Barnsbury Boy - Raymond Silk: Love Affair for the GS 150
Around 1960 I was wearing "bum freezer" two button bolero cut jackets for school which were very fashionable at the time. We'd go to the Ken Collier Jazz club in the West End where we'd see French students wearing amazing clothes that we'd never seen before which is where we caught on to their styles; roll neck sweaters and the like. We'd also go along to the tea stall at Highbury corner, there was always a group of Rockers there but we'd just chat and have a general banter, there was never any hassle. We'd also hang out at the Floor Below club in Church Street, Stoke Newington, it was all Mods there along with the Chez Don in Dalston; the Tottenham Royal had a mixture of styles but was mostly Mod.
I'd fallen in love with the sound of the GS, you could hear them coming a mile away and I had to have one. I got mine from Tom or maybe George Coles on Essex Road, they were £180 new but I got a second hand 150 VS5 for £115, I part exchanged my push bike and I'd been saving for a while. Whilst at school I'd been working as a grocery delivery boy and had a paper round, I left school in '61 and continued saving, by February 1962 I'd scraped enough money to put down as a deposit. My first job after leaving school was a messenger boy, my top line was around £6 before tax, I paid my Mum £2-3 out of that so there wasn't an awful lot left to spend on clothes and scooter HP. I was the first of our group to get one; my friend Billy got a Series 2 TV, Ricky bought a GS - 189 CJJ if I remember - mine was YYU 915 painted in black and silver but with no accessories when I got it.
I bought the GS on a Saturday and immediately took it for a thrash up the Cambridge Road; I got it home and put it in the pram shed, next morning the thing wouldn't start! A man came out from the shop to have a look and told me about the battery's on GS's, I pushed it back to the shop where they charged the battery and bought a second one to keep as a spare and alternated them after that.
Soon after buying it I added some chrome stripes, after a spill I changed the body to black and took the panels and mudguard to E.C. Furby in Clerkenwell Road to have them plated, Florida bars, front and rear carriers, top bars, mirrors, two lights, alpine horns, turbine wheel disks, an airplane mascot and a Cadillac grille all followed. Obviously it looked really good and inevitably it was stolen, when it was found it had been completely stripped all the accessories and chrome were missing when the police recovered it, some other Mod must have taken a fancy to it but didn't want to fork out the money himself. With the insurance money I started again, I had the engine rebuilt and all the new parts chrome plated and added the accessories again.
The TV clip came about one evening when we were approached by a couple of people from the BBC when we were at Chez Don. They were talking to people and wanted insights, and a group of scooterists to film riding. They were offering more than a weeks pay for half a day's riding so we were all interested but I suppose we'd have probably done it for free to grab hold of our fifteen minutes of fame!
The arranged day came along and buttoned up in our coats and parkas, we rode up to the Epping area in the pouring rain. Roger was on his GS160, the one with the Moon Eyes on the mudguard and Glennis, my ex-wife was on the back of mine. The only thing that kept us going was the promise of being paid. We only had a small part and weren't interviewed, but it's the scooters that set the scene for the whole feature that was aired as a BBC Panorama report, which contrasted the difference between Mods and Rockers.
At the time of the filming I'd removed most of the accessories normally fitted to the scooter as the weather was so bad and I didn't want the chrome to be ruined in the rain. We had a number of local touches on our scooters including oversized mud flaps from Land Rovers and our Metalplast screens we heated up to bend the tops over like they'd been peened back by the wind. That was always a pain as if you didn't ride it off the stand the screen would hit you in the throat as you nudged it forward.
I sold the scooter in September 1964 and replaced it with a Mini although I still have the number plates off the mudguard. I had a new job and more money; times were changing and cars were the thing to have. I couldn't forget about scooter though so I got another. I was working in Old Street and living in Clapton so it made sense to have a scooter to commute to work. I got hold of a Messerschmitt GS150 painted in claret and blue which had to go! I painted it mustard and kept it until the late Eighties when I was persuaded to give it away. A plumber who was doing some work for me said his son was a young Mod and would love to have it to rebuild. The rebuild never happened and it turned up again years later as a rusty wreck. Obviously I regretted letting it go virtually immediately. Some time after that my son became a Mod and came home with a Sportique Grand Luxe which I ribbed him about constantly as I'd always had GSs. Calling my bluff he told me about a friend who was selling a GS150 and so my love affair with GS's was rekindled, again with a VS5.
The previous owner had owned the scooter from new and had stamped his initials all over the various parts of the frame, engine and ancillaries. It had been painted blue and had a large windscreen, since I've owned it I've returned it to a factory fresh finish to reflect how I remember the first scooters I saw, I borrowed an auxiliary fuel tank to have it replicated but left it pretty standard other than that.
