As young lads, me and my brother Mike (3 years younger, less intelligent and really rather ugly) were obsessed by speed. Both of us finished up in A&E on various occasions, following perambulatory accidents. On one occasion, he staggered home with the remains of his bicycle handle bar embedded into his left thigh. A couple of months later I came unstuck attempting to tow a glider down Tempest Avenue on the back of my bike. Whilst swerving to avoid colliding with an elderly and rather smelly old lady – yes I was that close - I mounted the curb and temporarily lost my memory on impact with the pavement. When I came round I found myself in the old ladies smelly house, covered in blood with several teeth missing, two burst eyes and a black lip. I’m not sure whether these injuries were due to the impact, or the wrath of the smelly old geriatric.
Anyway, I never did see the glider again, but it was last seen heading over the fields to Houghton Main muck stack! I was guided home to me mum and dad by my mates, Terry Norman and someone else who I never did remember, but I think he was in the glider. Mum and dad took me straight off to hospital where they confirmed that I did indeed have two burst eyes and a black lip. They X-rayed me for brain damage and confirmed concussion but were not able to foretell what my intellectual future held for me.
After I had recovered, my dad thought I would be safer on 4 wheels so he made a fantastic two seater trolley for the both of us. Upon completion we went for a ride on it. It was fantastic, it had a really elegant steering mechanism and it even had brakes. I drove it several times round the block, with Mike pushing as we went up the hills and him jumping into the back seat on the way down. The short downhill section on the way down Doncaster road to the junction with Edderthorpe Lane was really good and we were able to get up to about 30 MPH on the footpath. Anyway, one time Mike wanted to drive so being the kindly older brother I gave him a go. I got a massive turn of speed up and then jumped into the back seat whilst he steered. I forgot to mention that this machine had iron wheels and sounded like thunder once you got it going. Anyway, as we came over the brow of the hill a little old lady (this one was quite fragrant) heard us and set off running. Now, if she’d kept on in a straight line she would have been a little out of breath, but otherwise unhurt. Sadly for the lady this was not the case. She was probably the fastest 80 year old on the planet that day, but alas only for a few seconds. Tragically, the inevitable happened. As we zig-zagged towards Edderthorpe Lane, she zag – zigged along approximately the same trajectory (I later became interested in mass spectrometry and the image of this was to serve me well in visualizing the trajectory of ions in the field of a quadrupole but that’s for another blog). At the bottom of the hill we collided. The old dear sailed through the air and landed with a sickening crunch and a prolonged exhalation of air where she remained motionless and covered in gravel. Obviously we realised we had done something terrible. When my dad arrived home from work he went round and collected her. He wouldn’t let us see her but I think he broke her up for fire wood and that was the end of that.
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