The Motorcycle Undertaker
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The Motorcycle Undertaker by Kevin Keld First Published in Great Britain in 2021 Copyright Kevin Keld 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electonical or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing. Preface Kevin Keld hails from the charming, picturesque East Yorkshire village of Barmby Moor. Spending most of his working life on the nearby Pocklington Industrial Estate at various engineering establishments it seemed a natural progression to open his motorcycle shop in that industrious area. A background in engineering and fabrication gave him a head start when it came to building custom bikes. He admits to being useless at marriage and after two failed attempts he gave up not before being blessed with three doting children who have zero interest in motorcycles. After being diagnosed with chronic heart failure in 2005 he retired from the UK preferring the sun kissed shores of Spain. After a ten year thrash in the fast lane, he returned to his home town and began to once again dabble in the dark art of motorcycle sales. A serious motorcycle accident leaves our author disabled and unable to ride at present though hopefully in the not too distant future there may be a chance of one last blast! The Motorcycle Undertaker CHAPTER 1 Childhood Shenanigans I suppose it was inevitable that I would somehow enter the world of ‘tinkering’ around with oily, noisy and unpredictable machines. My father was an occasional tinkerer. I have many happy and vivid memories of him with his upper body buried in the engine compartments of various vehicles during my childhood. I can clearly recall the beautiful, shiny black Morris 1000, registration number 2058UB (well remembered even if I say so myself) complete with cracked red vinyl seats and giving off that amazing musty pungent aroma that all late 60’s cars seem to emit. I can even drag from the recesses of my boyhood memory the 1970 Vauxhall Viva, sorry simply cannot remember the exact registration number other than it ended in the letter J. Whilst my Father was adept at the minor tasks, engine rebuilds or welding were the two repairs that either he hadn’t the necessary tools to perform or were plain and simply beyond his capabilities. Either way, should the major tasks be required then the offending vehicle would be promptly dispatched (usually towed with a frayed length of rope by the neighbour’s Ford Zodiac) to Keith Knowles Garage up on the A1079 just a couple of miles up the road. I used to look forward to travelling in the towed vehicle and standing in Mr Knowles garage in front of a big old smoky diesel salamander heater that would threaten to ignite anyone within a 4-foot radius turning them into a fireball, there were days when you could barely see your hand in front of you in that dingy workshop and I was never quite sure if it was the death ray heater or my Father and Keith smoking rolled up cigarettes, I bet they didn’t know that in the Nineteenth century tobacco was used for ‘rectal inflation’: blowing smoke up the anus to resuscitate the drowned. I do though. Both my Mother and Father had motorcycles and I suppose in the 1950’s it would be considered quite novel to see ladies on bikes, my Mother looked fantastic and quite the part stride her Ariel 650 whilst my Father used an AJS to terrorize the highways and byways of Market Weighton with. I still have a dog eared black and white photograph of Mother on her steed and one of Father but alas none of them together. Eric Keld never lost the enthusiasm for his bike but unfortunately in 1961 when their first and only son was produced (me) the bike had to be traded in for a ‘sensible’ car. As far as I can remember it was a big black old Austin A40 and I am sure that if he had his way it would have been a Watsonian on the AJS! As a child, he used to thrill me with tales of ton up races between Holme upon Spalding Moor and Market Weighton though I suspect there was some slight exaggeration on his part. I’ll never forget at the age of around 8 years old he called me downstairs one evening, now let’s get this right, the only times I EVER got called downstairs after I had been put to bed was for a right good telling off. On this occasion I racked my tiny brain trying to work out what I may or may not be in trouble for....was it for smashing Tom Hardcastle’s window with ‘Clippy’ Marshall.... No...Tom wasn’t due back for a week so that was yet to come. Could it be that I had yet again drunk all the milk leaving none for their thousandth cup of tea that day...Oh shit yes, I bet that was it, I had done my best and topped up the remainder of the milk with water to make it appear that the level was the same in the bottle (which incidentally never fooled anyone). Anyway upon arrival in the front room, a very warm front room, in fact, a room that had a fire in the hearth that would have kept a cruise liner afloat, I was greeted by the words “sit down and watch this”, on the big old black and white TV was a magnificent beautiful shiny black (I presume it was black and not blue, remember it was a black and white TV) motorcycle, well, to be precise a beautiful black Matchless 500cc that this chap had restored. It was a half hour programme and I am sure it featured a lot of music in it but was the story of this particular machine, I never did find out the title of the program and all these years later I still wonder if I really saw it or was it wishful thinking. Now there is a task for anyone reading this (other than myself), please find me a documentary from the 1960s featuring a big old Matchless 500!! After seeing that I made a promise to myself that one day I too would own a big shiny British motorcycle like that one. In fact, I did but never a Matchless. I don’t actually remember too many escapades with my Father but the ones I do were pretty damned memorable. Like the time he taught me to drive a tractor and straw chopper at the age of 11 on the farm where he worked and his last words as he leapt off the footplate Page 5 The Motorcycle Undertaker were “whatever you do DON’T shut the revs off”. So there I am trundling along chopping straw dreaming of being the big shot with my own tractor and suddenly I came across a stretch of straw that was just a little bit too much for the chopper to cope with so I had to slow down...I never thought of putting my foot on the clutch to slow down.....I just shifted the accelerator lever to stop whereupon half a ton of straw tried to get through a slowing blade promptly wrapping itself around every shaft and bearing. Two hours later, and after the obligatory bout of swearing and a major machinery strip down he miraculously gave me a second chance at fucking it up. “Off you go and this time....” well I never did and I managed to chop several acres without any major catastrophe (other than shredding a rabbit into twelve thousand tiny pieces). Another tale involves me, my Father, and his best friend Nelson. Nelson was aptly named because he only had one eye after losing it in a motorcycle crash many years previously. As if this wasn’t bad enough Nelson was a lorry driver, a class 1 HGV driver driving artic wagons daily. He had obtained his heavy goods licence in the early days when a driving test was not required and the old ‘Grandfather rights’ played a big part in ensuring he was never required to indulge in a medical examination of any kind. But before I go into this yarn let me tell you a bit about Nelson. He and his wife Sheila and I think three children lived at South Milford near Selby, in fact in a little row of houses adjacent to the railway line that transported coal to the power stations. The house, I use the term loosely, was more akin to a storage warehouse for every conceivable piece of tat and rubbish you could find. It was a cross between Steptoe’s yard and something hidden in small town America that the American Pickers would be proud of. I used to look forward to our monthly visits with great affection for inevitably I would leave the premises armed with my Father’s car boot full of junk to store in my bedroom, things such as reel to reel tape recorders, old valve radios and anything with wheels. Incredibly, and this is the really odd part....he was the proud owner of a rather dog eared Rolls Royce Silver Shadow which had been equipped with a cassette player!! Something of a rarity in those days and I’ll never get over listening to Tom Jones wailing the Green Green Grass of Home for mile upon mile on our monthly jaunts around the countryside.