chant of a poor man

still catching up with post's, here's some photo's from a couple of weeks ago, the b.s.a goldstar owners meeting at the 'john thompson' public house and micro brewery in ingleby near swarkestone, right in the southern most tip of derbyshire and on the border of leicestershire and staffordshire, a lovely location, right next to the river trent and a perfect mid-summer, mid-week, meeting place for motorcyclist's, shame then that my abiding memory of this place amount's to being refused 'service' here by a landlord in the early 1980's who took great delight in announcing to his audience of half-pint and gin and tonic swilling clientle 'OUT! GET OUT NOW!  motorcyclist's are not welcome here!' 30 years later and i'm still holding a grudge as me and dangerous pull up into a bikeless carpark, loads of cars but no bikes, have we got the right night? barse turns up on the shovelhead from hell, chalky on his hinkley speed-triple and we get a cold, full-fat-full-sugar coke from the bar, in the distance i can hear the big b.s.a singles coming, a phone call from sweary reveals he's blown a plug out of his velo, the sun is losing height fast and the shadows lengthen, a couple of nice nortons turn up, a trouser stiffening, alloy tanked commando engined special and a late model 750 burgundy beaut, as the numbers grow in the beer garden and the 'lad's' start to move the garden furniture around the painstakingly manicured garden i stifle a laugh, if it was a bunch of teenagers the locals would be kicking up a stink, the language gets ever more fruity, me and barse are the youngest here, we are early fifties and the rest of the old degenerates are early '60's to late '70's, for me the moment of the evening was when the present landlord came over and asked in hushed tones if we could tone down the volume of our conversations and raucous, anti-social behaviour as it was 'offending other customers' brilliant, i've been waiting 30 years for this moment and i must admit i relished gunning out of the carpark and treating the assembled 'gentle-folk' to the aural pleasure of a big-bore, carbureted, supertrapped sporty on the cam.....