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falling in behind us.
    The show cum rally cum party ran over the weekend. It wasn’t in the same league as the Big Two’s events, the Hells Angels’ Bulldog Bash or the Outlaws’ Rock and Blues Customs Show and Ink and Iron festival, the premier events in the UK biking calendar, but even so, The Brethren were determined to put on a good show.
Round the front of the clubhouse was the show. To the right of the pitch was a street of tents. Looking down the lines along which a small crowd of bikers and apparent tourists were drifting, I could see from the signs that the closest were hosted by a friendly support club, the local Harley dealer, a Tshirt seller, a Triumph owners club and traders in leather jackets and helmets. Beyond that the line curved round in an arc that lead back to the top end of the rugby pitch where there was a small cluster of other stands which from this distance looked like some kind of autojumble.
    Ahead of me a giant beer tent and a row of burger vans from which I could just about smell the frying onions, marked the far side of the pitch; while behind them ran a hedge beyond which were the camping fields where a mass of tents of every colour, size and design had sprouted like a forest of demented toadstools, interspersed with parked up bikes and fluttering club flags.
    The pitch itself had been cordoned off with a waist high screen of portable metal railings since it would be being kept clear for the day’s events. At the moment the half to my right was being used as a showground for a guy doing unbelievable tricks on a trials bike, his commentary booming across the field from speakers on poles at each corner as he rode up and over seemingly impossible obstacles without bothering to ever actually use the front wheel of the bike.
    Early in the afternoon there would be the formal ride in by The Brethren, followed by the other clubs and independents in order of precedence, up onto and across a stage that had been organised at the far end of the pitch on my left, to present their toy donations to the charity. Those bikes that were being entered for the ‘show what you rode’ would be parked up on the pitch for display and judging while the stage would be set up for the evening’s bands.
    Show awards would be at six, the music would kick off at eight and go on into the early hours. It was one of the reasons for holding it well out of town.
Should be quite a night.
    And then further off to the left, behind the stage and beyond the pitch itself, was a single large marquee. There were two flagpoles outside the entrance each flying The Brethren’s colours and even from here I could see a cluster of what were obviously strikers on guard at the entrance, one of them striking in the other sense of the word from the bright white sling his arm was in. He’d obviously had some kind of a shunt but as a patch, striker or tagalong, you’d have to be pretty fucked up and totally bedridden to miss today I knew. Still, I wondered how much slack, if any at all the sling would get him as a striker? Not much, was my bet.
    This would be the members only tent.
Wibble headed straight towards it.
‘Locals?’ I asked, although I’d guessed what he’d meant.
‘The Cambridge crew.’
    I had been wondering whether he was going to take me into the marquee but as it happened we didn’t need to get that far as a small posse of Brethren emerged from within as we approached and came forward to meet us.
    The two groups stopped, facing each other a few feet apart as Wibble and Thommo, the local charter president, stepped forward to embrace in the usual formal backslapping bearhug and expressions of solidarity, while their respective crews eyefucked each other across the gap.
‘So who’s this?’ Thommo said looking at me with an openly hostile stare as they broke apart again.
     
‘He’s a journalist,’ Wibble replied calmly.
     
‘You brought a fucking journo here? This weekend? What the hell for?’ Thommo