QUITE A FEW YEARS AGO, I ENJOYED A LENGTHY conversation with a man who appeared intent upon selling a motorcycle – a new motorcycle – to me. Selling a motorcycle to me is rarely a particularly difficult experience, given that I have a great appetite for motorcycles and a very large shed in which to store them. However, I’m (almost) sure that riding bikes all the time, every day, would be great but that it wouldn’t supply a chap with what we once called a decent wedge – and without that very wedge, a chap cannot afford to buy bikes. Hence the big shed I like to call the Big Shed. I store what I cannot ride.
The conversation was all about one of the then very new Norton Commandos – a 961 Sport, to be exact. I’d seen them, admired them, and foolishly shared my cynicism regarding the likelihood of their ever being available for riders to buy. I’d gone further; when writing about the new machines, I put my money where my mouth should be (where exactly does that expression come from?) and promised that if they built and sold them, then I would buy one.
Which is why I was standing in the middle of the new Norton factory discussing terms and conditions. This was actually a waste of time, as will become clear. But I bought the bike anyway, which reveals that a fool and his money are indeed easily parted.
That fervent discussion was not so much about the bike itself, engineering stuff, but about
