Rally Review

20th November 1987 - Rally Review Magazine

Following my previous rally, I now had a good reason to be grateful for having a large bike, as I had acquired a girlfriend, Becky, without her own bike, to take to rallies. This meant an obvious increase in the luggage requirements at the same time as a reduction in the space for the increase in items. Being November it was possible to wear most of the extra clothes needed and only take the bare minimum of changes of clothing.

We soon discovered that her ex was also at the rally, but there didn't seem to be too much animosity between them, (or wishes for reconciliation), so we got along OK.

Following the habit of the landlord of the pub nearest to Tutbury Castle, the site of the rally, of increasing his prices for the weekend, the majority of rallyists spread throughout the other pubs in the town, only returning to the marquee at the end. A lot of us settled in the rather upmarket pub, (almost a wine bar), at the far end of the town. It had a function room upstairs that we couldn't use as a local group had booked it. (More of that later.) A suitably enjoyable evening followed and we made plans to return there the next night.

On Saturday, as it was a Lez Lumps rally, the games included Dizzy Sticks, (there was a wheeled device which you were supposed to push along in front of you, but most people just carried it), along with other games.

Later on, after topping up at Zeb's food van, we proceeded back to the newly discovered pub. Soon enough things got very silly, including Keeef seeing just how many cigarettes he could carry at once after the packet mysteriously disappeared.

At one point several WW2 German soldiers, accompanied by a Herr Flick of the Gestapo came in. much to the consternation of the Belgian bikers there. The locals that had booked the function room were holding an 'Allo 'Allo night. After half an hour, Charlie Cobbe and I took them a page three from the Sun so they had a picture of the Fallen Madonna with the big boobies.

Following that, one group on our table were doing engine impressions. The simple four stroke twin, with its 'Suck' 'Squeeze' 'Bang' 'Blow' motions was quite easy, with the people representing the pistons jumping up and down as required. By the time they got to a six-cylinder, arms were used instead of bodies and they even pointed fingers to indicate which valve was being used at the time. This reduced Becky to hysterics and this only slightly subsided during the evening.

After a while, Carl Walsh, from the Hedgehogs MCC led a sing-song from atop a bar stool, even getting Lez up to assist on 'Climb up Sunshine Mountain'. Someone found some of those very large balloons you sometimes discover in pubs, which amused for a bit. We spent some time tearing suitable headlines/adverts out of the aforementioned newspaper and applying them to various parts of Becky.

Eventually, we felt the call of the marquee, so left the warmth of the pub to warm up the site. This was successful enough to persuade a couple of girls to remove some jumpers.

This was one of the funniest Saturday nights ever at a rally. As my camera ran out of film at this point, I cannot report accurately of the rest of the night, but you will all remember if there were alien invasions, earthquakes or tornadoes, which I'm sure would have been widely reported in the papers the next morning.

All we knew the next morning was that it was still dull and a bit damp, requiring the wearing of most of our clothing on the bike again.

- Phil (the Spill) Drackley