TALES FROM THE SHED

The seemingly endless summer of strangeness continues - or at least, it's continuing as I write this in late July. And magazine deadlines are as interesting as always! So it is, gentle reader, that I can reveal that although you may only just have recovered from a bout of hero worship and possibly terminal admiration for my actually almost nearly a little bit completing the ten-minute rebuild of the Matchless CSR, in fact it was up and running several months ago. As all Star Trek fans will know, time travel moves us in mysterious ways.

So there I was, with another functional - and road-legal - motorcycle, ready to ride and nowhere to ride to. The weather at the time was also superb, which is great for the gardening and the getting of an heroic sun tan, but merely frustrating when a chap was without a reasonable reason to ride very far. I lathered the CSR in ACFSO to keep the sun's rays at bay and parked it up under several waterproof covers. I truly am paranoid about the corrosive Cornish sea airs.

Rather than waste the sudden and unexpected free time, it was plain that I needed A Mission. And that mission was to delve into the darkest reaches of The Shed and drag out a few of the remaining relics. The last few years have witnessed the departure of more than a few old bikes, some of them chums from down the years, and others mainly oddities which turned up when I had a few shillings to hand and felt that the asking price was sensible . And I knew that deep within my