An interesting chat!

Tweet

Last week I went along to the blood donor centre to make a donation (my 40th!) and planned to do a bit of shopping afterwards before heading home where I hoped I would have an hour or so before heading out again to volunteer at the theatre in the evening. Of course ‘the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley’ as Robert Burns wrote… I got to the donor centre in good time, there was no queue and I was seen quickly. All the screening was fine and I was approved to donate. The blood donation itself was very quick and in less than half an hour I was just doing as I was told, having a drink and a little snack before leaving. Another donor was doing the same, sitting the other side of a little table. He saw me reading a book and started to chat (why does this always happen??) He mentioned how good it was to see someone reading an actual book rather than their phone, and told me he and his wife are both keen readers and often read on their travels although she is a much faster reader than he is. He mentioned that they are both motorcyclists and told me how he had raced against Barry Sheene (famous British motorcycle racer of the 1970s) and knew Mike Hailwood (another British racer, who dominated motorcycle racing in the 1960s and then crossed over to success in F1 car racing in the 1970s, something few people can manage). I used to ride bikes too, when I was young, free and single, so we had plenty in common. We talked about the bikes we had owned, the shops we remembered, more about racing, especially more about Mike Hailwood, how he was perhaps the best rider ever, his car racing days, how he saved the life of a fellow driver by pulling him, unconscious, from the burning wreck of his car while the stewards just stood by with their fire extinguishers. Mike’s own suit caught on fire as he struggled to pull the other driver to safety; he ran to the stewards, who put out the flames, then he ran back again and managed to pull the other driver out and save his life – for which he was awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian honour for bravery. (There is a very short video of this incident on YouTube). After 20 years away from motorcycle racing Mike returned to the Isle of Man TT race, one of the world’s most famous motorcycle races, and astonishingly, won it and repeated the feat again the next year before retiring from the sport. Sadly not long after that he was killed when a lorry driver turned across the road in front of him as he drove his children to get some fish and chips, decapitating his daughter and fatally wounding Mike who died a few days later. The blood donor man then went on to tell me how he used to work at a car garage and they would collaborate with the police, who were headquartered nearby, whenever they needed a job doing. On one occasion a car belonging to Robert Maxwell (wealthy media mogul of the 1970s and 80s) had been stolen when a member of staff stupidly went into a shop and left the keys in the car outside. The car was found crashed on Westminster bridge in London and since it was too damaged to drive the police left the keys at a nearby flower stall and asked the garage to arrange to collect it. Our man was sent with a recovery truck, but when he went to pick up the keys from the stall, he recognised the man running the stall as Buster Edwards, one of the perpetrators of the Great Train Robbery, the biggest robbery of all time when a mail train was robbed of today's equivalent of about £69 million in 1963. He (the man I was talking to) had a particular interest in this because apparently he grew up near the remote farm where the robbers hid out with the stolen money, and he and his friends used to explore the woods hoping to find a forgotten sack of cash – they never did of course. Funnily enough there is a 1950s/60s museum near my home town and one of the exhibits there is the truck used in the Great Train Robbery, and the owner has told us several times about how he has also met one of the robbers, so a tenuous connection there! Next he told me about how he renovated old bikes and had some famous racing machines that he had restored – and as a result had been invited by various publications to take them on all-expenses-paid trips to various racing circuits to ride a few laps and generally show them off to enthusiasts. A great retirement project! Anyway as you can tell we talked a lot, and eventually it was 3pm and the staff told us they were closing (they were closed to donors, but they were still working processing donations etc.) So they said it was fine for us to stay, and just to let them know if we didn’t feel well (in case we had any adverse effects of donating). Shortly after that we shook hands and parted ways – but after all that, and doing the shopping I had planned, by the time I got home I only had 10 minutes to get changed before I had to rush straight out again! The photo is of one of the bikes I used to own. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2025.