My life on bikes: part three - Suzuki GS500E

The GS500E was the first in a long line of Suzukis - the Suzi dynasty. I bought it secondhand from Carnell Motorcycles in Eye and paid way over the odds for it. On the plus side, Carnell said they would restrict it to 33bhp for free (a power limitation imposed on newly qualified riders for two years).

I had just completed my A-levels and had done rather better than expected... as an incentive Dad had promised me £1,000 for every A grade I achieved in my exams. I surprised everybody by getting three A's and blew the winnings within a week on the GS500E. Sam received a similar windfall at the same time and carefully banked his sum. He used it as the capital for the extortionate loan company he operated through University, by far his most reliable customer was his flatmate Amreet.

I picked up the bike on a sunny summer's evening. Dad and I took our bikes for a blast, heading along the flat (and occasionally bumpy) fen roads that followed the course of dykes. I really enjoyed this first ride. Even with its restriction the GS500 had loads more torque than the RS125 making it much easier to ride and also more forgiving. It was a lot heavier than the Aprilia but the riding position was more comfortable.

Suzuki GS500E

Mum's family were in Thorney for an occasion and there was a barbecue in the back garden. I remember my Auntie Janet coming out to see the bike and laughing at it. She said: "Is that it? It's a shopper." Talk about pricking the bubble of pride, especially since I was already sensitive my new bike was a bit dull and sensible (particularly after my Aprilia RS125).

The rest of mum's brothers arrived and made similar mean comments... lawn mower etc. Of course, I shouldn't attach any significance to this and Mum's side of the family all speak like this - I suppose these days it's called banter. It's never designed to truly wound and never oversteps boundaries from which it cannot return.

With a restrictor kit the GS500 could manage around 85mph flat out - slightly slower than the Aprilia but this is due to the extra weight, aerodynamics and the fact the Suzuki was never intended to run at 33bhp whereas the Aprilia was running as the factory had intended.

The first person to ride pillion (legally) on my bike was my girlfriend of the time Sarah, although she spelled it Sara and then got annoyed when people called her Sara. Only three details of this event remain with me: the first was mum saying: "be careful, it's precious cargo" as I left. Secondly, getting into trouble cornering flat-out where the Frank Perkins parkway became the Fletton Parkway and being surprised at how unstable a bike felt at speed, two-up, cornering and braking. I still hadn't quite got my head around the physics of a motorbike. Finally, that I had turned the engine idle adjuster erroneously when I was looking for a choke. I showed Sara's dad my bike and when I started it up it nearly hit the limiter and I had to pretend that was perfectly normal.

One of its first big trips was a run to Heptonstall, near Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, for an Arvon Foundation poetry writing course on which I had enrolled to support my university application to study Creative Writing. It was November but I got quite lucky with the weather and set off in bright sunshine. It could have been a beautiful ride through the Peak District but I chose to take the A1 all the way up to the M62. Of course, I missed the Halifax turn off and nearly ended up in Manchester. Even despite getting lost and stopping for a long lunch, I arrived very early. I had given myself seven hours for a two hour trip.

I hadn't got my top box fitted by this stage, so my possessions for the week were all tied with bungee straps to the pillion seat. I think one of the unnecessary items I hauled all the way to Yorkshire was a chain and lock. I used to be more fastidious about securing my bike, these days I'm more willing to chance it. I remember always riding around with a chain around my neck like a Feldgendarmerie. This was so dangerous, I can't believe I used to do it.

I had more adventures in Heptonstall than the Suzuki, although one of the 'poets' there did write a poem about the bike which he shared with me on the last day. It was an acrostic poem built around the word ARVON - I can only remember this because one of the lines was "Vrooming down to Heptonstall", which - even then - struck me as so clunky I made a mental note to never attempt an acrostic of my own. It was a strange episode because I had barely spoken to this man all week. As an 18-year-old I was a bit alien in the middle-class, middle-aged, wine sipping society of the Arvon Foundation. I suppose he was feeling romantic and inspired in the refined poetic air of the retreat and saw a teenager on a motorbike and imagined himself young. Maybe he even went back to Barnes and made an ill-advised purchase from the local Triumph dealer. Let's hope so.

