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In the early sixties two of my older brothers went away for a fortnights holiday. The day after they left I decided to borrow my brother Gordon's bicycle and with a friend, Peter Thompson, I rode to a pub called the "William the Fourth", about 4 miles from my home. The day was warm, the beer was cool and the mood was good, so, slightly inebriated, we decided to cycle over the beautiful Albury Heath to a second pub, The 'Volunteer', in the village of Blackheath, where we, once again,quenched our thirst for an hour. The pub was full of mainly cricketers but, as Peter pointed out, not many young ladies play cricket. He suggested, with the magnified optimism of a youth full of ale, that we visit' Bramley Social Club', and we duly got on our bikes to ride, mainly free wheeling, down the long hill that eventually took us to the village of Bramley. We saw some girls, spoke to a few, but had more success on the snooker table than with the ladies. However, we'd enjoyed ourselves and much later,as I parked my brothers bike in our old asbestos shed, I looked back on a good day, full of fun, exercise and much laughter.
I expect at this stage you're thinking what was the point of recalling this memory, well the following tells all. My beloved brothers returned from their holidays twelve days later and the next morning Gordon came out of the garden shed and enquired, 'what has happened to my bike?' I explained about the day out with Peter but that was not his concern, he wanted to know where his bike was! We all marched into the shed and saw two bikes, my brother Bobs racer and another bike, gleaming with its obvious newness, that was not Gordon's, old, seen better days, antiquated version of a bicycle. It did not take long for us to work out what had occurred, I had obviously left the club somewhat pie eyed, and, in the dark rode off on someone else's brand new pride and joy. After the laughter and the leg pulling was over I had a problem to sort out, where was Gordon's bike and whose sparkling new one had I stolen?
The answer saw me cycling over seven miles to Godalming Police Station on the new bike, exchanging it with Gordon's old one, and explaining what had happened to the Police Sergeant. It had been assumed by all concerned that some opportunistic thief had done a swap and for fourteen days his Officers had been on the lookout for a new bike being ridden by a dodgy looking character. No action was taken against me, in fact the police found it rather amusing, which was more than the owner did. He was an old fellow, the sort of age I am now, and he did not accept my apology with good grace. He kept repeatedly saying he'd only bought it that very day, and he refused to see the funny side of the situation. Still in my book, some 50 years later, its yet another amusing memory from a life full of good times!
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