couldn’t move the thing, the angle of the slope making the trike even heavier and harder to budge. I started to panic, not least because I could smell petrol. Really, really strongly. And the engine was still running. I thought it could just be petrol coming out of the breather pipes, which isn’t such a big deal, but when I looked down to check I saw fuel pouring straight out of the tank. The petrol cap, which I was straddling, upside down, was leaking and the fluid was going all over my jeans. We’re talking about two Coke cans’ worth, all over my crotch.
I managed to turn the engine off, but I still couldn’t move it left or right. After several efforts I finally shifted it just enough to be able to drag myself out from under it. Without me underneath it, the trike destabilised, rolled over and then slid off down the hill, but I didn’t give a toss about it by this point because the petrol had soaked right through to my skin and was now burning me in the worst possible place. The pain was pain like you’ve never felt in your life. It was literally like having my bollocks marinated in battery acid. It fucking hurt. There was nothing for it, the jeans had to come off. It hurt so much that I took my pants off too.
I then ran down the hill, shouting, screaming and wailing, with nothing on below the waist, not a stitch, swinging my tackle in an effort to cool myself down, and across the field, straight past a family of ramblers in cagoules. God knows what they thought, but I wasn’t stopping to find out. When I reached the outside tap in the courtyard I turned it on and literally stood there under the water, like someone who’d been in the desert for a month and needed a drink. I just sat there with cold water running all over my little todger. No lasting damage was done, you’ll be pleased to know, but I dread to imagine what would have happened if I’d been under that trike much longer.
I never told anyone about my manhood’s close call. The trike was still in one piece so no one needed to know. If she’d found out, my mother would probably have stopped me going on the trike altogether. My dad, on the other hand, would probably have argued with her that at least I was learning lessons. Where my mother always wanted to protect, my dad was all for character building.
Sometimes I could see his logic, other times it just seemed cruel. I was always one of the quiet kids at school and was horrendously bullied for it. I used to get the shit kicked out of me all the time. At lunch I’d always get a good kicking, maybe have snow rubbed in my face if it was winter. I’d come home and my jacket would be ripped and I’d be covered in bruises. It got to the point where my mother was desperate to pull me out of school but my father wouldn’t hear of it. ‘No,’ he used to say, ‘he’ll stand on his own two feet and he’ll fight it. No son of mine’s going to run away. Let him face it.’ It’s a fine line between character building and character crushing, a very fine line.
My mother always wanted to keep me on the safe side of that line. Which is why I think she let me have the bikes in the first place, even though I couldn’t ride them on the road. I think she felt it was better that I got it out of my system in the relative safety of the farm rather than rush out at 16 and go crazy on the road. And she was right. When I was 16 I lost two very good friends in bike accidents. Neither had had motorbikes before. They turned 16, got a bike each, and were dead within twelve months.
Still, my mother would have been horrified if she’d known some of the things me and my mates got up to, especially on that Honda trike.
At the back of our house there was a hedge with gaps in it, and for some reason we thought it would be a really good idea to get my air rifle and try to shoot each other through the gaps as we rode past on the trike. One of us would be in the field with the air rifle, another would be on the trike on the other side of the hedge, riding backwards and forwards, being shot at. We were all rubbish shots and never managed to hit the rider, so really we just spent hours and hours riding up and down in a straight line and missing our target. I don’t know why, but me and my mates thought this was great fun. I know, I know, it’s not big and it’s not clever, and I’m not suggesting for a moment that it was a good idea. Kids, if you’re reading this, don’t do it. But it used to keep us out of Mum’s hair for hours. We were farmers’ kids, that’s what farmers’ kids do. Well, it’s what we did. Things are different in the country. It’s not like kids growing up in the city. We didn’t talk weird and play with knives – well, you know what I mean. Most importantly, though, no one ever got hurt when we were out and about. Not unless you count a few petrol burns in private places.
And the time we ran over Philip Schofield in my Fiat 126.
8 PHILIP SCHOFIELD IS DEFINITELY NOT A CHICKEN: THE FIAT 126
My first experience of driving on four wheels came on a tractor. My dad had a big old Ferguson and he used to put me on his knee and let me steer; he would do the gears and the pedals. I was about eight at the time so my feet couldn’t reach. When I was ten I started driving it for real. It was a massive old thing and the steering was really heavy so I couldn’t drive it very far because it was such hard work. I’d drive it around the farm, but no more than maybe 400 yards before turning it round and coming back again. It was a proper old-fashioned model, with the tall exhaust pipe on the front, a flap on the top and tons of smoke belching out. Point is, by the time I got my first car, a little Fiat 126, at the age of twelve, I was already a pretty experienced motorist.
My dad figured that buying that car was cheaper than driving lessons, and he was right. He bought it off one of the staff at work for £40. It was completely knackered, they just wanted to get rid of it, and always being one for a bargain my dad jumped at it. It really was unfit for the roads, but it was great for whizzing around the farm. And because we lived in the middle of nowhere, my dad was always looking for ways to keep us, or more specifically me, entertained. After bikes and trikes, a car was the natural progression. (Well, it was either that or get a bigger bike, and the only thing to get after a Honda ATV70 trike would have been a Suzuki scrambler, which were quick little things – they’d do 90 miles an hour easy – and bound to get me into exactly the kind of trouble he was hoping to avoid.) He thought that if he didn’t focus my attention on an exciting piece of machinery I was going to go off and do all the stuff the other kids did, like, say, nicking things from empty farmhouses, being led astray by girls in uniforms, and messing about with air rifles. All the things I wouldn’t dream of doing. Never. Not me. Getting me a cheap banger was by far the safest option. More fool him.
The 126 was a tiny thing, just a bit bigger than the classic Fiat 500s, which I still love (I’ve actually got an original Abarth race model at home). It was dark blue with brown cloth interior – my childhood seems to have been cursed with brown cloth interiors – and it had a manual five-speed gearbox, no radio and a heater you couldn’t use because it reeked of something toxic, probably exhaust fumes, which made your eyes burn every time you turned it on. It was great. My dad taught me how to drive it in the courtyard round the back of the house, this time more successfully than his trike masterclass, and within minutes I was tearing around the fields. That thing provided me with hours and hours of fun.
And of course, once I’d mastered the five-speed gearbox, the clutch and driving in tractor ruts, all I needed to do was make it my own with a little customisation. So out came the masking tape and a couple of cans of yellow and red spray paint from Halfords and before you could say ‘pimp my ride’ my dark blue Fiat 126 had an unbelievably cool set of red and yellow flames coming off the front wheel arches and all the way down the side. Then, instead of a glass windscreen, it had chicken wire, which along with the blacked-out side windows (which you couldn’t actually see out of because I’d painted them with black spray paint – smart move) made it look like a proper rally car.
At least that was the official reason I gave for why the car suddenly had a chicken wire windscreen. The truth has been a closely guarded secret until now. My Fiat 126’s windscreen lost its glass when we ran over Philip Schofield (no, not that
