What a sodding racket! I need to tune the carburettor and patch the silencer and re-weld where the two down pipes met. I’d just pulled up at my sister Drian’s house after a fifty mile journey on my bike, a 1955 998cc series D Vincent Black Shadow in mint condition. I'd covered the last 40 miles with a dodgy silencer down pipe. The backfire as I turned it off frightened me to death never mind her neighbours. It was Friday late afternoon and as usual I was stopping the weekend with Drian my younger sister.

I went in, the house was empty, I was looking forward to a bath, I was filthy after having serviced a Massey Ferguson combine harvester which involved climbing inside the thing. I had digs near work during the week and was working as a mechanic because I was in between wives and my brain wasn’t up to anything more demanding. Empty house, bathroom was shelled with a new suite in the hall. Shite! I wanted to get clean, don some going out gear, slap some wooing fluid on and hit the town, the pubs, then the clubs and who knows what else if I got lucky, maybe I'd get to service another Massey. In joke that, there's a big family in these parts with the name of, yes you've got it, Massey.

I went downstairs to see if there was any explanation or possible way out of this appalling situation. I mean it doesn’t get much worse, no hot water, no food, no drink, no dancing and no women, it’s the stuff a young stud’s nightmares are made of. Nothing in the kitchen, nothing in the sitting room, but in the living room I found a note over the fire. ‘I’m stopping at Kevin’s over the weekend. The plumber hasn’t finished installing the new bathroom suite. But my friend Helen is expecting you for a bath. She lives at number one Fire Station Avenue, over the way. See you next Friday, Love Drian.’

It comes to something doesn’t it when the only one getting laid is your younger sister, but she didn’t have to rub it in did she? Though to be fair she was twenty three, fit as a butcher’s dog and had been seeing the guy for six months. I didn’t begrudge her good fortune, envied her yes, but begrudge no. Nothing is as easy as it seems. First I had to find Fire Station Avenue, ten minutes tops. The problem was there was no number one, the terrace started at number three. Fifteen minutes later I realised that the front door to number one wasn’t on Fire Station Avenue, it was on Jennings Street on the gable end of the terrace.

As I rounded the corner, I saw the curtains move, and the door opened before I could knock. I went in and had my bath, but Helen hid my clothes, and I never did go out that weekend. What a bully though, she made me father her kids and pay her mortgage. The following weekend I took her a flower, a cauliflower, from one of the farms where I’d been working and she joined me in the bath, though I was so filthy, from work honest, that she had another bath afterwards. The rest is history.

P. S. Over forty years later I’m still with Helen, but her surname isn't Massey any more. I've still got the bike and it's still in mint condition, but I only go out with Helen in the rain these days.