Rarely do contributors have a good word to say about despatching. Yet, thousands of DR's work away in Central London, not to mention the rest of the country. Money can't be the only reason as it's not that well paid, often dangerous and mostly out in all kinds of nasty weather. There I go, already, putting the business down. The truth is that no-one else is going to pay me for riding around on a motorcycle all day!
Invariably, I seem to end up on some 250 halfway to rat status but with enough life left to see out half a year of despatching. Call such devices as the RS250, XS250 and Superdream cheap and cheerful. They are way fast enough for the Central London hustle, dead cheap to buy and with the odd bit of bodging almost as cheap to run as a step-thru. They can also, if you're willing to sacrifice a bit of speed, be employed for the odd touring sortie and weekend outing.
It's not so much the bike that matters, although a minimum level of reliability (or at least the ability to predict the point of demise) is necessary, but a thorough knowledge of the complexities of London streets. Especially where the police like to set up checkpoints and those areas that are so destitute that stopping at a junction, let alone parking up a bike, is an invitation to mugging and robbery.
It takes at least three months to get a handle on the capital, more if you're new to town. It's always amusing to see Northerners trying to grasp the complexities of the city; a northern accent met by most Londoners with an evil inclination to misdirect them to the other side of town. Don't get me wrong, some of my best mates are from Manchester (and even Luton!) but it takes a while for us to become used to each other's sense of humour.
One of the favourite tricks practised by old DR hands is to swap over the HT leads on the bikes' of newcomers. Takes them hours to suss out this simplest bit of trickery, by which time the boss has steam pouring out of his ears and an interesting line of invective out of his mouth. One poor chap went berserk when this happened to him, whacked the nearest DR in the mouth with enough force to knock some teeth out. Hmmm. As I said, it takes a while to suss our sense of humour.
As well as working out all the short-cuts (try to avoid those that involve going through pedestrian precincts - it only gets us a bad name), some intelligence has to be applied to the order in which pick-ups and drops are done. A lot of this is down to the controller, so try not to piss him off. This need not go as far as giving sexual favours as one infamous pervert demanded of his DR's - you never knew when you'd come back late in the day to find him all togged up in a dress and black stockings. Despatching does draw more than its fair share of madmen. He was also a steroid warrior (perhaps explaining the dubious sexuality) and spent half the time in psychotic rages.
I know a few DR's who keep going by popping pills but it ain't recommended as increasing amounts are needed to get the same highs... they end up bald, burnt out and looking about twice their real age. I did start out riding everywhere at ten-tenths but soon found that a milder pace got the job done and drastically reduced the number of close scrapes. Some riders claim a sixth sense keeps them alive but it's really a case of practice making perfect; a fairly steep learning curve that sorts the wimps from the real men.
One really amusing incident was when a journalist from one of the glossies turned up for a few days immersion in the game. We had a lot of fun sabotaging his machine and he seemed to age by about five years...I wasn't that surprised to read that his ego-boosting diatribe bore little resemblance to reality. He didn't even mention the time his front wheel blew and he was thrown off; perhaps because he suspected that one of us had hammered in the nail.
Someone tried that trick on me once (I suspect the police who were annoyed to find nothing with which to book me, though I only did the bare minimum to comply with the law). A bloody big nail in the front tyre, but luckily the nail was deflected across rather than into the rubber. The steering was so marginal that the presence of the nail showed up in a lock to lock wobble at 10mph. I checked the front end over before the worst happened...the laws of resonance meant that the same wobble, much amplified, could've come in at higher speeds. No fun!
Consumables for these 250's didn't prove expensive as they would run on just about the cheapest tyres and chains in the land; even if they often needed changing every month. If the RS crunched through chains it was more economical than most, 70 against 50mpg; all that revving of the worn engine not doing anything for frugality. I sometimes managed to buy and sell a bike, over a six month period, without a loss on the deal, but normally they were so worn that even breakers told me where to go.
Despatching is hard on machinery, reducing nice bikes to wrecks in less than a year. It's the chronic misuse that gets to them, that and the great British winter. I work all the year around, not like some effete souls. If it ain't much fun in January, I actually make loads of money because there are less riders willing to work in those Siberian conditions. The general feeling being that criminals could usefully be sentenced to working as a DR over the winter.
The changing seasons have to be noted. The first signs of spring, for instance, accompanied by a spate of cagers going berserk. Something to do with hormonal changes, I think. I don't know what's wrong with these people, their cars are all but useless in Central London yet they won't give them up for more useful forms of transport. As the UK has sensibly opted out of car manufacture, more or less, we may as well ban the lot of them. Those still addicted to four wheels could be force-fitted into those tiny electric cars that are now emerging, about 40mph top whack and as much style as a wrecked Ural. That prospect, if nothing else, would get them on to bikes.
The end of summer, when the rain turns the road very greasy, can also be precarious in the extreme. I always try to guess the time and stop the wheels sliding every which way by fitting a relatively decent set of tyres. I saw one guy come a real cropper around that big roundabout at the end of Park Lane. Went into a fantastical slide, bike and rider parting company. The poor old bike flicked from side to side a few times before demolishing a cage. The rider narrowly avoided being run down by a bus; took one look at the damage and disappeared into the nearest pedestrian tunnel. At a guess, he had no insurance and no use for a machine that was in about a hundred bits (I thought fleeing the scene was a Thai habit - Ed).
Autumn can be nasty because weather conditions can change so suddenly. Impossible to guess how to dress, ending up too hot, too cold or just soaked through. When winter finally hits it's down to togging up like the Michelin man; nothing better than a decent set of plastic waterproofs as the final outer coating to keep the rain out - nothing else works in those kind of vile conditions.
Last winter seemed particularly heavy. Perhaps I'm getting too old for the game (36 if you must know, but friends tell me I look closer to 45) because at the end of the day I'd lost all feeling in my feet and the thawing out process was as painful as having a tooth drilled without an injection (my dentist's way of convincing me that the NHS ain't worth staying in). A nifty handlebar fairing kept my upper body protected so perhaps this time round I'll go the whole way with a full fairing. Even if the weight and width added to a worn out 250 will make it go like a fat old woman in the throes of a heart attack.
I wrote that yesterday and today picked up one of those Honda 250's (the Two-Fifty model, if you see what I mean) for a song. The newest machine I've owned in a long time and its throwback, flat track, style seems the business in town. It might even have the guts to run with a full fairing. Looks promising and should set me up for the next few years of despatching. For sure, good fun!
Danny