Back Street Heroes – October 2018

The summer of ’18’s been a good one, I think. Yeah, so May was a little damp, and the beginning of June was just ridiculously wet (five or six of us frantically trying to sweep the water out of the Ogri clubhouse the night before the Rat Show!), but from that weekend onwards it was bike-riding heaven, wasn’t it? I know that some people tired of the incessant baking heat, but for me it could’ve gone on for another couple of months at least. It’s been far too long since it’s been so hot in the UK that you aren’t able to do your jacket up properly, far too long since it’s been so hot that it was cooler to ride with your visor down than up, far too long since it’s been so hot that you had to be a little careful where you put your side-stand down for fear of it sinking into the tarmac. I love the heat, me, but that’s probably because as a non-driver I’ve done far more than me fair share of freezing winter riding and, trust me on this if you’ve been lucky enough not to have experienced any of the following, walking into your new girlfriend’s mum’s house for the first time with your top lip encrusted in a deep layer of frozen snot, or having to ride the six miles from the Chesterfield junction of the M1 to the first petrol station in first gear and then balance on one leg, leaning against the wall, with your left foot held up under the hand-dryer cos it’s got so cold that you can’t operate the gear-change with it, gets really old really quickly.

The other reason I like the heat is probably because, having spent some of my formative years in the scorching heat of the Middle East, I’m always slightly cold no matter what the weather here in Blighty. I remember very clearly getting off the ’plane at Heathrow in the summer of ’76, when the rest of the country was melting in the heatwave, at the age of just nine years old, wearing a big coat, and saying to my mum “Muuuummm, I don’t like this, it’s cold here, can we go home?”