Attentive readers will recall that in the story ‘The Floozies weren’t the Only Ones’ we hinted at My Friend Harry’s return to the Isle of Man T.T. motor cycle races. Well, return he did in 1947, and this is what happened. Never mind that Harold Daniell won the Senior T.T. on a Norton at an average speed of 82 m.p.h Here’s the real story of that first post-war Senior race
......
Harry awoke on the deck of the Hesperus, cold, stiff and hung over, in company with two million other voyagers from Liverpool, all determined to be in their Island of memories for the first Senior since Georg Meier and his B.M.W. had put it across Jock West and Freddie Frith 12 scant weeks before Hitler went to war.
It was 5 a.m. and the sun was shining and it was going to be a blissful day. There was just one snag. My Friend Harry couldn’t find his right shoe. He had it when he placed it tidily beside its mate before snuggling down cosily on the upper deck to turn his alcoholic haze into sleep. When he awoke, the left shoe was there all right, but there was no sign of the right one.
“Har, har,” he said sarcastically to his companions. “Tee hee. Very droll. Now hand it over.”
“Hand what over?" they replied blearily. “What are you on about, now?”
They gazed carefully at Harry and blinked at his right stockinged foot. “Where’s your shoe, then?” they asked.
It was a good question, but there wasn’t a good answer to go with it. When the jolly laughter had subsided and their tears had been mopped up, they assured Harry that they hadn’t touched the thing. What they did do was organise a search of the deck - in which they were gleefully aided by the hundred or so immigrants who had slept beside them, and on them, through the turbulent night.
Nowt.
So there Harry was, sitting on a bollard on the pier wondering why it was always him who had the leading role in such lunatic situations. It was clearly impossible to buy a pair of shoes at 5 a.m. and the best he could hope for was to be able to borrow a pair at the boarding house where the rest of the Kentish party had been spending the week. Taking no notice of his cackling companions or the sniggering citizenry, he hobbled with dignity to the taxi rank and set off for Glen Lomond, grandly describing itself as a private hotel.
There, the only footwear that would fit was a pair of thigh-length waders. Discarding his mackintosh, Harry shackled himself to those with stout cord and, fortified by a navvy-sized breakfast, prepared to set off, en pillion, with Alf White, for their rendezvous at Windy Comer on the wide expanse of Snaefell mountain.
The traffic up the Mountain road for that first post-war Senior was, understandably, an astonishing collection of all-sorts. And of all the all-sorts, none was more assorted than Alf’s Mongrel. Basically, it could be said to have been a Norton, if only because of the silver paint which covered everything except the chains - where it could not have been expected to adhere because of the rust. Nevertheless, it constituted transport and, as such, was a considerable possession in 1947.
So, it was with proper gratitude that Harry lowered his flinching posterior on the naked mudguard and prepared to accompany Alf up the Mountain. Up to Signpost Comer, they did fine and Harry foolishly took the opportunity to compliment Alf on the Mongrel’s pulling power. “Bags of go-get, too," he bawled over his shoulder and, to prove the claim, he wrenched the throttle lever towards him. True enough, the Mongrel bounded off at the rate of knots to Cronk ny Mona.
“Not bad, eh?" yelled Alf, with another over-the-shoulder smirk.
“Not bad at all,” Harry agreed heartily-and then, with Alf, froze into instant apprehension as they saw that the procession ahead had suddenly stopped. Alf promptly slammed the throttle shut, which was undoubtedly the correct procedure for the situation as he saw it. But what Harry saw, as did Alf, was the interesting appearance of a little loop of rusty inner cable at the end of the lever. “That means,” reasoned Harry, “that the throttle slide in the carburetter is still open.” Too bloody true, it was.
Alf applied the brakes but their contribution, at best, would have been to bring the Mongrel to a leisurely halt. It wasn’t enough. They hit the back of a van.
That was how Harry loosened his front tooth. It gouged an impressive furrow in the back of Alf’s head and it was as well that Alf couldn’t see his own blood, for the sight of Harry’s turned him up -- and Harry’s was a mere dribble compared with his.
It says much for the front wheel that it escaped unscathed, but the forks (Druid, circa 1927) looked a bit jaded and the mudguard (Coventry Eagle, 1929) was jammed against the down-tube. So, Harry and Alf respectively mopped and drank their blood, dragged the Mongrel off the highway and continued on foot to join their chums at Windy Comer.
Well, if you fancy your physical fitness, just have a bash at walking in waders from Cronk ny Mona to Windy Corner on a warm morning after a night on the open deck followed by some very rough dentistry without anaesthetic. Still, they got there before the roads were closed. The seven laps of the race took their minds off their personal troubles and they got a lift back to Cronk on reliable machinery.
Alf reckoned that the Mongrel would be rideable if the front mudguard were removed, so he opened the toolbag. That’s when he discovered that someone had whipped the tools. Almost a lifetime of petty larceny had gone into the accumulation of that toolkit and Alf was justifiably annoyed. In fact, his annoyance was such that a Monster, who was dallying on the grass with a young lady, came over.
“Hey, you," he said, his nose an inch from Alf’s, “if you don’t stop effing and blinding, I’ll bash yer bleedin’ face in.” Alf stopped effing and blinding.
When Harry reminded Alf that the Hesperus would sail in about 20 minutes, he went grovellingly over to the Monster and asked if he had such a thing as a shifting spanner. To their amazement, he produced a shifter from his Stormgard pocket, thrust it at Alf and barked: “Don’t be long with it, either."
In a trice, Alf had so burred the head of the nut that nothing short of a pipe-wrench would cope with it. The stay nuts yielded, however, so Alf dealt with the head nut by the process of waggling the mudguard until it broke off. Harry exhorted Alf to get a move on, so they took off right smartish and were 20 yards down the road before the Monster took his mind off his young lady and remembered his shifter. “That’ll teach him not to waste his time with judies," guffawed Alf as they wove from bank to bank under the eccentric influence of the bent front forks.
They made it to the quayside with a couple of minutes to spare and found the rest of the party dithering with anxiety. “What’s the worry?” asked Harry. “We got here, didn’t we?” They made it plain that their only interest in his appearance was the fact that he was the custodian of the tickets. At that, Harry suddenly fell silent. He swallowed, and said in a tiny voice: “I’m very much afraid, chaps, that we’ll have to let the Hesperus go without us."
All shouting at once, they reminded him that if they didn’t catch that boat they couldn’t get back to Liverpool until Heaven knew when and that would mean ...
“The fact is,” Harry explained, “the tickets are in my mackintosh pocket and my mac’s at Glen Lomond, third peg from the left of The Stag at Bay."
Let us not dwell on the snarling and savagery that followed, or on the unrepeatable language used by young professional gentlemen under emotional stress. Suffice to say that they returned to Glen Lomond, collected Harry’s mac and the tickets, paused long enough for him to buy a pair of shoes and caught the next boat.
In due course, they wandered off the pier at Liverpool in the bleak, small hours and made their way to the car, parked so economically in a nearby back street. They got in, slammed the doors and sank wearily into the seats. Sid turned the key.
Nothing happened. Some Scouse bastard had stolen the battery.
Hilarious