On your bike

Crossing the Line - part 22

My second year out before training for ordination turned out to be a real adventure.

My ambitions for the year were actually quite low.  I wanted to do a 9-5 job, live in a normal house in a normal street, and go to church on Sundays just like other people but the choice of job made it an adventure! 

While working in Haddenham, I fulfilled a long-time dream and bought my first motorbike – a Honda 125 Superdream.   After teaching myself to ride it in the car park behind the bike shop in Oxford and almost killing myself on the A40 in High Wycombe, I got some proper lessons.  A few months later, I passed my bike test, not far from that spot where I had previously come off the bike and slid down the middle of the road for 50 yards, narrowly avoiding a stream of oncoming traffic! 

I then bought a brand new Honda VT500 and knew exactly what job I wanted – to be a Motorbike Despatch Rider in London. 

The fact that I had never lived in London and didn’t know the West End from the Square Mile made no difference.  I was going to do it.  It was fast moving, more than a little dangerous, and in my mind, more than a little romantic!   Whizzing in and out of the London traffic to collect that vital letter or parcel before zooming to its destination where an anxious customer eagerly awaited delivery.  Ok, so my vision didn’t live up to the reality, but the picture was enough for me.

A home was easy to find.  Most of my friends from university had progressed to London and two of them, Anne and Natalie, had just bought a house in Finsbury Park with a spare room to rent.  We had been in the same student house in Oxford so we knew we got on well, and they became the very closest of my lifetime friends.

Getting a job was easy too.  This was the time before the internet, emails, and mobile phones. Bikes were the standard means of express delivery for documents, artwork, and small parcels. For many companies in the West End and the City, it added to their kudos if they could bike things over instantly.  For a few years it was almost compulsory!  There were bike despatch firms all over the place, and I was spoilt for choice.

 

I rang up a few companies and got a couple of interviews.  Ironically when I went to one interview, I ended up in totally the wrong place!  I mistakenly walked into another firm on the same road as the one I was meant to be at, and said I was there to be interviewed.  The guy behind the desk looked confused, but asked me a few questions and then offered me a job on the spot with a guaranteed minimum pay of £400 per week. Despatch riders got paid piece work for each item they delivered, so the promise of a minimum wage was staggering.  I said I’d think about it, walked outside and then saw the office for the company I should have gone to!  To be offered a job on the spot after going to the wrong address is hilarious, but that just shows how intense the demand was.

In the end I said yes to a job with Addison Lee.  They were a big firm with over 100 riders at the time and more importantly they had two radio channels – one for their professional riders and a training channel for rookies.  I definitely qualified for that one.  The radio network was the only real means of communication in the despatch world so a good channel was at the heart of any operation.

The first three months were the hardest; getting used to being out in all weathers for 9 or 10 hours a day, finding my way around London in an age before satnavs, and trying not to get knocked off the bike.  But I learned quickly and passed my test to join the professional riders’ channel.  

This was a huge step up. On the training channel, a radio controller would keep track of where you were and feed you jobs to complete.  On the professional channel the controller would call out the work available and each rider had to bid for each job.  You had to know which street you were in, all the adjoining streets and know if a pick-up was within ¼ mile of you before you could even bid for work!  Jobs came out thick and fast so you had to be quick on the radio as well as quick on your bike.

It was then that I started to get to know the other riders. The professional riders didn’t really talk to you for the first three months, because they didn’t know if you were going to stay, get injured, or give up when it rained every day for a week.   As I started to get to know my workmates I began to realise what a bizarre group we were.

Most interviews for despatch riders were just two questions long:

·         Question 1:  Do you have a motorbike?

·         Question 2: (if it was a reputable company) Do you have a driving licence?

As a result all kinds of people who didn’t really want questions about their past became despatch riders. 

We had one guy who used to supply sawn-off shotguns for armed robberies, until he got nicked and spent time in prison.  When he got out, every time a bank or post office got robbed, the police would turn up at his door to look for evidence that he had supplied the weapons.  He needed a new career so he became to despatch rider. 

