CHAPTER 22
Pissed English Biker.
PLOUGH AND HARROW #5
This is a short story / life event whatever you want to call it, it happened in the early 1980s.
We were all aware of the drink-driving laws back then, not that we took much notice of them, after all when your young, rules are for other people to follow.
But this one incident does show one of the reasons that the rules should be taken serious.
( SPOILER ALERT ) no-one was hurt or killed, it's not a horror story.
If you continue to read the story you will see even we at the plough were a little concerned even back then about the dangers of drink driving and the possible ramification's of the result's of being Bollock`d riding a bike, we had a sense of responsibility for other peoples actions.
The world has changed so much, but even back then this was a big No, No.
After all it's just not you on the road that can suffer from your selfish actions.
( Photo 1 ) . Modern photo of the plough taken in 2018, nothing has changed really except there were no wooden benches at the front of the pub back in the day.
One Friday night up at the Plough and Harrow, a biker from England and his miss’s turned up out of the blue.
He came into the back room a little sheepishly, he opened the door and took a good look around, satisfied with what he saw, then he called his miss’s in who was waiting just behind him in the small entrance hall at the front of the pub, and then they went straight to the bar in the corner of the room.
I was actually by the bar when he approached, Beryl was telling me that she was thinking about putting some wooden benches out the front of the pub, to try and get some trade off the students from Atlantic collage which was only a few miles down the round.
I said jokingly “ you don’t want to attract the wrong type of people, you’ll be selling cocktails next with little pink umbrellas “, Beryl had a great sense of humour, and we both laughed at the joke, after all to most of the run of mill people the wrong clientele were already in the pub.
The English biker came alongside me, I turned to him and said, “ alright butt “.
He answered “ yeah great mate, nice pub you got here “.
Beryl said with a smile on her face “if it’s your pub get behind the bar and start serving“.
We all laughed at this which I think broke the ice straight away, our visitor was lucky harry was not serving behind the bar or his comment would have been meet with a blank expression.
The English biker had long dark unwashed hair that ran past his shoulders
( well, it looked unwashed ), he was dressed like an average biker of the time with a black leather jacket.
The jacket he was wearing was well-used and it was obvious that it had been around in all weathers, the crease’s in the arms were worn down to the base leather showing the brown hide with the top black waterproof layer completely worn away.
He had a few old dirty cloth patches roughly sewn on to the arms, one patch had the ACE Café proudly displaying where it comes from, his misses was dressed very similar to him, but not so scruffy.
He was around 5`10, not a large build, but he could be described has wire`ery, his wife was a good-looking woman around 5`8 tall, in my opinion a little too much makeup, she had the lightest blue eye shadow I have ever seen maybe she didn’t have a mirror, who knows and to be honest nobody real cared, who am I to judge, what I know about style could be put onto a matchbox cover, and she too also had black hair that was halfway down her back with multicoloured beads woven into strands at random places, they both looked around the late 20s.
In fact they fitted in quite well with us, I said come and sit with us we are all friends here.
He was riding a can sprayed Matt black CB Honda 750 with a set of large ape hangers and loudest exhaust I have ever heard on a CB 750.
The exhaust was a home modified 4 into 2 which again was painted in Matt black, the Honda looked like it had quite a few miles on the clock, there was oil seeping from the rocker covers and it looked like it had not been cleaned in an age, in fact it looked a bit like mine without the oil leak, I never cleaned my bike either.
We knew from his accent where he came from, he had a very strong London accent, it was easy to pick up straight away.
He told us that he was on holiday down this way, just him and his wife, they were camping near llantwit major, a localish coastal town a few miles from the plough.
They had both been down in Wales for five days, they had tried some of the pubs down in llantwit town and some of them would not server them because of the way they were dressed.
We all said yeah, we know what you mean, we get a lot of that kind of bollocks all the time.
He was obviously delighted that they had stumbled onto a biker friendly pub in the middle of nowhere, deep in the countryside, he said he came this way because someone in llantwit told him about the plough, it took him a little time to find the pub, as the Plough was not easy to find in the green hedge covered lanes.
But he seemed very happy that he did, he also wished had known about the plough at the beginning of the week when his holiday started, he said “ to be honest it’s been boring as fuck until now “.
He asked if we would be here in the pub tomorrow night, we told him we had nothing on this weekend, and we would be back up the plough after 18:00, and the pub would be busier tomorrow, and there would be more of our friends here, and he and his miss’s were welcome to come up anytime.
