On the Move: A Life

From the earliest days, the call of movement was irresistible. As a boy sent away to boarding school during wartime, a sense of confinement and powerlessness weighed heavily. But in dreams, he soared—flying through skies, feeling the wind, the effortless grace of flight. Outside those dreams, the village near school offered horses, supple and strong, their warmth and smell forever etched in memory. Yet, nothing captured the imagination quite like motorbikes—machines of speed, power, and a hint of danger. The roar of engines, the gleam of leather jackets, the thrill of the open road—these were the symbols of freedom.

His father had once owned a Scott Flying Squirrel, a bike with a scream-like exhaust that echoed the boy’s own yearning. Watching motorbikes speed past the window seat in London, he learned to recognize marques like AJS, Triumph, and Norton, each a promise of adventure. His first bike, a secondhand BSA Bantam, was a lesson in humility and risk. The faulty brakes sent him on a dizzying, uncontrolled ride around Regent’s Park, hooting warnings to pedestrians and eventually running out of gas. The crowd’s encouragement was a strange comfort amid the chaos.

This event was not just a youthful misadventure; it was a metaphor for the life ahead—full of motion, risk, and the delicate balance between control and surrender. The thrill of speed, the camaraderie of motorbike groups, and the solitary joy of riding spoke to a deep need for autonomy and self-expression. Movement was not merely physical; it was a way to grasp freedom, to feel alive, and to connect with the world on one’s own terms.

As this journey begins, we glimpse the intertwining of passion and peril, the dance of control and risk that will shape the chapters ahead. Let us now move from the roar of engines to the quiet struggles of identity and belonging, where the heart’s journey unfolds alongside the body’s.