ORIENTAL ANGELS

And the air went blue, every hue from powder through to Prussian and quite possibly moving into the indigo side of the spectrum. Why? My good friend John was moving his latest project around and had just hoiked it up onto the centre stand. Not an issue you might think, and arguably an almost daily occurrence when you’re in the shed. What neither of us had bargained for was the fork leg lowers sticking out of a mid-height shelf, one of which had rather neatly punctured a substantial hole in the only just recently fitted rear light lens.

Once phrases such as "My, my, well

I never!" and "There’s a funny thing" dissipated, John’s facial colour dropped from puce to scarlet before seemingly settling on a ruddier than normal pink – which is the official shade of self-inflicted embarrassment, apparently.

A moment’s oversight, a second or two of looking elsewhere, or simply just a dash of over-enthusiasm had suddenly sent the rebuild back a few weeks. It wasn’t so much the thirty-or-so quid needed to replace the shattered mass of plastic that irked so much as the shipping costs from America and the inevitable thievery that passes for taxes and import duty.

All of which got us thinking, once the air had officially cleared of language that would make a 1950s docker blush, how such disasters might henceforth be avoided.

Obviously, not having the fork lower sticking off the shelf would have helped but then 20/20 hindsight is a singularly useless gift in my experience. We’ve subsequently formulated a plan utilising lumps of packing foam craftily glued together and secured variously with elastic bands and/or string.

It’s not an especially aesthetically pleasing solution but it will protect costly plastic mouldings in the future.

It’s only when you begin to look at all of the time, effort, research, pain, and money that you put into these old bikes that you realise how easily they could be damaged. While most of us don’t want to adopt the cotton wool approach, an hour or so of downtime pondering just how we might possibly damage our hard work can be a fairly shrewd investment.

Old duvets or blankets are pretty effective against casual damage and can easily protect tanks, clocks, panels and the like. Scoff if you like, but a vac bag or air bubble tent provides little protection against that numpty moment when you’re clambering over bikes to get to a cupboard or shelf. Talking of which, who hasn’t had something fall off or out of either, and almost take out a speedo or tacho? A moment’s inattentiveness can swiftly divvy up a significant repair bill.

If you’re a serial collector/restorer, you’ll know just how easy it is to suddenly find you have more bikes than available space. This very scenario became a reality only recently when the tail pipe of the Suzuki Apache took exception to the indicator lens of the Yamaha 350! Post-apocalyptic advice from significant others along the lines of "Well, why don’t you look what you’re doing!" are, in my experience, extremely unlikely to quell an emergent torrent of best Anglo-Saxon.

The recent investment in one of those four wheeled bike dollies has substantially freed up much-needed garage space. For those who suggest that size doesn’t matter, I’d respectfully counter that three inches gained in a garage situation seems like a lot more than 75 millimetres when it comes to getting bikes out of sheds or garages.

The retrospective fitting of a side stand to the Suzuki Stinger has allowed it to rub up much closer to its mates in the shed, giving its owner wriggle room. All of which is great until you hear that little voice saying, "You could get another bike in there…"

Anyone fancy super-gluing another rear lens back together?