He seemed very pleased with us accepting him, and he said they would be back tomorrow night to finish off his holiday as they were going back on Sunday.
We said no problem, see you both tomorrow night, he had a couple of pints and went on their way.
( Photo 2 ) . Some of the biker regulars who would have been there that night.
He was true to his word, they both came back the next evening, he said it was their last day of their holiday, and he intended getting pissed.
It was Saturday night and the plough was full, the plough was always busy on weekends, just like most places are, the weekend is always the busiest times of the week.
They came in and sat by us, most of the normal Saturday crowd was there Brian, Wobble, PJ and Sharon, Galen, tony dog plus everyone else, our new visitors were both good company and fitted in quite well, they looked very relaxed and as if they had been regulars in the plough for years.
But we all did notice how quickly he was drinking, he was not kidding when he said he intended to get very drunk, he was drinking faster than any of us and with every pint he drank he also followed it up with a whiskey chaser and within an hour or so the casual observer could see he was drinking far to quickly to last the night.
Oddly enough, I remember what song that was on the jukebox at the time, it was SUNDOWN by Gordon Lightfoot, strange thing to remember, ( good song ).
His wife tried to slow his drinking down, none of us said anything we didn’t know him that well, and he could have taken an exception to us telling him what to do, and let's face it, it was none of our business, people do what they wanted to do, and you can't negotiate with a drunk.
I though maybe his wife would be riding the bike back to the camp site, she seemed quiet capable of handling a large bike, we did know their names but over the last 30 odd years you tend to forget details, after all we only met them the night before.
He was on holiday, and he was determined to get Bollocks.
I did try to get him to play pool to try stop him drinking for a short time, but he was not having any of it, he was here to drink and that is exactly what he did.
By the end of the night a couple of us spoke to his wife offering both of them a ride back to the camp site, to take them as pillion passengers, and they could come back and pick their bike up in the morning.
We did offer this option to him rather him risk having an accident or getting pulled over by the police, in his state the police would have not looked to kindly at him, they would have thrown the book at him, and he would have ended up in a cell.
But he refused point-blank, and there was no talking him around, he was riding back to the camp site and that was the end of the conversation.
We had also been drinking, but drink-driving laws back them were not as harsh as they are now, but you would still get a driving ban with a large fine and have your driving license would be endorsed, none of us were so drunk that we could not handle a bike, to be honest we all drunk too much at the pub and then rode home, and this was every time we went out, which was quite often.
But he was way past happy drunk, maybe incapable was the best description, his only advantage was that his route back to the camp site was all green lane riding with no built-up areas or houses, and most police would have been busy in the towns on the weekend, trying to keep order when the pubs throw everyone out, so as long he doesn’t ride the bike into a hedge and end up upside down in a ditch, and if he arrived back at the camp site without getting caught, he would be ok, that depended on him staying on the bike.
When it was time for them to leave, we walked them out to his bike, we knew he should not have been riding on a fairground ride, let alone a CB 750.
We offered his wife a lift on the back of one of the bikes, and one of us would ride down with them down to the camp site just to see them get back safe.
Her answer was thanks but it’s what he does, he rides like this all the time.
We watched him climb on the bike well maybe I should say crawl on the bike, he sat on the seat and nearly fell over pulling the bike off the side stand, the bike roared into life and his wife climbed onto the pillion seat.
We shouted our goodbyes over the noisy silencers and wished them good luck, she waved to us all as they pulled off into the dark lanes.
And that was the last time we saw of them, if they ever came back to the plough, we all must have missed them, none of us had thought about getting any details like phone numbers or address, we didn’t get to know them long enough to get to that stage,
They must have arrived at the camp site ok, or we would have heard about any two wheeled accidents, something like that would come back to us on the grapevine.
To be honest, they were a decent pair and would always be welcome back to the pub.
Hopefully they are both still together and he is still riding and not drinking so much.
But, best of luck to whatever happened to them.
Ok, maybe we should have stopped him riding off, maybe we should have taken his keys off him and made him stay at the plough, Beryl would have allowed him to kip in the pool room, she has done it before, but it was a different world back then.
It is easy to say we should have stopped him riding away in the state he was in, but it was a totally different world with different values, everyone’s mindset was set up a little different, compared to what it is now.
If the same situation happened in front of me today, I would stop him riding the bike and take whatever crap off the said person that comes with taking over peoples lives, but like I say, back then the world was a very different place.
( Photo 3 ) . The Plough and Harrow, 2018, the green tree in the background of the photo is not a tree, but a 1000 year remains of an old monks barn covered in ivy.