Classic Scooterist ahead

So it’s farewell to Classic Scooterist? A magazine for the gentler folks of the small wheel fraternity. With advice from solid old chaps with comb-overs called Tom, Reg, Ron or Len – men with broken glasses and crooked teeth, nylon brown shirts and grey deep crotch ankle grazers. Men who always had a pencil and owned those now-coveted rusterations, with more badges than a cub’s jumper. Practical, national service men who kept their nuts in tobacco tins in sheds full of ‘that will be useful one day’. Pre-internet men who knew every quick fix for parts unobtainable before Google. Men with real tools in ancient canvas tool rolls. Men who knew how to use them because they’d have to catch the bus to work otherwise. In short, men you could trust with your machine and your wife.

And what are we to be offered for the demise of our canon of wisdom from the ancients? A book on chops and bright flakey paint bad dreams? It’s like offering vegans a rare fillet steak because you’re not doing nut rissoles any more. Portents of what is to come if the marketing people think this will keep the trade end of the scooter community on board? Regards, Andy – Aylesbury

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your amusing letter. Never fear, because Ron, Len etc. will be welcomed into the Scootering fold, and you’ll see (p95 onwards) that Mau will be continuing to entertain and inform his readership. Nothing wrong with fillet steak, I always thought those vegans looked a bit peaky.