JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID...

take 'experts' - the ones who say things like, "I think you'll find that the transfer you've put on the tool-box is the wrong one, it's the smaller 1955-62 version, the one you want, really, is a little larger. Oh, and it's about ¾-inch too high, and the colours aren't quite right, and by the way the hinge-pin on the tool-box hinges should be brass, I couldn't help noticing that..." etc., etc.

I also don't really mind 'technofreaks. "Well, Jim, I mean, your bike is woefully inadequate by modern standards - only two valves per cylinder! Pushrods! Primary chain! Clutch with plates, for God's sake! Not to mention that it's only got two cylinders... What you need is a bike like mine - 1748cc vee-eighteen; eight valves per cylinder; turbocharged; self-adjusting tappets/ cam-chains/battery/footrest-rubbers; anti-dive forks with linked braking to the computerised fuel-gauge and self-topping battery; nitrogen-damped monoshock prop-stand; methane-cooled, 360bhp @ 12,000rpm; potential top speed of 167mph."

"What do you do when it breaks down?" "Oh well, I haven't actually started it up yet, because I have to change my leathers every time I pick up the key... what do you do when yours breaks down, Jim?"

"I pick up a three-pound hammer, a chisel, a length of chicken wire, and a tube of Araldite, that's what."

I can put up with the weekend outlaws. "Hi there, bro, how's it goin'? Like the hawg? Yeah, real neat, huh? Ya gotta admit these old WLA 45s are really something, huh? Hey, wow, only cost me 17½ grand, man, but the guy who sold it me threw in a cut-off with patches, and a studded wrist-band! Still what the hell, when you're a computer programmer you can afford to splash out a little, get me? Like these Levis - there's this shop in Milton Keynes that takes new Levis, feeds 'em into a rotovator, splashes pig's blood on them, and then leaves them under Triumphs for three months to soak up the crankcase oil - they're really authentic, man. Ya goin' on the run on Sunday? Well, I reckon I'm goin' if ma old lady's got out of Matins in time off to the coast for those foxy chicks and some suds! Ride free... err, Barnaby Wilde, hey, bro, Live to Ride and Ride to... er... Ride."

I quite like the nostalgics, too. "Where did we go wrong, son? We were making the best bikes in the world... well, I had this old BSA, best bike I've ever owned, a bit like that Triumph of yours, really, only not so modern. Anyway, it took me and the missus up hill and down dale for years and years, never less than ninety to the gallon, only things I ever replaced on it were tyres and brake-linings and the odd cable, not like your Jap bikes, and it was really smart too, maroon and chrome, and as for the motor, well..." "Why aren't you still riding it?"

"Well, I had to give up because I ruptured my spleen kick-starting it."

"And is that your Honda C90 over there?"

"Yes, but..."

Not to mention dressers. "What your XV750 needs to really finish it off is a lighter, and a set of large-size Krausers and a top-box, they'd look really great with that custom set up. It's a pity it's not water-cooled though, cos then you could fit the Rolls-Royce-style radiator. Mind you, you can get lots of chrome detail plates to bolt on the fairing and panniers, and devil's-eye lights, and a padded backrest, and a water saddle, and..."

Or the people who do it in the dirt. "They're alright, I suppose, road bikes, but I mean to say, only idiots'd ride on the road what with all those cars, and everything. No, what you need is a dirt bike - say a good 600 Jap single or a 400 stroker, and once you get on the berm you'll feel great... 'course you fall off a bit now and again. Yeah, I expect you've noticed my stainless steel teeth, and the fact that one leg's three inches shorter than the other, but it's real fun. I clamp the bike to the Volvo at weekends, phone Medic-Alert and Mountain Rescue, and..."

No, the ones I really dislike are the people who ask me for help, and then pay no goddam attention to what I've told them. I've got to say that car drivers are by far the worst offenders, and nothing any biker's ever done has come close to the stupefaction I've been dealt by motorists over the years.

There was the guy who put Radox bath salts in his radiator, in the mistaken belief that Radox and Redex were one and the same (I bet he had the cleanest water pump in the business), and here are a selection of others I've picked up in a good few years of working in garages. "I think they've put the wrong dipstick in my car - this one's far too short, look, the oil doesn't come up to the bottom of it."

"They don't give you a very big hole to pour the oil in through, do they?" (Yes, that's right, they were pouring it down the dipstick hole.)

"My engine's pinking? Oh, no, I don't think so - no, it's still the same colour it always was, that sort of grey colour."

"Oh, silly me, here you've been pushing the car for a quarter-of-a-mile and, look, I haven't turned the key in the ignition."

"I borrowed these plugs from my son's LC250, and they fitted the Rover, even if they were a bit longer, and it seemed to start alright, but it's making this funny clanking sort of noise now."

"How do you mean, the big ends have gone? I thought it was something to do with the windscreen wipers."

"I've got a flat battery? What shape should it be?"

Oh, yes, I kid you not - every one's true. My next-door neighbour (my ex next-door neighbour, now, I'm glad to say) came perilously close to doing my head in, in a way that no car driver ever did. It all started when he got a Yamaha 80 to learn on, and asked me why they didn't fit a fuel gauge? (Well, it was new...) And wasn't there something wrong with it because the exhaust pipe was getting hot, and surely they shouldn't do that, should they?

