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 IT'S THIRTY DEGREES IN THE
SHADE and I'm clad in Kevlar, Gore-Tex and leather. I'm already hot and bothered and as I enter the Willesden Junction branch of HSBC the sight of half a
dozen loitering customers does little to cool me down. I'm greeted with six furtive frosty glances that leave me in no doubt that this is a queue, and then all eyes return to a single shirted-and-tied agent
seated behind a pockmarked and graphitised desk bearing a sign that promises 'Cust mer Servic'. It's the weekend, and it looks like 'Cust mer Servic' is all that's on offer.
We lounge on sofas or stand around, and in the flap of shorts, bikini tops and flip-flops the starched and spruced bank clerk is as incongruous as I am. But the eyes remain fixed on him. Perhaps it's
admiration for the calm way he's explaining to a disgruntled Australian why he won't be getting any money until Monday, or perhaps it's because he looks and sounds like Dr. Luka Kovach from ER. Most of the loiterers
are women. Or Australians. A woman comes in from the street and I track her as she walks to the counter, reads the 'no counter service' posters, tuts and then walks in
our direction trying to pretend she knew all along how things work around here. 'Back of the queue, love', I'm thinking, and glare at her. Shit, now I'm doing it. I try to recover by pantomiming a grotesque
eyebrow shrug but she just scowls and I feel instantly ridiculous. At least the bank's air conditioning is helping, but I'm still feeling irritable. I'm parked on the pavement and this two-minute formality
looks more and more like it's going to take an hour. I assume this is what's nagging me inside. It isn't. I reach the front of the queue and Dr. Kovach invites me over to
explain that my banker's draft has somehow been overlooked. My chest grows tight but he avoids strangulation by promising he will see to it and that I will 'only' have to wait another forty minutes. In my mind
the bike has by now been ticketed, clamped, hoisted and probably set on fire and thrown into a canal for good measure. I wait, and, surprisingly, he delivers in just ten minutes.
* * * It's still sizzling outside as I stride with futile haste back to where
the bike had been parked. The Rukka's already sticking to my back and the air is thick with the aromas of junk food and melting tarmac. It's the sleazy bit above Maida Vale and I can't get Joni Mitchell out of my head:
Pawn shops glitter like gold tooth-caps
In the grey decay
They chew the last few dollars off old [Kilburn High Road]'s carcase
The bike's still there. So is the knot in my stomach.Cut to bike dealer. As I approach I spy amongst the line of Bandits,
R1s and VFRs the splendid site of a newly-minted @ in all its burnished patriotic glory. Never mind that it's Japanese iron imported from France; today red, white and blue are as English as the clear blue sky
and the nosey traffic warden stalking the burger van parked across the street. I dismount the naily XT for the last time and linger to savour the @'s pristine loveliness. I note absently that the kph speedo hasn't
been stickered and I wonder where they've mounted the alarm's winker LED. A tiny cloud drifts across the sun, and for a second the sweat trickling down my spine feels cold. The knot is back.
Long story short. The dealer hasn't written down our deal, but luckily I have. We reconstruct the details from my tattered PostIt and discover I've traded mph clocks for an alarm (having declined the offer of a
free certificate in lieu of hardware). 'Er, sorry, we'll do it today'. Then I ask if the bike is registered and the reply is...equivocal. I'm no stranger to new bikes and I know the paperwork usually lags, but
this isn't 'usually': next Tuesday sees the introduction of Type Approval and if this bike isn't registered by then, one of us is stuffed.
I've suddenly got five hours to kill so I do some research. The LVLO is closed, and DVLA man says 'don't buy it'. I decide that's a safety shot - he doesn't really know what he's talking about. I mope around and
can't decide what to do. 16:30 and the dealer phones to say we're on. Back up the A5, swinging the nail in and out of grid-locked tea-time traffic for the last time (again) and he's not even there. I sit in the
shade nursing a warm can of Coke and recount the deal one more time to a minion ('he says you have the figures and he trusts you implicitly'; and well he might - this is 15 years and bike number 10).
The boss-man phones just as I get to the part about registration: 'I'll be there in ten minutes', and he is. We've done the paperwork but I need to make my point. The knot is tightening, and finally I get it.
There is no way on God's earth I can afford this bike, and the gutter-mouthing it's received from some quarters has left me deeply ambivalent. This has to work, and my anxiety is spilling over into
inconsequentialities. He spins a good yarn and, against my better judgement, I trust him. And so just the formalities are left. My end is messy: a naily XT600, a banker's draft, five hundred in cash and a  top-up with my gold VISA card (looks impressive but it's a zero-percent promotion).
Somewhere below the surface the wheels have been oiled and things start to move smoothly. A thousand-pound credit card hit and they don't even ask me to come to the phone. So it's mine. I ride up to
Elstree, stopping a couple of times to spanner various controls, and follow that with trips up the motorway to work and Dunstable Downs over the next few days. 400km on (how I wish I'd had
that speedo conversion) the knot has gone. And the bike? It's a big Transalp. I told me so. |
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