The whole Mod era was a good time for everyone and was a shift change for working class youths, their fashions, having proper jobs and developing different interests. We just rode around enjoying ourselves and seemed to appreciate what we were doing as part of our everyday lives, all those memories for me are encapsulated and represented in the shape of GS 150s, I don't think I'd like to be without one again!
December 2013. The full article can be read at ScooterGeek.co.uk
I'd fallen in love with the sound of the GS, you could hear them coming a mile away and I had to have one. I got mine from Tom or maybe George Coles on Essex Road, they were £180 new but I got a second hand 150 VS5 for £115, I part exchanged my push bike and I'd been saving for a while. Whilst at school I'd been working as a grocery delivery boy and had a paper round, I left school in '61 and continued saving, by February 1962 I'd scraped enough money to put down as a deposit. My first job after leaving school was a messenger boy, my top line was around £6 before tax, I paid my Mum £2-3 out of that so there wasn't an awful lot left to spend on clothes and scooter HP. I was the first of our group to get one; my friend Billy got a Series 2 TV, Ricky bought a GS - 189 CJJ if I remember - mine was YYU 915 painted in black and silver but with no accessories when I got it.
I bought the GS on a Saturday and immediately took it for a thrash up the Cambridge Road; I got it home and put it in the pram shed, next morning the thing wouldn't start! A man came out from the shop to have a look and told me about the battery's on GS's, I pushed it back to the shop where they charged the battery and bought a second one to keep as a spare and alternated them after that.
Soon after buying it I added some chrome stripes, after a spill I changed the body to black and took the panels and mudguard to E.C. Furby in Clerkenwell Road to have them plated, Florida bars, front and rear carriers, top bars, mirrors, two lights, alpine horns, turbine wheel disks, an airplane mascot and a Cadillac grille all followed. Obviously it looked really good and inevitably it was stolen, when it was found it had been completely stripped all the accessories and chrome were missing when the police recovered it, some other Mod must have taken a fancy to it but didn't want to fork out the money himself. With the insurance money I started again, I had the engine rebuilt and all the new parts chrome plated and added the accessories again.
The TV clip came about one evening when we were approached by a couple of people from the BBC when we were at Chez Don. They were talking to people and wanted insights, and a group of scooterists to film riding. They were offering more than a weeks pay for half a day's riding so we were all interested but I suppose we'd have probably done it for free to grab hold of our fifteen minutes of fame!
The arranged day came along and buttoned up in our coats and parkas, we rode up to the Epping area in the pouring rain. Roger was on his GS160, the one with the Moon Eyes on the mudguard and Glennis, my ex-wife was on the back of mine. The only thing that kept us going was the promise of being paid. We only had a small part and weren't interviewed, but it's the scooters that set the scene for the whole feature that was aired as a BBC Panorama report, which contrasted the difference between Mods and Rockers.
At the time of the filming I'd removed most of the accessories normally fitted to the scooter as the weather was so bad and I didn't want the chrome to be ruined in the rain. We had a number of local touches on our scooters including oversized mud flaps from Land Rovers and our Metalplast screens we heated up to bend the tops over like they'd been peened back by the wind. That was always a pain as if you didn't ride it off the stand the screen would hit you in the throat as you nudged it forward.
I sold the scooter in September 1964 and replaced it with a Mini although I still have the number plates off the mudguard. I had a new job and more money; times were changing and cars were the thing to have. I couldn't forget about scooter though so I got another. I was working in Old Street and living in Clapton so it made sense to have a scooter to commute to work. I got hold of a Messerschmitt GS150 painted in claret and blue which had to go! I painted it mustard and kept it until the late Eighties when I was persuaded to give it away. A plumber who was doing some work for me said his son was a young Mod and would love to have it to rebuild. The rebuild never happened and it turned up again years later as a rusty wreck. Obviously I regretted letting it go virtually immediately. Some time after that my son became a Mod and came home with a Sportique Grand Luxe which I ribbed him about constantly as I'd always had GSs. Calling my bluff he told me about a friend who was selling a GS150 and so my love affair with GS's was rekindled, again with a VS5.
The previous owner had owned the scooter from new and had stamped his initials all over the various parts of the frame, engine and ancillaries. It had been painted blue and had a large windscreen, since I've owned it I've returned it to a factory fresh finish to reflect how I remember the first scooters I saw, I borrowed an auxiliary fuel tank to have it replicated but left it pretty standard other than that.
The whole Mod era was a good time for everyone and was a shift change for working class youths, their fashions, having proper jobs and developing different interests. We just rode around enjoying ourselves and seemed to appreciate what we were doing as part of our everyday lives, all those memories for me are encapsulated and represented in the shape of GS 150s, I don't think I'd like to be without one again!
December 2013. The full article can be read at ScooterGeek.co.uk