Musings of a hairy Irishman.............

This week, I found myself halfway to my threescore and ten years, a fact that, if I am brutally honest, fills me with a sense of great annoyance, not because it's pretty apparent I'm not going to be a person of any major importance, but because I'm now looked upon as being old enough to know better.

20 years ago, on my 15th birthday, I was given a Commodore Amiga, a pair of trainers and I was looking forward to the day when I could ride legally on the road and didn't have to go to school. The world was a simpler place, I would probably end up driving a lorry for a living, be married to a girl called Debbie have 2 kids and drive an Opel Manta.

Sadly, I ended up driving the lorry amongst other crap jobs, I married and divorced a girl called Laura, had 3 kids and went thorugh more cars than Mad Max 2, although I did have the Opel Manta for a while!

Now that I'm officially old enough to know better, I can look back that my first years insurance for my 50cc was £192, then when I got my 125 at 17, the insurance industry went into a spasm about NI insurance and it went up to, and I'm not exaggerating, £1092!

I proceeded to tell them to fook off, got my car test, buggered off to England with my girlfriends cousin, then came back a year later to bluff my way into a courier job with the 125 which I had trailed out of the garage.

That meant my insurance was £9 a week, and although that was near £500 a year, that was for any bike. I even had my Exup as a "courier" bike because the boss was all right about these things, and the odd bottle of vodka tended to mellow his attitude somewhat. I took out another policy in 1996 for an old 250 MZ that I rode round half of Europe, and I had 3 years NCB untill late 1999 when some muppet stole my Jawa from outside my front door. Considering it had no barrels or head on it, and had blown it's crank bearings to bits, I don't really know why they did it. Anyway, the insurance paid out roughly 10 times what it was worth but I was down to 1 years NCB which I conveiniently forgot about.

Come 2003 and I was once more devoid of NCB as it had lapsed, but since I was back on 2 wheels I started slowly with my BMW R100, which was about £300, a year later I went to my GSXR1100 which was £400, back to the BM, then to a Bandit, which meant the insurance was hovering to just above the £100 mark.

True nirvana was achieved when I found myself astride a VTR1000, insurance, for what you could call a 1000cc sportsbike was sub £100, incredible when you thing that a 125 was once over a grand.

Anyway, I'm now looking at a policy that will get my GSXR1100, the Bandit and my SV all on the same policy for £115, all 3 sitting fully legal, to take out as the notion takes me!

So it seems, that although I'm slower, not as fit, softer and altogether deteriorated, the insurance people seem to like me, even if no one else does!