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Leader Magazine
SUMMER 1964.
A ROD IS A MOCKER
by J/SGT. A. BURNETT
As an ardent believer in keeping my feet planted firmly on solid Terra Firma, I have always been quite astonished at the number of people risking life and limb by tearing around as fast as they can on that most catastrophic machine, the motor cycle, which is after all just a lump of crazy twisted metal supported by two circular rubber rings filled with ordinary air. Furthermore, the amount of red tape and official bullying a prospective "ton-upper" is subjected to before buying and riding a motor cycle is quite staggering. Here are just a few of the many forms of arduous pleasure a potential motor cyclist has to pass through.
In order to own a motor cycle, an individual has first to negotiate an intricate system of forms, with various high-sounding names, before he is so much as allowed to sit on the machine. Once, however the insatiable appetites of the taxman, the insurance broker and the Post Office have been satisfied, the happy person may straddle his gleaming machine in much the same way as St. George must have straddled his mighty warhorse in days of old.
Proud though he is of it, he is still out allowed to make his own choice of passenger from the local population; he must first pass a driving test. After all this, and only after all this, is he allowed to ride his girl friend through the streets. Even so, his worries are still not all over.
Three weeks after he has bought it, his motor bike refuses to function. When he kicks it over, it seems to laugh at him like a small, spoit child. Grimly and with a face like thunder, he buckles down to the task in hand, and decides he must overhaul his now slightly soiled cycle. He begins by fishing out the bike's handbook. Reading it through from cover to cover aids him not in the slightest, so with great sorrow he wheels his bike to the nearest garage. After a preliminary examination, the young mechanic pronounces his diagnosis. With a voice muffled by grease and amusement, he tells our hero that there is no petrol in the machine! With his face the colour of beetroot, our slightly peeved hero buys a gallon of petrol and rockets off home to punish his bike by refusing to touch it for a week.
It was June when our hero bought his motor cycle and now seven months have passed. Everybody knows how breezy and cool a motor bike is in summer, and unfortunately the same can be said for winter. Our hero, thoroughly sick of the infernal machine, decides to sell; he does so, and then finds himself confronted by an even worse menace when he buys a motor car!
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