OF TANDEMS

I owned one. I was fourteen. A tandem stood rusting outside a house on my paper round. Eventually I took courage, and knocked on the door and asked the man if he wanted to sell it. It belonged to his daughter, away at University, but when she came home, he promised, he'd ask. Then one day, he stopped me. "Still want to buy that tandem?" I offered him £15 and he took it. It was a Claud Butler. Vintage. I guess about 1930. Hub brakes. Cross over chains . As heavy as a skip. But my best friend and I had a whale of a time on it. We were both racing cyclists in a local club, and we could have the tandem, heavy though it was, up to a good 35mph or more. We used to take it out after school onto a dual carriageway where, at about the same time every evening, a chap on a Honda 90 would be commuting home from work - Wymondham to Norwich, about 9 miles. He was our Derny. We'd tuck in for the nine miles, grit our teeth and hang on for the distance and then try and outsprint him on the final downhill for the City sign, getting up to probably 45 mph or so. He clearly was tickled, and would tuck down, urging the Honda to exceed its meagre power output. Sometimes he won. Sometimes we did.  Norwich - A Fine City. That's what the sign said.  The sign's still there. Everything else is just memory.

I've been looking at tandems on ebay.