My Latin education finished when I was 16, but I knew that tempus was bloody fugiting and it was not looking like there would be much time for sea trials or shake-downs. Penelope was up and running but Samantha still needed work. One small episode unnecessarily delayed us and it probably was down to me helping. Roly is not the world’s fastest mechanic but he is thorough and meticulous, not one to make mistakes. On the other hand, I am neither thorough nor meticulous … and also not a mechanic. At best I am ok at holding things and passing over spanners.
Samantha was finally adjudged ready for her maiden voyage. I slopped in fuel
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from a four-gallon tin I had and she was tickled … a near-technical term relating to evidencing that fuel has reached the right part of the carburetor … and she was kicked, and kicked, and kicked again. For an engine to run it needs only air, fuel and a spark. These do need to be in the right volumes at the right time … but that is what Roly was for. Our efforts were rewarded by silence, graveyard-like silence. There was no sign of life in the corpse. Too late at night to do anything more we both went to bed grumpy and disappointed.
Next evening, still no life could be coaxed from her, despite there appearing to be a nice fat, blue spark. In frustration, Samantha was pushed out into the road in front of No 46 and then launched down the hill. This was an exercise we’d done dozens of times at home with numerous recalcitrant bikes, but never with one that seemed to be throwing out great gobs of electricity. She chuffed quietly down the hill with the engine spinning over but with no reward what so ever. Optimistically we kept pushing and trying a variety of throttle openings and gears … until we were right at the bottom of the hill. Of course, this meant a laborious joint-effort to push her back up to home-base and once again we went to bed pretty grumpy and disappointed.
Fuel flow was checked, the magneto was checked, valve timing and ignition timing were both confirmed as being what the book said. We were flummoxed. Roly was confused as a single cylinder engine with a magneto is as simple as mechanical things get. No battery is needed, as a magnetic field is ‘broken’ by points opening and closing as the armature spins around creating a spark. Even I could understand that … but why wasn’t she showing any signs of life? You can have instances of a spark being able to be evidenced when ‘outside’ but once under compression in the combustion chamber being insufficient to ignite the mixture. Surely not! Not with the big, fat blue spark we were getting, irrespective of spark plug.
It wasn’t until most of the week had been wasted before Roly twigged that the fuel I had tipped in from my ‘petrol’ tin was in fact ‘red diesel’. It came back to me. I’d acquired some ‘not for public road use’ red diesel from my building site the winter before as spare for the London taxi. Roly felt that he should have smelt it or noticed the oiliness of the diesel and I had been a pillock presuming that if it was in a petrol tin, it must be petrol.
The count-down was stressing us a little. It is wonderful to be able to revel in the ‘only seven more sleeps till … ’ when you are ready and waiting, but nerve-wracking
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no one said it would be easy
when you are not sure if the quantum of work left to do, will fit in the time available. I was having to miss out on a few social outings now that the adventure was looming large, including a festival headlined by 10cc and The Rolling Stones. Steph attended and blamed the sun and tiredness for her not making it through to the end in an upright position.
Pommie Jim made wooden pannier boxes for us, just as he had for my ‘Ernie the ES2’ ride a couple of years earlier. The pending departure and the final completion of the bikes were converging and it was looking like it was going to be a close-run race. Sadly, the nice B33 BSA was taken to the nearest tube station and left outside in the car park after removing the magneto as a spare for the trip.
After many years, the flat at 46 was going to be abandoned with no replacement tenants lined up by any of the residents. This meant quite a big clear up and in the absence of any knowledge of how to get stuff to the dump … (we didn't actually know where there was a dump!) … we came up with a cunning plan. Some of the girls from the past including Steph had co-owned a VW Beetle which now seemed surplus. Steph could have the London taxi. The other owners were gone but the VW hadn’t, so we filled it with the detritus of many years of itinerant young lives. We then drove to a posh neighbouring suburb, looked for a smart street and parked it outside the flashest, pleased-and-proud house we could find. We then locked it and walked away. This gave us immature pleasure for many weeks, wondering how long it would take for the home-owners to mobilise the council to remove the eyesore that was our legacy.
Our leave-taking was programmed for Sunday afternoon following the final farewell party for the flat. This would have been ok if we were ready. We weren’t and spent half the party night working on the bikes, still trying to sort out primary chains of the correct lengths and getting luggage sorted. Half-heartedly we partied too, trying to be part of something that truly was the ‘end of an era’. These last few days had been full to the point of over-flowing and I was neglecting Steph a bit, but I also knew that the ship wouldn’t wait, whereas I was confident our relationship was not something that would wither and die because of such a trifle.
A myriad of last-minute things were attended to on the Sunday morning when we finally arose. All around us, there was activity as the flat was abandoned, farewells flying everywhere. There would be a skeleton crew only there that night. Around lunchtime, we had our maiden voyages, fully laden. They were a nightmare, the bikes
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were almost unrideable, with the loads not being distributed well enough. Frantically changes were made and way too late we were off, for better or for worse, clinging to the notion that we would put it right on ‘the other side'.
For a lot of years, my building jobs had been all over London including south of the river, whilst the flats I'd lived in had all been north of the Thames. Transiting from the south to the north often took me past an arrowed sign which said Tilbury Docks, so at least I knew where we needed to get to.
Thinking “Shit, this will be close!” we wobbled our way through the stop-start suburbs towards the docks. Down the High St, we crossed the North Circular and achingly slowly passed through East Finchley and Highgate, onto the Archway Road and into the old City of London and finally to the turn-off to Tilbury Docks. Almost majestically we swept around the curving exit to what I hoped would be the wharves and a relieved welcome from eager stevedores awaiting our belated arrival. The sight and sensation of that moment lives with me to this day. The road led onto The Embankment and under a bridge and there before us, was a large two-posted road sign proclaiming TILBURY 34 Miles. My heart sank as I knew this was down to me … I was the local expert … I knew where Tilbury was. Bugger, bugger, bugger! There was no option but to carry on, clinging to the hope that for some reason the departure was delayed.
In life, not everything goes your way all of the time … and this was one of those times. My emotions included pending-humiliation. I knew what my robust rugby club mates would soon be articulating.
“What Plonkers, couldn’t even get to the boat on time!”
“Typical half-arse Molloy!”
I knew that many of the young guys at the rugby club envied our laid-back, cruisy lifestyle. We’d invite some to come along on summer adventures, but they would always say that they couldn’t because they had jobs. We’d always opine that they could get another one when they got back and the hesitation indicated what they would like to do, not aligning with what they would do. Our friendships, however, didn’t mean that they didn’t secretly hope that we would fall on our faces occasionally. I know they enjoyed the vitality the colonials brought to the previously staid ‘old boy’ world of London rugger. The Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans brought a different dynamic and we could always be relied upon to bring a coterie of stunning young women