John Bickley

I like pubs, I always have done. I’d go in with Yorkie, Grub, who was Yasso's cousin, and a few others. We used to go in the Exchange first, and meet in there. Because the beer in the Tavern was shit. I’d drink Newcastle Brown, usually. Anything out of a bottle!

It was the seventies. Skip was the landlord, and his wife – whose name is escaping me I worked with her at the lock factory in later years, and she told me how Skip had had a heart attack at home. Gone. And how she remembered going down to Spain on the back of his Goldwing, and falling asleep as they left the ferry in France and not waking up again till they were in Spain. She slept through France!

I was a young lad, going up to town, exploring the world. The Tavern had no outside windows. A corridor. It was a youngsters’ pub. It really was. I mean, you got older people in, but… instead of you being the kid in an adult world, it was a youth club which allowed you to get drunk. Just walk in, turn left, do the der-dump down that step.

I had long hair, leather jacket, jeans. Really long hair. I could sit on it.

We’d take over the corner as you walked in, past the bar, on the left. And whatever the rest did, was up to them. We’d fill the corner with the herberts that I knew. We were in a motorcycle club, the Golden Eagles – named after the pub – the previous generation of bikers started that club up.

We’d park our bikes outside the Exchange, in the road, go to the Tavern. Then we’d go for a curry and come out of there, nine strong, and head somewhere up the Penn Road. A blue light would come on behind you and people would just scatter! And there’d be someone who was too slow to react.

We’d go to camping weekends set up by other clubs. You’d pay your money, you might even get an enamel badge, and you’d go to the pub that was usually attached to the field the camping was on. It’d be a country pub that needed the trade. And in the early days there was always a bonfire you came out to after the pub had shut, with cans and bottles and whatever, and you’d sit round the bonfire till the fire went out, and crawl off into your tent.

Not all pubs let bikers in. The Boycott Arms, on the Bridgnorth Road, we thought was excellently named, because bikers weren’t allowed in. We would turn up once a year, ask to be served, get refused, and go OK we’ll see you again next year! We’d turn up then, go in, politely ask to be served, get refused again… The Unicorn, at Hampton Loade, did rallies. We had one of ours there, a winter rally The Snow Eagles. And we all got on the drift ferry, went across the river to the pub the other side, asked to be served, got refused, went See you next year!

I remember a snowball fight in the Tavern. And I remember when the Hells Angels came in and decided to put their stamp on the place, and make everyone be…respectful. The glasses started flying. I’d gone in with my new girlfriend, who’d got an arm in plaster from a crash on the previous boyfriend’s bike, and I threw her to the floor and just covered over the top of her. And yeah, I was a bit concerned when the broken cast-iron table legs started flying, but we got away with it. It was more a show of strength than a desire to actually hurt anyone.

I stopped drinking in the Tavern because I got my own place. I wasn’t living with my folks, and I moved out of the town as a haunt, and I started drinking in the Combermere. I was too lazy to walk up town and drink in the Tavern. I could just walk to my local.