Hi Dave,
Yes.
I first did it with the wife´s Ford 100E. All seats out except the driving seat and in with the Bantam less its front wheel. Not too often because the 3-gear, side-valve Ford 100E was slow on the motorways. I went to Brands practice frequently that way because it was a short distance from home and no rush to get started anyway.
Nice to hear from you. I hope you are keeping well -- and well above the smelly stiuff.
Then Simms Motor Units, Finchley gave me a company Cortina to dash about the country in -- supposedly to do work for them. The Simms garage man gave me the Cortina on a Friday afternoon before Llandow on the Saturday. I got home that evening, took out all but the driver´s seat and with the Bantam´s front wheel removed installed Icarus-1 as my passenger. Wife was pleased it was not her 100E but horrified that it was a NEW Cortina. Less than a hundred miles on the clock she wailed and you´ve scratched the paint already.
Instead of driving down to Wales on Friday evening with The Wobblyman or others from the East End crowd I drove down on Satúrday morning in plenty of time for scrutineering -- without a hangover. The latter `hangover´ was when with The Wobbleyman... or developed from some twerp starting his Bantam at 3 in the morning. These twerps existed in those days: obviously having thrown the Bantam together at the last minute, and driving to Llandow late, they just had to -- irrespective of it being early hours of morning -- try to start the ruddy thing. Terrible noise a racing Bantam can make when its carburration is too weak or too rich -- like a machine gun getting itself jammed -- pop (scuffing feet sound) -- eh -- pop-pop -- er (scuffing feet sound) pop !! or waffle waffle, pop pop, grr grr, bwoom bwoom -- something like that. Then, of course it would run fairly smooth and after a few fistfulls of sound and a few blips it would suddenly go totally silent. The suffering, would-be sleeper settles down with a sigh and nearly gets to sleep when it starts up again.
Some how in those GOD (Good Old Days) times we had such twerps disturbing the peace which I believe just doesn´t happen in these well-controlled, 21st century days.
Colin Aldridge -- The Wobblyman -- was a great friend in more ways than one. He died of stomach cancer in early 2002 and my last phone call to him was when he was at Daytona with Slick my son spannering for Scott Russell the WSB Champ. Instead of Slick answering the mobile phone Colin did. I told him it was surprise because I thought he´d had another dose of the surgeon´s knife only days before ... He told me he had had so many ops that they´d installed a zip-fastener in his gut. He added that we should each get a Racing Bantam and get down to Brands because now he would be competitive on a Bantam at last -- just under 11 stone!. So it came as a surprise, a couple of months later, when my Daughter phoned from the Isle of man to say he had died just a few minutes earlier when she had been with him. Apparently he grinned as he said, "Not long now Kate and I´ll be off ..." as if he knew ....
Typical of Colin he left a big sum of money with the IoM golf club that when he popped off was to be spent on booze for all his friends there during his send off. Cost must have been in thousands. Colin´s ashes were spread at one of the golf holes and my son Slick said he got covered in them. A gust of wind came up just at the right time -- just as if The Wobblyman was saying goodbye with a laugh to the one he had done so much for, in the motorcycle racing world.
Cheers to one and all!
JayBee.
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Fri Dec 13, 2013 6:35 am
