It was the Christmas present to end them all. At noon on Christmas Day, bucks fizz in hand, I was blindfolded by my husband and led into the central hall of our house. The family watched on: my parents, daughter Kitty, son Dan and his girlfriend Mandy, and our close friend the photographer Robin Allison Smith, who lives next door. Jonathan said, ‘I got you this because I know you’ve got a wild streak’ , or something like that. Then came the unmistakable stuttering roar - especially loud inside four walls - as Robin turned the ignition and a mean machine clattered to life. I ripped off the scarf and gaped. The present was a new Harley Davidson in my favourite colour - purple. It’s sexy and beautiful, and it’s mine.
The salesman at F.W.Warr - London’s biggest Harley dealers and the oldest in the country - must have been amazed when Jonathan Dimbleby walked in off the street (accompanied by Robin to give advice) and chose a 1340cc Heritage Softail for his wife, who can’t even ride it - at least, not yet. He wasn’t to know the background to the gift - a story which is to do with fantasy, and not letting your fears get in the way of your dreams. It is to do with a belief in living in the present, because we shall all be dead for centuries. And it’s to do (above all) with having fun....
It began in 1998 when a newspaper asked me to write a piece about being over fifty - after Cher (depressed because her ex-husband Sonny had been killed) concluded, ‘it sucks’. Cher is the same age as me. My article was philosophical about coming to terms with getting older, as we all must. I sadly accepted the fact that I would ‘never ride pillion on a Harley across the States’. But about six weeks later I met the Editor of the Times Magazine who said, ‘When I read that, I thought - why not? ‘ Now the truth is, I had never really hankered to ride pillion on a Harley anywhere. It was just a throwaway line. Afraid of speed, I didn’t even like motorcycles very much. But I was hoist. In September 1998 the magazine dispatched me, with Robin Allison Smith (conveniently a biker as well as a photographer) to Minneapolis where we hired an ex-police Harley Road King and rode it on a two week, 2,000 mile journey down Bob Dylan’s legendary Highway 61 to New Orleans.
How was I to know I would love it so much? That being restricted to a small carrier-bag of clothes for the fortnight would make me feel totally unencumbered for the first time. How was I to know I’d nearly cry to say goodbye to that huge white Harley, and spend 1999 hankering for the whole experience? The woman whose interests stretched from books, to pictures and writing, and back via music to books, was transformed into somebody who read biking magazines, looked at leathers, studied the prices of second hand Harleys and yearned to be on the road again. Jonathan could hardly believe it, but listened as I explained to him the difference between a Fatboy and a Sportster, and described why my favourite was the Heritage Softtail. A man of taste and style, he began to understand the aesthetics....
Why a Harley? Yes, it could have been a pink cadillac, but Harley Davidson motorcyles are uniquely American, and sum up the spirit of the United States - which, for all its faults, is a place I love. They are built for the long highways of a big country. For me they are the sexiest machines - singing out speed and sensuality at once. The stuttering, pat-a-pattering irregular sound of that V-Twin engine carries within it both a promise and a threat. The up-side is a swashbuckling individuality and liberty. The other side is the irresponsible wish to hang out, kick over the traces, and be baaaad.
Born to be wild , sung by Steppenwolf, is more than a rebellious state of mind, it’s a condition of soul. The middleaged Harley owner, with nothing in common with the Hell’s Angels, is still refusing to give up, be respectable, accept his or her future in the Old Folks’ Home. To hell with that, we say - just as when a friend asked me if I would stop colouring my hair and ‘grow old gracefully’. No - the ubiquitous death’s head symbol so beloved by bikers waves two triumphant fingers at age, fate and mortality. Climb into the leathers, straddle the chunky grace of that dream machine, and you’re telling the world that it’s impossible to fence you in, that you will always be ‘lookin’ for adventure’ (in the words of the song) right up until the end. Oh, and please - don’t mess with me.
