It was around a month ago I sat pillion on the back of a scooter after decades, “Kick start it then I’ll sit” I tell my friend offering me a lift.
“Kick start?”
“Yes, kick start,” I tell him.
“Sit” he says, presses a button and engine springs to life.
“Wow” I think as my memory travels back to more than a quarter century to my old Lamby. If she had a self -starter like this she would have lasted a few decades more. Every kick I gave her knocked off a few years of her life. She was already more than twenty years past her prime when I bought her. We rode back on her, my brother and I, in second gear, since the mechanic from whom I had bought her informed us after we had paid him, there was something wrong with her third gear. There was of course no fourth gear; those Nineteen Fifty-Eight models came with only three gears.
There were a few other differences that made her look different from her sisters on the road; her head light wasn’t on the handlebar, but fixed on front panel, and handlebar had cables springing out, which carried brake and clutch wires.
It took a while each morning to wake her from deep slumber, till one day I found it was a waste putting so much effort kicking her into submission and instead got younger brother to push while I sat in majestic splendour and was pushed all over till the old engine spluttered to life, and then he would jump pillion and we would ride into the wild west for a few kilometers till she ran out of gas or spark from the spark plug sparked no more!
One day the side shield fell off. It made such a clanging noise on the road, that a policeman started blowing his whistle hysterically. We put it back, but found the old spring which kept the shield in place was spring no more. A cycle tube was then fitted round the cover to hold everything in place. It looked a little odd. But, it worked didn’t it?
And then one day the kick starter fell off.
With kick starter gone, she lay in my backyard; till one day an onion merchant friend of my father offered to buy her. Reluctantly I gave in and it wasn’t the onion smell from his shirt that filled my eyes with tears as he led her away.
I sit on the back of the gleaming scooter of my friend and my thoughts go to you dear reader, “Will you laugh with me today at some ancient machine you once had, your first car, your prehistoric cycle, or some event in your past? It’s wonderful to do so, than to be like many who complain of tough childhoods! Instead, praise our Creator for blessings He has now given us..!”

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