TALES FROM THE SHED
In the deepest, darkest, most dank and dingy recesses of The Shed, an old motorcycle has been oozing a secret existence for a couple of decades. Occasionally I would remove its several covers, flushed with an optimistic vision of the future in which I breathe life back into those two cylinders, and ride, gentleman-like, into a bright horizon.
Then I hurriedly cover the rusty hulk up again and hurl spanners at something a little less daunting. Which would be most things, mostly.
Those days are gone. Today there is Only Forward. I've just enjoyed yet another birthday and am becoming concerned that the ancient gentleman will still be sitting patiently in The Shed waiting for that famous 'slight attention' when my remains have been elevated to that big fry-up in the sky. Which would be a considerable shame, as I have always enjoyed riding Sunbeam twins - even the scooters, sometimes.
The elderly Sunbeam does of course have a story to tell. When the Better Third and I first met, quite a while ago now, we talked about bikes a lot. It was like two sides of an argument held in two different languages. While I would wax lyrical about CSRs, Bonnies and Bantams, she would return fire with outrageous GSX-R excess, ZZRl 1 00s as touring machines and Yamaha Fazer track bikes. She even thought that a Dominator was a Honda.
When I suggested that there was once a British bike called a