Rendez-vous at a service station outside Leeds
and the only photos of the bike

Dad proposed meeting me for the journey back to Peterborough so we could ride through the Peak District. I have been looking at a map trying to work out the designated rendezvous but somehow I managed to get completely lost and ended up in Leeds. This was a time before smartphones and it's always hard to keep in touch on motorbikes because you can't hear your phone ringing and to answer it you have to remove helmet, ear plugs, and gloves. Long story short, I finally found Dad at the Ferrybridge motorway services, two hours after we had been due to meet.

We stopped for a Little Chef (Dad's particular weakness at this time) and decided the Peak District would have to wait for another day. It was a few years more before I would ride through the Peaks, but I fell in love with them instantly. On the long blast down the A1 I triggered a speed camera near Nottingham and got a £70 fine and three points on my licence.

At the poetry course I met Sophie, a Conservative, horsey-type with aristocratic pretensions and the most shameless self-promoter I've ever met - with her exaggerations regularly straying to the fantastic. Within minutes of meeting her you learn her grandfather and Laurence (meaning Olivier) regularly dined with the Reagans. Of course I fell for it all. The King's School Peterborough had been awash with the dullest kind of girls - daughters of lawyers, accountants, local businessmen. They were so deeply infused with the deadliest aspects of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism and were destined, by and large, for lives of slow rot which might flower into post-menopausal alcoholism. Sophie was very confused, and she was a liar and a show-off but she wasn't dull.

She lived in an old country cottage in Rutland and I used the Suzuki to visit her. It was a lovely ride down the Welland valley through Harringworth, with its railway viaduct, and Wakerley Woods. It was at the White Swan in Harringworth where Sophie and I finished dead last in the Tuesday night quiz - I took it with sport but her pride was piqued, especially after she insisted on calling our two-man team 'Stronger than MENSA'. Anyway, I always used to ride too fast down this road and would regularly get caught out by agricultural detritus spread across the road by tractors. Once Sophie and the animal aunt, which is a live-in helper who babysits your pets while you're on holiday (yes, I was surprised this was a thing too!) were returning from taking the dogs for a walk in the local quarry. The animal aunt pulled out onto the road without looking just as I arrived. I slammed on the brakes but it wasn't enough and had to career onto the grass verge, somehow I stayed upright. Neither the animal aunt or Sophie had considered the episode particularly remarkable but I was white and shaking.

I made a few modifications to my GS500E over the years... some good, some bad. The good included a top box, the automatic chain oiler and the wind shield. The most egregious was when I replaced the perfectly adequate single front chrome headlamp with an ugly fox-eye streetfighter style light. It was a white plastic and clashed with the rest of the bike. Also the lights were half the strength of the standard lamp and made riding at night very dangerous - as I found out once on a snowy ride back from Northampton. To make matters worse I tried to spray it blue to match the rest of the bike using a colour that looked (on the cap) not dissimilar. Of course, I now know it's better to contrast entirely than attempt to match and arrive just two or three shades too short. It was such a mess I had to scrap the project and fit my old headlamp - which incredibly went back on without a hitch. Or so I thought!

During my bodged mechanics I had loosened a wire from the ignition loom that had once been safely zip tied. Over the months the wire rubbed when I turned and eventually wore through, causing a short circuit and the battery to drain. I had to call the RAC out on several occasions before the fault was diagnosed. Once I broke down approaching the Hardwick roundabout in Kings Lynn and had to be towed all the way home.

This wasn't the biggest mechanical fault the bike suffered. That award almost certainly goes to the engine seizing on the fast lane of the A1(M) on the way back from Brands Hatch. It was a beautiful summer day, the racing had been great and I was following Dad on a Triumph Speed Four he had borrowed. I heard a painful clunk from below and the sound of locked metal being twisted and bent. I pulled the clutch in and fortunately managed to navigate three lanes of traffic to coast to the relative safety of the hard shoulder. It was some time before Dad realised I was missing and even longer before he could turn around and retrace his steps. It was obvious that engine was never going to start again and I had to sit on the bank under a setting sun watching other bikes howling past as I waited for another tow-truck.

