Ace OF CUBS

Rewind to January 2011 and you’d see my hands thrust deeply into my jacket pockets as I waited for the show to begin. My fellow bikers crammed the hotel bar for the much-anticipated Scottish Classic MC’s winter auction – an annual event which boosts club funds by flogging unwanted motorcycle paraphernalia.

To the great amusement of the room, the appointed auctioneer is traditionally hard on fidgets, coughers, blinkers and nose-scratchers. Any involuntary movement is sadistically rewarded with the lesser contested auction items – how else would the usual collection of round-robin books, DVDs and dog-eared magazines find new homes? So my hands remained firmly entrenched in my pockets and my body rigid as petrified stone. I was wise to the auctioneer’s tactics and not an itch would be scratched, nor a twitch indulged.

Two ragged-looking Honda Cubs had attracted my interest. Both were propped up ungainly against the bar. Either would be a prize to any Cub enthusiast; they were discovered festering in a shed in the seaside town of Broughty Ferry. An SCMC official was offered both brine-encrusted machines for club disposal to clear them out of the shed.

Lesser items were rapidly disposed of by the auctioneer’s gavel before the main event, and it wasn’t long before an excited murmur rippled through the crowd like a Mexican wave. I fancied bidding for the C90 and in expectation I released my hands from their confinement. The C50 came up first and the ‘rat-a-tat-tat’ of the auctioneer’s gavel soon soared beyond the starting bid, to reach a very reasonable £60. ‘Well affordable,’ I can remember thinking at the time.

I prepared myself for the C90 – a machine which I hoped to secure to kickstart my sixteen year-old daughter Zoe’s biking career. Once again bidding was fierce and