All Grown Up

A Memory of Wantage.

Being of a young age by this time, twelve years old, I remember the market square being filled with motorbikes, with each the bike riders wearing leather jackets topped with a cut-off denim with this being decorated with many a metal stud, either coloured brass or silver, and sometimes framing what was a stencilled picture of perhaps an evil looking face or else something of another bizarre description. This congregation of these bikers held a friend and myself in so much fascination that even with our both being at this early age, every evening my friend and myself would be found sitting at the foot of King Alfred's statue joining this party, he wearing his leather-looking jacket and I in my denim jacket covered with a variety of studs purchased from one the local shops and chains used for plugs, either bought or else retrieved by some other means. On the back of my jacket was painted a scull with lightning drawn through its entirety, so making the complete diagram stand proud. At around nine o'clock often we would make haste either down Mill Street or Wallingford Street to be purchasing five pence worth of chips, whenever it was raining, for shelter we would stand in the doorway of either Hiltons the shoe shop or else Woolworths doorway, (both no longer in existance). On Saturdays we would both spend most the day arranged around the statue in the square, which was filled with many of the bikers from all around, a sight to be seen, unlike today! During the afternoon would we enter into the local smoke-filled cafe for what was a lukewarm cup of tea and a piece of stale cake. Towards the rear was a table where some these bikers were also seated and where there was a juke box playing a tune (no longer in existance). During winter months the square was usually seen rather empty at night,with the bikers spending this time inside one of the public houses, they often accumalated down in Grove Street, but like everything else this has also all come to an end ...