1975 and its contents

1975 was a formative year for me. It was, partly, the year between leaving school and starting university. I was 18 and 19 during it. For a few months, I can’t remember exactly how many, I worked as an assistant warden in a youth hostel in Dorset. I was attracted to the area by having read a number of Thomas Hardy novels and wrote to the YHA, for some reason, asking if they had jobs in that part of the country. These posts were unpaid but you got full board and lodging. In my case this meant sharing a room with the warden, and sleeping on a sofa. It was, how shall I put it, an eye-opening few months. The warden was, I would guess, in his 40s. Everybody looked old to a 19 year old. One of his ‘hobbies’ was riding a motorcycle and a number of his men friends would visit and they all also rode motorcycles. The most interesting visitor was Ted. Not Ted Simon but Ted (Edward) Goring. Ted lived in Bath, worked as a journalist there and rode a very snazzy new motorbike. It had electric start which the warden and his friends, who role British bikes that sometimes started after a frenzy of kicking, used to make fun of. It was a BMW and I am pretty sure it was a R90/s. Now that I am developing an interest in restoring a classic BMW, am am taking more notice of these old models. I even ran a search on the DVLA website to see if I could locate this bike. I knew the registration number because the photos taken at the time – of me sitting or standing next to it – clearly show it. It looks like it hasn’t been used for about 25 years.

I think Ted must have been its first owner and he must have visited us down in Dorset soon after buying it, to try it out and show it off perhaps. I remember, through a rather golden mist of nostalgia, the Sunday evening when he gave me a ride from Dorset to Bath for me to stay with him on my day off. It was that ride, stored in my memory, that influenced my decision to take the bike test and buy a motorcycle back in 2008.

I also remember that not many months afterwards, Ted had a bad accident. I believe that a mobile crane or some other large vehicle backed into him when he was stationery and he broke a leg. I have a memory that he discharged himself from an NHS hospital because he thought that they were not treating it properly and checked in at some private place. I also have a memory of visiting him in his Royal Crescent flat while he was struggling around, and very grumpy, on crutches. I don’t know what happened to the bike in that accident. Clearly it lived on for another 24 years at least. And perhaps it remains, gathering dust and mice, in some real or metaphorical barn waiting for me to track it down and restore and ride it.

I have often wondered what happened to Ted and finally I found an obituary. I have missed him by 4 years, sadly. Edward Goring’s obituary is here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/11/edward-goring-obituary

The text mentions his love of motorcycles which is nice. ‘He continued riding high-powered machines into his 70s’. In Bath he introduced me, fleetingly, to Jan Morris through the sunroof of her BMW.