I took incredible care of my little Puch. I had it for about a year, and when I wasn’t testing my skills to the limit I was cleaning and polishing and taking good care of my pride and joy. Until one day it was nicked. I was gutted. It wasn’t insured or anything. My dad always said to me, ‘When you’re finished with it, lock it up and put it in the shed and then lock the shed to be on the safe side.’ And, like an idiot, I didn’t. One night I left it on the hard standing at the back of our house and it got stolen. I woke up in the morning and it was gone. I was heartbroken. I went in tears to my dad, who in typical style said, ‘You’ll learn, that’ll teach you.’ He didn’t say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you another one,’ it was always, ‘You’ll learn.’ About three days later it turned up at the bottom of the village next to the telephone box. It had been completely stripped, all the leads had been pulled off it, and it had been set alight. It was just a burnt-out pile of bits, completely wrecked. I think the sight of that was worse than having it nicked in the first place. I loved that bike so much.
So that was that. My Puch 50 was no more. I was back to my BMX and working hard to save money to buy another motorbike.
Once I’d got a bit of cash together I went with my dad to the bike shop to look for a replacement. I was looking around at the Puch 50s, Yamahas and Hondas, and in the corner sat this shiny, brand spanking new Honda ATV70 three-wheeler. Now, these things really were lethal. No one knew that at the time, of course, but they ended up being replaced by quad bikes because they were so dangerous. It looked great in the shop and I said to my dad, ‘I like that.’ I only had about half the money though – my savings plus Christmas and birthday presents. I sat on it and thought it was really cool, but knowing that there was no way I could afford it I got off, had another look round and pointed out another small motorbike, nowhere near as nice as the trike but nowhere near as expensive either. I said to my dad, reluctantly, ‘I’ll have that one.’ My dad looked the little motorbike over, nodded and said, ‘Right, I’ll pay, you go and wait in the car.’ So I gave him my money and went and sat in the car.
Next thing I knew the door of the shop was opened and my dad was wheeling out the big Honda trike and pushing it into our horse box. I couldn’t believe it. I guess he must have liked it as much as I did.
We got home and filled it with fuel. My dad informed me that this was a serious bit of kit and that we were going to have to read the instructions. Then he was going to show me how to ride it. Like he knew how to ride it. I don’t think he’d ever seen one before, never mind driven one. But there he was, on the courtyard round the back of the house, looking it over like you do when you’re buying a new car, consulting the instructions and telling me that it had three gears, that’s the throttle, that’s the brake…
‘Right,’ he said when he’d finished his piece, ‘are you watching? I’m going to show you how to use it.’
He started it up with the pull cord (like the one you get on a lawn mower), sat on it, revved it up and put it into first gear. Only he still had the throttle on, and as soon as he released the clutch that was it, it reared up and fell straight back on top of him. He’s lying on his back in the middle of the courtyard pinned to the ground by this trike and I’m pissing myself laughing. And there ended my very first trike lesson. Still, there was an important lesson there for me, which inevitably I didn’t learn.
Blatting it up the side of the old lime kiln was easy enough on my little Puch 50, but on the Honda ATV70 it was a different story altogether. Looking at the stupidly steep side of the kiln now, it’s obvious it was never going to happen. When you’re a kid, though, you think that because you got up there on your little 50cc bike it should be no problem for this big three-wheeler, just as long as you get a good run at it.
Before long I was bombing it up there. The further up the mound you went, the steeper the gradient got and the more you needed to lean over the front to stop the bike rearing up; only the more you lean over the front, the less traction the back wheels have, and the steeper the gradient, the more traction you need. By the time I was three-quarters of the way up the side of the kiln I was on a 60 degree slope, leaning right over the front, and the rear wheels started to spin. And before I could say, ‘Oh fuck, what do I do?’ I found myself rolling slowly backwards wishing I’d stayed indoors and played Connect Four with my sister, like she’d asked. I was rolling, rolling, rolling, then suddenly it reared up and fell straight back, literally right on top of me.
Unlike my dad, however, I wasn’t flat on my back in the courtyard, I was upside down halfway up a steep hill with the trike not only on top of me but dug in. I was pinned down and I couldn’t move the thing, the angle of the slope making the trike even heavier and harder to budge. I started to panic, not least because I could smell petrol. Really, really strongly. And the engine was still running. I thought it could just be petrol coming out of the breather pipes, which isn’t such a big deal, but when I looked down to check I saw fuel pouring straight out of the tank. The petrol cap, which I was straddling, upside down, was leaking and the fluid was going all over my jeans. We’re talking about two Coke cans’ worth, all over my crotch.
I managed to turn the engine off, but I still couldn’t move it left or right. After several efforts I finally shifted it just enough to be able to drag myself out from under it. Without me underneath it, the trike destabilised, rolled over and then slid off down the hill, but I didn’t give a toss about it by this point because the petrol had soaked right through to my skin and was now burning me in the worst possible place. The pain was pain like you’ve never felt in your life. It was literally like having my bollocks marinated in battery acid. It fucking hurt. There was nothing for it, the jeans had to come off. It hurt so much that I took my pants off too.
I then ran down the hill, shouting, screaming and wailing, with nothing on below the waist, not a stitch, swinging my tackle in an effort to cool myself down, and across the field, straight past a family of ramblers in cagoules. God knows what they thought, but I wasn’t stopping to find out. When I reached the outside tap in the courtyard I turned it on and literally stood there under the water, like someone who’d been in the desert for a month and needed a drink. I just sat there with cold water running all over my little todger. No lasting damage was done, you’ll be pleased to know, but I dread to imagine what would have happened if I’d been under that trike much longer.
I never told anyone about my manhood’s close call. The trike was still in one piece so no one needed to know. If she’d found out, my mother would probably have stopped me going on the trike altogether. My dad, on the other hand, would probably have argued with her that at least I was learning lessons. Where my mother always wanted to protect, my dad was all for character building.
Sometimes I could see his logic, other times it just seemed cruel. I was always one of the quiet kids at school and was horrendously bullied for it. I used to get the shit kicked out of me all the time. At lunch I’d always get a good kicking, maybe have snow rubbed in my face if it was winter. I’d come home and my jacket would be ripped and I’d be covered in bruises. It got to the point where my mother was desperate to pull me out of school but my father wouldn’t hear of it. ‘No,’ he used to say, ‘he’ll stand on his own two feet and he’ll fight it. No son of mine’s going to run away. Let him face it.’ It’s a fine line between character building and character crushing, a very fine line.
My mother always wanted to keep me on the safe side of that line. Which is why I think she let me have the bikes in the first place, even though I couldn’t ride them on the road. I think she felt it was better that I got it out of my system in the relative safety of the farm rather than rush out at 16 and go crazy on the road. And she was right. When I was 16 I lost two very good friends in bike accidents. Neither had had motorbikes before. They turned 16, got a bike each, and were dead within twelve months.
Still, my mother would have