This incident could have been the end of the GS500E. Replacing the engine was - perhaps - only just cost effective providing I could find a sympathetic mechanic prepared to do the dirty work. Dad and I sourced an engine from a scary breakers yard in the darkest fens. The engine number had been sanded away and the new engine was silver, and not black. One of Richard Marson's old mechanics was then operating from his garage in Turves and he agreed to remove the old and fit the new. The operation was a success and my Suzuki had risen from the ashes.

I kept the motorbike with me in Norwich throughout my time at University. It was really useful, particularly when I was living off campus. I could also use it to travel back and forth from Norwich to Peterborough rather than taking the X94 bus which took about two-and-a-half hours. Once I had to sit next to a guy in his early 20s who had just been released from prison in Norwich that morning and was on his way home to Lynn. He was already on his third beer and was in the mood for a big night out to celebrate his release. At that moment he was chirpy and peaceful but every so often he betrayed a flicker of madness and I guessed he might be back inside before the night was out. I remember one journey back to Norwich on Bonfire Night. I had been in Thorney to watch the MotoGP season finale at Valencia. It was a cloudless night and all along the way I watched fireworks fizzing, bursting and showering.

One of the problems I had was my hands getting cold - I had always suffered with poor circulation but the longer journeys to Norwich made the pain unbearable at times. I used to make frequent stops on the A47 to hold the exhaust while my hands warmed up... a little too quickly sometimes and I branded a few pairs of leather gloves in this way. I experimented with mittens, silk liners and once even wore several pairs of the plastic diesel gloves from a petrol station but to no avail. I once attached bar muffs and although they offered some succour they never fitted properly and just pulled slightly at the front levers so my brake light was permanently glowing. I've no idea why I didn't fit heated grips, nowadays I can't live without them and they are the only thing that works.

I remember once having to pick Sam up from Peterborough station. He had just got back from New Zealand where he'd be on a 'medical placement' - which is the  Maori word for skiing and drinking. Incredibly, nobody come to meet him from the airport after the 11,500 mile flight. Even worse, nobody had come to meet him from Peterborough station. I stepped up and picked him up on the GS500E with one bag in the top box and his cricket bag full of dirty laundry strapped with bungee hooks to the back. We were completely over the recommended weight limit and all the weight was on the back wheel. It was the vaguest and most wallowing ride I've ever had. I had invented a new type of anti-dive forks. We got home without incident.

Despite six years of loyal service and mechanical abuse the Suzuki met a sad end. I got a job working for Motor Cycle News (MCN) and suddenly had access to all of the latest bikes, what's more, Emap would pick up the petrol tab. Slowly the Suzuki retreated into the shadows as it shared garage space with Ducati Monster S4Rs and BMW R1200LTs. Eventually I decided to sell Suzi. It wasn't a great idea because insurance was so cheap, it was mechanically sound and would have been really useful in a couple of years time when I was living in London and working at the Press Association. I sold it to an old chap who worked in Perkins and wanted a reliable commuter. He gave me £900 and wobbled off down the road with his wife following in the car. I wasn't sorry to see it go, I'm ashamed to say. I had a BMW F800S in the garage.

Occasionally I saw the Suzuki around Peterborough. I guessed the new owner lived in Eye so we passed one another. Of course, he couldn't recognise me... I had a different bike every week. Under my dark visor I always felt slightly guilty... like bumping into an ex-girlfriend on the street when you're with a younger, more attractive model. The six years with the Suzuki had been an important time in my life. I went from leaving school to unemployment (which I called a gap year), through my University years, and then finally into my first serious job. It's funny that in all the time I owned this bike the only tour I ever made was to Heptonstall. I couldn't even find a photo of me with the bike and I believe there exist only two photos of the bike (taken on the return from Heptonstall at the Motorway services where I met Dad).

In brief, the Suzuki was a true work-horse and served me very well.

My life on bikes: part two - Aprilia RS125

Aprilia RS125

By the time I bought the Aprilia RS125 I was already hooked on bikes...

The sensible thing would have been to pass my driving test and buy a Ford Fiesta but I was determined not to drive. Instead I did the least sensible thing and bought a peaky, precious Italian sports bike. It was a Valentino Rossi replica - perhaps one of the only bike racers who needs no introduction. At this time he wasn't the multiple World Champion but a cocky, clowning and
unbeatable teenager.

