today? Yet another thing to file away in the corner of my mind marked things to worry about. Perhaps the girls were making their way over separately, I wondered?
That would be good, I thought. But it seemed unlikely as I started to worry. There were only two reasons to single pack on a party run that I could think of. The first was because it was going to be the sort of a party that you didn’t want to take your old lady to as she might cramp your style. But on the annual Toy Run, as a semi public event, that seemed unlikely.
And the second was because you thought there was going to be trouble.
The kid next to me hadn’t clocked any of this, I could tell from his attitude. I wondered why he was here. The kid was worried about how he would hold up in this crowd, he hadn’t picked up on the vibe that there was something going down here at all. He was an innocent who just smelled of wannabe and that was never going to wash with this crowd. The other kid, Charlie, the one who’d blanked me completely when I’d arrived; he felt more right, watchful, arrogant, unfriendly. He already had the air of apartness that characterised some of the guys. Despite his age, you could immediately tell that he was right as a striker. He’d fit straight in, I thought, if he stayed the distance. Damage had talked once about recognising, not recruiting, and with these two I could see just what he meant.
‘Hey,’ Danny the Boy shouted across from astride his bike as he did up his helmet, ‘Are you writing another book? About the club I mean. Is that why you’re here?’
That was a very good question, I asked myself. A very, very good question. So as I pushed the bike upright off its stand, turned the key and pressed the starter button for the bike to crob into throbbing life, I smiled back at him and shouted across the honest truth to the kid over the roar of the engines firing up all along the kerbside.
‘The thing is kid, I really don’t know.’
*
The run, the ride there, wow that was something else, like nothing else I had ever experienced.
I’d ridden with other bikers before of course. As kids my mates and I had hung around together and ridden together as we graduated up from our fizzies and AP50s onto our first real machines, our two-fifties, Bob on his Dream, me on my GS250T, Cliff on his RS. We’d all taken our tests and ridden these throughout our student years, blasting up to town to the Hammersmith Odeon for Sabbath gigs, or to the Marquee for Girlschool, racing each other round Surrey lanes and south west London’s streets, or cruising down in a group to the west country to join the rest of the lads, with their assortment of second hand minis and parents’ cars borrowed for the week, at Croyd or Perranporth for our drunken surf and zider holidays. And then as we’d each got jobs, the first purchase had been the bigger bike, the seven-fifty, the real thing.
‘It’s like falling in love with motorcycling all over again,’ Bob had told me when I first got mine, and he was right, it was.
And for the next few years we did all the same things on them as we’d done on the two-fifties, only bigger and better and faster. The trip to Devon or Cornwall was a complete thrash, one which cost me my first three points somewhere on the A303. The biking holiday one year for three of us was a seventeen hour and fifty-six minute blast leaving from Lands End at just gone five-thirty one beautiful July dawn and pulling into John O’Groats just before midnight that evening having realised as we zoomed past Carlisle and headed to the border that we were only half way.
And when we headed down to Box Hill on a sunny weekend we needed to be careful to dodge the speed cops on the dual carriageway.
I’d ridden on MAG demos in London, we’d joined in semi organised runs from Box Hill to Brighton on an August bank holiday.
Courtesy of Bob, I’d even been out a couple of times years ago with his local police motorcycle club, and fun
That would be good, I thought. But it seemed unlikely as I started to worry. There were only two reasons to single pack on a party run that I could think of. The first was because it was going to be the sort of a party that you didn’t want to take your old lady to as she might cramp your style. But on the annual Toy Run, as a semi public event, that seemed unlikely.
And the second was because you thought there was going to be trouble.
The kid next to me hadn’t clocked any of this, I could tell from his attitude. I wondered why he was here. The kid was worried about how he would hold up in this crowd, he hadn’t picked up on the vibe that there was something going down here at all. He was an innocent who just smelled of wannabe and that was never going to wash with this crowd. The other kid, Charlie, the one who’d blanked me completely when I’d arrived; he felt more right, watchful, arrogant, unfriendly. He already had the air of apartness that characterised some of the guys. Despite his age, you could immediately tell that he was right as a striker. He’d fit straight in, I thought, if he stayed the distance. Damage had talked once about recognising, not recruiting, and with these two I could see just what he meant.
‘Hey,’ Danny the Boy shouted across from astride his bike as he did up his helmet, ‘Are you writing another book? About the club I mean. Is that why you’re here?’
That was a very good question, I asked myself. A very, very good question. So as I pushed the bike upright off its stand, turned the key and pressed the starter button for the bike to crob into throbbing life, I smiled back at him and shouted across the honest truth to the kid over the roar of the engines firing up all along the kerbside.
‘The thing is kid, I really don’t know.’
*
The run, the ride there, wow that was something else, like nothing else I had ever experienced.
I’d ridden with other bikers before of course. As kids my mates and I had hung around together and ridden together as we graduated up from our fizzies and AP50s onto our first real machines, our two-fifties, Bob on his Dream, me on my GS250T, Cliff on his RS. We’d all taken our tests and ridden these throughout our student years, blasting up to town to the Hammersmith Odeon for Sabbath gigs, or to the Marquee for Girlschool, racing each other round Surrey lanes and south west London’s streets, or cruising down in a group to the west country to join the rest of the lads, with their assortment of second hand minis and parents’ cars borrowed for the week, at Croyd or Perranporth for our drunken surf and zider holidays. And then as we’d each got jobs, the first purchase had been the bigger bike, the seven-fifty, the real thing.
‘It’s like falling in love with motorcycling all over again,’ Bob had told me when I first got mine, and he was right, it was.
And for the next few years we did all the same things on them as we’d done on the two-fifties, only bigger and better and faster. The trip to Devon or Cornwall was a complete thrash, one which cost me my first three points somewhere on the A303. The biking holiday one year for three of us was a seventeen hour and fifty-six minute blast leaving from Lands End at just gone five-thirty one beautiful July dawn and pulling into John O’Groats just before midnight that evening having realised as we zoomed past Carlisle and headed to the border that we were only half way.
And when we headed down to Box Hill on a sunny weekend we needed to be careful to dodge the speed cops on the dual carriageway.
I’d ridden on MAG demos in London, we’d joined in semi organised runs from Box Hill to Brighton on an August bank holiday.
Courtesy of Bob, I’d even been out a couple of times years ago with his local police motorcycle club, and fun
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