The Irish Tales

The end of the road.
　
There were 10 or 12 of us; I can’t remember clearly now, after this time.
But, we were all riding race-prepped bikes and pumped full of adrenaline on leaving Assen.
And we needed to get to the Hook by 7.30pm.
Why ? Because England were playing Germany in a qualifier for the European Championship and most of us wanted to watch it before we boarded the ferry home.

And so began the most insane ride I’ve ever been on.
Once on the ...

The Long Road Back, to Assen. (Part three)


Without a shadow of a doubt, someone was watching over The Crow and I that weekend.
During the most intensive 48 hours I can remember, we both enjoyed moments of extreme peril, only to escape with a single, improbable bound.
Deux ex machina ? You’d think so, were this a fictional story.
Read on and see what you think, my anonymous friends.

Let’s start with the weather : both days, the ride to and from ...

Second Life (23)
The long road back, to Assen. (Part Two)
　
Peering through the fog of the years, some things, some people, some events, are will o’ the wisps, chimeras; unreal but possible, cloudy at the centre, vague at the edges. I grope for a hold on them, but they slip through my fingers like un-earned money.
Others are pin-sharp and succulent and no sooner called to memory than they appear, as if it were only yesterday.
My father, my mother, my first lover…. ...

Second Life (22)
The long road back, to Assen.
　
The neurologist had the last laugh. I was discharged from Charing Cross hospital, (which is nowhere near Charing Cross) one sunny day in September and walking to the main road to hail a cab nearly finished me.
I just couldn’t walk in a straight line and fell over twice, as my battered inner ear got it’s left, right, up and down all in a dither.
Added to this, all sounds were distorted and booming and when people ...

Second Life (21) Part deux.
　
Midsummer, 1967, on the drive of my father’s house at Radcliffe. I am sitting on a battered old Tiger Cub, the engine ticking over bumpily,matching the rhythm of my heart.
I am 14 years old.
My father says :"This is the throttle. Twist it and you go faster This is the clutch : let it out and you move forward, pull it in and you lose power. And this is the- "
Too late. Always impetuous, I drop the clutch and twist the throttle. ...