Happy memories

I was greatly surprised when confronted by a sidecar race photo from 1969 in the Ernie Hall ‘They’re Hall You Need’ feature (August 2021). The original picture, taken by

Rod Sloane, has regrettably been lost in the mists of time.

Ernie prepared the sidecar engine underneath an apple tree in his garden. We celebrated Ernie’s

50th on the steam railway at Tenterden – is it truly 40 years?

So much fun and laughter from the 1960 and 70s has been omitted… as in the time when with beard and moustache shaved off it was arranged that Ernie visit Motor Cycle Mechanics’ editor Ian Speller, as the head honcho of SIS motorcycles who were based in Portugal. I still have a lapel badge.

Ernie had arrived as

Senor Gonzales or whatever and, in on the joke, I went to usher him up to Ian’s office, on the third floor at Mercury House.

There was no way on earth you would have recognised him. With plastered down hair, yet without beard and moustache, he was wearing a suit… and shoes. Nobody had ever seen Ernie without his trademark sandals!

Ten minutes in and doing his best to accommodate this Portuguese business envoy with politeness plus tea and biscuits, Ian Speller began to have misgivings.

His guest’s English was pidgin to a degree and each laboured sentence was immediately followed by what he took to be a suppressed chuckle. Or was it a snigger? He’d heard that chuckle/snigger before.

The penny finally dropped. “You b ****** d, HALL!”

There then followed a few minutes of commendations for those who had played their part, knowingly or unknowingly, until it was realised that this back-slapping was costing valuable time in the lunchtime bar.

Humour counts for so much. Jerry Clayton, Church Westcote.