I bought the RS125 from a strange chap in Leicester. He kept birds of prey and had previously owned an RS50... which he promptly traded in for an RS125... which he then promptly sold to me. When I collected the bike the engine still wasn't run-in and had to be kept below 7,000rpm - easier said than done on a high-revving two-stroke with a power-band that began somewhere approaching 10,000rpm.

Another awful pose in the back garden

The pleasure of riding a cramped Aprilia from Leicester to Peterborough on a cold, grey day belonged to Dad. A week earlier I had crashed a Honda C90 and one wrist was in plaster and the other was in a support bandage. Mum drove the car back and I watched my new bike from the rear window, excited and just a little desperate of Dad's excessive revving.

It was bitter-sweet - on one hand I had the bike of my teenage dreams, on the other I hand both my hands were broken. I'm not certain Mum thought buying another bike was a very good idea and I suspect Dad was an important advocate in the backroom negotiations. He certainly lent me the considerable sum required to buy the bike, insurance and new leathers. I would have to work Sunday and Monday nights at Sainsbury's to pay off the loan, leaving very little for Friday night beers. I was supposed to save money by giving up smoking, a habit I'd acquired a year earlier. Giving up smoking and a life of asceticism proved harder than I'd expected. All the more so because it was around this time Lucas Gardiner introduced me to fruit machines, which proved a very expensive distraction from smoking.

The torture of owning an Aprilia RS125 and not being able to ride it proved too great. One day when everybody was out I wheeled it out of the garage and down the road. Despite a plaster cast on my right wrist I took if for a spin. It was very painful and unquestionably dangerous. Operating the throttle was clumsy and I had no chance of grabbing the front brake in an emergency. When I got back home I jumped off the bike and pushed it back down the close. Next door neighbour Chris was loading his car and very interested in my new bike - he once owned a Yamaha F51E and had lots of dull stories to share.

A week later I went to hospital to have my cast cut off. The right wrist had healed well but the X-ray showed the hairline fracture on my left wrist was more serious than they had initially thought. The doctor wanted to put this in plaster and I had to beg him to reconsider. He wasn't happy and warned I might get arthritis later in life. I must have bolted from the hospital. Later in life was the distant future, by then we'd probably all have hover cars and robot servants. There was no way I could wait another two weeks to ride.

It was a decision I've regretted ever since. I first noticed the wrist pain a few years later when I was riding on cold days. It was nothing serious but it reminded me of the day I refused the plaster cast. Insidiously it deteriorated. Last year when I was in Peru a taxi driver let go of my suitcase as I was unloading it from his car, my wrist twisted under the weight and it was agony. I waited a month or two but it was still troubling me so I went for a scan. The x-ray revealed the old trauma and showed where the bone had calcified as it healed like a small talon on a cockerel's heel. It was rubbing against the bone and becoming inflamed. I wish I could say those two extra November weeks spent on an RS125 had been worthwhile.

I had planted all my teenage hopes and dreams in the RS125 - that they failed to flower, let alone bear fruit was an important life lesson. I imagined that owning this bike would make everything better - but of course it didn't, because it's just a bike. The same is true of any object you covet.

I thought my Aprilia would grant admittance into the biking world. I thought that it would be accepted, even admired, by other bikers. Or that you only needed to ride up and park and you would be surrounded by a group of fellows, ready to offer instant friendship and understanding. This isn't how life works.

Once on a relatively sunny day early in the year I rode out to Carnell - the motorcycle dealership in Eye. In the summer it used to host hundreds of bikers, who would admire each other's bikes, smoke, drink tea and eat bacon butties. On the day I arrived the car park was empty except three young men on 600cc sports bikes. I parked on the other side of the car park and approached them nervously. I had barely taken my helmet off and said hello when one of them told me my bike had just fallen off its side stand. I was mortified but inexplicably disguised it and instead feigned indifference - more: "Not again!" We strolled over and I could barely bring myself to inspect the damage. Luckily it wasn't too bad, just a cracked indicator and a few slight scuffs. We made awkward conversation for a few more minutes. They were heading off on a 'blast' and didn't invite me along. I rode home to polish the scratches out my bike.

