As an avid reader of the small ads found in many newsagents windows I've come across some truly remarkable offers, but as I don't wish to arouse the interest of the vice squad I'll say no more, but the most interesting of all I found in Deptford, South London: For sale, Chimney sweep's round, est 1894, plus all equipment and tradesman motorcycle/sidecar, £250.
I just had to check it out. Maybe there was an old 1910 Triumph or prewar Norton just waiting to be snapped up and auctioned for a ludicrous profit or even a 1894...no such luck, just a set of sweep's brushes and rods, an industrial vacuum cleaner. list of clients (most of whom were deceased) and a mid seventies Jawa 350 combo with 86000 miles on the clock.
The sidecar was basically a massive oblong box at least four feet high and constructed from pitch soaked oak. The timber was worth more than the bloody bike, which was covered in a layer of soot that just about covered up the rust.
All thoughts of quick profit were dashed, so I accepted the old sweep's offer of a glass of homebrew and a Woodbine. God knows how long I sat listening to the old boy's simple but humorous tales about the free and easy life of a sweep but by the time I left I was totally paralytic, the proud owner of a Jawa 350, dedicated to the noble art of chimney sweeping and 225 sovs poorer. Somehow I rode the bike home.
A lot of shit has been written about the art of controlling an outfit but don't believe a word. With a clapped out 350 motor there's no way you can steer it on the throttle unless you're prepared to keep dropping from fourth to first gear on left-handers. What it takes is brute force, massive shoulder muscles and at times extreme violence, together with total disregard for your own safety. And as for all that nonsense about sidecars being sociable forget it, no bird I've ever known would climb inside a tar soaked box vaguely attached to a smoking, rattling wreck of a bike!
Until I started using the combo I never realised just how very ridiculously slow London traffic is. It's just one big snarl up from top to bottom and left to right. After a week my patience was stretched to the limit. Stuck in a two mile tail back in the suburbs I finally snapped, had an acid flashback, stuck the chair on the grass verge and shot down the inside of the jam at full throttle in first.
The impact was massive and catapulted me over the bars. The no waiting sign was demolished and the sidecar pushed out of line by 45 degrees. A copper arrived from nowhere and started to list the 356 offences I'd committed. I feigned semi consciousness but he just kept on. I think he reached number 121 before his radio went off with a 999 alarm call. Believing me to be immobile he told me to wait until he returned.
The Jawa started so I shot off. The sidecar wheel wouldn't rotate properly and by the time I got home the tyre was shreaded and the bare rim dragged along the ground. The racket was appalling but at least I escaped.
I used a pair of hydraulic jacks to straighten out the bike and picked up a used Mini wheel complete with tyre for a fiver for the chair. This wasn't to be my last scrape with the law. After a particularly successful day's chimney cleaning, during which I'd done about 10 chimneys and stored the resultant soot in the sidecar, I was driving home via Whitechapel and down the Blackwall tunnel.
All through the East End I became vaguely aware of groups of pedestrians running from the pavements coughing and generally panicking. Cars hooted and flashed at me, but I carried on down into the depths of the tunnel feeling the hot blast of air and fumes being funnelled at me by the huge, powerful ventilation fans.
Halfway through I noticed that it seemed exceptionally quiet. I glanced behind me, there was no traffic just a giant cloud of thick, impenetrable mist swirling round and round like a tornado from hell in the fan created wind. I looked down at the sidecar and noticed that I'd forgotten to put the tarpaulin over the soot filled box.
That evening the newscaster on local TV assured viewers that the mysterious cloud that descended on Whitechapel was not toxic as first believed and the oil tanker fire in Blackwall tunnel was a false alarm!
London suddenly didn't seem a very healthy place to be so I decided to pop down to Devon and Cornwall with my brother for an extended holiday. We decided to stop off on the way at the Stonehenge festival. The bike was serviced, new rings, chain and rear tyre fitted and the crude Posilube oil pump overhauled.
