Continued.........
The A7SS provided daily transport through 1967 to 1971, evenings were spent with mates on the coffee bar circuit south of Birmingham including the stops at "the doss" Amusements next to the Hare and Hounds in Rednal and the coffee bar in Cotteridge. There were a few haunts in Rubery including the "Top Cat" where many a Saturday night was spent. The Double Zero club in Digbeth (Saint Basil) was in full swing but for some reason I cant recall visiting there although the vicar who ran it (David Collyer) did end up performing the marriage ceremony at my wedding in St Lawrance Church Northfied in 1975. I still have a signed copy of his book "Double Zero" and at £0.40 has provided a good investment as I see them advertised on Amazon at $119! Of all of my mates who I rode with back then there are none that I see on a regular basis. One (Roger) emigrated to USA in 1977, he had an older brother (Brian) who lives in Redditch, between them they had a string of bikes ranging from BSA, Triumph, Norton, Vincent and many more. One other guy (Vinden) was extremly tall, his dad wouldnt allow him to have a motorbike but relented and let him have a Honda 50! He used to ride it to my house, dump it in the garage and travel with me on the pillion. One trip into Malvern resulted in a blow out of the rear tyre. We were lucky to keep the bike upright but by the time we had stopped the tube had come out of the tyre and had been peppered with grit / stones between the rim and the road. With no tools on board and little money a kind gent loaned his garage and tools but all we could get hold of were bicycle repair kits. With about 20 patches on the inner tube and some four hours later we headed for home only for the tyre to deflate again outside Worcester. A guy cutting his lawn saw the dilema and offered to store the bike in his garage whilst we made our way home courtecy of Midland Red bus. Vinden turned up at my house one summer afternoon, his dad had relented and let him buy a bigger bike in the form of a 500cc Triumph on the condition that it had to have a sidecar attached. he was over the moon and asked if I wanted to give it a spin. So off I went round the block leaving Vinden waiting at the house. The first leg of round the block was down hill with a T junction at the bottom. Turning left was when I realised that I am not a "chair man", the thing understeered so much (I didn't know about sidecar braking) that I ended up on the opposite side of the road, thankfully the oncomming traffic took to the pavement and I survived. It was at this point I realised that something was amiss with the engine as it appeared to be only firing on one cylinder. A quick look revealed that the nearside plug lead was adrift. replacing and restarting the bike ran sweet for the remaining drive and I handed the bike back. Vinden left and in five minutes he was back demanding to know what I had done to his bike. He couldn't understand why it was going like a rocket, he had not had the plug lead attached for three days since he bought the bike!
