I was on a scooter going to a scooter rally, speeding along a road in Derby on the way to Morecambe, We approached a long hill at the bottom of which was a roundabout. I had a vision I’d speed around, leaning full on into the curve like Barry Sheene, how great I’d look.
That’s not what happened, I missed the curve, carried on forward and hit the rising kerb of the roundabout, but that’s not where I stopped, Instead I flew over the roundabout, in mid-air like a clumsy superman clawing at the mid air, well that’s how the witnesses describe it, when you crash, the mind freezes, it stalls and doesn’t take in the actual experience, you black out. Next thing I was impaled upon a metal barrier on the other side of the roundabout, some 130 feet away. Apparently I pulled my impaled leg off the metal barrier and ran over to my smashed up Vespa. According to the paramedics, that can’t have happened as the barrier had sliced through my thigh muscle rendering mobility impossible, but like a distraught mother lifting a double decker bus to free her trapped child, that did happen.
I spent the weekend in Derby Hospital and was offered a place in a nurses flat who took a fancy to me. She was beautiful, mixed race which for someone in a then, predominantly white Dagenham was as exciting as it was somewhat exotic. I’m a gentleman, I declined and hobbled home on crutches.
No Barry Sheene posturing, No Sex stud memories, and I wrecked my beloved scooter. Risks? No thanks.
My Scooter after the crash, it failed the MOT, the frame was bent, but I still used it albeit, wonkily.
The Western Gate 
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