Roadholder 364 - April 2018

9 Anyway, at about this time, I decided that perhaps three wheels, rather than two, would be more suited to my racing talents - or in the case of two wheels, lack of. At about 11:00 in the morning, and 3:30 in the afternoons, I would get called up to the back office for tea. The exciting thing was that you could never tell who would have 'just dropped-in' to see Harold. It was like a who's-who of motorcycle racing, past and present. I just sat in awe and listened. It was just the same if I went to serve at the counter for some reason: many of the well-known racers of the day would come in for Manx parts, things like exhaust valves which, being sodium-filled, were both very expensive and also hard to get at the time. I must say that, for me, just looking at some Manx parts on the shelves was magic - they were like the crown jewels. It made me smile when I found that some of the Manx bits were kept in race trophies, e.g. main bearings in a Swiss GP winner's cup. One well-known rider of the day, who I got to know quite well, was Joe Dumphy, who passed on to me racing leathers and Manx wheels for the race outfit I was building in the back workshop. Another up-side of working at Daniell's shop was that, with the name on my entry forms, I had no problems getting entries for race meetings, which was a problem for most people starting out at the time, even at club level. Another frequent visitor to the old shop was John Hudson; he always came on a Norton, most often a Dommie. He would spend time in both the shop and my workshop, perhaps to sort out some ongoing problem with a new model. What a nice man he was; he came to visit my wife and I for supper on a number of occasions, as did Steve Lancefield and his wife. The south-east of London, and indeed the Forrest Hill area, was somewhat of a mecca for motorcycling, with a number of very well known dealers in the area, whom I got to know through working at Harold's. The Norton (AMC, by then) managers were very true to Harold and, to the last, he remained the main dealer for that part of London. I think he got commission on all Nortons sold by other dealers in the area. One further abiding memory I have of