Fred and My Friend Harry were in that very agreeable Thames-side hostelry known as The Bull at Sonning and were on their third, or maybe fourth pint, and Fred's second cigar. The air was hazy with smoke and the conversation was limpid with nostalgia. They had been talking about pubs and, as you can imagine, the mood was benign and affectionate.
It was Fred who mentioned the Highlander… and started them off on a different subject altogether. The Highlander is a pub in the Isle of Man, five miles from the start of the TT motor cycle circuit. On a hot day in June with a cool pint to hand and leaning over the wall to watch the best in the world making tumultuous history, an enthusiast could be as near Paradise as one could expect to get in this world.
"Bill Doran," said Fred. "Remember?"
Big, burly, affable Bill. The Jekyll and Hyde of the motor cycle racing world. Gentle and genial away from the track; a blistering, blasting bombshell on it. Why should the mention of the Highlander conjure up the welcome memory of Bill?
Well, the road may have been levelled by now, but in the Fifties there was an almost imperceptible ’lift' which had the faster bikes airborne for 20 or 30 yards. Fred’s memory had pinpointed not only the year but the very day. It was the Monday of the Junior race in 1953.
Three death-defying Valiants were already abreast, a foot off the ground at over 100 m.p.h. when Bill Doran arrived and passed them all in mid-air, his wheels shoulder-high. His screaming AJS shook its head in momentary disbelief as the front wheel touched down. Then it remembered who was in charge, gulped and pressed on towards Greeba Castle. Fred and Harry, ashen and shaken, tottered to the bar for the necessary restorative.
After a blissful pause recalling that magic moment, Harry caught Fred's eye. "Remember what happened next?"
He did. Behind the Highlander was, and maybe still is, an old ruin which legend said was haunted by an evil spirit known as The Buggane. Scarce had Bill Doran blasted off to terrorise others around the course than the only slightly less formidable Charlie Salt hurtled into view on his BSA. But it was not Charlie's day. As his engine seized with an uncompromising bang, Charlie had the clutch out in a flash, but not before his primary chain had gone. As he coasted to a standstill in a silence broken only by the pattering of chain-rollers skipping along the road, it was evident to Fred and Harry that Charlie, too, knew of the evil spirit of The Highlander. For as he stopped a yard or two from them, Harry distinctly heard Charlie ejaculate: “The Buggane."
Or, on reflection, words to that effect!
"Forty years ago," Fred ruminated in disbelief.
"Doesn't seem possible," Harry agreed. A short silence, and then Harry ventured: "Wasn't that the year of the annual dinner when... ?"
"…old Bert upended a jug of beer down the Mayoress's décolletage?" finished Fred. “That's right. It was."
The funny thing was that it wouldn’t have happened at all if Bert hadn't been so lucky at cards. You see, the club dinner didn't start until 8 o'clock, and half-a-dozen of the brighter sparks had got together as soon as the pub opened for a few liveners and a quiet game of pontoon in the back room. Well Bert, as usual, cleared everyone out and they departed for the chicken and sprouts with Bert leaning noticeably to the right with about a couple of quids' worth of copper coins of the realm in his trouser pocket.
He and My Friend Harry were sitting opposite the Mayor and Mayoress and it must be said that the conversation between them flagged, for the civic décolletage was very low slung.
However, time passed in strained silence until at length the chairman banged a spoon on the table and requested all present to be upstanding and drink the loyal toast. Bert, a fervent monarchist, leapt instantly to his feet.
That was when a couple of quids' worth of copper coins caught the underside of the table, upended it and deposited a quart jug of best bitter in the ample bosom of the Mayoress. Talk about pandemonium! The way the Mayor went on you would have thought old Bert had done it on purpose - and Bert himself didn’t help by trying to mop up the Mayoress's soaking blouse with his napkin ...
Fred and Harry quaffed ruminatively. "What were you riding in 1953?" asked Harry.
"Fifty three? A 16H."
Harry thought about the 16H model Norton motor bike, an indestructible, versatile side-valve 500 that won an affection paralleled by few bikes over the years.
"I rode a 16H only once," he said. “That was in the Army in the war when I did a short spell as a despatch rider. I’ll never forget it. It was pitch dark and I was plunging headlong to almost certain destruction at 60 m.p.h.
“I didn't know the road, I didn't know where I was going, my path was lit by the parking bulb because of the black-out and I was overtaking unlighted tanks every 30 to 40 yards.
"Anyway, there I was in the winter of 1941 hurtling into blackness and almost paralysed with fear when out of the night came a concussion that took five years off my life. It was another motor-bike, also travelling flat out-but in the opposite direction and with no lights at all. We missed each other at a combined speed of 120 m.p.h. by no more than a couple of inches - or so it seemed.
"I stopped dead, leant on the handlebars and let the trembles have their way with me. Three minutes later the maniac who had passed me drew up alongside. As I raised my pallid and glistening face he yelled: ‘What the hell were you going that way for?' Then he turned and thundered off again into limbo. That was when I decided all despatch riders were raving mad. Five subsequent years of military service added layer upon layer of proof."
"Great bike for a sidecar," observed Fred, his thoughts going back to the 16H Norton. That set them off talking about sidecars until Fred said: "There was a time when they made the bodies of wicker-work, wasn't there?"
My Friend Harry pulled up his sleeve and revealed a scar on his left forearm. Then he pulled up his right trouser leg and showed a scar near his calf. "Got those when I was 17. Get me another pint and I'll tell you about it."
After Fred had obliged and Harry had taken off the top two inches, he set the glass down.
“When I was a youngster, there was a journalist of the old, not to say decrepit, school who was an object of morbid curiosity in our neighbourhood. He was known to one and all as Smithy and he possessed a Triumph Ricardo motor-bike to which was attached - if that is not too binding a term - a wicker-work sidecar shaped like a hip-bath. Smithy knew little of the mechanics of the Ricardo and suffered the explosions, rattlings, clankings and tremors as vulgar manifestations of a vulgar age.
“But he regarded the sidecar with a warm eye, for he found it a most convenient receptacle for the empties when there was no room left indoors for empties. Which was often.
"And when the hip-bath was creaking and sagging with the accumulated weight of glass, all Smithy had to do was run it round to the off-licence and collect a small fortune.
Not always did he collect, though, for that was long before the days of breathalysers and Smithy was not infrequently the worse for wear." As the periodic rending of metal and the shattering of glass echoed round the district, there would be the shaking of heads and the casting of eyes to Heaven. 'Smithy’s turned it over again,' they would say and would make their way to the scene of carnage to set Smithy back on his feet and the combination back on its wheels
"I was a stripling of 17 when Smithy offered me a ride and I accepted with fearful alacrity. 'Just popping round to the off-licence’ he confided, but it was one of his off-days in more senses than one. Perched on a miniature mountain of bottles, I braved the terrors of a journey that made thumping acquaintance with both kerbs and seldom had all three wheels on the road at the same time."
"As we went into the first-and last-left-hander, Smithy tweaked open the throttle lever with alcoholic abandon. Over went the hip-bath and over went I. That's how I got the two gashes. But what I remember even more clearly than the pain and suffering was the sight of Smithy regarding with concern the torrent of mingled blood and beer that flowed from the debris.
"There must have been a full one there," he said hollowly, and his world had no room for greater sorrow.
"That reminds me," said Fred, when there was an interruption.
"Come along now, gents, let's have you. Long past closing time...”
As they struggled into their coats, Fred said something historic.
"It' a funny thing," he chuckled. "It's never the big things you remember. Only the little things."
And that's a fact.
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