LITTLE MOMENTS

LITTLE MOMENTS

CHAPTER 66

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One

Late 70`s- mid 80`s

Someone once said that life is made up of little moments, well maybe he or she was right and maybe he or she was wrong, I don’t think anyone cares, I know I don't, but saying that, here are some of my little moments.

I was riding my gold and black Rickman/Honda CB 750 on a Saturday morning making my way up the valley from my work place at the engineering firm in Llangeinor, I needed to top up with petrol, so I stopped off at Braun's garage in the little village of LLuest, this little roadside petrol station was he only petrol station in the valley.

The garage was not busy, there was no other vehicles there, I pulled up at the pump and young Braun came out of his little shop to fill up my tank with 4 star, we called him young Braun, he must have been twenty years older than me, he was called young Braun because his father who also attended the garage who was called old man Braun, young Braun topped up the bike and I paid him, I pulled off and rode across the small court-yard and stopped to pull onto the main road.

As I waited there for a gap in the traffic, an older middle-aged guy was walking on the pavement in front of me.

He had short grey hair. His hairstyle what was commonly called a short back and shine, well in the valley it was, and he looked like a typical retied miner, with a dai cap covering his short grey hair, he also had a large beer belly and wearing an old pair of striped suit trousers for some bizarre reason and finished off with a dark brown home knitted jumper with holes in the elbows.

As he walked in front of me he stared at me all the time he took to walk past me, not taking his eyes of me, I just ignored him and kept watching the traffic and waited for him to pass by.

Once clear of me, he stopped and turned to face me and said ” that bike is too big for you, you should get a smaller bike”, the old guy now had my full attention, I replied ”sorry what did you say”, he replied still staring at me “ that’s to big for you” while he said this, he was pointing at me and moving his finger down to the bike, for some reason to indicate that he was talking about the bike I was sitting on.

As he said his last remark a gap appeared in the traffic and I began to pull off, as I did so I shouted back” that’s funny, your wife said the something about my cock”.

I pulled onto the main road, and I could hear the old guy shouting and swearing at me as I rode away from him.

( Photo 1 ). My gold and black Rickman/Honda 750.

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Two

The next little moment had my heart racing a little.

I was riding into Bridgend town on the Tondu road coming from Aberkenfig village, I was riding my Kawasaki Z1000, I had just passed Angleton village and started to accelerate up the slight slope of a hill onto the dual carriageway, it was late in the evening and nighttime had caste its dark shadow over the land, it had been raining all day with dark grey clouds and heavy down pours, the darkness didn’t make a lot of différance to the quality of daylight, the roads were soaking wet, the rain had eased off a little and just a slight drizzle was coming down from the dark sky.

I had half lifted my visor, I did this because I couldn't see shit, my helmet visor was scratched to hell and back, and the street lighting created a matrix of stars over lapping the visor making it difficult to see thought it, and because of the weather it was misting up all the time, the drizzly rain did not help I needed to wipe the visor around every 30 seconds, it was always like this, I should have really just changed the visor, but of course I didn't, I just put up with it, I used the bob heath visor spray to help to stop the visor misting up, it never seemed to work for me, I also had a rubber visor wiper on one of my fingers on my right hand, the wiper fitted over a gloved finger and acted like a windscreen wiper, this piece of kit did actually work.

Because it had rained so heavily earlier in the day many parts of the roads had some slight flooding.

As I rose up the small rise from the garage at Angleton which was almost opposite the lane that leads up to the village of Pen-y-Fi, I was still accelerating and almost hit the 100 mph mark, OK, on reflection riding this fast in this kind of weather conditions I just described was way on the stupid side and very fool hardy, but when you are young, you don’t give a shit about the consequences, and common-sense and the rules are for other people to follow, after all when you are young you are immortal until your not, even when your friends die at a young age it's put down as a bit of bad luck on their part, then we have a drink to say farewell and carry on as before.

