Memories 6


Well I suppose I better tell you a bit about me, I'm 59 verging on 60 and really wanting to take early retirement or at least go to part time, cos' this arthritis aint getting any better as I get older and hell, I think I done my bit let the youngsters take the reins now. After I left school and worked as an apprentice I was sitting on the aforementioned 390 bus (not the same one that was waiting to get past Grandad!) was waiting to pull out of Blyth bus station and a girl got on the bus and straight away a thought hmmmm she looks alreet hehehe anyway to cut a long one short I got to know her and eventually we were married and 37 years later we still are, with a daughter who is 30 in January (2014) and one who is 28 this year (2013) and our eldest has a son that causes more mayhem than a cyclone grrrrrr, hahaha but we love him to bits. Anyway about the same time I seen that lass on the bus a bought meself a moped. The aforementioned moped was a Raleigh Runabout and was basically a push bike with an engine on, well!! I travelled miles on that little thing and such fun I had, but once again the Wrath of Doris reared its ugly head when me Dad announced he had found me a real motorbike, anyway off we trotted to Cowpen, in Walton Avenue I believe and we bought this Francis Barnett 150cc Plover 86 to be precise with a nut missing from the front wheel spindle "Sharp get one of those" Dad cried, aye and Doris slept sound again as it lay for months against the fence with still no nut on the wheel but turbulation abounded once more when on a visit to Stan Curtis's bike shop for summit I saw a pair of forks and wheel in his junk, "whats that off Stan" I enquired curiously, the reply of "a Francis Barnett 200" once more instigated the rumblings of Doris but this time me and Dad were succesful and we transplanted the forks onto the 150, I did more miles on that than I ever did on the moped we even ventured to Ullapool, that would be me and Dave Purdey and Bryan Reece and two lads from Gateshead for whom the annals of time have drawn a veil over their identity and so after a fortnights holiday including girl chasing and getting beat up on account of the aforementioned girl chasing we started for home and happily we toddled along but getting hungry I told the lads I was stopping for chips and I would catch them up but after nom noms and two hours on the road I knew that something was amiss and I never saw them again that night I slept in a ditch at the side of a corn field and after a look at my dismal amount of money left I realised I couldnt eat and opted for a cup of tea and a box of matches for me fags (I foolishly smoked in those days). Eventually coming through Berwick it ran out of petrol and looking in the tank, the business side where the pipe was, was bone dry but a little remained on the othe side where the tank straddles the frame so I leant the bike to the ground and tipped it over and a couple of cupfulls glugged to the other side and honestly that little glug was just enough to get me home. A week later the ignition coil burned out on the bike, now if that had happened in Scotland there would have been another green ornament in the hedge with the reg number of TJR 18 see you soon I'll tell you about my Royal Enfield

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