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Gestation

Chapter 1

Gestation

I knew I had only about two or three k's to go but I couldn't make it up a small hill. I was crying from frustration and exhaustion and from the silence behind me I knew I was alone. The others were probably bogged and unable to follow me. Twice Penelope made a chuffing noise and died on me with no compression, but both times she started on cooling down a little. I was parched and scarcely able to breathe but I pushed and shoved and swore, screamed, yelled and cried and somehow I got Penelope up that bloody hill and struggled on until I could see the brick outpost over a sand dune. In the last 20 yards I bogged down again, and so leaving Penelope upright in the sand I staggered in, to the amazement of the soldiers. I beg for water. The soldiers helped me to get Penelope and then I set out on foot to look for the others. While walking along I felt proud of Penelope because despite everything she got me to safety. Panthers rule, Ok!

So I wrote in 1977 and the memory stays with me, like something from a French Foreign Legion movie … Penelope, my trusty old Panther motorcycle abandoned, sunk to her rear axle in a picture-perfect, tawny sand dune, overlooked by a harsh blue sky. And yes, like a Hollywood character, complete with torn clothes, I did stagger down the dune and in to Fortin Garay, an army outpost in the Chaco Desert of Paraguay. A grimy, sweat-ingrained face with long red hair and a large dust-matted auburn beard formed my presenting visage. Possibly I looked a little scary, certainly a little unusual. It was the end of the day and the troops were all assembled into a square formation. The Major was about to review and presumably dismiss. I knew I was intruding into a performance of importance, even if it was one of routine … a bit like walking onto the stage of an opera at The Royal Albert and asking for