I generally refer to my business as a hobby gone mad, because that’s how it started, a hobby. Back in my youth during the 50s and 60s bikes were a way of life, you had bike if you were lucky and could afford one to get to work, most blokes were apprentices on very low pay. Bikes were cheaper and more available than cars. I started by riding my mate Geoff Reeds T20C Tiger Cub around the local green then got my own BSA C11 and went on from there. The first decent machine I had was a Gilera 175cc beautiful little bike lousy electrics but my first real love. Most weekends we would go to Brands Hatch during the summer or local Scrambles during the winter, there always seemed to be somewhere to go  and watch our hero’s wrestling  these big  lumps of metal around. Naturally on the way home, and the way there to be honest, the racing started, how we survived I don’t know, by the Grace of God I think. I can remember blokes climbing out of hedges, taking avoiding action into fields, bouncing off telegraph poles and that was just in daylight.

We then progressed up the social ladder and rode out in the evenings to our favourite cafes mine being the Saltbox at Biggin Hill, opposite the wartime fighter base.  Friendships were formed there many lasting to this day. The lads would say see you at Johnson’s next weekend after Brands and I not wishing to show my ignorance would say "yea course" but I never found it because I only knew one way to Brands, coming out of Brands I turned right toward Death Hill and London for Johnson’s you went left, simple as that.

By the mid sixties I had acquired a very second hand DB32 Gold Star for I think £75 from a chap in St James Road Sutton who bought up HP snatch backs etc. My mates tried to tell him it was a B31 but he knew exactly what it was and nearly threw us out on our ears until I produced the folding stuff.

They thought I was bonkers buying a seized up Goldie but it turned out OK. The gearbox was seized and that went to Monty & Wards of Twickenham to be done but I overhauled the engine much to my mother’s disgust when she came home early and saw what was cooking in her precious oven.

Well that bike did for me she was and still is I believe a little cracker, she was fast, very reliable and best of all a right crumpet puller.  I had been lusting after a lovely little blond name of Diane for ages getting nowhere then I get the Goldie going and hey presto its "can I have a lift home tonight from youth club".  Well say no more and the following weekend its off to Brands to show off what Id pulled.

Now in those days everyone would park up lining the sides of the road from Sidcup to Brands just to watch the action. Yes well, along comes King Dick with blond bombshell on the pillion applies brake’s hits cats eyes and too roars of applause from the assembled throng bites the dust amidst busting Thermos flasks, beloved Goldie and new girlfriend.

Well I thought, very thankful to find she wasn’t hurt, (motorcyclists being only one rung up from those unfortunates who got their girls pregnant in fathers opinions) that will be the end of that she will on the first bus home but no not a bit of it, she had survived an "off " from a Goldie, higher than that you could not get, she was top of the class, O Lord you work in mysterious ways.

For the most part of my apprenticeship as a journeyman electrician the Goldie never let me down and was used for work and pleasure including riding into and out of London in the rush hours with an RRT2 box and BSA clutch. But all good things come to an end and although I had considered starting racing when I finished my exams at 22 an event happened which decided the course of events.

Up till this time although it was the middle of the Mod’s and Rockers era, the police, providing we didn’t push things too much, left us pretty much alone. However one foggy night a bunch of bikes, coming back from the cafes I think at Biggin Hill toward maybe Thornton Heath Pond café or Chelsea Bridge, were tramping on toward the old Croydon Airport up the Purley Way which in those days had no speed limit. The inevitable happened of course and there was an awful accident in which several riders were killed including the story goes, a police inspector’s son. After that if you rode anything in our area with rear-set footrests and or drop bars you got tugged for the most minor of offences.  All of a sudden blokes were clocking up fines losing their licences etc. Cars were getting cheaper , girls were getting choosier, it was time to leave the party and start racing.

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