Is it Really a Triumph?

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?