Roadholder 364 - April 2018

13 the ability to complete the first lap as an MGP competitor at over 100mph. So what happened to this extraordinarily talented serviceman? Sadly, a bad crash in 1974 at Mallory, when his Yamaha put him in hospital with a broken back and he never came back to competitive road racing, apart from a lap in the Island during the Master's Parade in the 1990s. I had partnered Paddy in the 500-miler at Brands in 1978 on the Cotton Conquest, and after leaving the RAF, looked him up. He still had competitive machines at home, but an attempt to persuade him to borrow my Commando for the 2016 Retro collapsed when Paddy fell off his pushbike! So it was a hobbling rider who helped me on the island that year, and introduced me to a few dozen well-known riders who had only seen the back of Paddy's Yamaha. I remembered a lunch with the TT Riders' Association, when Freddie Frith was asked how he had got to the top? He modestly replied that the others had "all given up!". Where would Paddy Reid have been had he not had the Mallory accident? There must have been other riders who have shown extraordinary talent in learning this most difficult of courses; Jimmy J. Buchan Jnr. showed this when he won the 1956 MGP double. He had previously finished 4th and 2nd in the Junior/Senior IOM races in 1955 after only having competed on the Clypse course races! I tried to get Paddy to explain how he achieved this expertise, but in his modesty, he said that he rode "smoothly and without haste". He also admitted that he ran his wheel bearings on light oil, but this statement clouds his talent. There is no doubt that some riders take to the Mountain course more quickly than others, and this does not reflect on their short circuit performances. Memory riding, the ability to know when to go flat out and when to expect a 'tricky' corner, is essential. So does the line through a long series of corners, like Quarry Bends. But there is no doubt that Road Racing takes a special skill that often emanates from Irish genes, as history reminds us. Paddy is an Ulsterman, like Stanley Woods; Sammy Miller is Irish, the Dunlops, Walter Rush and Oh, a thousand others. Do Guy Martin, or McGuinness have Irish blood? Well no, but there are exceptions, as many Lincolnshire men will prove. Paddy lived alongside the Clady circuit. He remembers sitting on Geoff Duke's Norton when stopping off at his home to get his autograph, and he certainly grew up with the noise, and smell of motorcycle racing. I find that drivers today are incapable of understanding hand signals as they expect flashing trafficators, so with some reluctance I decided to retro-fit flashers to my Dommie 99. They can always be removed in future by a purist without damaging the bike and, meanwhile, they should increase my chances of survival, particularly when waiting to turn right across the opposite carriageway. This plan was slightly complicated by the bike being six volt, positive earth, and it has a dynamo with all that that implies for feeble charging amperage compared to the later alternators. fitting trafficators to a 1957 dommie Tom McKewen