Three weeks from that birthday and a purple Ducati arrives in the garage, my first bike in six and a half years. It can’t be my mid-life crisis as I had that last year (and the year before, now I think about it). Unbridled enthusiasm for the new arrival is matched only by the happiness of having an excuse to wear muscular bike gear outside the house again. Maybe there is some truth in the notion that non-essential bikers are principally poseurs. It could be true of the matching leathers crowd, but I didn’t get into bikes for posing purposes.

I started riding in August ‘98. No real idea why it took that long, I suppose it was residual “not under my roof”, and a succession of interesting old cars, cheap fuel and company motors. Back then, I was living in south London and driving to work at a west London car showroom every day - not the optimum solution even ten years ago. One rare day off, I tripped over an internet ad for a Gilera Runner 125.

This was a scooter, but not as we knew them.  It was a decent size, with mini-superbike tyres, more stable with decent suspension, looked comfortable and was quick and economical. At last, grownups could whizz about London without becoming Vespa-riding fashion victims, or having to squeeze themselves aboard scrawny seventeenmobiles. My local dealer, Hamiltons of Streatham, had a ‘98 R-plate in stock: silver with 1800 miles and mint. I bought it, got myself an Alpinestars jacket and Shoei lid as part of the deal and had the scooter delivered to Crystal Palace for Compulsory Basic Training.

CBT was brilliant: a bright and sunny morning spent with a leather-clad pirate, otherwise known as our instructor. The man had clearly seen it all on two wheels and gave us some seasoned advice on all the stuff we weren’t supposed to know. This included filtering, or how to skip to the front of the queue safely (my favourite part of being on two wheels in London). Now legal to go it alone, the first time I rode my Runner to work I quietly queued up at the Tooting Bec lights with everyone else. When a bike burbled down the outside of the smokey string of enclosed car drivers, I quickly snapped out of whatever stupor I was in and got with the program; straight to the front.

My route through town to work was a blast: past Tooting Common and up Trinity Road to Wandsworth Bridge. Over the bridge and straight up through Fulham to North End Road, where I would race past the Orange Club, headed for Olympia. Left at the top, through the back streets to Shepherd’s Bush, past the BBC Theatre and up past White City tube station to the Westway. Then a straight line all the way to work on the Western Avenue. In a car, it was an easy hour most days. On the Runner, it was 25 minutes -max. A hooligan began to surface who hadn’t seen the light of day since I’d assumed full responsibility for myself on arrival in London 10 years earlier. This scooter was fun!

L-plates allowed me to get to work in half the time and at a fraction of the cost, but they didn’t get me into the traffic-light chat club. For that I needed clutch and gears, and the Runner had neither. Ten weeks later, I left the job for another, taking a few days off before the new start to do a three-day Direct Access test. No more L-plates for me.

To make the transition from swish little scooter to sexy 600, I placed myself in the hands of Metropolis at Vauxhall Bridge. Their started-in-a railway-arch philosophy appealed to the romantic in me, and I figured urban bikers needed urban instructors, so the rough and ready Metro rockers got the gig. Saturday November 28, 1998 saw me zipping  along the South Bank, on the road to big-bike bliss.

The weekend-long three day course, two days prep with the test on day three, was inspired. Saturday morning was all about wobbling SR125s round a basketball court out the back of the shop, and I took to the clutch-and-geared Yamahas like a zebra to a crossing. After a bit of street riding on the little bikes, two of us were teamed up with an instructor, and given the all-clear to swing a leg over 500 of Mr Honda’s finest cubic centimetres: the all-conquering CB.

Sitting astride the CB 500 was a seminal moment, and there are distinct similarities in the regard with which I hold the elegant Chinese girl who helped disspell my youthful innocence and the exquisitely evocative CB - medieval in its simplicity, yet lithe and sensual once on the move. The throb of the twin between one’s legs, controlled by one’s fingertips - who said men weren’t sensitive?!

 TO BE CONTINUED