norton's WORK HORSE
It’s funny how things turn out, don’t you agree? There I’ve been, chattering away about the strange dilemmas which can infect the most resilient of us: such as whether to buy back a bike you sold off a while ago to finance something else. Chatter chatter chatter. The previous pre-owned machine was the Harris T140 Bonneville we featured on the cover a couple of months back. I decided against it. Not sure why.
One of the more amusing aspects of increasing decrepitude is that I tend to remember only positive events and their backgrounds. So I remember vividly the good times when justifying my recent acquisition of a machine similar to but different from two other machines of the same marque and model which I’d sold earlier. A long time earlier, in fact; both times to resolve a temporary liquidity crisis. I still can’t recall many bad memories of those previous ownerships – but lots of good ones.
However, that is not the same process as the one we wander through when an actual machine from our past reappears. It happened again, twice, in the last month or two. First, the Norton Commander which I bought new in 1992 or so reappeared. I enjoyed lots and lots of epic rides on that machine, but remember why I decided to sell it. It was simply too tall and bulky for comfort.
Almost immediately, a very nice man (official) remarked that he’d been offered a scruffy but sound Norton Model 18, and… hang on. Didn’t I have one, and didn’t… It was the same machine. I stared at it, admiringly. Few old bikes are as handsome as a Norton 18, in my view. Although the ES2 is the more famous (and more famously priced, of course), the 18 is unafflicted
