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no one said it would be easy

about OK and despite my reservations regarding a 30s+ male flat-mate being an avid Come Dancing fan, and a reclusive ascetic woman of similar age being an author of Mills and Boon ‘Penny-dreadfuls’, I got by and Lawrie engaged me in a work scam he had inherited.

We worked … or rather attended a double-glazing company of some substance. We were contractors and worked under the direct control of the accountant, so the woman who looked after all the clerical workers in accounts knew nothing of what we did, other than that it was an important analysis project of some sort. All day we copied out figures and made summaries of sales. Just occasionally we would gather up our findings and take the ream of paper into the accountant and he would ceremonially put it through the shredder and tell us to start again. The work was deemed so important that we also needed to work over-time. Often we would surreptitiously follow the last of the bosses out the door and be only one gear-change behind him going up the road. This scam had been passed on from hand to hand for some years, Lawrie getting it from some South Africans a year or so earlier. Each week we’d submit our invoices and accordingly get paid. During the day Lawrie often slipped in toll calls to home in Australia or to the US where he was planning to relocate to prior to our ride. The sweet old dear who looked after the office never seemed to suspect a thing.

Around this time, I got news that my mum and dad were going to visit the UK and some of Europe. There was also the exciting possibility that my brother Roly was thinking of coming for a look around with a couple of mates. Roly is less than two years younger than me and had served his time as a motor mechanic. I was seen as the academic and he was the tradesman … a good mix. We’d shared a love of old motorbikes and cars from our schooldays. The kitchen floor at home often was a depository for large work-in-progress lumps of old Brit Iron. We’d always been close even though I was seen at times as a Svengali figure with undue influence, likely to sweep him along on a path that might not be ideal for either of us. The pending visits were great news and I told Roly to definitely come and to bring his tools. Presumptuously, I also hit him with the thought that he’d be able to work on the three bikes I was planning to go off adventuring on. Bessie had a clear lineage to the post-war BSA models he was very familiar with and I was sure he would be keen as mustard to get into the Panthers, being as they were exotic and totally unknown to him.