Uneasy Rider

It seemed like a good idea at the time, as do most ideas that involve potential death, possible maiming and the likelihood of a severe telling off from your parents.
It was 1977, the queen had been on the throne for twenty five years, the streets were festooned with red, white and blue, the Sex Pistols were gobbing on audiences worldwide and we were rebels who felt a need, a need for speed, a need that had to be sated.

We may not have been able to lay our hands on a Porsche or a Ferrari but we had the next best thing, the slightly less advanced skateboard. Having just taken off as a craze the first time round we all had them mainly because ‘Skateboard!’ magazine often had pictures of semi-naked young ladies adorning their pages in adverts so actually owning a skateboard lent some legitimacy to purchasing the magazines if you could claim you were drooling over a nice pair of -er- Kryptonics. Unfortunately due to a certain degree of parental tightness, the boards we owned were little more than lumps of plywood with what appeared to be roller skate wheels screwed to the base. However, a minor detail like that was not going to stop us. Whose idea it was to have a race down the steepest hill in the district is lost in the mists of time. Suffice it to say that with hindsight we really should have tied them to the nearest lamppost and gone and done something more boring instead. Especially Dave and I who had a bitter experience of that same hill from six months earlier when we discovered why a Raleigh Chopper was so named after the brakes failed whilst we were riding down it two to the bike. Dave was still walking like a junior version of John Wayne. However, we all agreed it was a really good idea and that afternoon after school went and fetched our boards all apart from Dave’s older brother, Alex, who decided to tackle the slope on a tricycle belonging to his four year old sister. In later life he would show equal disdain for life and limb by leaping off bridges attached to a length of glorified knicker elastic in the name of sport.

Sitting on the skateboards toboggan style we prepared to race. One of Alex’s friends, lacking transportation or perhaps being infinitely more sensible than the rest of us counted us down and then we were off. This is where, as is usual in most stories of my childhood it all started to go just a little bit pear-shaped. Being as this was the mid 70s there was not a lot of traffic around. In fact the hill was traffic free but in our youthful enthusiasm we had forgotten two vital things. Firstly, this was a very steep hill and at the bottom was a low but very solid garden wall. Secondly and more importantly about halfway down was a crossroads which in the late afternoon could get fairly busy. No prizes for guessing just when we decided to tackle the “slope of certain death”. Let’s just say it was not in the morning. Most of us became acquainted with the fact that there might be a minor flaw in our great race plan when several large metal boxes on wheels, commonly known as cars appeared in our path. Unable to stop we shot between a Morris Minor and a Ford Granada with an Eldritch wail of “Ooooooooooooo shhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttt!” Surprisingly there was not a multi-car pileup, not even when Alex hurtled past some way behind us. I’m sure that back then a screaming eleven year old on a very small red tricycle was not a normal thing to be seeing barrelling past the front of your car. It is not exactly common now.

Now came the realisation that having escaped death once we were staring it in the face once again in the guise of the wall that had now taken on ‘Great Wall of China’ proportions despite only being about eighteen inches high, on the opposite side of the lower T-junction. Four pairs of trainers went down in unison and the air was filled with the smell of scorching rubber and several screams of “ARGH!” as we desperately tried to escape our fate of becoming one with the stonework at high speed. By some miracle those of us on skateboards survived, the worst of our injuries being a few cuts and bruises, some very ruined trainers and a couple of rather bent sets of wheels where we hit the kerb.

It was then we heard it, a long drawn out “AAAAAAIIIIIEEEEEE!” and turned to see Alex hurtling towards us, the tricycle having picked up speed on the steepest section of the hill. Unlike the rest of us, Alex could not put his feet down to act as brakes. Alex you see was still wearing his brand new school shoes that his mother had informed him on pain of death he was to look after. No kicking footballs or climbing walls or trees in them or the punishments would be dire. Believe me, you did not get on the wrong side of his mother who was a fearsome woman at the best of times.

The rest of us, being the brave, concerned mates we were picked ourselves up and stood aside as with a combined crunch and clang the tricycle hit the kerb and with a wail Alex flew over the handlebars to land face down and winded amongst a patch of plants. If we had been judging him on artistic merit and technical impression his short flight would surely have earned him straight tens but pausing only to peel him out of the flattened Delphiniums before the house owner spotted the bunch of kids loitering in his garden having apparently just chucked one of their mates into his prize blooms we ran leaving only the battered tricycle as a testament to our misadventures.

Many years later at a chance meeting of old friends the subject of who had been the winner that day cropped up and the universal answer was “Dunno mate, I was too busy crapping myself to notice a minor detail like that!”