Getting deported from New Zealand as an illegal overstayer wasn't one of my best moves ever. At least I arrived back in the UK in the less terrible weather. Being dumped straight into the middle of a British winter would have been just too much after the ignominy of being slung out of my favourite country with precious little hope of re-admission.
In any event I had little time to ponder this grim possibility - I had arrived back in the UK at unexpectedly short notice with nowhere to live and most of my stuff (including my bikes) in storage. I rang an old mate with a holiday cottage away up in the wilds of the Scottish highlands, why yes of course I could go and stay there, as long as I liked. He was working away in France, and was only too glad of someone being around to keep an eye on the place. I wasn't to realise why he was so pleased to let me stay until I arrived there some days later. After a horrendous sequence of bus journeys I was greeted by two of his daughter's idiot friends who had established a weed farm on the premises. I quickly decided that I wanted fuck all to do with this enterprise, and repaired to the caravan which stood on the property a good 200m from the house.
While my surroundings were admittedly congenial, the small matter of the two mile walk to the nearest outpost of civilisation turned my mind to bikes. It just so happened that one of the aforementioned idiots possessed not one but three Honda Melody scooters, but not the ability to convert them from a large heap of parts to something resembling a working motorcycle. After some perfunctory negotiations I purchased the lot, along with an assortment of shite Chinese tools, for £20.
With little but time on my hands I set about building one of these magnificent steeds from the large selection of parts at my disposal. This would not be a labour of love but a matter of simple practicality, and as such I dispensed with such luxuries as paint and polish, tyres with tread and an exhaust not repaired with bean tin steel. The engine selected from the three available was chosen on the basis of being the only one with a full complement of non-snapped exhaust studs. As with most basket cases, the majority of the available components were either extensively worn or had been damaged by the primate who dismantled them, so it really was a case of choosing the least knackered example of each part required.
Two days graft (and many mugs of tea later) under the awning of my temporary home saw me become the proud owner of a running scooter, with working lights and everything! The likelihood of seeing another living soul out on the road, never mind a copper, was exceptionally slim so legal niceties such as tax, MOT and insurance were quickly and conveniently forgotten about. I was back on the road!
I found a bottle of very poor quality 2-stroke oil in the shed behind the house, syphoned a gallon of unleaded from one of the idiots' cars, filled the tanks and headed off for my shakedown run. The reality was slightly less exciting than even I had anticipated - with my 15st ass on board the Melody could just about achieve 35mph, and on any of the myriad hills you were lucky to see 20. Considerations like handling are best forgotten about in the context of machines like these, you just have to accept them for what they are. Still, nothing fell off and the bright yellow Melody managed to complete a perversely enjoyable 50 mile inaugural run, leaving a huge plume of blue smoke in its wake.
I was already enjoying being holed up in the comfortable little tourer at the side of the house in such a beautiful part of the world, and knowing that I had a healthy, running 2-wheeler parked outside only made me more content with my lot. Unfortunately the Melody also meant it was easier for me to spend evenings in the pub, enjoying live folk music and getting pissed on the rather fine local brews. The total absence of plod meant that riding home after a pint or five wasn't a problem, though finding my way back to where I lived (hindered by several pints of heavy and the world's dimmest headlight) sometimes was.
On the plus side, hanging out in the pub did introduce me to many of the locals and eventually saw me find gainful employment as a painter and decorator on a project converting a few old crofters cottages into holiday homes for moneyed southerners. Now I knew nothing about the trade in question but I lied my way into the job thinking 'how hard can it be?' and for once I was right. Money for old rope.
When the job came to an end I had a reasonable wedge in hand, and decided to take an extended camping trip along the West coast. I found a rear rack and top box in the junk pile behind the 'van, fitted it and loaded up the Melody. The trip took three weeks and some 450 miles in total. The only headache was caused by the plug cap working it's way off the end of the HT lead, but once that was sorted we got back to the caravan without any further drama.
This idyllic lifestyle continued for another couple of months, six in all, until an unwelcome development brought it to an abrupt end. On riding home from a lunchtime pint I noticed that the old homestead seemed unnaturally quiet. Closer inspection of the front door of the house revealed that it had been kicked in, and screwed shut again with woodscrews. A notice bearing the crest of the local police force announced the origin of the visitors...
To this day it remains a mystery as to how these two morons managed to get busted in such a desertered location, but busted they had been and I was anxious not to be anywhere around when plod came back for a second visit. I packed my gear and rode away, never to return. I stopped off in town at the home of a drinking mate and left the Melody with him. His son had been fascinated by it, and its potential for widening the horizons of a bored teenager trapped in a sleepy highland town. Hopefully I started another biker on his journey that day.
And me? I jumped on a train south with no real idea of where I was going to get off, or what I was going to do next... sometimes life can be a little more exciting than you'd like it to be!
M Zapata