Of course, I did have one biking buddy at this time - my Dad. Sadly, for the company and the time we spent together I was completely ungrateful and unappreciative but now I've come to realise that it doesn't really matter. You are confused about everything at 17 so this is just one more thing to add to a long list. When the BMF show came to Peterborough I stubbornly insisted that I should go without him - lying to him, and myself, that I was going to hang around with my bike instructor Martin (a grim, ex-marine who rode a Kawasaki Zephyr and undoubtedly saw me for exactly what I was). Instead I spent a lonely day on my own trying to make my £7.30 stretch as far as possible and pretending to enjoy the 'Moped Mayhem' while sucking on a Marlboro Light because I'd failed to quit.

From my current perspective I now appreciate our time together - sometimes fixing cracked expansion boxes, replacing punctured tyres, or sat on a muddy bank somewhere in the Midlands watching hours of windswept racing with only a mug of coffee and a cavernous picnic bag filled with Minstrels, Jaffa Cakes, Pringles, Choco Leibniz and cement dry, single-ingredient sandwiches that no tomato could ever touch. We certainly ventured further afield now my engine capacity had more than doubled and the Aprilia would have visited Donington, Cadwell, and Mallory Park.

Biking buddies - the gang nobody wanted to join

The second petrol incident occurred on the Aprilia somewhere the other side of Bourne. Dad and I left the RS125 by the roadside and found the nearest petrol station. As with the first petrol incident (which happened on the Derbi Senda somewhere in rural Lincolnshire) he had very little sense-of-humour about it all. It didn't matter that his bike had a 250 mile range and a fuel gauge... I had an amber warning light and a five mile safety window.

I refused to ride the RS125 on L-plates because I wanted to be taken seriously. I was very lucky the police never stopped me because there's no way I could have kept my cool under interrogation. The bike was de-restricted and was probably making around 27-30bhp. It was a lot of power for such a light bike and cruising at 80mph was easy. Magazines would report a top speed of close to 100mph but this seems unlikely looking back. That said, I did once see 100mph on the speedometer along the Castor bypass.

In theory I was supposed to pass my bike test on the RS125 but I had little interest in learning. I was getting lessons from Cam Rider in Eye, under the watch of Martin in his tassled-leather trousers. I was cocky and over-confident and probably a complete pain in the arse. For his part, he made unscheduled stops at the bike accessories dealer next door to Hein-Gericke where a sales girl he fancied was working called Xena - like the warrior princess. I was happy just to be part of the circle and didn't mind so much that my class time was being swallowed by idle chit-chat. Looking back I think they were all laughing at me because I was nervous, over-compensating and desperate to fit-in. I would say how I was thinking of going racing in the Honda Hornet Cup and other such fantasies.

Performing the U-turn on my Aprilia was a real challenge because of its steering lock. It was possible but required a lot of practice and no margin for error. When I came to take my test I completed the U-turn successfully but locked the rear-wheel on the emergency stop. The bike was so light and the brakes were so good that I probably stopped from 30mph in half the distance most of the CG125s could manage.

I was devastated to fail but was unaccustomed to success at this time (it was only at University that I would learn how much effort goes into success). I'm certain I went into my first bike test resigned to failing and it was certainly no surprise when the examiner confirmed the news. It was no surprise to Martin either, who was waiting at the test centre. He had little consolation.

I had taken the morning off school to take my test and rode home crestfallen (rather than to school). Mum was in the kitchen and the news of failure did not go down well. She pulled her: "Tell me the truth... now I know you're joking" trick. Once she'd accepted my failure she said: "Even thick Anthony Pacey in the village passed his test." For once I was too disappointed in myself to argue, although I did marvel at her imagination - Anthony Pacey was a boy we went to primary school with and somebody I had not seen or spoken to since leaving... that his name should come to me at the dark moment made it stick to this day and it has acquired a curious aftershock.

I took the failure of my bike test very badly and no longer wanted to ride my bike. Instead I saw it as a financial burden that was forcing me to suffer the indignity of working on a checkout in Sainsbury's for minimum wage. A punctured tyre and several other unexpected repair bills had only deepened my levels of debt. In the end I decided to sell the bike. It sold in no time at all and instead of an Aprilia RS125 I had a bedroom drawer filled with £20 notes. I got a decent price and was just about able to pay off my debt to Dad... but not quite. I remember being nearly in tears as I watched this middle-aged stranger ride away on my bike.