With a little bending and welding we fitted a tow bar and trailer. The box sidecar was chopped down to sensible dimensions and a £3 Mini seat nailed in place. Brother got out his cosmic paintbox and covered the whole plot in weird patterns. Not the greatest touring device but at least it would score top marks with the hippies at Henge.
Fully loaded, replete with trailer full of camping gear, it handled like a herd of pigs, the brakes were pathetic and top speed was down to 50mph from a previous 60mph. We cruised at a ridiculous 40mph and held up everything faster than a milk float. Henge was a bad decision as it had been banned that year.
There were road blocks everywhere and the police were pulling anyone or anything that looked even vaguely strange. In the overloaded, freakily painted combo we were sitting ducks. After a check over, we were forced into a convoy of overloaded busses and herded miles from Stonehenge. I tried to escape up a farm track but it was heavily guarded by the riot squad tooled up for aggro. I told them we had engine trouble and they seemed to believe me but forced us back into the convoy.
The Jawa then started overheating, crawling along at 10mph behind a fifties Bedford bus there's not much of a cooling breeze. Eventually we were directed into a swamplike field and told to camp. There were no festivities that night, the presence of 140 SPG kinda dampened down our spirits. We left the campsite early in the morning reflecting on the new regime in Britain.
We picked up a hitch hiker who'd been injured in one of the more violent incidents the night before. We said we'd take him to Shaftsbury's casualty ward. With the extra weight we were down to 30mph and couldn't pull top gear. Even in third the clutch slipped and screeched viciously. Up a hill on the A350 it gave out altogether.
We stripped the engine down but there was nothing that could be done, the corks were totally fried. Just as brother was about to start hitching a pre-unit Triumph pulled up. The owner said, no problem, when he saw the clutch and nearly ripped my brother's belt off him. The bloke set to work with a Swiss army knife: 'Fix it in a jiffy,' he enthused.
It was a pitiful pathetic sight, watching brother's £15 Levi leather belt get hacked to pieces by a clueless idiot. Eventually he gave up but saved himself from brother's wrath by offering him a lift to the nearest Jawa dealer and back. Five hours later minus the hitcher who had hobbled off in disgust we were back on the road.
With the new clutch top speed was back up to 50mph which was about as fast as the narrow Cornish roads allow. Two out of three campsites had 'no biker' signs and even some pubs joined in. We rode right around the coast which included some massively steep inclines but the Jawa took it all in its stride.
The only problem was when I took a hairpin bend too fast and the trailer slewed around and hit a wall. It took a lot of hammer work to sort it out. The sidecar proved worth its weight in gold when we bought a couple of five gallon barrels of scrumpy. Brother bought a long length of tube so that he could drink whilst we were in motion. Just for kicks I switched it to the spare fuel can - brother made a weird noise then went into convulsions, spraying vomit everywhere. The bike went out of control and ended up demolishing a fence. I was creased up but brother just hasn't got the same sense of humour!
The trip home took 10 days on account of our general inebriated state and the fact that the differential on the trailer went. At first, it was good fun skidding into the path of oncoming traffic on every bend but once the tyre shredded we decided to ditch it and filled the sidecar with its contents. This completely destroyed the previously piss poor handling and caused the forks to flex alarmingly.
I kept the Jawa a few more months until the engine finally died at 98000 miles and then dumped it. It turned out to be an amusing and relatively cheap means of hauling ridiculous loads around but as a serious means of transport it's a joke.
After all, a Mini van is probably cheaper to run, costs less and carries more. Tyre life was terrible - 4000 miles rear, 7000 front and 10,000 for the chair - fuel never bettered 40mpg, oil 300mpp and chains about 4000 miles. I think I'll stick to solos but if anyone's got a nitrous oxide injected GSX1100 hopped out to 1275cc with extra wide tyres and an extremely low chair I might just be tempted!
Andy Everett