Chapter 12

Flaming Fucking Hell

I needed help with Bills motorbikes, so on Sunday I am knocking on Toby’s door and yelling though the letter box (Trying to get my point across about him shouting and yelling though my letter box)

Like Toby, I stand back when I hear feet stamping and coming towards the closed front door.

Toby answers the door,

TOBY: I’m watching cartoons!

ME: Fuck off, they aren’t on today! Want to make some money?

TOBY: How?

ME: Help me fix and flog those motorbikes me and Bill talked about yesterday,

Me and Toby travelled on the number 53 bus upstairs on the backseat as usual to get to Bills flat at Blackheath, we talked about how much money we could make.

It didn’t take long to get there, and the bus stop was just a minute away from Bills flat. We got the keys to his big shed at the back of his house.

There was a wide gravel alleyway at the back of the long row of big mansion houses that ran parallel with the main road at the front of the house.

This gravel alleyway would be an excellent place to race powerful motorbikes! I mean, make good use of this alleyway to fix and test motorcycles by two 15-year olds

(This already sounds like its going to go very wrong doesn’t it)

We open up the double doors from the alleyway end of the shed and look around to see what is what.

TOBY: What we looking for Leo?

ME: Something that looks fairly cleanish, something that is almost complete,

We look around for a while. I hear metal scraping against metal and moaning behind me. Toby seems to have found an old moped, he has pulled it out of the shed and into a nice sunny day.

I get Toby to help me pull out an old AJS single cylinder 500cc motorbike, we drag the heavy old bike out into the bright daylight.

We put the bikes on their stands and sit on them for a while, then walk around them for a bit and finally examine them both and make a plan.

TOBY: There’s no petrol tank on this bike, no front brake, and the exhaust baffle is missing,

ME: There is no carburettor on this engine, and no petrol in the tank,

TOBY: So, we at least need petrol then,

ME: Yeah, but there’s not a petrol container in the shed, we will have to get a can someplace, maybe the petrol station will lend us one?

We walk down to the end of the alleyway where it ends at a petrol station forecourt, we go into the shop and ask if we can borrow a petrol can. But the answer in “No, sorry, buy one”,

TOBY: What we gonna do Leo,

ME: Don’t know,

We go and sit on the petrol stations forecourts low wall and watch the traffic going past for a while. There is a CO-OP shop across the road and we both watch as a CO-OP milkman driving an electric milk float drops off some metal-framed crates of full milk bottles outside the supermarket.

The milkman starts to load crates of empty bottles onto his milk float, but soon realises there is not enough room on his milk float for all the crates, so he leaves some crates of empty milk bottles and drives off down the busy road.

TOBY: MILK BOTTLES!

ME: Yeah? What about them,

TOBY: Lets put the petrol in those milk bottles,

Since that seemed to be the most immediate and available option, we commandeered the milk crate full of empty one-pint glass milk bottles from outside the CO-OP supermarket across the road.

ME: We need something to stop the petrol spilling out the tops of the bottles, look around for something Tobes,

I go to a petrol pump and start to fill up each bottle in the metal crate with petrol from the petrol pump while Toby wanders off to find something to plug each bottles top to stop any petrol spillage.

With all the bottles brimmed with petrol I go and pay the man at the till. When I return to the crate of petrol Toby has found a couple of old black cotton shirts that he has torn up and is packing into the neck of each glass milk bottle.

(yes, I know, it’s as dangerous and bad as it sounds)

We then take one end each of the crate and make our way back to the shed down the alleyway. We did get some concerned and strange looks from people in the garage and passers-by though, not that we took any notice.

Anyway, we were focused on more urgent things at the time. But looking back I guess we must had looked liked we were going to a “bring your own crate of Molotov cocktails to a Guy Fawkes reunion party”…

Back at base camp “The big wooden shed”, we decided to make sure that the engines ran on both bikes before we fixed anything else like lights, horns, bald tyres, brakes (even though these were probably the more important safety bits)

I found a carburettor for the AJS, and Toby fits an old plastic half gallon bleach bottle on the back of the moped’s flimsy luggage rack over its back wheel.

Toby found some plastic tube that was the type used in those aerated tropical fish tanks along with some window putty.

Toby puts a hole in the bleach bottles bottom and pushes one end of the fish tank tube onto the moped’s carburettor petrol inlet, and the other end of the tube goes into the bottom of the bleach bottle.

Toby puts putty around one end of the tube to hold and seal the tube in the bottom of the bleach bottle. Gravity should allow the flow of petrol to the carburettor on this moped.

We carefully filed both bikes petrol tanks with petrol from the milk bottles leaving us with a half a crate of milk bottles full of fuel, which we had sensibly left to cook in the hot sun next to a wall.

So now You’re thinking this is where it gets bad don’t you, well no, not just yet…

We tried to start Toby’s moped by peddling the pedals with the moped on its stand, which should had made the engine start and run. This failed to produce any results, so we took turns pushing each other up and down the alleyway on the moped.

