A curious set of circumstances found me with a nearly clapped Kawasaki GT550 and a fairly desperate need to earn some reasonably large quantities of dosh. I'd seen the adverts in the back of MCN for despatch riders to earn up to £500 a week. and thought what the hell, it was only a hundred miles from Brum to Shit City and I knew a girl who would put me up for a few nights.
Things began to go wrong as soon as I hit the motorway. The '83 Kawa had 42000 miles on the clock - it had been given to me in repayment for a debt, the rider having used it for despatching in Birmingham until he fell off and broke his leg. The top end was obviously on the way out, with an ominous rattle and every time I backed off the throttle I could see a trail of smoke in the cracked mirrors. That said, the thing could still struggle up to an indicated 115mph and would race away from jerk-off artists in GTis. It was the end of October and raining like God was angry cos no-one wanted to believe anymore. The Kawa kept switching onto three or even two cylinders, suddenly losing 20mph in the process.
Surrounded by hoodlums in artics that sprayed out huge plumes of water and maniacs in Sierras who hogged the fast lane, it was tough going to keep the speedo flirting with 90mph, even without the misfiring engine. Halfway to London the thing went onto three permanently and l was stuck in the slow lane hoping things wouldn't get any worse.
They didn't, and I eventually made it to London. Unfortunately, the girl I knew lived in Brixton which meant I was pushed straight into the chaos of Shit City traffic. The pace of traffic is at much quicker than more civilized cities and it took me half a mile to become used to the speed. It soon became a ball to rush down the outside of mile long traffic jams, headlamp full on and and finger on the horn button (some Fiamma air horns loud enough to wake the dead - even Morris Minor owners). i even forgot how cold and wet I was for a while.
When I finally arrived in Brixton there wasn’t anyone there, but as it was one of those basement flats I could at least shelter out of the rain and change into some dry clothes without anyone watching me. After half an hour it stopped raining. so I decided to head for Soho to suss out the despatch scene. After visiting a number of companies and more or less (and literally in one case) being told to piss off after my Brum accent revealed my lack of civilization. I found one place off Farringdon Road where the boss, a lounge lizard in a Marks & Sparks suit, told me to start straight away as he’d just lost two lads.
My first run was to pick up some artwork in Covent Garden and rush off to Watford with it. I finally found the place after half an hour struggling with a misfiring GPz, mad taxi drivers and suicidal pedestrians. It was loomed in an unmarked alleyway and, Barbour clad, I felt rather out of place amongst sleek young ladies with cut glass accents.
The run up to Watford was not uneventful as I went the wrong way three times and the Kawa went dead twice; and it started raining again. I finished the job two hours after leaving base and received a full minutes worth of bad language from the boss when I phoned in from Watford. He sent me down to Catford and I almost told him to piss off.
The day passed in a blur from then on, I became too wet and cold to bother and my first day's five hours seemed like years (it probably took years off my life. anyway).
Summoned back to base for a chat with the boss, my riding became ragged as the light faded and I had a couple of near misses when the Kawa failed to accelerate as fast as l demanded and holes in the traffic disappeared before I could take them. I barged into the office at seven o’clock, all the other DRs long gone. The boss had the secretary’s jumper up around her armpits and was fiddling with her bra. He almost threw her on me floor when he saw me. To say he was mad would have been an understatement and he spent five minutes informing me that l was the slowest, laziest, would be despatch rider he'd ever come across, and only the fact that he couldn’t find anyone daft enough to ride bikes in the winter stopped him from sacking me on the spot.
After riding for a week and talking around it became clear that the bosses of these establishments were all of a kind — egomaniac idiots who would shit themselves if they went within a few yards of a motorcycle. Their only attributes appeared to be a bank full of money and enough front to persuade people to give them some work. The boss drove around in a flash car and appeared to have never had a thought more complex than how to screw the women despatchers he was particularly keen to recruit.
l was soon to find that these characters were endemic to London and put in their smiling, suave faces everywhere I ventured to spend money.
My major problem was finding somewhere to stay, along with silly house prices, rents for bedsits had hit the roof. I ended up in an attic room in a house full of out of work Irish labourers, owned by a corpulent ex-public school prat with a cast in one eye and an odd way of walking. A mere fifty notes a week, sharing a bathroom with seven others and no cooking facilities. didn't exactly make me overflow with happiness but it was dry and for the first month I was so tired after my ten hour day that I just wanted to fall asleep anyway. I certainly couldn't be bothered to do anything other than put petrol and oil in the Kawasaki.
It didn't take kindly to this. although the morning ritual of spraying the bike with WD40 stop it cutting out in all but the worst downpour, it had decided that it didn't like fast riding anymore and just gave up after 80mph in sixth and was smoking all the time.
