The Irish Tales

Second Life (21)
　
　
　
　
　
August 8th, 2000. Donington Park racetrack. Conditions : Sunny and warm. YEEEEE HAH !!
　
My head is as far under the bubble screen as possible, the throttle is wide open and I drift over to the left of the start/finish straight, aiming for the pit exit to give me the fastest line into the right-handed Redgate corner. The engine screams on the rev limiter as I head straight for the turn-in, then I’m hard on the brakes, down two gears, waiting for the right moment to lift off the brakes and throw it over on it’s side.
There – brakes off, bike over, knee scraping the tarmac, head bent to the right, looking straight at…the angry eyes of an irritable Irish nurse."Yer need to have a shave, ya daft gobshite. Yer wife’s here….."

Yes, I’m very sorry, but it’s time to talk about motorbikes.

I’d woken up in the famous Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, after a massive prang at Donny. Queen’s was famous at this time mostly for killing its patients by injecting the wrong drugs into the wrong part of the wrong person’s body.
I was a little luckier. Because I was brought in holding my elbow, they suspected it was broken. By the time they realised it was only a graze, they’d cut off my leathers, completely ruining them and somehow missing the matted blood and bone at the back of my skull.
By the time it dawned on them that I had a serious head injury and should on no account be given any opiate-based painkiller, I was bang full of dia-morphine.
Yum, yum.
No wonder I wasn’t that concerned about shaving or bathing. Or my wife for that matter.
I had no idea why I was in this appalling prison when I should be in a diner on the A1, swapping war stories of the day with my friend and accomplice, Nigel "The Crow" Crowe, founder of the 750 Recording Studio, best sound engineer in London or Sydney, Aprilia-lover and the man who unthinkingly stuck his hand into my battered helmet, only to find blood and gray matter smeared all over the inside.
(He screamed like a girl, or so I’m told.)
My last memory is of tipping the bike in to the corner. Apparently, I then had a massive highside, which probably needs some explanation for those of you who have no real interest in riding motorbikes as fast as insanely possible.
The tarmac of a racetrack is the stickiest surface you will ever find, much stickier than any highway in the country.
This allows the tyres on a bike – or a racing car – to grip fiercely at high speeds, which are the speeds one wishes for when racing.
At the edges of such a racetrack, you may notice a white line or kerb.
This is paint and is slippier than Lord Mandelson at a political rally.
Riders of bikes are not supposed to place their tyres on this white line, especially the rear tyre which provides all the drive.
I made a typical novice’s error and touched the white line with my rear tyre.
It immediately lost all grip and spun viciously, then slid back toward the unforgiving tarmac.
Once there, it gripped like a bitch on heat, which snapped the bike upright immediately, throwing the rider, (your humble scribe) up into the air and over the "high" side of the bike.
Now.
This can sometimes be hilariously funny and extremely exciting.
No, honestly, it can. If you survive it.
At other times, it can be horribly unpleasant and rather damaging to the soft tissue which makes up most of the human body, which is the only one I have. Allegedly.
So there I was, doped up with morphine, smelling pretty ripe, un-shaven and wondering where my birthday cards were – it was August 10th by then.

Dear old Kate. If the nurses disliked me, they hated her. In that pragmatic way she has, she knew instantly that somehow, I had to be moved down to a London hospital, now that my life was not in danger.
It wasn’t easy, it was full of red tape, she had to personally hire a private ambulance and arrange for a neurologist to receive me at whatever hospital could take me.
This, they did not like. Not one little bit. Private patients then were spat upon in the NHS and they made no secret of their views to her.
To the extent that she was told that if she wanted a calming smoke, she had to leave the ward, take the lift 15 floors to the ground, exit the hospital and stand on the main road.
The day the ambulance arrived to take me to London, she discovered there was a smoking room, dead opposite my room, a mere two yards away.
God bless political correctness.
As I was loaded into the ambulance, a certain degree of sentience returned and I mulled over what Kate had told me as we rolled down the M1.
She was driving on ahead and would meet me at Charing Cross hospital later.
I reflected first on how lucky I was, then on how soon I could get back on a bike and then on how I would dine out on this story and then I fell asleep.
I was rudely awakened some time later by the driver.
"’ere mate. This Charing Cross place. It aint at Charing Cross, is it ?"
I tried to focus. "No. It’s on the Fulham Palace road, near Hammersmith."
He nodded sagely.
"Ah, well. This is London, anyhoo.Where d’you wanna go ?"
　
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To be continued…………