It’s been six months since I quit despatching for an easy life teaching normal people to ride motorbikes. The plan was to spend less time wearing leather in the rain, and more time feeling relaxed about life. I was going to do something less physically demanding that involved real human interaction beyond ‘Sign and print please’. I was going to come home from work and have energy and spirit to go out and see friends. I could risk a hangover midweek, because at least my life didn’t depend on me being on the ball in quite the same way. This then, was the plan.

Training completed I found myself doing something that I’d never done before: Looking through a newspaper for a job. Qualifying as a bike instructor in the middle of December could perhaps have been thought through a little better on my part - it didn’t occur to me that only the clinically depressed would want to learn how to ride a CG125 around a playground in February. After a tense couple of weeks going to lots of interviews and not being offered any work, I got a call-back from a woman called Alison who was starting up her own bike school in Fulham and planned to specialise in training women.

I got involved in the same way you get in a very hot bath. Cautiously. I wasn’t in a financial position to risk waiting around for someone else’s dreams to come true. The financial position I was in was one of those that you have to turn the page upside down to work out.

I also, as regular long-term readers may remember, have some fairly strong views about women on the roads. I wondered if my integrity as a biker was going to allow me to put these brainless chick-twits on two-wheels. However, since I’d made a career decision to do my bit to improve traffic conditions, and not one to shy away from a challenge I thought I’d give it a go. I’d just terrify them into forward planning and common courtesy.

Alison and I met at a café in Fulham to discuss changing the face of Motorcycle training in this country. We met and the whole school existed in a yellow notebook and Alison’s head. No bikes, no garage, no office, nothing. However, the inside of Alison’s head is one hell of a place to be and four months later, we have five instructors, 14 bikes and a huge pile of Berings clothing.

One of Alison’s ideas was that since we preach protective clothing at our new trainees, it was a bit daft to let them go out on the roads for the very first time in jeans and trainers. So everyone who hasn’t got his or her own kit must wear ours. Head to toe protection in fetching silver jackets and black trews which, together with our fluorescent pink bibs, makes a class-ful of CBT’s look like a small freestyle stunt team.

It was an incredible opportunity for me – fresh out of instructor school with all of two-weeks experience suddenly finding myself ‘(mis)chief instructor’ of a new school, buying bikes, making contacts, and setting it all up from scratch.

However, the original plan, the one that was about easy-life shorter-hours less-time-in-leather, has gone tits up. Completely. It’s high season for bike schools.

Far from reducing the amount of time spent on a bike, I’m doing more hours in the saddle than ever. At the same time, these days I’m a representative of the Driving Standards Agency supposedly setting a good example and adrenaline moments are rare, except when a pupil threatens to bin it badly and even then I’m supposed to stay calm and collected in a professional manner. I’m not even really allowed to shout at the other Muppets on the road.

I gave a twit in a BMW a despatch-style talking to on the A4 the other week and the students could hardly hold the bikes up for laughing. All day they ride around listening to me burble encouragingly and soothingly away to them on the radio, when suddenly “Oi! Piss off, you t...! What the f... are you playing at?” Quickly followed by “Oops, sorry girls”. (The radios are operated by me talking, or coughing, or swearing or even breathing heavily.) Trouble is though, that DSA regulations insist on us putting the name and phone number of the school on the back of our high-vis jackets, so Alison got a very snotty phone call from said twit who objected to being told off by a “Girl on a big white trailie”. Me, I was thrilled: I haven’t been called a girl for a decade.

Some of the students, the gutsy ones, get taught how to ride a bike round the Aldwych, or Hyde Park Corner. What a teaching ground we’ve got on our doorstep. They always master clutch control on the ‘Dilly and nail the ‘ brisk get-away’ on Upper Thames St. Banking the beast over just falls into place on Goodmans Yard, and frankly, if they make it round the Elephant, they can handle any roundabout that the examiner throws at them.

The students who can’t remember to look out for themselves get sent round the Aldwych to learn their lesson. If they don’t seem to appreciate the dangers that lurk on the pavement then it’s Canon Street at lunchtime, and if they look sceptical at me when I explain the Black Cab to them, it’s off to the Strand, and a circuit of the ‘Garden’. I don’t have to do much except point out the imminent dangers all around them as they crop up. Then on day two, I’ll shut up and let them get on with it. It’s amazing how people respond when you really put them under pressure. I’ve discovered that the secret of teaching U-turns lies in making them do it a road in Putney doubled parked with very expensive cars. Not wanting to scratch up a Jag is great motivator.

I am discovering new aspects of my biking personality. There is a constant daily struggle in my psyche between ‘Deirdre-DSA’ and ‘Daisy-DR’. Deirdre is a sometimes suffocatingly cautious character, who justifies everything in the name of safety. Daisy on the other hand might be said to have a thrill-control problem; but can’t work out what the point of riding a motorbike is, if it isn’t whooping it up. Let’s face it, forget ‘practical transport’ – a motorbike is a machine that makes fun. I have real trouble relating to students who insist it’s just to get to work and back. Nah, you’re wrong there, sweetie. Let me show you what I mean. How am I supposed to instil a sense of art about the whole thing if the student looks at motorbike like she looks at a bus?

My new job is teaching people to ride bikes. At the end of the day the only way you ride a bike well is if you are enjoying it. This is hard to put across to someone who is permanently terrified. You are on your own when you’re riding a bike. There are no dual controls and if it all goes wrong you are going down, and you’ve never fallen off a bike before but you are absolutely certain you will at least lose both legs. The only thing making you feel remotely safe at this point is your instructor encouraging you every step of the way. “That’s lovely, you are doing great, let’s get it up to 20 now shall we?”

I don’t know how many of you remember your motorbike training. I do, it wasn’t that long ago. I trained in Ham, Richmond but it could have been Milton Keynes for all I took in of the local scenery. Ham remained a blank patch even into my despatching days – some psychological blinkers come down the minute I drop down Petersham Hill and I am unable to see anything but the car in front of me. That’s what it’s like being a trainee biker. For a lot of people it’s the first time they’ve been well and truly terrified for a couple of decades. Students react in different ways to the intensity of bike training. Some go into a kind of catatonic shock. Others get almost hysterical with the thrill of it all and want to hear all the biking stories I’ve got, good, bad and grim. Some lives are changed learning to ride a bike; people find things out about themselves. It can raise questions they haven’t asked for years. Take a student on a 5 – day course and you cover a lot of ground with them, both tarmac-ly and philosophically. It’s a great job for someone who is interested in people.

Today my first rock star passed his test and I won’t tell you who he is but I will say it was a good week at work. Monday lunchtime, sitting on the beach in Brighton, A and B roads all the way down, chatting biking and life to an interesting guy eating fish and chips looking forward to a good ride back. Yeah, this was kind of how I hoped it would be when I decided to go for this ‘instructing’ lark.

On the way back from Brighton it occurred to me that I remember my own bike instructor. I remember the man who taught me how to ride a bike, and I always will. I’ve loved the streets of London from the saddle of a bike for the greater part of my working life. I’ve loved riding my motorbike with a passion, and Jim at R.A.E motorcycle training school introduced me to that passion. It’s nice, in a seriously cheesy way, to be passing it on.

Part 2 September 2004 back to top