As I began to know London and speed around with some kind of aplomb the boss became a little less nasty. I never did manage to persuade the secretary to come for a ride on the back of the Kawa, though.
The 430lbs of the GPz was a bit of pain to throw around in traffic, especially after a few uncomfortable hours in the saddle. The motor tended to overheat after an hour in traffic and the clutch would drag — I had to hold on the front brake while waiting at the traffic light GP and blip the throttle to stop the engine from dying. But my major problem was parking the bike. After some jerk-off Commissioner of police had wet his knickers over the way DRs were using Shit City streets as an anything goes open air lunatic asylum, the filth were pouncing on DR's bikes and throwing the book at riders for even minor infringements.
Like the majority of riders, I hadn't even told he insurance company that I was despatching, and if the pigs had picked up on the state of my rear tyres, pads vorn down to the metal and a Holy Joe exhaust system, one thing would lead to another and I'd be in deep shit.
The sensible option was to actually spend some money on the bike, but, what with my living expenses and the slow way I was working in the beginning, l was only just breaking even, so that was a definite no-no.
I hadn’t come anywhere near that magical £500 a week. I managed 10% of that in my first week (not helped by the fact that the boss had put me on a lower rate than the experienced DRs), and by my fourth week was on a more respectable £150 gross, which while it was rather better than the dole was soon depleted by the enormous expense of living in Shit City. In act, many riders were despatching and claiming social security at the same time - that way they could get the state to pay the silly rents demanded by greedy London landlords, but it wasn't the kind of thing a law abiding citizen such as myself could ever contemplate.
Oh, the poor old Kawa was suffering, it was like some old codger on his last legs, suddeny coughing and spluttering, the engine tottering on the brink of self destruction. I treated it to a can of the best oil money could buy, a carb balance and an afternoon under the influence of a strong water hose and a couple of tubes of alloy cleaner. I struggled manfully tying to fit a new rear tyre (after hacksawing the old one off), but eventually had to pay a fiver at the local car shop to have it fitted.
The Unitrak linkages were all shot to hell, but it was still quite stable, so that could wait. I decided to stick an ad in MCN, hope that some sucker would turn up and give me a grand for it - I figured it was the only way I was going to grab some money out of London. No such luck, the nearest I came was when a group of bikers turned up, the guy had the money in his pocket but by the time his friends had pulled the bike to pieces all he would offer was five hundred notes - I was tempted but decided to try some of the dealers.
The best offer I had from those toe-rags, was from one gay Kawa dealer who lisped that he might manage four hundred. I made a quick exit and went back to despatching.
I knew my way around Central London quite well and by riding like a lunatic for all the hours that were going, taking enormous risks, I managed to push my income up to £275 a week. The boss eyed me suspiciously when he handed out such a large sum, as if I was cheating him.
I decided that the only way to save some money was to stop paying the rent. avoided the landlord for a week but when he did catch up with me, I put him off by saying I’d have some money next week - as he'd taken a week's deposit he wasn't too worried. If it had been the summer I might have been tempted to camp out but it was still too cold for that kind of thing.
One morning the Kawa would not start. No sparks, I prayed the CDI unit hadn’t gone, but couldn't find anything else wrong. As a last ditch measure I wired the battery directly into the ignition - it worked. was an hour late for work and the boss went into one of his tirades. The fact that he was well sun tanned from a week's holiday in Spain didn‘t exactly endear him to me, either. But I was used to the verbal abuse. I spent the time inventing ways to execute him. Talk about two Englands, this guy was just asking to be taken outside for a good kicking.
Half way through the day, clouds of acrid smoke start coming from the Kawa whilst I'm trying to deliver an ultra important letter. If it isn't delivered two miles away within ten minutes all hell will break loose. I ignore the smoke and race along Edgeware Road. I just manage to get there in time.
None of the electrics work, but the engine still runs. No horn is a bind, and no headlight more than a little dangerous with some of the blind idiots trying to drive their cars and taxis. I really do feel sorry for some of the youngsters who buy bikes just to earn a crust despatching - they hit the chaos of the streets with a few hours training and little instinct for survival. I'd been riding for ten years and like most people who manage to survive that long, have developed a sixth sense that gets me out of trouble before it happens. You get to the stage when you can guess which car is going to do a sudden right turn. Most times, anyway.
I had to completely rewire the whole bike. I stuck a light across the alternator leads and it lit up when I rewed the motor and then blew. Tried the same with the rectifier/regulator and the bulb lit up and didn't blow, so that was OK. Found the light switch was burnt out. so used some toggle switches in the side panel from the local car accessory shop. They looked at me as if I was insane.
