FICTION – WHEN WE WERE YOUNG…
WET COBBLED STREETS, AND WORKING-CLASS NEIGHBOURHOODS. CHROMED-OUT CHOPPERS PARKED UNDER YELLOW SODIUM LIGHTS. THESE WERE OUR BACK STREET HEROES, OUR OPPORTUNITY TO STAND OUT. A SPECTACULAR MACHINE BUILT FROM INGENUITY AND LUNCH BOX DEALS FROM THE GUY AT WORK WHO DOES THE UPHOLSTERY, ANY COLOUR YOU LIKE, AND ALL IN WORK’S TIME – A VERY ENTERPRISING SIDELINE.
The sheer beautiful romance of sharing your first flat with a halfdismembered motorcycle. Like some modern sorcery, the assembly bringing with it the promise of life’s fulfillment, a portal to high adventures, and righteous lawlessness. The yellow stain left by spilt T-Cut on a brown carpet, a reminder of polishing second hand crossover slashcuts. The sacrifice of a brown carpet was nothing compared to welding the frame in the back room. A terrible sight was that, the wallpaper looking as though it’d been peppered with burning buckshot! Straight up, nobody even said a word. The realisation of the pure concept left no space for such temporal concerns. Slowly over the dark winter months, these beasts’d take form in rooms across the country, rising from skeletal forms to become dark whims of curiosity – brutalist statements from the raging hearts of youth. All at once it spoke of threatening danger, and wild abandon. There’s no way you’re getting out of this that easy, this was the life! What a glorious life! It was as if you had somehow entered a portal in time, and arrived in a fantasy adventure filled with real-life outlaws and pirates. Bullet belts work well down the pub, and everyone’s cool with your jangling spurs (if that’s your thing). The freedom they called it but, in reality, it was all about the escape – the wind in your hair as advertised in Easyriders. This was not for the meek who worshipped at the foot of a god of stone and plaster, this was Motorhead, and studded leather jackets, patchouli oil, and Newcastle Brown. If you wanted gospels, read Motorcycle News – adverts on the back pages for secondhand parts, cash on delivery, that’ll do nicely! Allthiswasmeanttobea phase, as the mothers called it (the curlers and slippers kind, not beards and middle finger muthas). The nights of getting wasted with your mates, before they called them ‘bros’ (which
was either a pair of blonde guys in baggy jeans or a Honda v-twin that was better than the Revere… which nobody bought either). Rolling a joint in the dark was done with a dutiful care worthy of a Zen gymnast – the highly attuned could do it without even realising their hands were moving, while the rest of us waited, thankful to be sitting to the left – it was always passed to the left. The true adherent of the cosmic bypass could roll one while the other was already on its way around the room. No greater feeling was there than seeing that second set of papers being carefully assembled – it makes your eyes fill up even thinking about it. Faces illuminated by the warm glow of the fire, we lie back on tie-die throws as friends on the other side of the room recede into the darkness. Countdown complete, we travel together through space and time towards distant galaxies, listening to Hawkwind which has, somehow, transcended music and become the f**kin’ Clangers! Higher than a knitted alien, you wait an eternity for someone to make tea. All for the blessed tea! Sugar levels increase as the warm sweetness floods your veins. This is Earth calling! You’re coming round, it’s so dark now that you can’t even see the cup. Somebody put a light on! Leaving behind the room full of thick hash smoke, the cool night air feels good, and fills hungry combustion chambers through a bank of jetted Mikunis, as 987cc of pure air-cooled menace attempt to escape through an un-silenced exhaust by Marshall - the same company who made amps for Lemmy… which should be true, even though it isn’t. The road goes on forever, that’s the truth. The need for escape may’ve dulled a little as you grew older, but the road didn’t change – it’s still there. That arcing right-hander with the hedgerow on one side, the one that opens out on to a fast straight – all you have to do is keep it leant over and nail it! The bike doesn’t know it’s at least 25 years old by now. Can you really believe that much time’s passed? Me neither, it seems like it was just yesterday when we were kings! The bike still thinks it’s eighteen though, and waiting to fly as far as you can. Just watch the brakes – they didn’t get any better with age, and make sure you take your phone... just in case.