THE LIFE OF RILEY
BY FRANK RILEY ©

BOOK ONE - SPIKE ISLAND

Chapter Twenty-one: Wheels

When Mike passed from junior school to secondary-modern Dad presented him with a shiny new bike. He had been promised the bike several years prior to this historic event on the proviso that he did well in school and passed all his exams. This Mike did and the presentation of this reward was the result. It had cost Dad twenty-nine pounds, an unheard of sum in those days - I never knew there was so much money in all of England. Dad must have done well on the horses or something to have been able to fork out that much.

Well, Mike was really chuffed with this, and why shouldn't he have been? It was mainly black, with chrome handlebars and wheels, and a polished bell to warn the on-coming traffic. It even had headlamps and rubber-coated pedals and brand-new pump which sat underneath the cross-bar. Wow! It was a corker! And how Mike loved it. He went everywhere on it. He took me for rides on the cross-bar or sitting on the handle-bars and we had a great old time with it.

On the day of this presentation Dad turned to me and said in a solemn and meaningful voice: "You'll get one too, when you leave St. Patrick's, that is, if you pass all your exams like Mike did. This was wonderful news. A bike of my very own! I couldn't wait to grow up.

But wait was what I had to do. I was two and a half years younger than Mike and that took six years to pass before my turn came. Time goes so agonisingly slowly when you are a kid and some great event is waiting for you to come of age.

The great day did eventually arrive, however. I had passed all my exams; I was so damn clever because of that bike, they were going to send me to university, except that universities hadn't been invented yet. I waited at home with great anticipation, knowing that Dad had gone off to get my bike. Oh, what fantastic times were in store for me when Dad came home with it. I'd ride to Frodsham Castle, no, to Chester, maybe to Liverpool. Oh, heck, I'd ride everywhere.

Dad arrived and there was my bike - a dilapidated, paint-scarred, wreck of a thing with bald tyres. Dad could see that my crest had fallen.

"What's the sour puss for, then," he asked, menacingly.

"Nuthin' Dad. Honest. It's smashin'. Ta' very much, Dad," I said, hurriedly. Times must be a bit tough this year, I told myself.

A new bike it most assuredly was not, but as the months, and indeed years, passed it became the best bike in the whole world, and parts of England too. I did go to Frodsham Castle, and Chester, and Liverpool, and everywhere, and some other places as well. I became something of an expert in patching the inner-tubes, and God knows, I had lots of practise. I painted it black to look a little bit like Mike's bike and took it everywhere I went. I would have slept with it if I could have lugged it up the stairs every night.

On the far side of the railway tracks, close to the marshlands, there was a dirt-track which stretched for about half a mile. It was on this magnificent highway that I practised all the tricks one could do with a bike. First of all, I tried riding without holding the handle-bars. That was too easy. Then I would gather speed and when it was going fast enough I'd put my feet up on the handle-bars and my hands behind my head. That was not so easy, but in time I mastered that trick too. Riding backwards was always a good one, that is, facing back-to-front. But you had to be careful with that one in case you ran into a train and damaged it. There were so many tricks I learned; it was a pity that the circus never came to Spike Island.

The most fun I had though, was when I used the dirt-track as a speedway course. Starting at one end, I'd set the bike in motion and then pedal as hard as I could until the speed at the end of the run was touching the sound-barrier. Then the brakes would go on and I would throw the bike over into a skid which sometimes went for thirty or forty feet. It was murder on the tyres, but, oh, what fun it was. Many's the time I landed bum over armpit of course, and I'd limp back home with cuts and bruises and a bike decidedly in need of repairs.

Harry Arnold's view of where Frank's world of Spike Island was joined to England by the railway swing bridge across the Sankey. Frank's dirt-track speedway would have run from the far side of the tracks, alongside the canal.

At one stage in my cycling career I landed a job as a paper-boy working for Peter Pender, the paper-man. Mr. Pender was about a hundred and sixty years old and not very well to boot. But he was a nice fellow and always treated me kindly. Morning and night, seven days a week, you would see me flying all over West Bank. Come to think of it, Saturdays and Sundays were mornings only, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, there I'd be up with the coughing sparrows, in all seasons, riding like the wind to pick up the first bag of papers. Mr. Pender, bless his heart, would give a nice cup of tea before I started - in England you don't have tea, you have a "nice" cup of tea; it tastes better that way. You could lose a leg, or an arm, or the house could burn down, and you could be sure that within minutes someone would say: "Well, we'd better have a nice cup of tea, then, shall we?"

Thus fortified, I would take off on my rounds, zipping in and out of streets and alleyways, pounding up hills and racing down the other side. This was a proper service too. Not that American stuff where you ride along in a car and fling the paper into the garden. No, this was right through the letter-box stuff; besides, no-one had a garden in West Bank, in any case.

With the first round out of the way I'd race back to Peter Pender's to pick up more papers and push off again. It was great fun. And to think I was getting paid for it! 12/6 a week I was making. Dad kept ten-bob out of that for his drinking money, but I was still left with half-a-crown. He did exactly the same a few years later when I worked for his daughter, my half-sister, in her fish-and-chip shop, but what's the use of complaining, as the man said, when his wooden leg got dry-rot.

Yes, the old bike served me well. We saw so many places together; places I would never have been able to see had I not had it. It was a good lesson I had learned when first I set my disappointed eyes on the old wreck: it's not the price paid that makes a good bike; it's what you do with it when you have one. And in the end, that's all that really matters.

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