Café CONTINENTAL
Me and motorcycles go back a long way (yes, I know what the correct grammar is, but ‘motorcycles and I’ doesn’t have much of a ring to it). Back to the early-1960s, in fact, when I was getting a little tired of pedalling and began noticing these big, noisy things that irritated the neighbours. Simply noticing them turned into an obsession and I bought my first bike in 1966; a BSA C11G that took me a year to get running and which I pushed more than rode.
It was a cranky thing, with alloy mudguards, humped seat with tassels, cowhorn bars, open mega silencer, garish red (brushed-on) paintwork and the capability of reaching around 50mph on a good (very) day. It eventually let me down once too often and I flogged it to a scrappy for a couple of quid. I particularly remember the trip to his yard because among a pile of bits in one corner, there was an Ariel Square Four cylinder head. That has always stuck in my mind.
It was with mixed fortune that I grew up with a female sibling, a couple of years older than me. The bad fortune was that she had a penchant for bossing me around. The good fortune was that she socialised with a few geezers who were a couple of years older than her and that put them in the bike-owning bracket. One in particular changed his bikes pretty often and I was conniving enough to surreptitiously nurture the friendship between my sibling and this
