When I was a little lad of 18 or so I worked for a time at Norton-Villiers-Triumph in Wolverhampton--does that count? I didn't make any bikes, but I learned how to grind the head off a match on a grindstone without setting fire to it, and how to sharpen a brazing rod and throw it into the ceiling just hard enough so it would drop out when somebody slammed the door--accomplishments which have served me well in my working and social life in the years since. I also learned what happens when some idiot (not me!) puts a 24" face-plate on a lathe and starts it up without locking it up first. That was fun: when it got up a bit of speed, it dropped off the shaft and onto the floor, rolled all down the length of the apprentice shop, through the double doors, across the landing, through the next double doors and into the shop next door; from the exited shouts I think they had a lot of fun with it in there!

All the apprentices were bike-mad, but none of them could afford one. They were all "foot-greasers"--all the leathers and a bus-pass.

My grandad was a deepatch rider in the ARP in the war. He rode a chrome-plated Harley (painted olive green) that had once belonged to some Indian worthy. It didn't like cornering very much, and he often had to jump off while it ran into a handy ditch or field. I remember in the 50s, before he bought a car (a Reliant 3-wheeler), he had an Arial square-4, with a radiator and a hand-brake, which were almost unheard of in those days.

Dad did a bit of speedway riding before he married Mom (and she sang with a band a few times before she married him). He used to have a BSA when I was very small, but swapped it for a shaft-drive Sunbeam with a Swallow sidecar so he could transport the three of us at once. When my bro came along, he got an A30 instead. I remember in 1957, we went overnight to Cornwall for a holiday, about two hundred miles. Mom and Auntie Mu and I went by train, but Dad took the luggage in the sidecar; and Uncle Al did the journey on he BSA Bantam, which must have been an experience!

Much as I've been tempted over the years, I've never quite got around to a motorbike. I've got a push-bike, does that count, as well?

Steve