My mum had a significant win on the bingo one year and so informed me that I could choose a brand new bike!! OMG (or whatever the 1983 equivalent was.. ACE! maybe)
Imagine my surprise when I woke up to a fully loaded Raleigh Equipe with 11 gears and an electric siren..
Somehow the guy in Halfords had disregarded the fact that I had magazine cuttings and pictures of the Raleigh Bomber in Raleigh colours on my bedroom walls… and that I had wished for it every night and dreamed about it and that I had pretty much spraffed my kecks about the Bomber for at least 2 years..
and somehow this Halfrauds bozo had convinced my naieve mother that no young boy would choose a mean and tough functional Bomber over the effete and flimsy and in my eyes completely pointless road race replica..
being the kindhearted and thoroughly grief stricken but dutiful little boy that I was.. I passed off the choking and the burning tears that sprang to my eyes as gratitude.. I sobbed a ridiculously melodramatic thankyou and promptly turned the ridiculous drop handlebars upside down and literally rode the wheels off it time and time again for the next 5 years until my first after school job enabled me to replace it with something more suitable…
The melodramatic and tearful thankyou went down in family history as a sign of my all round goodness.. and I have perpetuated the myth until the truth slipped out during some friendly banter with the old crow a few years ago!