Then there was Dave – on the one hand, a heavily tattooed skinhead and member of the National Front, and on the other, the nicest softly spoken guy you could spend an evening with. (I am not defending the National Front, by the way!)

And there was Ian who became a close friend.  He was a lovable rogue who lived in a very well appointed squat on the other side of Finsbury Park.  Ian drunk too much and used almost any drug which was on offer at the time.  This was particularly tragic as he had already spent time in prison for manslaughter after he and his first wife injected each other and she died of an overdose.

Not everyone had a shady past or present. 

Paul used to be a wine taster for a high class importer in St James (the area between Piccadilly and the royal palaces).  He travelled all over the world tasting great wines and somehow got bored!  So he became a despatch rider. 

There were Nick and Bronwen, both law graduates who worked in the control room at Addison Lee.  They later married and started their own despatch business.  Their wedding was very stylish and they gave me the unexpected honour of being one of their witnesses after their first choice got lost somewhere between the restaurant the registry office.

And there was Julia who is one of the most creative people I had met.  Designer and musician, she gave us an EP from her band some years later as a wedding present.

All sorts of people, with all kinds of stories, and Friday night was the time when many would end up in the Marquis of Granby in Covent Garden, a few doors up from the office. 

Even that pub told a story of London’s diversity.  There was a coat stand by the bar, and during the day, it was often full of the waterproofs of tourists seeing the sights of London in all weathers.  Then from around 6pm, the waterproofs disappeared and the coat stand filled up with crash helmets from Addison Lee.  Finally, for those still there late into the evening, the crash helmets thinned out and it was filled with the violin and woodwind cases of musicians from the English National Opera, whose stage door was also just round the corner.

Woking for Addison Lee had its moral dilemmas though.  One which I felt in particular, was their marketing policy.  In those days they charged customers more than any other dispatch company on the basis that riders would only ever go ‘one up’.  That meant that riders would only ever have one job on board at a time, picking it up and going straight to the destination before getting other work.  Unfortunately this was not even economical with the truth - it was total bollocks!

As soon as we got busy, it was not unusual to get 3 or 4 jobs at a time, picking up around the West End and dropping in the City.  This caused a problem when customers would ask me straight out, “Is this your only parcel?  Are you going straight there?”  I have never liked lies and yet I found myself having to lie if I wanted to keep my job.  Eventually, I came up with an answer I could cope with.  I would say, “Well that’s what you’re paying for!”  At least that was true, even if it didn’t answer their question.

These were also the days before speed cameras, and London had an unofficial set of speed limits 15 mph above the official ones.  That meant 45mph in a 30; up to 55 in a 40; right up to 85 in a 70.  On a good day, swooping through the traffic was like playing the ultimate arcade video game.  On a bad day you got knocked off your bike – roughly once every 3 months, even for the very best riders.  Over time, experienced riders learned to minimise the damage to body and bike when we got hit, but getting knocked off still hurt.

I once got stopped by a motorcycle cop after a particularly bad gridlock in Trafalgar Square had brought everything to a standstill.  Finally reaching the open road of Whitehall I opened up the throttle out of sheer joy, not realising that a police bike was following me out.  When I reached about 60mph heading for Downing Street, the blue lights came on but even then he just told me not to do it again while slapping my wing mirrors and yelling “Next time use these!” 

Another time, I transported forgotten passports from Kensington to Gatwick in 35 minutes – in the rush hour and in the rain – just in time for a family to catch the weekly flight to one of the smaller African nations.  I’ll leave it to you to do the maths.  Having said that, I then stopped for a coffee before riding back in and found that as the adrenalin subsided, my hands shook so much that I couldn’t hold the cup.  As I sat there, I concluded that this was not something which was important enough to risk my life for.  My guardian angels got paid overtime that day!

