| |
 |
Ducati 999
|
Issue 125 : October - November 2002Just a nod
Of course my memories could be false, absorbed from the only other person with me at the time! But having spent many years listening to my mother's versions of the past I doubt it. If such were the case my recall would be of the worst kind: greater numbers running riot through the streets, men women and children being crushed beneath the hell spawned wheels of whatever two wheeled monstrosity came to mind, teenagers drowning in their own blood as more teenagers stomped on their broken bodies, shops destroyed burning looted, torrents of blood flowing in deep rivers along the gutters to be swallowed by the gaping maws of Brighton's sewers. The fact that my memories are so far removed from these images to seem totally banal suggests that they are real, and definitely my own. Yes it is true, I am old enough to have been on Brighton beach that fateful day in 65, but no, I am not old enough to have been involved. As a child of what is euphemistically called a broken family my mother fought through the late fifties and throughout the sixties to make life as near normal as possible, which included such things as an annual holiday (to my grandparents' home) and the occasional day trip to the seaside: as long as it was economically possible. Brighton was one such destination and while my memories of the actual trouble are minimal, I recall being hauled off the beach in a panic stricken flurry of tartan blanket and wicker shopping basket to be deposited in all my semi naked glory on the prom, at which point I successfully diverted my mother's attempts to dress me by craning my neck round at some unnatural angle to stare at the scattered chrome dragons parked at the roadside with their low slung handlebars and mystical graphics: Norton, Matchless, Triumph, BSA.
But it was more than the machinery it was also a style, the dark brooding misfit, misunderstood and seeking some form of identification, camaraderie and brotherhood with his friends. I could go for that. And so with relative ease the ideal of the biker culture was absorbed, unnoticed and unchallenged into my psyche. Unfortunately mine was not a world where the biking experience could easily be obtained. I had no older brothers, no male relatives and no one in my immediate social realm possessed a two wheeled vehicle that wasn't operated by a couple of pedals and quarter inch chain. So for the years following that fateful Brighton experience motorcycles existed only on the periphery of my awareness. Unable to afford anything as self-indulgent as a television, newspapers, magazines or a telephone, I was just as effectively insulated from the world at large, which consisted mostly of home, school and the countryside in which I spent most of my formative years. Social awareness was not high on the agenda in a home rooted securely in the social philosophy of children being seen and not heard. Because of this I was unaware of shifting trends; such as the steady demise of the British motorcycle industry as it imploded on its own ineptitude. Poor management, lack of investment and unreliable machines being dumped into the waiting embrace of the more reliable Japanese imports, which were quickly and irrevocably tightening their grip on the UK market. From the latter part of the sixties it became a common sight to see bikes standing at roadsides. Despondent owners sifting through the disassembled guts, their hands black with grease and their faces smudged, or perhaps worst of all a desolate and dejected figure, his helmet dangling forlornly from the handle bars, trudging with heavy steps along the side of the road his beast of a dead bike fighting his every effort to push it to the nearest centre of civilisation. Invariably the common thread to these situations was the presence of other bikers, friends or more telling, strangers who had stopped to offer assistance. The insulation I experienced meant that for each biking encounter the impact was all the greater, and significantly more influential, and the more I encountered anything remotely bike related the more I identified with it, hell even Elvis was portrayed as a detestable outsider in the film Roustabout, although why they put him on a Triumph and not a Harley is a question I have since often wrestled with.
By the end of the sixties I had a little more freedom, a little more wherewithal, some pennies in my pocket and a cinema prepared to divorce itself from the mainstream and cater to a less savoury cliental. Crouching like hidden tigers between the 'stag' movies of the day I encountered such celluloid offerings as 'Girl on a Motorcycle', 'The Wild Angels', 'Hellcats', 'Easy Rider', and of course re-runs of the ubiquitous Wild One: although I found it very hard to identify with Brando - who always impressed me as being adult pretending to be a teenager, even when he was one. Other less mainstream offerings included Hell's Angels on Wheels, and one whose title deserts me about a gang of biker vampires (no not Lost Boys). At the same time the trickle of information coming from the States became an unsteady stream: choppers, chops or hogs were the order of the day and many British bikers embraced the new fashion with an enthusiastic gusto that bore a greater relationship to innocent naivety than to technical know how. If it came off it did, if it bolted on it was. Bars were raised, forks extended and somewhere somehow in the middle, saddles were lowered, all of this with ne'r a thought given to such mundane things as the need to rake frames. Bikes rolled out of garages and garden sheds across the country, tilted up at impossible and unrideable angles, their would be riders swinging from the new bars in a credible imitation of the animal they were named after. These pioneers quickly learned there was something they were overlooking: falling off at junctions because your feet don't reach the ground can be a harsh teacher, and ensured that the steep learning curve is taken at a no-holds-barred head down full speed ahead run. Why? Because of the very thing that permeates every example given above: people working together: cooperation: because everybody who threw their leg over a bike became a member of a big extended family whether they liked it or not. It was this that attracted me all those years ago. The sense of belonging, the sense of being a part of something, the sense that you had an identity. The knowledge that you were together, that if you were stranded at the side of the road with a broken bike another biker would stop and offer assistance. Society may shun us, but we didn't shun each other. It didn't matter who you were, where you were, where you were headed or what you were riding, if you met another biker you greeted that biker, a nod, a raised hand or a quick flash of your lights. The method was irrelevant, it was the message that mattered. A signal of togetherness, of recognition, that's what was important. So what has gone wrong? Where has that familiar friendship gone? It seems the more bikers I meet, the fewer there are who are prepared to acknowledge the existence of anyone other then themselves. New, and old bikers it seems are insulating themselves from their own group as much as car drivers do with the rest of the world once they climb inside their cages. It doesn't matter that you don't want to ride with, or be part of a club, that you only use your bike for transport and not for the thrill of freedom or to rekindle that dying spark of rebelliousness, we are part of a greater whole: a community within a community. The first rule to conquer any opposition is 'divide and rule.' Hard enough at the best of times, but easier when the target group does it for themselves, and by not acknowledging each other that is exactly what we are doing. I for one will continue to recognise my fellow bikers even if they don't want to recognise me, perhaps the more it happens the greater the chance they will eventually reciprocate. Mike Dale
|
|
home | top
| |
Mike Dale looks back at our motorcycling heritage and wonders if we've lost something.
