[Otei]

Well, It all started off innocently enough. I honestly didn’t expect to be racing this year as I had suffered all sorts of problems, both personally and illness wise. My confidence had been at an all time low and my physical condition was appraised on a day to day basis.

So I was more than chuffed to finally get out on track at Cadwell for a track evening the Monday before Donington DD on the 750. It was hard work but satisfying.

I had planned to go to the Donny DD meet whatever the case, just to see some friends and watch the racing, but when Scotty “The shaven ******** Badger boy” Wilson told me that him, Jim “Electric knees” Brian and Scott’s pet Capuchin monkey, “Blommers” were doing a track day on the Thursday, I decided to take the day off work the day before and try and get on the already full Focussed events day when I turned up.

I arrived at the circuit early and the weather was lovely. I decided to break out my most expensive pair of Primark shorts and wander around in my £3.99 local garage sunglasses. P.I.M.P. No-one had a Scooby Doo that I was wearing Hello kitty underwear! Suckers!

I unloaded the bike and arranged my shizzle as loudly as possible in a vain attempt to wake Badger’s Comatose Mrs, Nancy. It failed and she only surfaced at midday when there was an announcement over the tannoy that someone had driven a car into the local supermarket’s window.

I went to start the bike and….click…click…nothing. Marvellous. I got a bump start from Scott who instead of actually pushing me, just flexed his handshake grip and the resultant massive wave of energy catapulted me halfway down the paddock. The bike fired into life…on one cylinder. By great Suarez’s bite marks, what a giant pile of Mingewarts.

It was at this point that I realised why I had been involved in DD in the first place. Everyone gathered round the bike and immediately started trying to diagnose the fault. Jim Brian, being an electrician by trade suggested that I probably needed a new fuse board, a flux capacitor and some very expensive platinum dimmer light switches, that he displayed proudly in his trade brochure. Scott, being someone that is awake at night for a living, suggested that it was probably because my eyebrows needed plucking and went to see if he could find some tweezers.

In the meantime, the Capuchin monkey started screeching wildly and threw a banana at me. I opened it to find a brand new spark plug in it. Being somewhat surprised at his ability to conceal such an item in a piece of fruit, I cleaned it off and replaced the rear cylinder plug. The bike fired into life and all was good.

A very nice lady came over the tannoy and reminded whoever it was that was running their motorcycle that engines were to be silenced until 9am. Scott retorted in his charming Northern manner by barking, “Why don’t you go and F*ck yourself!” Good lad.

The guys went off to sign on while I pieced things back together. Unfortunately, the seat wasn’t on the bike and I tore a hole in my prized shorts on a sticky out bit. Bugger. But the trackday was at least mildly on..and I went to see if I could get on it.

“Come back at half nine.”

“Come back in 10 minutes!”

“Come back in 10 minutes!”

“Yes, you’re on!”

Sorted….but I had missed the sighting laps and they couldn’t put a transponder on to time me. It was a “Chrono” day where they divide you into groups based on laptime. This is actually a great idea, but it doesn’t translate if you have a 50-60bhp bike against litre bikes. The net result of this was a train of us navigating big lardy and powerful missiles that were regularly 15mph slower than our slippery little Desmos in the corners. I found it to be quite good fun but Jim was particularly incensed by it and vented his frustration by hooking the monkey’s balls up to his generator and delivering random, high voltage shocks. “Blommers” seemed to enjoy it, which only wound Jimbo up more and he went to change his group to a faster one.

At this point, a new rider to the series, Ellis “Boo” Hadley turned up and introduced himself to the group. I wasn’t sure how to get home, but fortunately, amongst the many inky scribblings on his arm, there was a map of the Midlands. I made a note of the route and wrote it on the monkey’s forehead, as I had plans to take him home as a washing up slave.

The day progressed well, despite a couple of incidents that threatened to make a mockery of the entire show. These included running out of ambulances…so there was a delay…and also the fact that three people had parked their vans in unsafe poisitions..which led to……...a delay. Then, the monkey stole Karen Mabbut’s bar of dairy milk….which led to….a delay.

In the end though, I started to feel very comfortable on the fast and flowing circuit and chased down and eventually passed the very smooth looking endurance style of “Boo” Hadley.

Now, I had recently seen videos on Youtube of people training monkeys to ride minimotos, their pre-hensile tails seemingly offering them immense balance and stabilising capabilities. What I didn’t know, was that Scott had trained “Blommers” to ride his very own 583 under the number 69, which was kind of ironic, as apparently he could regularly be heard at night, wailing and freaking out at his futile attempts to perform self felatio.

During one of the sessions, I ran hard into the downhill and off camber Old Hairpin section of the track, only to see a Simian pilot fly up the inside, tail wildly swishing from the back of his leathers in an attempt to understand what it was that he was trying to achieve, exactly. He ran wide, onto the rumble strips and had the biggest lock to lock tankslapper that any primate has ever experienced. I laughed my ass