Saintly collection

It was a cold, wet, early winter morning in 1968. The traffic lights turned green at a busy London T-junction, just as the young policeman riding a grey Velocette LE ‘got the call.’ Demonstrating too much ambition and not enough experience, he let out the clutch, upped the revs and turned right. He immediately regretted his enthusiasm.

The rider, in classic upright position, realised his error too late and as the bike lost traction, he stoically and stubbornly remained seated and hung onto the handlebars. The duo were now sliding horizontally, as if riding the wall of death, and continued rather gracefully across the road, with metal scraping across the Tarmac.

The rider culminated his performance by clattering into the opposite kerb, in front of a bus stop, which was home to a disorderly queue of school children, who cheered and waved their arms aloft at this unfortunate cabaret. The remarkable thing was the rider’s helmet stayed planted on his head until the bike stopped and then it