It was the Friday evening of the Antler Rally weekend in 1975, I suppose we must have taken the day off work and travelled up to Kilchoan during the day, anyway there we were getting very drunk in the beer tent, a substantial deposit had been required for the use of a pint glass, so we (myself, Doug and LW) redeemed our empty glasses and in the darkness made our way from the beer tent to Kilchoan Village Hall (the signing on point) to see if there was any food on offer. On the way, whilst crossing the village hall car park which was surfaced with small rocks and boulders, LW announced that he had found a beer glass that he was going to cash in on the way back, I swore blind that it was my glass that he had stolen and with Doug joining in a good natured ruckus started on the car park, which ended when LW slid down the side of a parked van and fell to the floor claiming to have broken his leg, more to the point, that I had broken his leg. To this day he still maintains (as do others who weren't even there!) that I personally broke his leg, and to this day I still deny it! After all, I was only drunk, he was drunk and in considerable pain! So, myself and Doug half dragged and half carried him into the village hall and called upon the rally organisers for assistance. After much deliberation it was decided unanimously that it was possibly only badly sprained, and even if it was broken the village nurse would not be happy to be woken up after midnight to treat a drunk carried in by his equally drunken mates, and anyway, she wouldn't prescribe painkillers to someone who had obviously consumed vast amounts of alcohol. So it was decided that the alcohol would help to deaden the pain and we would take LW to see the nurse the next day. So Doug and I carried/dragged him up to the top of the field where our tents were pitched and made him as comfortable as we could before going back to the beer tent! |
The night passed, not very peacefully and the next morning a sober(ish) LW was in real pain. me and Doug went down to the village hall to arrange to see the village nurse. A giant Scotsman was to accompany us to deliver LW to the nurse, we gently pulled him out of the tent whereupon the giant hauled LW up on to his shoulders, by his broken leg, and carried him to the nurse's house in the village. LW's leg was indeed broken so the nurse called for an ambulance to take him to the hospital in Fort William, 60 miles away. To save time and to save the ambulance having to negotiate THAT road, we agreed to meet the ambulance at Salen, only 25 miles away down THAT road. We were to transport LW lying on a mattress in the back of the organiser's Thames van, the nurse would accompany us to make sure that he was handed over safely. So it was all arranged, LW lying on a mattress, me sitting on one wheel arch beside him and Doug on the other, the nurse was to sit in the front next to the driver. We were just about to set off when an attractive, scantily attired, teenage girl from the village arrived to speak to the nurse, the nurse ushered her into the house and then came out on her own a few minutes later to say that the girl would be coming with us. Apparently the girl suffered from epilepsy and the nurse claimed that if she refused to allow her to accompany us she could become agitated which might bring on a seizure. The girl was to sit on the engine cover between the driver and the nurse and so we set off to meet the ambulance at Salen. |
If you've ridden THAT road you may remember that at one point it runs alongside the loch about 6 or 8 feet above the water level, well that was where the girl had her seizure, flailing about and hitting the driver and the nurse. The driver was quite surprised (to put it mildly) but managed to keep control of the van whilst beating off the girl as the nurse tried to calm her down. After what seemed like minutes, but was probably only seconds, the driver pushed the still flailing girl over into the back of the van where she continued to flail about on top of LW and his broken leg. Me and Doug were treated to the spectacular sight of the girl, with her short skirt up around her armpits and her shirt down around her waist, writhing about in the back of the van to the soundtrack of LW's screams. I'm sure that he would have found it quite exciting had he not been in so much pain! The nurse, hanging over the front seats, managed to calm the girl and haul her off LW and drag her back into the front of the van. The rest of the journey to meet the ambulance passed without drama. |
LW was taken to the hospital in Fort William. We went back to the rally site and during the course of another drunken day and evening, we managed to find someone willing to ride LW's bike back to Stoke. She was the wife of a friend of D the D's and she hadn't ridden a bike since passing her test, certainly nothing as big as a Triumph Daytona. All in all she managed very well, (would you want to ride THAT road as your first attempt at riding a big bike?) she only dropped the Daytona twice, luckily without injury to herself, we weren't too worried about the bike, we just needed to get it the 400 miles back home. |