sign on.
The buggers put me on a YTS in Gloucester, which meant a Proper Motorcycle (Well, a Suzuki GP100. 1983.)...
(Tired now, time for bed)