My good ol’ days

I wasn't around in the 1950s and 1960s – but I was in the 1990s...

Few are the days when one laments being young. But remembering the ‘good ol’ days’ when bikes we love now were commonplace, speed traps were from 1984, and Japanese bikes were the exciting ‘new thing’ is something that, very occasionally, has me wishing I was older and therefore had experienced.

But I didn’t, so I stand quietly, listen and nod occasionally, as stories abound from older folks when stood around our machines. Racing on the ‘new’ A47, the Three Cs café in Norwich, and buying

T120s for a fiver from a scrappy are often spoken of. Then laughter is aimed at myself and other ‘young uns’ for not being there. I’ll trade not being there for the pain of more arthritis…

I may not remember the 1960s, but I do recall the 1990s. Sportsbikes and racing leathers, with grey imports giving us a taste of Japanese wonders at budget prices. Bikers were still working lads looking for a missile up their bum. My profession was photography, but some wise-arse invented digital photography and it killed the once beautiful, creative-yet-complicated art, turning it into something a monkey can do. So reading Motorcycle News, I saw the many adverts for dispatch riders, liked the idea and bought a Yamaha XJ900.

I started in Norwich for – I won’t say. Although self-employed, you had to be there from 8am to 6pm (illegal to tell selfemployed when and where to be), was not allowed to work for anyone else (also illegal, but threatened not to take any further as legal team was 40-strong), and had to pay for a uniform that leaked (illegal). Great start. Rates were 44p per mile, while carrying, so Norwich-London was 111 miles and paid £48.84.

First job was Stockport. Never heard of it. I had oversized, non-waterproof waterproofs over my Wolf leather jacket and Wolf jeans with virgin sliders and my lovely Arai Giga helmet. And an A-Z.

The Yamaha was a Trojan, my clothing, preparation and map reading skills less so. The anticlimax once you’ve delivered after hours of riding changed my biking forever. As did how wet and cold you can get. Homemade 12v foot warmers from welding wire, anyone?

Edinburgh, Swansea, Manchester, Paris. The world got smaller and I soaked it up. You learn to pace. You learn the optimum speed for efficiency and fuel economy. You learn that once wet and cold, you stay wet and cold – and the only things that work are Gore-Tex and fairings. Learn to be seen, but not remembered – all this crap about loud exhausts. How to deal with a blowout at 80mph in the wet, in the dark. How to ‘deal’ with someone when they open their door on the M25 because they can’t go anywhere, so why should you? London could often be two, if not three times a day. One hour and 15 minutes of boring A and M roads, followed by 30 to 45 minutes of pure adrenaline, racing past famous landmarks with MotoGP-style moves, only to drop within sight of where you’d been four hours earlier.

London was where the money lived once I knew my way around; £700 to £1000 cash each week was possible. Industry just seemed to be spanking money everywhere.

I swapped the XJ900 for a Honda Bros 650cc V-twin; small, light with a custom carrier on the back, a Morris Minor horn and loud exhaust. Time was money, so spit, smoke and swear in time-sapping advertising agency receptions just to get them to hurry up – but never do that in the Home Office buildings. When queueing for copies of the small print on budget day, park where you’re meant to on Whitehall – the traffic wardens wait for a shot like retired bankers on a fatted pheasant shoot. And never, ever ask what’s in the small, tapedup envelope coming from the back door of somewhere dodgy in the west to Canary Wharf mid to late afternoon. Especially when the receptionist is adjusting their dress coming out of the lift or the besuited are wiping their noses. Advertising agency staff always used to have colds, it seemed.

It was a peculiar job; you earned more than most of the people looking down their nose at ‘that filthy biker’. You were freer than them, doing what you wanted. London was our racetrack and we were paid handsomely to race. But the job took its toll, so I went to the taxi Limo bikes, an idea to get the time-poor to pillion around the City on sumptuous Pan-Europeans, and then found the perfect job, teaching others how to ride, in which I found true satisfaction.

I wasn’t around to remember the good ol’ days but I have my own. Completely impossible to re-enact, unwise and of their time, but they were bloody good fun.