On the other hand, I also went places few people have the chance to go.  I have ridden my bike into the central courtyard of Buckingham Palace to make a delivery to HRH The Prince of Wales, and stood in the hallway of 10 Downing Street next to the mantelpiece where foreign dignitaries used to pose for photographs with the Prime Minister.  I delivered parcels in person to rock stars from Status Quo, Pink Floyd and The Cure.  

At the other extreme, I remember taking a thick envelope to a deserted warehouse in Wembley one day.  When I got there, there were two Jags parked outside and inside two hefty looking men in thick overcoats. They opened the envelope without saying a word and counted out a wodge of $100 bills before nodding to someone in the shadows and letting me leave.  I left that drop pretty quickly!

It was also the year of the Great Storm of 1987 that laid waste to millions of trees in London and the Home Counties.  The morning after the storms, I got up and turned on the TV for the weather forecast just like every day.  Instead of Breakfast TV, I saw a dimly lit TV studio on emergency lighting because the power had been cut.  From that moment, I knew that day would be different.

The centre of London looked like a battle field.  Scaffolding had collapsed everywhere, sometimes 15 floors high.  Trees were uprooted and broken glass littered the streets.  I went to a company in a dead-end street in Bloomsbury to pick up an insurance claim.  As I approached the address, I saw the problem.  A 70-foot tree had been uprooted in the square at the open end of the road and had been blown all the way up this cul-de-sac, before embedding itself into the office block at the end.  Another collection had the instruction, ‘you will know when you find it because there is an upside-down car sticking out of the shop window’.  Everyone wanted to get their insurance claims in before the inevitable rush and we were very busy that day.

I continued dispatch riding throughout my time at theological college.  At the end of every term, it paid well to go back to work for a few weeks, pay off any debts and get some money for the term ahead.  In 1991, just before I was ordained, I almost caused a diplomatic incident during the G7 Summit at Lancaster House in central London.  All the riders were battling road closures as foreign heads of governments were transported to and from the conference venue in St James’s.  Every time we found a route blocked off, we would find a way around it, and in doing so I remember coming out of a side street straight into a motorcade of big black Russian limousines.  Before I knew it I was riding alongside a particularly large limo with Russian flags flying from the bonnet and a worried looking grey face staring at me from the back seat.  I sensed I might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, so quickly pulled over as a swarm of police outriders converged on me at the side of the road.

Within a year of starting, I was one of the top riders in Addison Lee.  There were two individual bonuses awarded each week; one to the rider who completed most jobs, and the other to the top earner in the fleet.  Amazingly, I won these more than once.  Then each year in Battersea Park, there was the Despatch Rider of the Year competition with several hundred bikers competing.  One of my proudest moments was being part of the 4-rider Addison Lee team which won the competition and I still have the trophy to this day.

I had a wonderful year.  I got to know London like the back of my hand.  Natalie and Anne were the best landladies I could ever wish for, even spending several hours with me in Accident and Emergency on one occasion.  Our friendship deepened further and continues to this day. 

But I also learned a lot about people; diverse, wonderful, fallible and flawed.  I learned how valuable each person is; about how everyone has a story; about our often prejudiced value judgements and how God sees people in a very different way. 

Compared to the intellectual quads of Oxford colleges, or the cloistered environment of the Church, it was life lived in vivid technicolour and taught me so much.

It was a real joy to see some of my despatch riding friends at my ordination in Southwark Cathedral, five years later.  During my time on the bike, I had begun to realise why Jesus spent so much time in parties with 'outcasts and sinners'.   He was constantly criticised for it by respectable people, by religious people, by establishment people.  In many ways he became an outcast with them and was certainly crucified as an outcast in the end.

Yet here was the cutting edge of God's boundless love, both given and received.  Here was the soil of life in all its fullness.  In the nitty-gritty of London's streets I began to see a bigger world.

Click here for part 23 - I had a dream

Click here for an Introduction to Crossing the Line