A long time ago -maybe 1980, myself and my oldest friend, Mark, went on a mini scooter run to a place called Chobham in Surrey in the south east of England, perhaps thirty miles from London. To be honest, it could have been Cobham, also in the same county. I get confused. In fact, I think Mark got confused too but we reached our destination anyway; a visit to see his country cousins, who turned out to be a couple of bikers and must have been amused to see our scooters wheezing and farting their way into view.

Mark’s PX was a 200E and could easily leave mine in the dust (a 150cc). It can’t have been long after this that Mark painted an Inspector Clouseau on the sidepanels and earned his nickname of ‘The Inspector’. Mark also owned an Olympus Trip camera, of which I was very very jealous. How come he got all the good gear? It’s hard to believe how time-consuming and expensive photography was back then -and you never really knew what the shots would be like until you got the prints back from the chemist. You’d be lucky to get to your front door without a couple of hundred photographs being taken now. And I mean from the inside. These photos are precious.

The ‘Soft Drinks’ shot was taken at a petrol station -and that’s all I remember. Good innit? I don’t think I’ve changed a bit…