Bargain Beezas striking stories

In the September edition of OBM

I was fascinated by Neil Cairns’ article The Autumn of a 1946 BSA C11.

When Neil joined his school in Bletchley I was living in a parallel universe in Fulham, London and

I too was starting my fifth year at school and mad on motorbikes.

Like Neil I had very little income apart from a pittance from my paper round and 10 bob occasionally from the family at birthdays and Christmas. At school my mates and I would pore over old copies of The Motor Cycle and dream of things to come.

Imagine the joy one morning when cycling off to deliver papers I found that somebody had ‘dumped’ a tatty motorbike at the kerb outside our house.

I drooled over it for a week, spending more and more time looking at it from my bedroom window. My tolerant mum was not too keen but under pressure she allowed me to seek out the owner who lived locally. He was an ‘elderly’ man, about 30, and was only too pleased to get it off his hands.

I did not strike as good a bargain as Neil, but parted with £12 and became the owner of a 1948 BSA C11 needing plenty of TLC.

Having spent all of my savings, my mum offered to buy me a book to help me learn properly about motorcycling. Like Neil, I chose an Iliffe book, mine was called Speed and how to obtain it, costing 8s-6d, and like Neil, I still own it.

I await with interest the next instalment of Neil’s story. Can there be more adventures with his C11 to parallel my own? Who would believe that after half a century elderly C11s can still provide magical stories.