Steady Now Doctor Read Free

Burton-on-Trent today,” confirms this.
    They knew he came ill-equipped, as on their first night, where for some reason they pitched their tent on a rubbish dump, Ward had no sleeping bag, and had to share the large hessian one with Andy.
    Today this could have all sorts of connotations, but in those days it didn’t. That’s how things were.
    In spite of it being wartime, they had managed to get a route map from the AA. These maps were joined at the top of the page, and had detailed instructions like, turn left at Brown’s Tea Shop, right at Smith’s Garage, and as you turn up and over each page, the road for you to follow, with all its accompanying details, ran down the middle of the page.
    Andy was later than all his friends in acquiring a bicycle. His father was some sort of Structural Engineer, being moved on and up the scale every few years but never quite catching up to the salary scale he was on, so the family was always hard up.
    At the beginning of the war the family were evacuated to his grandmother’s at Blackpool, but after some months things were so quiet they returned to their home in South London. The day of their return coincided with the first day of the Battle of Britain, and they had a ringside seat watching Spitfires and Hurricanes fighting against overwhelming numbers of German aircraft over Croydon Airport.
    But, joy of joys, some stranded New Zealanders, who had been borrowing the house, had left a bicycle behind. Andy immediately claimed it. It was a sit up and beg bicycle, and had no handgrips on the handlebars. This was remedied by his father, always a genius with plastic wood, who moulded some on. In fact, he was probably the only cyclist with plastic wood handlegrips.
    Joneson’s bicycle was of the dropped handle, racing type, which had the disadvantage that when he became so tired he couldn’t lift his head, which was often, he couldn’t see where he was going, so Andy, in his upright position, directed operations.
    He was not wearing his Boy Scout uniform as he was not on Boy Scout business, but he did wear his Scout trousers which were dark blue, a leather zipped jacket, Scout socks, plus green tabs on his garters to show that he actually belonged to the Scouts.
    He had a borrowed frame rucksack which he wore. His tent, sleeping bag and hand axe were carried on the carrier on the back of his bicycle.
    On his belt he had a sheath knife with a silver top, beneath which were two circles of coloured glass between the top and the hardwood handle.
    His multibladed penknife hung from a ring on the other side of his belt.
    Joneson had some sort of lightweight waterproof gear, and all-in-all looked much more streamlined than Andy.
    They went up the old Watling Street that Roman Legionnaires must have marched up in their thousands, and who would have envied their bicycles, as they, in their turn, envied the cars and lorries that passed them.
    Nowadays it is not easy to pick out the Watling Street on modern maps with all the new motorways that have sprung up, but he still had a feeling that somehow they went through Grantham, as in one ambiguous town they parked their bikes against a grocer’s window, to have the daughter of the house, a bushy blonde with prominent teeth of about their age, come out and hysterically admonish them.
    They were a bit nonplussed at the violence of her attack. Fortunately Joneson kept his cool.
    â€œYou’ve got a big hole in your stocking,” said Joneson.
    â€œNo, I haven’t,” said the girl, carefully examining her black woollen cladding.
    â€œYes, you have,” said Joneson.
    â€œI’d like to see where,” said the girl, now looking worried.
    By now they had safe hold of their bicycles.
    â€œWhere you put your legs in,” shouted Joneson as they cycled away.
    One day, many years later, when Joneson and Andy had one of their periodical bump-ins on the train from Paddington, Joneson said, “You