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Tilbury Plus

Chapter 2

Tilbury Plus

The Tilbury cock-up had left us all dressed up and nowhere to go, so to speak. As well as being embarrassed, we were now homeless, jobless and down the gurglar for quite a bit of dosh. On the upside I was back in the arms of my beloved and we had the opportunity to do improvements on the bikes. Life goes on, the sun comes up (or not!), there’d been no loss of life or serious injury, just a little humiliation … so fairly good result overall. It could be viewed as just being a pretty extreme measure to get a few laughs from the boys at the rugby club … and beyond our pride taking a bit of a hammering, it was situation normal. Solutions to our mired state needed to be found. There were no more sailings for the season on ships that would take both passengers and freight but I did find that there was one last pre-winter sailing to Montreal with a Polish passenger line that could take us in economy, and the bikes could go to New Orleans just like Bessie did. Phew, the expedition might yet grow legs and run, albeit after a five-week delay to the UK departure.

Norman and Edna, the caretakers of the rugby club grounds and facilities let us use the clubrooms as a base for getting the bikes further fettled. They even provided us with a bit of work that we could do for pocket money. Other club members provided us with temporary lodgings and chores as well, so life was great … if you disregarded the parlous state of our funds. Steph took a live-in job with an Arab family looking after a new baby which seemed to go well. She noted with irony that when they returned to Saudi, she started the day flashed-up in a shiny black Daimler limousine, transitioned into the First-class Lounge at Heathrow and ended it soaking wet and grease-covered after a recovery-mission involving both the old taxi and one of ‘the girls’. Roly and I had somehow inveigled our way into mainly staying