Back in the day when I was a young scally (who are you kidding you still are - .anth) I would ride around the pavements, streets, park and anywhere else it was possible to ride, on the council estate where we lived aboard my red and white 10 speed Freespirit. For some reason I only ever did two things on this bike. First of all I went everywhere at full speed, I have no idea why as being just a youngster I had no deadlines to meet and no places to be at by a specific time, but I always seemed to ride flat out and this probably contributed to my second point. Crashing, monumental, catastrophic, horrendous crashes. One in particular sticks in my mind, tearing down the grassy bank which led onto the newly re-surfaced street, I somehow managed to clip the back of the local ice cream van at 1000MPH, slamming me into the road, and peppering my knees with chuckies. Mind that child, more like mind that ice cream van!

The next stage of my, if you will ‘cycling career’, was the pivotal point. For all those Blues Brothers fans, I saw the light! And everything fell into place. I soon discovered the joys of big knobs and 26 inches, and not of an illegal German type either, but my first ‘proper’ adult bike. This bike was purchased from the local bike shop, Ythan Cycles, and was a green framed Lion Bike with bright yellow logos. The friendly salesman was keen to push all the important playground bragging right facts, such as the bike being an offshoot of Peugeot Cycles and also one of the first bikes to feature SRAM gripshift “It’s just like a motorbike!!” In a sort of gears rather than throttle kind of way, but still, a motorbike! I can see a theme emerging here……

Anyway it was on this bike that I discovered the joys of money, pedalling away for 30 minutes every morning, whilst shoving soggy, wet and torn newspapers through old people’s doors could earn me a whole 16 pounds! Wow! Think of what could be bought with that! Unfortunately the majority of this was spent on fixing my rear wheel, for no apparent reason it would go as limp wristed as Graham Norton at the slightest glimpse of a bump, or as my dad put it; “You have been bumping up and down bloody kerbs haven’t you?”

“Well what else is a mountain bike for?” I said as I defended myself.

Due to my heavy handedness with my Lion Bike, it was soon buggered, the wheels were buckled, the brakes didn’t work, the gears were skipping and the fact that I was going through daily changes being in my mid teens, it was also too small. The Lion Bike was soon made redundant and replaced by something rather unexpected, my mum's purple Freespirit girls bike, which considering I was in the notoriously moody puberty stages, I am surprised I even considered riding. However this bike was also, well, completely destroyed. But not due to my riding style of course, it must have been the cheap parts…. So off to the bike shop we went.

Whilst serving time as a paperboy, most of my weekly 16 pound wage wasn’t (or was in most people’s eyes) wasted, for I had found an encouraging and inspirational monthly cycling magazine, this being, rather embarrassingly so, MBUK. Now for those who have not had the pleasure of reading this most excellent of publications, it was unashamedly aimed at the younger generation of cyclist, it was full of extraordinary photographs of professional cyclists performing quite frankly amazing feats of skill and more obvious, bravery or stupidity depending on how you see it. These pictures painted a thousand words, which was important as the remaining content of the magazine was crap at best, as you had to sift through the hundreds of adverts to find any text worth reading. This magazine also had something very important to a 14 year old lad. Porn... Pure unadulterated mountain bike porn, whether it be the latest Klein Full Suspension with a spangle purple paint job, or a group test of downhill forks which cost in excess of £1000 each, this was all fine and well for the sponsored pros, but for a family who at the time didn’t have much was a problem, it was simply unobtainable.