What’s Yet to Get

By: Squad 69 Mood: happy Date: 01/01/2008 14:10:46 Music: Motorhead

"All things come to those who wait."

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof."

"I have no worries, I do not fret, some may have what I’m yet to get"

I have always been an under-achiever. I used to think of myself as Bohemian, but Bohemia has out priced itself in recent times. Margaret Thatcher reportedly said that when she saw a man of 26 on a bus, she saw a man who had failed in life. God alone knows what the old bitch would make of me at 40 wheezing to work on a rusty bicycle. It’s true that I have a car for shopping, gigging and days when it’s really pissing down, but I doubt a ‘95 Astra estate with a smashed tailgate would elicit much in the way of Tory admiration either.

Mine’s a white Mk3 with a long bonnet and it looks like Ecto 1 from Ghostbusters. It’s exactly the vehicle I wanted when I passed my test and it just kind of happened. One day I’d wanted a roomy diesel with a towbar for years, and the next day I had one, like it had been there all along.

It’s the same with women. I knew as soon as my balls dropped that I wanted a small dark dirty one*, preferably from a few hundred miles away as my family’s been in Somerset since the Norman Conquest so I’m related to everyone here. I didn’t get round to losing my virginity until I was so old you frankly wouldn’t believe me if I told you, and a disastrous first marriage left me staunchly celibate for years. I don’t exactly move in celibate circles (hi Alex!) so I wrote off any chance of a partner until January ‘94 when a small dark dirty woman from Grimsby wiggled herself in my direction and we were married within the month. Fourteen years and three sons down the line, I am often reminded of the Talking Heads song ‘Once in a Lifetime’.

"And you may say to yourself: This is not my beautiful wife, and you may ask yourself: Well, how did I get here?"

This is all working around to my new motorcycle. When I was a boy the comic 2000AD introduced a thrilling character called Judge Dredd. Dredd had a big gun, took ten minutes sleep a night and dispensed instant justice on the streets of Mega City One. His Lawmaster was a giant of a bike with metre wide tyres, onboard cannons and a talking computer. The year was 1977, the Pistols were swearing on the Grundy show and I’d seen Star Wars about twelve times at the Odeon but even these life changing events could not compare to the motorcycle parked a few doors down from me. Honda called it the GL1100 Goldwing but I knew damn well it was a Lawmaster. Fucking huge, like the offspring of a Harley Davidson and an ocean going liner. Lathered in chrome, swathed in metallic paint, lights everywhere, the only motorcycle I’d ever seen with a sound system but above all fucking massive. I wanted one even more than I wanted to be a Jedi Knight or a Sex Pistol and I knew with utter certainty it would never ever happen. My dad had an ST70 monkey bike and we were united in hopeless longing for this iron apparition.

I should mention that I’ve always associated motorcycles with music. From Brando’s troupe of be-bop freaks (the original Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) in ‘The Wild Ones’, Elvis on his CB450 Black Bomber in ‘Roustabout’, Mods on scooters and Rockers on café racers, through Fonda & Hopper’s psychedelia-soaked ‘Easy Rider’ to the thrash metal streetfighters of the 80’s. Hell, even Motley sodding Crue on their hired Harleys exemplified the spirit of a thing which has passed into urban hands as the beat goes on.

My first motorcycle was a seventies Honda, and was followed by Suzuki fours, BSA twins and a bizarre Czech sidecar outfit made from melted down Soviet tanks which wrote off a Mini that was unwise enough to pull out in front of it, but I never forgot the Goldwing. Every time the wife and I pulled our still vibrating bones off some rattling deathtrap at the motorway services a Goldwing would loom up alongside and disgorge it’s relaxed and well heeled occupants. No doubt about it, these bikes were for those who middle managed and semi detached their way through responsible lives, and so glittering a prize could never fall to council housed minimum waged punk rockers.

This all came up while setting the world to rights one afternoon with a contractor. The contractor in question has a sideline in customised trikes and his own Goldwing, a GL1200 Aspencade. He had a wrecked GL1100 in bits all over a shed that he needed to clear out and would I like to take a look?

Would I? Is Madonna Catholic?

The next Sunday saw me brushing the spiders and accumulated debris from my new bike. Dismantled, broken and rusty with a shagged starter, £300 in 3 monthly instalments. My eldest is now the same age as I was in ‘77, and we’re going to scrape the crap off, paint it matt black and throw away all the lights except one on the front and one on the back. I’m only leaving the indicators on because the bloody thing’s so wide nobody will notice hand signals, and the radio cassette can fuck right off. Chrome is out of the question, but yellow and black warning stripes are in.

You know what? I think I may be able to fit my bass rig in the panniers.