Читать книгу No One Said It Would Be Easy - Des Molloy - Страница 13

6

Gestation

running the same magnetos, and all with same-size inter-changeable tyres. Such a great formula - couldn’t possibly go wrong.

Well it would help if there was stability in the lives of the intended crew and a nice warm workshop to prepare the bikes in. Lawrie lived completely the other side of town and had no mechanical skills. I didn’t even know where the American lived or what he did … and can no longer recall his name. A lot of the friends from our early London days had now wandered off home and as each flat was disestablished, a new place would need to be found. For a while I was a ‘guest’ of 603 High Rd, Leyton, a flat originally of six Kiwi and Aussie teachers. This had been an all-girl flat but at different times quite a few of us of the wrong-gender had bunked down in the lounge or temporarily taken over a bed while someone was away. During these years there were always openings in flats because often occupants were temporarily ‘going off to do Scandi’ or ‘driving across America’ or having a ‘Top-deck tour of Morocco’, ‘debauching at the wine festival in Fucina’, etc. Some would even go off to Aussie for a couple of months of outback work to top-up the coffers, thus enabling more travel. Our lives were ones of low-level hedonism, with work always taking a back-step. Careers were not advanced, there was too much living to do.

While at 603 the bikes had an unpowered, unlit, falling-down shed to live in. The sidecar frame was randomly deposited in the next-door backyard that was shared. Vandals subsequently set fire to the yard area and later a rag-and-bone man made a raid and removed everything. It is only decades later that I can mourn the loss as at the time it solved a problem. Preparation for the big trip was glacial in its pace.

For the summer of 1975 I’d had a construction company and had won a contract to replace a district heating scheme in a housing estate. This involved getting a great suntan, a lot of workers and heaps of fun, but towards the end, when I had my hand out for legitimate contract extras, the money flow slowed to a trickle and delaying tactics from the client were very obvious. I seemed powerless to get my due. The timing of this crisis was corresponding with the disestablishment of 603. I needed to move and for the first time in 4 years there wasn’t an obvious place to relocate to. After warning the client several times, I resorted to direct action and removed everything from site and went AWOL. I took an advertised room in West Hendon which I called The Box. It was tiny. I could almost touch the walls on either side with my finger-tips, and to put the light off I just swished away with my squash racket till I got the switch. For the first time I was not in an Antipodean enclave. It was just