But back to the now, our ride takes us out into the country and includes a minor breakdown when one of the bike's magneto points' securing screw loosened off, disrupting the spark. Roly recalls this break-down quite clearly and the pull-off area where we attended to the problem. There were two derelicts lying about the place, one with his penis hanging out. We find the place quite unsavoury, and hastily make the requisite adjustment and we surge on. Unfortunately, there was no glorious skin-of-our-teeth reward awaiting us at Tilbury. Our ship had indeed sailed … and not with us on it. Knowing it was making a quick stop in France the next morning, I did for a moment wonder about trying to get there overnight but it all became too hard … and we didn’t seem to have lights that worked. We hung about in Tilbury for a while and I found a phone and rang Steph giving her the news. She was sympathetic but also quite excited. We’d not really had time for a good farewell.
Telling Roly that we would worry tomorrow about what to do next, we headed back towards North Finchley. Of course riding that far on bikes without lights is never going to be uneventful and naturally enough an officer of the law intervened.
“Good evening lads, what is going on here? You are aware you are riding without lights!”
I could only think of bunging on my broadest colonial Aussie-type accent.
“Awwh yeah, gidday mate, yeaah the lights don’t work and we have to get back to North Finchley.”
“Right sir, but this is a public road and lights are a necessary piece of motoring equipment. What are your names and your addresses please?” He reached for his notebook, obviously about to issue us with a ticket.
“Well sorry officer, but we don’t have an address, we were leaving the country, but we missed the boat.”
“So where are you going now?”
“To my girlfriend’s place.”
“So what is that address?”
I gave out the information but added the info that no one would be living there from tomorrow.
“So where can I send an Infringement Notice?”
“Dunno mate … maybe our folks’ address in New Zealand.”
“And when will you be there?”
“Dunno that either mate, maybe a year … we’re going to South America!”
22
Gestation
“You’re not going to pay this are you?”
“No, probably not!”
He ended our little inter-play with mutterings about bloody colonials and an earnest warning about taking care.
At 2.00am I slid in beside Steph in the make-shift bed on the lounge floor at No 46 … shattered. It seemed that my head had hardly hit the rolled-up clothes that made do as a pillow, when the shrill ring of the phone in the corner, brought me to a blurred awakening. I crawled over and uttered a husky, sleep-deprived salutation.
“Mr Molloy … you are not on the boat!”
“… I know, we missed it, we’ll go on the next one.”
A short silence followed.
“Mr Molloy, there is no next one!
Penelope in a state of nearly-readiness
The gladdest moment in human life, me thinks, is a departure into unknown lands.
Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890)
24
Tilbury Plus
Chapter 2
Tilbury Plus
The Tilbury cock-up had left us all dressed up and nowhere to go, so to speak. As well as being embarrassed, we were now homeless, jobless and down the gurglar for quite a bit of dosh. On the upside I was back in the arms of my beloved and we had the opportunity to do improvements on the bikes. Life goes on, the sun comes up (or not!), there’d been no loss of life or serious injury, just a little humiliation … so fairly good result overall. It could be viewed as just being a pretty extreme measure to get a few laughs from the boys at the rugby club … and beyond our pride taking a bit of a hammering, it was situation normal. Solutions to our mired state needed to be found. There were no more sailings for the season on ships that would take both passengers and freight but I did find that there was one last pre-winter sailing to Montreal with a Polish passenger line that could take us in economy, and the bikes could go to New Orleans just like Bessie did. Phew, the expedition might yet grow legs and run, albeit after a five-week delay to the UK departure.
Norman and Edna, the caretakers of the rugby club grounds and facilities let us use the clubrooms as a base for getting the bikes further fettled. They even provided us with a bit of work that we could do for pocket money. Other club members provided us with temporary lodgings and chores as well, so life was great … if you disregarded the parlous state of our funds. Steph took a live-in job with an Arab family looking after a new baby which seemed to go well. She noted with irony that when they returned to Saudi, she started the day flashed-up in a shiny black Daimler limousine, transitioned into the First-class Lounge at Heathrow and ended it soaking wet and grease-covered after a recovery-mission involving both the old taxi and one of ‘the girls’. Roly and I had somehow inveigled our way into mainly staying
25
no one said it would be easy
at Lawrie’s girlfriend Mo’s place. Mo was the archetypal English Rose, stunningly beautiful in an almost fragile way. She was vivacious, well-read and unexpectedly generous with her small flat, out in Twickenham. I’d been over-awed by Mo in years gone by, as her poise and style had always marked her out as being way out of our league. Posh and beautiful, scared most of us unsophisticated colonials. She even let us stay when she away in North America with work. Such an angel.
I’ve always been of the opinion that the hardest step in any venture is the first one. Coming up with the dream, and deciding that the sacrifices to expedite the dream will be repaid a thousand-fold, is the biggie that most stumble over … that step out of the shadows and committing to do it is often a trepidatious one. Finding the money is a completely different exercise, just one of finding solutions to problems etc., planning, managing. If the lack of money is the reason for not doing the adventure, then you just haven’t wanted to do it enough. It also helps if you are blindingly optimistic and unhearing of nay-sayer’s wisdoms. It was now the second
Roly at the rugby club carpark, adjusting Penelope’s clutch.
26
Tilbury Plus
step that we were struggling a bit with. Deep down I knew that if someone had said “How much is the trip going to cost?” and insisted on a clear viability analysis I’d be exposed as a charlatan. I had followers who were keen … and hopefully that would be enough, and besides maybe Lawrie would come through with a big cash injection. After all, he was working in the generous land of Uncle Sam.
Penelope and Samantha were uneventfully ridden to Liverpool and dispatched. Well, almost uneventfully. Spectacularly, one of the spares-filled army-surplus