I was back on the Derbi Senda once again but I was determined to pass my test and buy a 'proper' bike. It hadn't been a particularly happy time with the Aprilia, but then it wasn't a happy time for me in life - so it's a bit unfair to expect the bike to medicate. One of the happiest moments I had was picking up my girlfriend of the time and taking her to school on her birthday. I was not supposed to carry a pillion so I had to smuggle a second helmet out of the house in the morning. I'm very surprised Mette's mother allowed her daughter to go on a bike, particularly considering I had crashed only months earlier. Perhaps in those brief moments - and we're talking a journey of only five minutes - I was fulfilling the dreams I had imagined when I bought the RS125.

Like the Derbi Senda, the RS125 is now almost certainly with Jesus.

My life on bikes: part one - Derbi Senda 50

Derbi Senda 50

I'd never really thought about owning a motorcycle before I owned a motorcycle. In fact, I'd never really thought much about motorcycles. So it was a bit of a surprise to get a motorcycle for my 16th birthday.

In the summer between my GSCEs and A-levels I was working in Bristol at the newspaper offices. I think I was a bit depressed so perhaps Dad thought buying a bike might cheer me up - either that or he was secretly hankering after a bike himself. We saw some scooters in Fowlers of Bristol but I wasn't feeling very inspired. 

Later we visited Richard Marson Motorcycles in Whittlesey, he specialised in the weird and wonderful and was something of a trailblazer (a bit ahead of his time perhaps). He was flogging a few obscure Iberian brands - Reiju and Derbi. I wanted the Derbi Senda from the moment I saw it. It looked like a much bigger bike and not at all the moped it really was. What's more - it could be quickly de-restricted by hack-sawing a washer which strangled the exhaust. 

The Senda was my first bike, 'kick-starting' my life-long love of biking and, at times, even my livelihood. Unsurprisingly I've got a soft spot for the Derbi.

Me posing on the Derbi Senda in the back garden

Derbi is a Spanish bike maker specialising in stylish, small-capacity motorcycles.  Until Derbi began exporting to the UK the choice was limited. Top of the pile was Kawasaki's AR50, already long-in-the-tooth and with outdated styling. I completed my compulsory basic training (CBT) on an AR50, so this was the first clutch motorcycle I rode. 

Shortly after buying my Senda the Derbi brand launched a marketing drive and went racing in the 125 GPs with Japanese rider Youichi Ui. He bagged a podium in his opening season, and (as well as having the best name in the paddock) narrowly missed winning the championship two years on the trot - only thwarted by Italians Manuel Poggiali and Roberto Locatelli. I might have enjoyed a glimmer of reflected glory.

Of course the Senda was no race replica but had convincing motocross styling, nobbly tyres, liquid-cooling, front and rear disc brakes, meaty front suspension and race graphics.

The 50cc two-stroke engine needed some brutal revving. On straight roads it would build up to 50mph. I used to spend more time staring at the digital speedo than the road, hypnotised as it danced between 80-81-80-81-82-81. I would contort my body into ridiculously positions in an attempt to become more aerodynamic. The speedo was Spanish and wouldn't show miles. I once saw 90kmh when I struck lucky with a howling easterly gale at my back on the A47. Usually I was about 5mph slower than the lorries and X94 bus, leading to some hairy moments. 

I was more convinced in the off-road potential of the Senda than its performance could deliver. Over confidence and a lack of talent led to a few tumbles. My worst spill was in the brick pits in Eye, I flew down the slope of the quarry so I could keep the momentum up the opposite gradient. I had overcooked it and the bike went flying and landed in a bush with its engine running and rear wheel spinning. I landed on my arm and thought it was broken at first. At this time other kids used to take dirt-bikes down the Eye pits (now a nature reserve (maybe it was back then too!)) and I was a bit lucky they didn't steal it. I think mine was the only bike in the pits with a number-plate, MOT and insurance.

On another occasion I crashed with Sam on the back when I was riding too fast on the field path by the windmill. I didn't fully understand the delicate physics of a motorcycle and pulled the front brake mid-corner... of course the bike instantly washed out from underneath us. I was thrown clear but Sam’s left leg caught on the footrest and he received a bruise.