That Easy Rider cocktail of cool, non-conformity and cutting loose is utterly seductive. Once you’ve tasted it you’ve got (maybe despite yourself) something in common with the rowdy rebel played by Lee Marvin, astride his Harley Hydra Glide and confronting Marlon Brando (riding a British Triumph) in the iconic 1953 movieThe Wild Ones. Is this mere fantasy - the delusion of the respectable middle-aged achiever who’s wistful for lost youth? Yes, of course; but I see no fault in that.
On the move, you zip through your own dreams so fast you can imagine you are standing still. See a fellow biker on the other side of the freeway, raise a laconic hand in greeting because you’re part of the same ‘club’ - and yes, that’s cool. People in cars stare with a mixture of anxiety and envy, because they know you’re different. With no seat belt to fasten you embrace all the danger as well as the excitement of the open road. You feel every slight change in its surface and understand the meaning of corners - leaning into them, feeling the tarmac unroll beneath you. You are IN the landscape in a way impossible in a car - smelling the air, buffetted by the wind that screams around your helmet. You become your own road movie, to a mental soundtrack of rock n’roll. On the Harley, above all, you feel intensely alive.
Trying to analyse my new obsession I summoned a forgotten memory. When our children were small Jonathan and I put the car on the train from Nice and disembarked at Calais, waiting for the vehicles to be unloaded for the ferry. A scarlet Harley stood among the cars and I couldn’t take my eyes off it: all silver studs and black fringes, and ridden by a lithe guy in black leather and his woman, beautiful in a bandana. I gazed in envy as my children squabbled at my feet. Suddenly I didn’t want to be a wife and mum, but to be those people. But when Steppenwolf were singing Born to be Wild back in 1968, I was already married. I ignored the injunction, ‘Git your motor running/ head out on the highway’, and wrote articles, built a home, concentrated on family.
Now those wonderful, bickering children have grown up, and I realise that you don’t always have to close the gates behind you. We tend to pigeonhole, but there is no contradiction in being a mum, a writer and a biker chick too. Well, all right then - biker hen, being as I am now 53, and losing a few feathers. There is no reason why you shouldn’t love poetry and rhythm and blues, Vermeer and tattoos, the music of Bach and the sound of the V-twin kicking into life. Why be ashamed of planning to customise your Harley with as much enthusiasm as you map out your latest novel? Why give things up as you get older, instead of taking on more and more? It ‘s about allowing the possibilty of change in your life, and being alive to it in the world out there. But there’s pure frivolity too. When you’ve come this far and known some pain, you seize any chance to have a good time - in the full knowledge that your light shines all the brighter for the darkness that surrounds it.
A few days after Christmas I asked Jonathan, ‘But WHY did you buy me a Harley?’ He replied, ‘I knew it would make you smile’. Acknowledging the privilege of such extravagance I ask - is that not proof of imagination? People ask me what the Harley is ‘for’ and I look at them as if they are mad. It’s for FUN, I reply. When the weather gets a bit warmer I shall take lessons of course, but in the meantime I echo the funky granny I met in New Orleans whose husband was a fireman and Harley fanatic. When I asked if she wanted to ride herself, she replied, ‘No, honey, ah jes’ like radhin’ arahnd on the back, lookin’ at the people, an’ posin - y’know?’
So in my £30 secondhand leather I pose too. Robin acts as ‘chaffeur’ and we share my bike (which means I own it, but he insures it, which seems fair) and ride through the lanes of a small cold country - far from the freeways of the American south where I learnt the joys of the road. Years ago, collaborating on a book about Somerset, we developed a passion for English country churches - and so now the fearsome leatherclad bikers show up and record carvings and fonts. This summer we’ll go to the rough old Bulldog Bash or Free Wheels Festival in France, run by the Hells Angels, and cover it for a magazine. What larks! The possibilities are endless - all kickstarted by that powerful purple Harley which is, for me, the ultimate symbol of glamour and freedom. It mutters, ‘Never say never - ever!’
