Ice Cold on Valentines Day

It was Valentine’s Day, a day I would never forget in a hurry. I was a bookbinder at the time; shift work was unavoidable. On this particular day, I was on the early shift. Early shifts were six in the morning for twelve hours, not much time for anything but work, especially with a forty-five minute ride in on my motorcycle. It was tiresome getting up at five in the morning. This morning I had been happy and bushy tailed for once, mainly as I had something out of the ordinary to do on my way to work.

At the end of our road, just where the modern estate started, lived a cute girl with her parents. She was quite a babe. Not only was she beautiful but also pleasant and intelligent with it. I had known her for years, pretty much watched her grow up. There was a couple of years between us but that’s not too important when you are in your late teens as we both were.

I also knew her boyfriend. Not the shiniest apple in the cart, for that matter popularity and looks eluded him as well. Going by the arguments I had seen between them he did not really respect her too much either. For these reasons I knew she would be better off with someone who would appreciate and love her, me.

There was a large manila envelope waiting on hall table, marked with her name and ready for delivery.

It was a cold morning that February 14th. Two Jerseys and a scarf under my bike jacket on this day. As I left the house in the darkness of the early hours the road outside was effervescing with a pure white frost that would probably be gone in the following couple of hours.

Icy roads are not great for two-wheel riding. It was only a glorified moped. If I still owned it the thing would be quite rare at present and probably worth far more than it was back then. It was a Simson 51, which was an East German manufactured bike whose company went bust in 2003.

When it was running, it had been superb; sadly, it spent more time back in the dealers than on the road. Despite it being only a moped it still managed a steady top speed of about 50mph, but not in the condition of the road on that day.

The bike was a little unusual in its operation; the ignition key went into the side, just behind my thigh, a very odd position. The key also operated the lights, by turning it further round when required. The style was a sort of on/off roader, comfortable on road, looked like it should be just as happy off road with its high-level exhaust and mudguards, in reality it was really only any good on the flat level tarmac.

It started fine for a change so after a couple of minutes warming up I headed on up the crystal glinting road, using incredible care. Within seconds, I pulled up and left the bike idling while I nipped up the path and posted the card through the front door of the end of terrace house.

With my personal job done it was now off to continue travelling to work. I took it nice and steady, it was dark and thankfully too early for any other traffic to be out yet. I prefer that as I think most motorcyclists will agree. If you do get in trouble and slide off due to ice, diesel or just plain wet, you do not want some idiot in his centrally heated metal box so infused by his music or on the phone that he drives right over you.

It was going to be a long journey. The roads out of town were not quite so frosty, but I still kept it steady and slow. I started into a small town that was just three miles into my twenty-mile journey. The orange glow of the streetlights lit up the central point of the village. It was a large hexagonal thatched shelter known locally as the fountain. From this point on the road became virtually single lane due to all the cars parked along its kerbs.