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Maybe it's me who's got it wrong. Maybe the modern generation are right that sticking bits of metal in your face and other body parts actually does make you look attractive. Maybe the dropping of the letters H and T from speech is a significant advance in the English language. Maybe the text messages that arrive on my mobile telephone looking like they were composed by a youth wearing his baseball cap back to front and hailing from the wrong side of the New York tracks are the future of communication. Maybe the inclusion of the word "text" in the dictionary as a verb, with the derivatives "texts" and "texting" really does make it an acceptable addition to the vocabulary. Maybe it doesn't matter that few people realise, let alone care, that the days when a birth announcement in the local paper involving two parents with the same surname is almost a thing of the past.
However, for those of us who remember fondly times when life was lived at a slower, quieter pace, every now and then there comes along a means of turning back the clock and forgetting all that ails the modern world. Such a means arrived recently in the form of a new book on the history and development of the cyclemotor. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: The Stinkwheel Saga, Episode One. Wherever cyclemotorists gather, the talk frequently turns to the lack of a good quality English language version of the history of the auxiliary engine. There exist, of course, books in French: "Le Temps des Mobs" - and Dutch: "Bromfiets". I consider these to be required reading for any enthusiast worth his salt but there has always been a gap in the market, a vacancy for an English language text history of the home-grown clip-on.
Thankfully, this gap has now been filled by three of the National Autocycle and Cyclemotor Club's luminaries: Dave Beare, Andrew Pattle and Philippa Wheeler, who collaborated in researching, writing and co-publishing Stinkwheel. The book was conceived, presumably over many a glass of vin rouge, on a well-known French campsite several years ago! The gestation period of five years or so has been worth the wait but, being of a squeamish nature, I do not intend to take the metaphor any further.
The Stinkwheel Saga begins with an entertainingly written introduction to the subject, outlining necessity as the mother of this particular invention. The post-WWII austerity years are cited accurately as the origins of the auxiliary engine, although much earlier incarnations, such as the Swiss Motosacoche, are briefly touched upon. It continues with a chapter about Joseph Day and his two-stroke engine patents. Day began his working life with Stothert & Pitt in Bath - little did I know when I was at the Bristol Microcar Club's rally at the Stothert & Pitt rugby club's ground last year that I was on holy ground! The first volume of the Stinkwheel Project covers in depth nine of the most popular cyclemotor attachments: the Cyclemaster, Trojan Mini-Motor, BSA Winged Wheel, Sinclair Goddard Power Pak, Ducati Cucciolo, Vincent Firefly, British Salmson Cyclaid, GYS/Cairns Motamite/Mocyc and the Mosquito.
Each machine is covered in great depth and the chapters are beautifully illustrated with diagrams from handbooks, factory publications, advertisements from contemporary magazines and period photographs. Many of the illustrations will be completely new to the vast majority of readers and add greatly to the enjoyment of reading the book. It is well written throughout, much of it from a personal perspective, and the author's comments will strike a chord with many readers.
He digresses from the main subject of each chapter, taking us up interesting blind alleys to bring us snippets of information relevant to the machine under discussion before returning to the matter in hand.
However, if I meet him in a dark alley one night,he had better be able to come up with a good explanation for the comments about the "unlamented" Raleigh Wisp!
The nine machines referred to above arguably represent the core values of the cyclemotor movement, although this is not to denigrate the many other makes and models collected and enjoyed by enthusiasts, he added hastily! They are the most numerous survivors of the heyday of the cyclemotor known to the NACC but there are other, less numerous examples of attempts at motorising humanity which, with hindsight (which is always 20:20) were always destined to be short-lived. Many of these are listed and briefly described in a final chapter headed "The Rest". Fuller exploration of their design and fate will be published in "The Stinkwheel Saga, Episode 2", currently being researched and written by Dave, Andrew & Philippa.
I thought that I knew my cyclemotors but this book contains a wealth of fresh material and should be on the wish list of everyone interested in the subject, whether from an historic, social or technical point of view.
So if the sight of obese people eating chips in the street and teenage mothers pushing their bastard offspring from their council accommodation to the benefit office offends you as deeply as it does me, grab yourself a copy of the Stinkwheel Saga, shut out the appalling music emanating from your son's bedroom in which the deafening beat and misogynist threats hurt your sensibilities, settle down into that comfy chair by that roaring fire with your pipe, slippers and mug of cocoa and lose yourself in this magnificent book. Trust me, you're in for a treat.
First published, August 2004