This is the best book I have read in ages. No, I don’t mean the best motorcycle book. I mean the best book, period. It is incisive, pertinent, exciting and above all, very funny. The news-stand glossy bike press wouldn’t be on its knees if its journos could write as well as Chris Scott.
We’ve all encountered mediocre writing but often the whirlwind adventure makes up for it. This book isn’t like that. It’s in a league of its own in terms of sheer quality and then, as one turns from page to page, you suddenly remember, crikey, this is the guy who invented the phrase ‘adventure motorcycling’!
In many ways this is the story of motorcycling and life itself in Britain through the 1980s; vignettes of life on two wheels in the city set against huge social, political and economic change and personal development.
Personally, as a former courier and fellow Londoner with some long-distance travel behind me, I feared I would be hyper-critical of what in some way, was a story rather similar to my own. Instead, laughing out loud on the tube, button-holing colleagues at my school and posting on Facebook, for six months this book has been all I can talk about.
Chris Scott has done something that only the best writers can; he’s taken a subject that doesn’t sound particularly earth-shattering, has sucked you in and had you gasping for more. I mostly read in bed, just before ‘lights out’ and normally manage a chapter at most before exhaustion overwhelms me. I read this book in three nights and virtually screamed with rage when I reached the end and realised my reading pleasure was no more. I was so impressed that I contacted Chris Scott and begged him to let me interview him and make a little film about the back-story behind the book. Check it out on my YouTube channel ‘aevmondo’.
I urge you, if you have an interest in bikes and a pulse, this book is an absolute must.
Austin Vince
ISBN: 978-0-9930465-1-3
Paperback 281pp
Published by Chris Scott 2015
£8.99