The part of the road I was riding on was part of a dual carriageway and on one side was a steep-ish hill that ran up to Newcastle Hill and on the opposite side of the road was an iron fence with the Bridgend Abattoir down below in the hollow near the river Ogmore.

I felt I was in full control, so I did feel I had any need to slow down.

I came over the bow of the hill and started to ride down the other side of the rise, and then I hit a stream of water that was running across the road.

I had no idea that this stream of water was there, I did not spot it, and I was going to fast to avoid it in any case.

And then my front wheel suddenly started to aquaplane.

In this short moment I had no control of the bike, this large lump of metal decided to slid in a diagonal direction toward the kerb to my left, I no longer had any control of the bike and just hung on.

Luckily I was on a dual carriageway which had two lanes, so I had more room to manoeuvrer, if I was on a single lane road, I would have hit the Kerb and disappeared thought the iron fence and ended up in the abattoir.

This alarming event only lasted for around three seconds and then my front end found the tarmac once again and regained its grip on the road.

I was in control again and throttled off immediately, I had no intention of touching my brakes.

I let the bike slow down on its own, by its own engine stopping, I did this by having a closed throttle, the bike slowly climbed down from the 100 mph mark.

Now dear reader, these three seconds may not seem a very significant amount of time to write about, but it was a bit of a wake-up call for me, it was the kind of shock you get when you see a jump scare in a horror film, my heart was pounding in my chest, I slowed down and stopped by the old Embassy cinema, I did this because my adrenaline was still pumping through my veins and my heart was beating ten times to the dozen in my chest, my hands were shaking, I waited a while and sat in the drizzle, and then for the rest of the journey, I stuck to a more sedate speed.

The reason for the stream of water on the road was because the drains at the edge of the dual carriageway were blocked with mud off the hillside and started to overflow onto the road and a stream of water coming off the hillside ran on to the carriageway.

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Three

There was a group of us riding back from somewhere we had visited up in the Rhondda valley I was riding my Honda CB 550f1, making our way back home, we chose to go over the Bwlch mountain leaving the Rhondda valley and down into the Ogmore valley and then all down hill to Bridgend town.

We had just left the village of Cwm Parc at the base of the mountain and just rode around a very tight bend in the road called Tommy's bend, I have no idea why it acquired this name, there was a hand painted graffiti sign painted with white paint onto some redundant concrete structure declaring to all the passing road uses that you were on Tommy's bend, anyway we were all riding in single file as we left the bend everything was fine and keeping up and staying with the group we started to climb up the steep side of the mountain, PJ with Sharon as passenger was in front of me on his Honda CB550, I was around six foot/two meters behind him, PJ was riding in the middle of the road to avoid the small boulders and rocks on the near side of the road that had rolled down from higher up the mountain, and of course the suicidal sheep, as he rode along PJ rode over one of the cats eyes that are set in the middle of the road, somehow when he rode over the top of the cats eye, he dislodged it and the tyre flicked the small cube metal into the air and turned it into a missile.

PJ`s back wheel must have flicked it out with some force, it rose in the air around 2 foot, and came straight at me, I watched it happen, and I was in no position to avoid it, it came straight at me, it hit the front part of my chrome mudguard creating a massive dent and then bounced up and over my handlebars only just missing my head, it disappeared behind me and bounced off the earth banking and then disappeared down the side of the mountain.

I didn’t stop, and just kept my place in the column of bikes, there was nothing to worry about, no-one was hurt, it could have been a lot different with me take a large hard lump of metal full in the face, but luck was on my side, Just one little moment that could have changed my life for the worst, like I say I was lucky so happy days.

( Photo 2 ) . Tommy's bend, the actual painted notice at Tommy's Bend.

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Four

In the early 1970`s I sold my BSA175 Bantam D14/4 after I upgraded and bought a Yamaha RD 250, from Hayden Rees at Waterton Motors on Market street in Bridgend, this bike shop moved from its humble two-car garage space to a new shop on Ewenny road known to everyone as Pan's or officially Leslie Griffith Motors.

