IN TERMS OF the event, the make or type of bikes surely doesn’t matter now, but it weirdly did then, so the issue seems to warrant emphasis in the process of looking back. The dragsters and stingrays, the one or two mid-sized racing bikes and the custom jobs – extended forks welded onto dragster frames with racing-bike front wheel and dragster rear wheel. For twelve year olds, such ‘work’ meant help from a big brother or maybe an Old Man, as well as access to welding equipment. It was about rights, skills and being seen as older than one was.

Surrounded by these bikes, these machines, with their front wheels raised and bearing down on him, Brett didn’t consider being seen as older, bigger or stronger as a sign of maturity. Weedy, as they called him, and odd coloured. He felt he was much more mature than them, for all their accrued power and mutual reinforcement.