The landlord caught up with me and gave me a lecture on morality and responsibility, then hinted that he’d have to send his heavies in if I didn’t pay up next day. I owe him a hundred notes and want to hold out for another couple of weeks. I threaten him with the police and he stalks off, incensed because they're supposed to be on his side not mine.
The next day a silencer fell off the Kawa. It had been a bit loud for couple of weeks but I'd hoped it would last a bit longer. It had cracked around the circumference. This happened ten yards from one of the most expensive breakers in London. You should have seen the grin on his face when he took twenty quid off me for a slightly less rusty stock silencer, but I could have lost more than that running around trying to pick up a cheaper one.
Two days later the front calipers decide to simultaneously seize up. An hours roadside strip and cleaning up job sort of fixed that up, but the pads were frighteningly down to the metal. I had to buy some brake fluid so paid twelve quid for a set of cheapo pads at the same time. The engine seemed to purr along contentedly after all this effort.
I had to take the 'new‘ silencer off and wrap some Coke can around the pipe to make a gas tight fit. I noticed that the other silencer was cracked and wobbled around disturbingly, so determined to buy one cheaply before it actually fell off. With three weeks rent owed I returned to the house to find my stuff out in the street and the front door lock changed. Back to Brixton for the night.
The next day, another DR invited me to stay in a squat in Acton. A whole row of derelict council houses full of aging hippies, old tramps and the odd DR. each guarding their territory against the other, It was not unknown for petrol tanks to be filled with sugar or HT leads cut. A bad scene.
There was a spell of good weather, a weak sun and no rain. Hands and feet were relatively warm and dry for once, and the roads were clear of ice. Only bad thing was that too many kids started turning up at the office. The boss was glowing with pleasure at the thought of cheap labour and had become even nastier than normal to the regulars.
One moped rider sticks in the mind. The bike was about four days old and he was still having trouble co-ordinating clutch and gearbox. On the second day the bike skidded on some oil and went straight under a double decker. The kid survived with a few scratches, but the bike was a total write off. He turned up a few days later, trying to get the boss to let him use a pushbike - the insurance wouldn't pay up because he hadn’t told them he was a despatch rider and he owed six hundred notes on the HP.
When the rain and the cold came back everyone started moaning, the new guys disappeared and the boss became bearable again. These dog days were lightened by the sight of a minor riot in Soho when truncheon wielding riot police tried to close down one of the clubs - fat, half dressed, West Indian women screaming as sweating cops tried to throw them into the back of their vans. Not so funny when one of them tried to clear the gathered crowd and started waving his truncheon in my direction; so much for community policing.
I went through a spate of punctures until I saw some yob putting nails in the back tyre outside the squat. He ran away before I caught him but I managed to bounce a brick off his head - the brick broke but he kept running. Which is more than can be said for the Kawa. With over fifty grand on the clock it sounded like a dozen dustbins full of glass rolling down a ravine, whilst top speed was down to 75mph.
About two hundred yards away there was a yuppie enclave and a brand new GPz550. l was tempted to swap engines but didn’t know if the engine could be traced back to me through the records in Swansea.
There was a shocked silence in work when we heard that the boss was going to increase the rates - things must have been getting desperate. I was able to earn just over £300 notes a week if I really went for it. With minimal living expenses thanks to the squat, I'd actually managed to save a grand. But the bike was on the way out. Over the weekend I took the motor out and stripped the top-end down. Cams scored, valves burnt and piston rings gummed up. I cleaned up the pistons - bit sloppy in the bores but they'll survive a few more miles. New camchain and tensioner spring.
Reground the valves and polished up the cams and cleaned the gunge out of the head. My mate had a couple of spare shims from the time he'd owned one, so by juggling around the new and old ones I was more or less able to get the valve clearances set up.
Started her up, not exactly quiet but much better, I could actually hear the clutch or primary rive rattle. Rode it for another five weeks, but kept falling off because of the worn rear end. Another DR offered me five hundred for the bike, which would have given me three grand - enough to go off to Spain for a couple of months to enjoy the sun. But I decided to hold out for another week as the rain stopped and the sun was shining.
The boss started getting nasty again, with a full bank account I gave him some lip back - he started calling me an ungrateful tool, it he hadn’t given me a chance I‘d be penniless; if I didn't shape up I'd be sacked. I decided another week, then I’d be off to the sun.
With one day’s work left, i almost lost it all, when a taxi did an illegal U-turn on a wet road. The bike swung around, hitting him on the side. Big dent in the car, a few scratches on the Kawa. The taxi driver was furious that l was still alive and his vehicle was damaged. I didn't even hang around to swap insurance details. Sold the GP for £650, took all the money out of the bank and caught a plane.
John Pearce.