We gave up with the moped and tried the AJS. After trying for half an hour in the now very hot sun, I unscrewed the spark plug and told Toby to hold the spark plug against the engine to see if there was an electric spark.

The idiot didn’t hold the spark plug against the engine. He just held it tight in his hand. As I kicked the engine over by the kick start Toby jumped upwards and backwards a good few metres eastwards as he took 11,000 volts up his arm.

Yes, I did tell him again that he needed to hold the spark plug against the metal engine firmly to avoid a stiff electric shock as he squirmed on the ground cursing me.

So, the bike had a good spark then. With a cleaned-up Spark plug back in the engine, we tried again, and the engine roared into life.

With Tobes on pillion, we rode the AJS up and down the alleyway, not too fast, just to test it out. Then Tobes taps me on my shoulder,

TOBY: I got an idea, lets tow the moped at a fast speed to try and start it,

ME: Ok, lets do that,

We couldn’t find any rope, but Toby found a broom and had what he thought was a better idea than towing with a rope.

Now this is where the story starts going downhill…

My AJS’s headlight was missing, but the headlight cowl was still there. This cowl is like a big 20-centimetre diameter metal sideways eggcup at the front of the motorcycle.

Toby proposes that we put the pointy end off the broom stick into the empty headlight cowl, and he would sort of half sit on the soft headed brush end with part of the broom head in and under his trouser belt at his back.

And I would ride the AJS pushing him down the pretty tree lined alleyway at speed with a broom between us, because that was what Toby thought the moped needed in order to start, In Toby’s mind… 

Toby was convinced that being pushed along at speed would make the moped work, even with a bad front brake and dodgy rear brake, without a proper fuel tank, and two bald tyres at the very least.

What could possibly go wrong?

With the AJS started, and Toby on the moped with a broom propped between us, and with no crash helmets, just jeans, T-shirts, and plimsoles on our feet, we moved off slowly,

TOBY: Faster,

I go faster,

TOBY: Faster!

I change into second gear,

TOBY: FASTER!

I rev the AJS engine harder and can hear the mopeds engine is trying to start, bluish smoke choughs out of the mopeds failing holey exhaust.

I start to feel droplets of liquid on my face like rain and look up briefly. I cannot see any rain clouds though. I can now smell petrol. Is it drops of petrol spraying onto my face? But where is it coming from?

I looked down at the moped and could see that the tube that had been in the mopeds bleach bottle fuel tank had come out.

Petrol was now pouring all over the rear tyre of the moped and spraying up in the air like a “Rooster tail” effect. I could see rainbow colours shinning though the petrol vapour in the bright sunlight.

TOBY: Its starting to go! IT’S STARTING! FUCKING GO FASTER!

Toby’s bike gives out a big backfire. His engine bursts into life and screams, then a flame shoots out of the exhaust, the broom handle falls away from the front of my motorbike as Toby accelerates away from me on the moped.

The petrol has now caught fire and there is a trail of flames from the rear wheel.

I follow him to the end of the alleyway where the petrol station forecourt starts, his back wheel soaked in petrol is leaving a line of flames on the ground behind the moped as I watch him now trying hopelessly to stop the bike.

With the moped engine screaming and with both his feet frantically skidding along on the ground he goes across the garage forecourt and out of the entrance (Not the exit) across the busy main road, as cars screech to a halt to avoid him.

He makes it across the busy street and enters the alleyway next to the CO-OP on the opposite side of the road with the broom still dragging behind and a line of fire following him.

I dump the AJS motorcycle on the ground in the alleyway and run the garage forecourt and then across the road, I go into the alleyway where Toby vanished out of sight.

Something catches my eye see in the sky ahead of me. I see a small black Smokey nuclear explosion looking mushroom shaped cloud as I turn a bend in the alley. Then I see a water-soaked Toby sitting on the ground with a broomstick up the back of his T shirt, it is sticking out of his T shirts neck collar hole.

There is also an elderly man next to Toby who had been washing his car. But had now turned his attention to hosing down a now burnt and still smoking moped and Toby.

As we were pushing the bikes back to the shed down the alleyway, we could both smell something that was like wet grass burning.

When we got back to the shed the crate of bottles with petrol that we had left next to the wall had caught fire.

Leaving half a crate full of petrol filled milk bottles in the hot sun must had caused the milk bottle glass to act like a lens, and the heat from sun rays must have ignited the petrol that had been sweating in the heat.

There was nothing around them that was directly inflammable, but above the wall where we had left the milk crate were some prize sunflowers, and the heads of these plants that were destined for the Chelsea flower show had burnt off.

Bill asked us if we knew anything about these prize sunflowers that had strangely caught fire and were grown lovingly by his neighbour.

But we knew nothing.