Some time about 1990, I got my mitts on a full-power Kawasaki KDX125. The thing kicked out about twice the weedy 12hp that the learner-legal version developed and did nearly 90mph. Amazing little machine.

Anyway, a summer Sunday afternoon and a group of us went for a hoon, as you do, down on the Weald of Kent. We bummed a cup of tea off my parents, and then set off for London and home.

There was me on the KDX, Richard on his Harley, Niall on his RD500LC and Harland on his Kawasaki Z1000 Mk.2, which had an 1100cc Moriwaki kit in it and went like stink.

In a straight line, anyway. It was still running stock suspension, so it handled like an evil snake.

Harland was a nutter. He'd already lost his right leg in a bike crash but it hadn't slowed him down much. The only problem he had was keeping his right (artificial) foot on the footpeg at high speeds. Anything over 90 and it blew off, and his artificial leg flapped up and down in the breeze, a bit like those semaphore indicators you used to get on Moggie Minors.

On the basis of "slowest bike first", I was in front on the KDX. I knew the lanes round Tenterden like the back of my hand, having cycled and ridden on them since the age of 12. I came buzzing up to a superb S-bend, right in the middle of which was a level crossing for the Kent & East Sussex Steam Railway. Banged it left, *BoUNCED* on the railway tracks, banged it right, up the hill and away.

As I crested the hill, I checked the mirrors. Nobody in sight. Hm. I slowed down. Still no sign of the others. I stopped altogether. After two minutes I got that sinking feeling you may know: "Oh, fuck, what's happened?"

I did a U-turn and went back.

Well, the RD500LC had got round the bend. Bike Number Three in the line was Harland's Z1000. He'd managed the left-hand bit, but the bounce over the railway lines had completely unsettled the thing, and when he tried lobbing it into the right-hander, it didn't want to play ball.

There was a superb black rubber streak left by the front tyre as the bars had flapped, and a Z1000-shaped hole in the hedge. 25 yards into the field beyond the hedge was a very bent Z1000 and a swearing Harland.

One reason why he was swearing was because in the impact he'd broken his artificial leg. It was completely twisted, bent, and the foot was pointing behind him. He was sitting on the ground trying to wrench the thing back straight so he could stand up.

Just at that moment, the level crossing keeper came into the field. The trains were running that weekend, and the signalbox by the crossing was manned. From his eyrie above the bend, the signalman had had a grandstand view of two bikes whapping round the S-bend and the third firing itself into a field, in a green cloud of shredded hedge.

He came running up to Harland, took one look at him hammering away at his twisted and smashed leg, went the same colour as the grass, and sat down abruptly in the field....