I unscrewed the cap of my Triumph's tank, and said: "See? Petrol!", and pointed at the Bonnie's purple exhausts upon which the falling rain was hissing and boiling away, but I knew I was in for a bad time...

Then he got a Super Dream, and he came to me to ask why his rear tyre was bald on one side, and okay on the other - he couldn't understand it, he said, because he always adjusted the chain when it needed it. "Well, that shouldn't be any problem, I reckon," I told him, "it's just like a push-bike - apart from the brake torque-arm..." He looked blank, and the awful realisation dawned. "The rod that keeps the rear brake drum firmly housed to the frame?" I said. "You slacken it off before you try to move the wheel."

"I thought the spindle was a bit stiff,"

he told me. "I had to take a hammer to it, and it only really moved on one side."

"Have you been falling off a lot recently?" I asked him. "Like round lefthanders, in the wet?" He nodded, and I went back home to pour myself a stiff Scotch.

Then there was the Super Dream's oil-filter. I caught him just as he was dismantling the starter motor.

"Problem starting?" I enquired, and he shook his head.

"Just changing the oil-filter," he told me, reaching for a ¾" Whitworth socket. "I reckon this home maintenance is a piece of piss, particularly when you've got a Haynes manual." I looked at the manual - it was for a 2400 twin, and he was quite surprised to find that Hondas didn't make Kawasakis when I pointed it out to him.

"And have you ever thought that oilfilters don't usually have wires coming out of them?" I asked.

"Don't they?" he queried, as the starter fell apart in his hands.

Then he got an RD400; one careful owner, and lots of not-so-careful owners (it'd been raced at Flookburgh for a year or two), wouldn't tick over at under 4,500rpm, and sounded like something announcing Armageddon to a startled world. He fitted a set of rear crash-bars to it, and started complaining about the handling, and asked me to have a look at it.

"It's not a good idea," I told him, "to mount the bottom of each crash-bar on the bottom eye of each suspension unit, and then mount the top of each crash-bar on the top eye of each. What you've done is convert your bike into a hardtail. .."

"Wow, like those in Easyriders? Far out..."

"Something like that," I remarked, and headed back to the reliable solace of The Famous Grouse.

He got rid of it when it started sounding like a bean-can full of pebbles (well, more than they usually do, that is) and, always keen to benefit from my sage advice and experience, decided to get a four-stroke he could actually ride. He got a Suzuki 425, and a week later they stopped making them.

I might be wrong - it could've been a 400, a 450, a 440, or an eight-valver of any of those, but it doesn't really matter because they stopped making 'em all eventually in any case. A week's production of each was about enough for Suzuki, and I can't say I blame them, either.

It chewed a cam up in a spectacular sort of way, so he decided to get a cheap bike to ride while he was waiting for someone to get him one (he was waiting six months, incidentally, probably because Honda'd bought them all up for CX500s to see if they could use them in the VF750s at a later date). "There's this MZ250 single," he told me. "Stored for two years, ever since its owner fell off in the snow - he wants £100. What do you reckon, huh?"

"Has it been owned by a BMW owner?" I asked him.

"Yes," he told me brightly, "the guy's got a really immaculate RlO0RT in his garage, fully fitted for touring." We all know why BMWs are immaculate, huh? It's because their owners all ride MZs into the ground instead, and take out the Beemers twice a year to ride round the world before their next service. Well, except the Police - it's a pity they aren't given MZs too, 'cos my white Beemer might've been okay if they had been... not that anything could've cured the gearbox, which is a Feature Of The Model, and has been since 1923.

"Well, if I do decide to have the MZ," he said, and I knew the little messer had already made his mind up, "what should I do to get it started?"

"Take the plug out, get some paraffin," I told him, resisting the urge to add that he should pour it all over the bike, set fire to it, and claim on the insurance. "Pour it down the plug-hole, and work the piston up and down on the kick-start until it frees - it's bound to be gummed up after two years doing nothing. Probably be okay then, but don't forget to put the plug back before you try to start it, huh?"

He looked at me as if I thought he was an idiot. He was absolutely right, of course. Five hours later, this sweating, red-faced guy in a dayglo jacket knocked on my door. "It seized," he told me. "I've pushed it three miles."

"Did you do what I told you?" I asked him.

"Well, err, no," he answered. "I mean, what good can pouring paraffin down a plug-hole do? It didn't seem logical."

"If it's logic you're after, take up something else than biking, you pillock," I said, and closed the door gently but firmly, and waved bye-bye to him through the kitchen window. He was talking about buying a Jawa and sidecar just before he left, and I can honestly say I've never been as glad to see anyone go in my life before. Is it any wonder I'm a cantankerous old bastard?

And then a friend of mine came round for advice. 'Tm thinking of buying an old British bike, sort of as an investment," he said and, catching my look of disgust, hurriedly went on, "and to ride as well, off course, that's when the weather's fine, the odd week in summer, and suchlike... oh, and to do a bit of touring on as well. You've been riding bikes a long time, and I've only ever had a Suzuki