Author Topic: I remember when...  (Read 4093 times)

rafiki

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 263
    • rafikiPHOTO
I remember when...
« on: February 23, 2019, 12:34:29 pm »
In another thread @tyreon mentioned being brought up in the 1950s and it brought back many memories for me too. At an early age sometime in the late 1940s I rode a trike. My father bought me my first 'proper' bike in the early fifties (probably 1952). It was a Raleigh. Red and white I remember. Steel and other raw materials were in such short supply I had to wait months for delivery. I remember visiting the LBS every Saturday morning to check if it had arrived. One glorious Saturday I received the reply "Yes, boy, it's here." and they wheeled it out from the back room. They set it up for me and I rode it home with a huge smile on my face. I guess I must have been eight years old. It had been sized 'plenty big enough' so I kept it for many years. I loved that bike. I recall my friend and I cycling from Burnham (Buckinghamshire) all the way along the A4 to London Heathrow Airport for plane-spotting from the top of the Queen's Building overlooking the apron. No terrorist precautions in then. It was about 13 miles each way I recall. Traffic was very light in those days and one could cycle anywhere. Trips such as through Windsor as far as Staines were common. I pleaded with my mother to buy me one of those Sturmey Archer mileometers to measure our trips. My parents didn't have much but after about a month in which time she had saved up the half a crown (2 shillings and sixpence) and gave it to me one Saturday morning and I raced to the LBS to get it. Memories of folding up cardboard cigarette packets and sticking them through the brake into the spokes so as to make a sound like a motorbike as we thought! Whilst train spotting, riding away from the train lines down an alley lined with fencing, hearing another train coming, racing back towards the line, standing on the pedals to look over the fencing so as not to miss the train, forgetting the concrete post set in the middle of the path to stop cars entering the alley, seeing the post only in the last second, my face smashing into the concrete! Oh the blood, the pain, the shame being walked home by a passer-by. Sitting on my father's 'big' Raleigh with a Sturmey Archer 3 speed hub when it was parked in the shed. Leaning against the wall pedaling backwards. Graduating to that bike when Dad bought his first motor bike - a Francis Barnet 197 two-stroke. How proud I was riding his bicycle - with gears! And lights - a dynohub! I kept that bike into the mid-sixties. I used to love cycling out through the Hertfordshire countryside in the evenings (Dad had moved for his job). I remember one evening, parking the bike and sitting on a raised bank along the roadside watching a tractor ploughing a field. So tranquil. It was at that moment I decided I wanted to study agriculture. I had a job in a nearby village and used to race another cyclist along the towpath every morning, rain or shine, freezing or warm, collecting the samples from the factory and carrying them in the saddlebag (not sure if it wasn't a Brookes) to the lab where I worked. I rode that route for a couple of years. Then I bought a Car!
Brian.

Andre Jute

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4064
Re: I remember when...
« Reply #1 on: May 24, 2019, 11:47:09 pm »
Fabulous memories, Brian. And memory, too, for the details.

rafiki

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 263
    • rafikiPHOTO
Re: I remember when...
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2019, 04:50:41 pm »
When one enters dotage distant memories become more vivid I think. On my daily rides I think about my past life much more these days. Happy, sad, exciting, dull; life's rich pattern!
Brian.

Matt2matt2002

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1893
Re: I remember when...
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2019, 05:15:07 pm »
You mentioned Hertfordshire.Rafiki.
Barnet boy here. Where were you?
Good memories. 1953 model myself.
Never drink and drive. You may hit a bump  and spill your drink

rafiki

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 263
    • rafikiPHOTO
Re: I remember when...
« Reply #4 on: May 25, 2019, 05:45:58 pm »
My father moved us to Ware in 1960 for his job. I was there until 1968 when I went to Bangor (N. Wales) to study Agriculture as a mature (?) student. After many years working in East Africa we returned to live in Royston where we lived for 20 years. I had returned to the small malting company in Stansted Abbotts which I worked at in the mid sixties on leaving school and before university. I still visit regularly as I have family in Herts and I have a fondness for my old company in Stansted Abbotts.
Brian.

John Saxby

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2000
Re: I remember when...
« Reply #5 on: May 26, 2019, 10:56:30 pm »
Quote
After many years working in East Africa

I thought that might be the case, Brian -- the rafiki gave you away ;)  Where was that, and when? I lived much of the 70's and 80's in Zambia and Zimbabwe, and often visited Tanzania.

rafiki

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 263
    • rafikiPHOTO
Re: I remember when...
« Reply #6 on: May 27, 2019, 06:28:15 am »
Hello John. I was 6 years in Kenya (Nairobi, working for Kenya Breweries in the city and out along the Rift) and 7 years in TZ (Moshi and Tanga). This was all from 1977 to 1990. Whilst working in TZ for a Belgian company (82 to 87) I traveled frequently to Zambia, also to Uganda, Ethiopia, Mauritius and Malawi. I would have been visiting Zambia during the years 83 to 87. A frequent stayer at the Intercon and Pamodzi in Lusaka. Good times. I've not been back to E. Africa since but in 2016 I spent nearly a month in Namibia and in 2017 a couple of weeks camping in the bush in Botswana photographing landscapes, animals and birds rounding it off with a trip into Zimbabwe for a few days to see Vic Falls.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2019, 06:35:24 am by rafiki »
Brian.