Harleys, Spitfires and Guitars
13 October 2009
Like a lot of writers, I think, I have to juggle being a novelist with another ‘day job’ - in order to pay the mortgage and feed the kids. Sometimes this can be frustrating, when all I want to do is hide in the garden shed (where I write) and live in my head! But I’m lucky that my parallel life is often great fun. Last Saturday was one of the best of those times.
I help with publicity for the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Opened just eight years ago, the Arboretum comprises 150 acres of trees, gardens and memorials, including the towering Portland stone walls of the Armed Forces Memorial, honouring the 16,000 servicemen and women who have died on duty, or as a result of terrorism, since shortly after the end of the Second World War. It is an extraordinarily dramatic and moving monument and the arboretum itself is a beautiful and tranquil place.
Though there is one day a year when it’s a little less tranquil!
It has become the destination for Ride to The Wall – the event that involves several thousand motorcycles converging on the site for a special memorial service.
When the organisers floated the idea of having live music at the event, I suggested my husband’s band, so he, me and the whole family headed up to Staffordshire at the weekend.
The band set up outside the chapel. The weather was perfect, soft, golden autumn sunshine. The band’s guitarist arrived just after ten o clock and said that it was a rather scary experience driving up the M6, and looking in his rear view mirror to see a fleet of Harley Davison’s on his tail! The bikes gathered at Drayton Manor and, escorted by the police, began arriving from eleven o clock.
It was a truly awesome and surprisingly very emotional sight (and sound) to see (and hear) them cruising in, flags flying and engines rumbling. I am not a biker, (though my biker jacket is my favourite fashion accessory) but there is something very stirring about the sound of a Harley!
Last year, the first Ride to the Wall, there were 2,500 bikes. This year more than twice that number were expected, and over 7,500 turned up. They kept coming …and coming. By midday there were bikes lined up as far as the eye could see, parked along every path, avenue and verge, the sun glinting on chrome for miles. And leather and tattoos everywhere. This could have felt rather threatening but it was the loveliest, friendliest atmosphere imaginable. It was a moving sight to wander amongst the oddly incongruous crowd - bikers mingling with soldiers in red berets and aging war veterans displaying their medals.
The service, on the steps of the Armed Forces Memorial, led by TV celeb Lionel Fanthorpe, was followed by a Spitfire flypast.
Maybe it’s because my Dad was a Lancaster bomber navigator and my strongest childhood memories revolve around air shows and aircraft museums. Maybe I have watched too many black and white war movies of the Battle of Britain , but the sound of a Merlin engine makes me want to cry.
The spitfire flew amazingly low. I had never seen an airborne one up so close, and it sent a shiver down my spine. The Harley and the Spitfires have much in common, I think – machines with soul.
And a fitting tribute.
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