Speeding, Armaggedon, hospitals and lost love

Bill is cautioned with speeding on a bicycle yet charges full throttle through town. Working in closed cabs means hospital visits from which he barely escapes unscathed, only to fall victim to lost love in a motorcycle exhaust.

Of speeding bikes and motorbikes

Much of my time was spent in the agricultural contracting side of the business. My weekly wage had risen to £3, but by working overtime often doubled it. However, as I was mostly working up to a seven miles radius from home, I needed transport, and despite father still prophesying doom, bought a Dawes racing bike. This gave me my first serious brush with the law: a motorcycling policeman pulled me over as I hurried through Buckingham, and lectured me for exceeding the speed limit, which I am afraid rather pleased me – but I should have thanked my lucky stars that he wasn’t around a few weeks later.

Having finished a farmer’s ploughing by Saturday lunchtime, I rode to tell Mrs Topham and collect my wages, she remarked that my father was urgently needing a field ploughed, and asked me to wait whilst she phoned the transport manager. Howbeit she turned from the phone with a smile, and said, ‘At least you can have the rest of today off, they can’t get your tractor back before tomorrow.’ Next morning I arrived at the workshop as Mr Topham drove up in his Jaguar, and we walked in together, only to see a mechanic lying beneath the engine of the lorry, and the manager peering in from above. He turned, with a frown, saying, ‘This will be out of commission until at least Wednesday, and I’ve been unable to locate a hire lorry for today, the ploughing will have to wait.’ ‘Nonsense,’ said Mr T, ‘That old Allis Chalmers has fairly worn pads, Billy can drive it back; I’ve driven it on the road many times and there will be little traffic this morning,’ and turning to me, ‘Away you go then, it will only take just over an hour: try to keep on the verge as much as you can.’

I had quite a difficult time keeping to the grass verge because of the many telegraph poles, having to skew well out into the road to avoid many of them – regardless of approaching blind corners. Now and again the first share of the six furrow plough would turn a large sod onto the road as the wheel dropped into a rain gutter, so I had to stop and drag it back into place. I arrived at the outskirts of Buckingham soon after 10.00 am – grass verges now absent, it was full blown clatter on the street. So whether to go at ploughing speed, and only make enough noise to bring out the nearest residents, taking half an hour to go through, or go like the proverbial ‘bat out of hell,’ and take about half that?
I went for it!

As I passed the wide cattle market stretch, the racket dissipated a little, but as I came up towards the Old Gaol, the noise bounced back at me, and I was pretty well deafened. I shot past at about nine miles per hour – which felt like a teeth rattling fifty. As I skewed across the centre of the square, I noticed the Salvation Army Band standing in open mouthed silence – I don’t know when they were able to start up again, for I lost them to view as I turned into the narrow confines of Cannon Street. Anyone in residence along my route through those narrow streets, will surely remember that awful rumble, growing steadily louder as their house shook in unison: then as they ran to doors and windows, instead of at least ‘Armageddon,’ all that trundled past was a rusty track layer and six furrow plough, with a young lad at the controls. Luck was on my side, no policeman appeared, but had they wanted to pursue reports, they could have tracked my progress in much of the road surface, for many months afterwards.

Some time later, driving a little grey Ferguson on rubber tyres I was stopped by a constable ...

The full story in the podcast 'Battles, bicycle, tractors and unrequited love' in a reading by Chris Thomas, from Bill Clark's autobiography, 'Route and Branch', here:
https://archive.org/download/battles-with-hospital/Ch3a-Battles-with-hospital.mp3