It's
1974 and my Triumph Bonneville's let me down again. A
plug's oiling up and I feel a top end rebuild coming on. It'll make a
change from sorting the electrics, now a weekly exercise: ride out
Saturday, spend Sunday working on it so you can ride to work Monday,
that's what owning a British bike is all about. A few of my
mates on the never-never have got new Tridents, but not for long, in
the blink of an eye they're riding Honda fours and Z900s. Soon, I'm on a
Yamaha, then a Kawasaki, then another. Then it's the 1980s and I'm
riding a BMW, and then another, and another. Time goes I don't know
where and I'm looking at an advertisement in a magazine. A new blue and
white Triumph Bonneville SE is standing in the sunshine in front of a
blue and white building, and I think, 'Is it really a Triumph?' and I
go to a Triumph dealer and stare at one and then ride one. And the
salesman smiles and we drink coffee and I tell him it's what my old
Bonneville should have been like, when I was seventeen, and he smiles
despite having heard it all before and I smile and I take one home
and ride it on sunny days and polish it, and stare at it.
And
then something happens. My moustache has grown up my nose and my
sideburns into my ears. When I'm standing next to the pool on the
Saga Sapphire and I look down, I can't see my feet let alone my
Speedos. Women don't see me any more, not even to snigger, and the
young girl on the check-out at Tescos calls me dear. Inevitably, I
buy a cruiser, but not a Harley, I buy a Triumph Rocket 3 Touring, a monster
that makes people take notice. We cruise the sea front, my Rocket and
me, I'm a rebel with road tax, swigging Gaviscon straight from the
bottle. And then it's all over.
My
Rocket has to go. I'm riding a B road when the rear end seizes up,
locking the rear wheel and ditching me in the verge. Despite the bike
being three years old Triumph supply the dealer with new parts FOC;
I'm grateful, the final drive alone is over a grand. Loss of confidence in the
Rocket takes me back to BMW and the Triumph salesman
consults his price guide and offers me a trade in against a used BMW
in the showroom. When I go to a BMW dealer he consults the guide and
offers me £500 more for the Rocket against a used BMW identical in
every way to the one at the Triumph dealer, but priced £1000 lower.
I feel I'm being cheated, not financially, I stopped worrying about
money at the point I became closer to the end than the beginning, but
cheated out of something far more precious.
And
then I'm in my garage staring at my beautiful Bonneville SE, now
dwarfed by a BMW. She could sneak up from behind and try to
strangle me and I wouldn't get rid, such is my affection for my
seventeen-year-old self. But when I look at her tank badge and follow the line that stretches from the bottom of the R near the start to the H at the end, I wonder, is it really a triumph?
