excellent stories on here I particularly like threads like this. I was mid-apprenticeship but still managed to buy and run a TR5. Cloverleaf in Croydon were the only Ins. Co. that would touch me and let me pay in quarterly instalments (all I could afford) It sat near Chertsey Bridge with a flat tyre for two weeks before I plucked up the courage to find the owner (on a houseboat). He'd bought it from The SportsCar Centre in Esher on H.P. and run it into the ground - brake shoes and clutch on the rivets and dropped layshaft in the gearbox a common design fault on all those early Triumph gearboxes. Had to hide it when Hire Purchase company told me to look after it until they could collect it.. previous owner fibbed when he said he'd paid up to date. Ok - nothing to do with bikes but what a car at 20 years old - I didn't put the hood up for months.
It was a very good year, for long legged girls who would come and knock on my bedroom window after midnight begging to be let in! Just returned from a 6 month overland adventure to India where I 'turned on, tuned in and dropped out' but had to return to the horrors of working. Found myself work as a fitter/welder at The Ocley brick company. One Saturday morning my task was to do maintenance on the giant clay chopper, which was a huge hopper where the large chunks of clay that had been dug from the clay pits entered the factory , brought in via large conveyer belt. The machine had a large axle with numerous 1 meter long blades fixed tangentially to the axle , very much like a giant version of a garlic chopper that often got bent or damaged, as the clay was unusually hard due to the heat. I was standing on top of the axle trying to crack off the big bolts that held the blades in position with a long 3/4" wrench bar with scaffolding putlock slipped over the end of the bar as an extension. Suddenly the machine started up and the next thing I knew was I was flying though the air still grasping the wrench bar as the rotating blades that I was standing on flipped me up and out of the side of the hopper in an arc. I landed on my feet on the steel catwalk surrounding the hopper in a state of shock. What had happened was that a fellow fitter had decided to start up the conveyer to do some maintenance, and as the chopper was connected to the same switch gear as the conveyer that had started up as well. Now the conveyer could work 2 ways;backwards or forwards, and had the fitter decided to operate the switch the other way I would have been chopped into mince meat, still affects me to this day. The horror! Still managed to fulfill my biological destiny many times that summer though, in fact I was like a rat up a drain pipe!
In Summer 1976 I borrowed a BSA for a week. Not a bike, it was a 1936 BSA three wheeler car, with a French built Hotchkiss 90 degree V twin engine and front wheel drive. Rather difficult to drive - the brake pedal was on the left and the clutch in the middle; the gear lever came up between your legs; and it only had a single front brake (meaning one brake drum shared between the two front wheels), among other idiosyncrasies. But an absolute delight, real hoot and a half with bags of character.
Pete, it exemplifies the old saying about the truth being stranger than fiction. Could you imagine the reaction from the man's creditors when they were told the reason for non-payment is that "snails have eaten my chequebook!" I just love that story, keep them coming He11cat.
Sounds like something out of the Frank Zappa back catalogue "Snails ate my cheque book" and had a banana" tra la la la
Saints beat Man Utd in the FA Cup, glorious day celebrated by a long summer and tourists setting fire to the New Forest which was a pain. Lots of adders in the grass, punk rock and Star Wars wasn't even out...
There was also the box of butterflies I opened while my Dad was asleep as he worked at night which gave him a shock. And a bucket of crabs that escaped in the caravan at night . Not to mention when the car filled with bluebottles after I left a load of fishing maggots in the boot. The flies being really really bad .... Oops
It was expected I would do something like that or a vet ! Instead design which in all honesty was a curse and screwed up a decent career!
& there's a memory from 76, James Hunt F1 world champ. I was 12 in the summer of 76, knew nothing of his off track antics, but you couldn't help but admire the bloke.