The Senda had a seven litre tank and it was quite thirsty with a range of just over 70 miles. Once I rode to the Cadwell Park round of British Superbikes. The 120 mile round trip was soured when I ran out of petrol just the other side of Crowland. Dad was unsympathetic and has never really forgiven me. Unfortunately my reputation as ‘the sort of person who runs out of petrol’ was reinforced a year later in a repeat incident.

I still remember riding the Senda through Peterborough with my friend Richard Allen on the back. The bike had no pillion footpegs so his legs dangled at the side, worse than that I only had one helmet and L-plates. It was the final day of term before the Christmas holidays and we were all in high-spirits. I was lucky I wasn't stopped by the police and Richard was lucky I didn't crash. Suffice to say I was extremely foolish.

The bike was surprisingly reliable for a high-revving Spanish two-stroke. I used to fill it with leaded petrol and occasionally topped up the oil, but aside from this it needed little maintenance. Once the clutch plates seized solid after I spent a morning on the back-roads behind the golf course practising wheelies. 

The Senda didn't live in the garage but in the shed around the back of the house - at this time Dad still had his Lotus (although this would soon make way for a BMW F650). I quickly churned the grass leading to the shed into a quagmire. I also used to help myself freely to the petrol cans intended for the lawnmower. A blind eye must have been turned to this petty thievery.

The Senda even competed in a moped endurance race at Cadwell Park and crested (if not soared over) the famous Mountain. It was a strange event and I took it much more seriously than was intended. I started the first session, which even had a Le Mans style running start (of which I think I made a complete hash). I crashed at the hairpin four or five laps in, cornering too quickly on a damp, cold track with knobbly tyres. I bent the front brake lever but we managed to bend it back into shape. The rest of the team included Eric Rayner, Chris Coakley and Peter Hurford. I can still remember how excited I was sticking the race number to the bike and taping up the headlight and indicators.

Aside from racing, I commuted to school everyday on the Senda and also to Sainsbury's - where I was working on the checkouts. Once, when the Senda was in for service, the dealer Richard Marson kindly loaned me a Honda C90 which I promptly crashed on a roundabout in Breton. I broke both my wrists and skinned my knees. Mette, my girlfriend at the time was following in her dad’s Vauxhall estate, loaded with two German exchange students. She was panicking so much she reversed into the stricken C90 and could barely drive with shaking. I remember the German girls saying: “You must relax Mette, it hurts Tom when you drive like this.” The poor C90 spent a lonely night by a roundabout on an industrial estate. Miraculously it was still there in the morning when the dealer went to recover it in a van.

In Casualty I was still high on adrenaline and rather enjoying the wounded soldier act with three girls fussing over me… but it was short-lived. The onset of pain coincided precisely with mum marching through the automatic doors of A&E. Mette and the Germans got such a frosty glare they soon scarpered and I was left to the thumbscrews… a minute or two later I was vomiting in the disabled toilets in reception. 

When my bones finally healed and I returned to two-wheels it was on an Aprilia RS125, but my Derbi days weren’t over just yet. A year later I sold the financially crippling Aprilia. In my absence Sam had been riding the Senda for a few months - mostly to visit his girlfriend Felicity Croft - but once he had passed his driving test the Senda didn't get a look in. I was back in the Senda's saddle for a few months until I bought a Suzuki GS500E.

We eventually sold the Senda for about £1,000 to a teenager in Eye. I rode it to his house for the final time and his eyes were alight when I arrived. It had been a great bike; crashed, thrashed and in no way trashed when I finally handed over the keys. I doubt the little 50cc engine survived very much longer.

Its biggest flaw? The bike was prone to carb-icing. It proved a difficult condition to diagnose. On days with a temperature of around five degrees the bike would lose power after six or seven miles and eventually stall. It could not be started again for 15 minutes, no matter how hard I kicked. After this it started fine and could be ridden. It was very frustrating when you were already running late for school. I used to smoke by the roadside, stamping my feet to keep warm and waving on passing Samaritans.

The Derbi had given me my first taste of freedom. I remember how excited I was when I looked at a map and thought 'I could go anywhere I want... provided it's not a motorway'. Of course, I never did go very far because 50cc and 50mph (flat-out) is hard work and progress is slow. 

Dreaming of bigger things at the NEC Bike Show