Page 94 - IT'S A RUM LIFE BOOK FOUR Volume 1 "Northcote 1984 to 1998"

To assist in carrying sufficient leaflets for these long journeys I had bought a set of ‘throw
over’ saddlebags. These supplemented my top box and simply slid over the dual seat
behind me. As money was always difficult to come by, they were an ‘economy ‘make,
made of a canvas/plastic mix and although waterproof, never seemed to have much body
shape.

From time to time they were pressed into service during November and December to carry
all the offerings from our Christmas fund- raising catalogue as I travelled around visiting
various OAP rest homes seeking to sell our cards and gifts while at the same time ‘selling’
the idea of perhaps a summer visit to our centre for the elderly residents.

COOKING
Quite unexpectedly, the saddlebags suffered severe damage one Friday afternoon as I
was travelling back from Boston.
Leaflets had been delivered around the town and I had collected a month’s supply of
frozen dog food from our regular supplier.

The dog food was pieces of pork left over from the butchery, packed in long plastic tubes
about 18 inches long and frozen in boxes of about 30 tubes.

The boxes of frozen meat weighed in the region of three stones or 42 lbs or 20 kilos.
This was too much for one saddlebag so I split the box and put 15 frozen tubes in each
saddlebag.
I was going straight home so packed together the tubes of meat should not come to any
harm. Or so I thought.

Only three miles from home I passed through a village and noticed a tasty smell of cooked
meat. My first thought was that someone was having a late lunch.

A mile further on the smell was still there but ‘the penny did not drop’ until arriving home
and hearing a sizzling sound down behind my right leg.

The “superdream” has twin exhausts and my saddlebag on the right had totally lost its
shape. The weight of the frozen meat tubes had forced it into a long flat shape and the
heat from the exhaust begun to melt the bottom two tubes of frozen meat.

The smell was in fact the tubes of meat cooking in the bottom of the bag that had itself
become ‘welded’ to my exhaust pipe by its plastic/canvas fabric.

These half cooked tubes were pressed into service for dog nutrition and I never could
totally remove the remaining plastic/canvas from the right hand exhaust.

The saddlebags remained in service with a cardboard bottom to support the leaflets but I
always had to remember that any rain or spray from the road soon saturated the inside of
the bag on the right hand side!