There is a scene from
porridge in which the Judge says ‘you are an habitual criminal, who accepts
arrest as an occupational hazard’
meaning that if you choose to live the criminal life then you must
accept that one day the chances of having the Police turn up your door is
something that you have to take in to account. Yet when you live your life as
an honest man, paying your taxes, child support etc. and still end up having
your front door pounded down by several Police officers something is going
horribly against you. This was unfortunately the case for me. My whole life, at
least working life has been spent working on a passion of mine which happens to
be Scooters. I’m not talking about the mopeds you see 17 and 18 year olds
ripping around in over summer I mean the finely crafted Italian Lambrettas and
Vespas. I got my first scooter at the age of sixteen which was when the love
affair started and since then I have managed to establish myself as a
well-respected member of the scooter community. Over the years I have helped
repair hundreds of bikes and have managed to make my living buying old scooters
restoring them and then selling them on. I have made documentaries on the bikes
I love and in the scootering world have secured my place now as a trustworthy and
reliable person that is very knowledgeable on scooters. Therefore naturally no
one was more surprised than I when after a routine trip to Italy I had my life
turned upside down.
I had
set off in my van to Modena Italy, home of the finest balsamic vinegar Italy
has to offer and also Mary of Modena a former Queen of England. I was
travelling over to Italy to go to a scooter jumble which I tend to do several
times a year to buy scooters in need of some tender love and care and
experience had taught me that these jumbles were where you can pick up some of
the best bargains. Obviously travelling to Italy isn’t the most ideal of
situations especially when you’re in an old post office van that has seen much
better days, but as a great lover of Italian culture and primarily scooters I
had grown very fond of these trips. It is hard to describe one of these jumbles
and to the untrained eye it probably looks no different to any event of this
nature, lots of people stood round trying to sell their rubbish. A lot of times
this is the case, you can walk round for hours at a time and not find anything
that is remotely useful, however this time in particular I came across a
beautiful bike, a Lambretta Silver Special. The bike itself wasn’t in the
greatest condition but I knew that once I had spent a bit of time on it in my
workshop back home that I would be able to do it up lovely and make myself a
bit of money on it. It really is luck of the draw at these markets I’ve
travelled down to Italy before and returned empty handed and you get a few
‘marketeers’ like myself travelling over from the U.K for the same reason so
it’s competitive as everyone wants to get their hands on the best stuff. I
managed to pay for the Lambretta get it at a reasonable price and I thought
that was it, I’ll move on and see what else there is to offer. This trip was
unfortunately a nightmare from start to finish, there was an ongoing problem
with a few people of the people I had travelled with regarding some stolen
money, my van blew up whilst driving through some French mountains and I
personally was returning somewhat empty handed as I hadn’t managed to buy as
much as I had hoped for. All this was just the calm before the storm however as
it wasn’t until I got home that the real problems had started.
After what can only be described as a torrid journey back
home I finally got back home and was looking forward to a few days of relaxing
after the draining trip. I remember thinking at the time ‘thank god I’m home’
and for a few weeks this was the case. I was able to work on the Silver Special
and had put the bike on ebay as it was ready to be sold. It wasn’t for a few
days later that I had my life turned upside down when I received a knock at the
door from Interpol claiming I was selling stolen bikes. When buying bikes
abroad it is always customary and in your best interests to get all
documentation you need on the scooters you are purchasing which I always made
sure I did, so to see two uniformed police officers at the front door of my
house came as a massive shock. The officers had been ‘made aware’ that I was
selling stolen bikes that I had picked up on the cheap in Italy. This came
totally out the blue during the summer period, a time when I do the most of my
business as people like to take advantage of the summer weather and get out on
their scooters. Yet I had Interpol on my doorstep telling me that I was under
arrest for a crime I hadn’t committed, that all my other bikes were to be
confiscated and that I was believed to be part of some sort of stolen scooter
ring. The following few months I was treated like a criminal, I was constantly
being harassed by the Police. They were asking me all sorts of questions and
trying to pin me to several bike thefts. I lost all my custom that summer so
couldn’t provide for my family. My wife turned to drinking and we were arguing
non-stop and consequently divorced, all for nothing. I have always felt that as
a human the biggest achievement you can have in your life is to find love, I
had that as well as a successful business and it was taken from me. I spent the
next few months dumbfounded by the position I had been put in; I was penniless,
wifeless and it didn’t look like showing any signs of coming to a favourable
resolution for me. I found myself in the worst state of my life until one day I
had all my bikes returned to me minus the Silver Special and all the charges
against me dropped. It was like a brief fleeting visit from a tornado that just
passed through my life and left it in tatters. I was never given any
explanation by the police as to why they had reason to suspect me or if they
even had any evidence for that matter. I was the victim of sheer Police
incompetence and in such a short space of time they had made me lose so much.
Other scooter enthusiast’s that might have considered my business as
competition started to publish articles in magazines slandering my name so my
business and reputation had to be rebuilt from scratch. It was a truly horrible
period in my life, one that I still have many of unanswered questions about
like; Why did the Police think the bike was stolen? What happened to it? And why me? But I have now moved on from it
and it’s a chapter of my life that I will not remember fondly.
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