I never kept my older bikes which is a great shame, I sold the Bantam to a guy called Dai Lloyd, (no relation), The surname Lloyd is very common in Wales, not as common as Jones, but still very common, to be honest I didn't like this guy and still don’t, I thought he was a bit of a pick and had an attitude with people, he never called anyone by their first name, only by their surname, I think he thought he was above the average person for some reason, well anyway he bought the BSA to make a quick sale, he was not a biker, he was looking at a fast profit and knew nothing about engines or bikes, I sold the bike to him for the same amount I paid Two Wheel Services for it a few years earlier, so I was happy with the sale, I had used the bike for a while, so I had my use out of it.

A month or two later I was walking over to my Great Auntie Rachel's house around half a mile away (she lived to 101 years old), to be honest she was never nice to me, she would only speak Welsh to me and always called me Mochyn Bach Du (little black pig) for some reason I never knew why, she never laughed when she called me this name, she was around 70 years old in the 1970`s I had another 30 years before she stopped calling me the name.

On my way over to her house I would pass a group of five garages which were isolated on their own in the middle of nowhere, well away from any houses, they were known to everyone as the five garages, yes I know not it's a very imaginative description, but a very descriptive one, these group of garages were old, four of the garages were made up of random corrugated sheets in various states of disrepair, the rusted sheets were a variety of red rust, some dark red and some more of a yellowy rust, none had been painted, the remaining garage was a newer one, built of large mottle concrete slabs with a grey asbestos roof.

The five garages were next to a large paddock that had a huge pink sow roaming around, turning the paddock in to a replica of the Somme battlefield from the first world war, sometimes when we were younger myself and my friends would go to see the little piglets rooting around in the mud, near to the old wooden gate inside the paddock there was an old car, it had flat tiers and no glass in The windows, I remember the make of the car, it was an Oxford Cambridge, it had been there since I can remember and most likely rotted into the round by now.

In one of the rusty garages, Dai Lloyd was doing some work on the BSA I had sold him, so I stopped to take a look.

Dai the dickhead was on his knees working on the bantam, he had stripped down the top half of the engine and the head and barrels were on the dirty floor of the garage sitting in a puddle of rain water, I looked up there were numerous pin holes in the tin roof.

I walked in by the entrance, I could see he was looking down into the engine and tapping it repeatedly with a large screwdriver, I said “ what you up to Dai”, he put the screwdriver down and picked up a torchlight and stated looking down into the engine, he was busy searching for something in the cavity of the engine, he did not answer me nor did he turn to see who was talking to him, and so I spoke again ” what are you looking for Dai”.

He replied without turning, just showing me his back, “ the tappets need tightening, they are rattling, but I cant find them”.

I replied ” it's a bantam? It's a two-stroke Dai, it doesn’t have tappets”.

He still kept his back to me and said “ I was told it`s the tappets by a mechanic, he said I have to check them and he knows what he was talking about”, I smiled and said “ was he laughing when he said it”.

I repeated myself “ its a two stroke, they don’t have tappets”, he answered “ yes they do and what's a two stroke”.

He kept talking and said “ it won't start and its making a ticking sound from the engine”.

I could see this guy was not going to listen to anything I said, he was more of an idiot than I had originally thought.

I was about to leave and let him get on with his fruitless search, then I noticed the cylinder head on the floor, I picked it up and said ” have you changed the spark plug”?.

He answered still with his back to me, which was annoying the crap out of me “yeah I put a new one in”.

I looked at the cylinder head once again and said “ umm the best of luck with that then, and then I said in sarcastic tone, I hope you find the tappets”, and then I left.

This guy was a bona fide idiot of the highest rank, he put the wrong type of spark plug into the cylinder head, it was far to long, and he had managed to batter the top of his piston and put a hole in it, no wonder it would not start.

He ruined a perfectly good engine, I bet he is still looking for the tappets.

It was a little moment that I could not believe how stupid, and arrogant some people can be.

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I have had an afterthought, wouldn't it be a great name for a pop/rock group.

THE RATTLING TAPPETS.

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