I stood under the branches of the tree which overhung the driveway, a soft wind rustling the leaves.

“Beautiful, isn’t it.” Dad smiled. I could tell he was impressed. He was looking at the bike, but his sight, I could tell, stretched back some 25 years, to his own youth.

“why don’t you start it up, so we can see how it sounds?”

my brother stepped forward with the key. He slotted it into the ignition just behind the two gauges. Almost immediately, like a newborn kitten the bike began to purr.

It generated a gentle put-putting sound which reminded me of old biplanes from the twenties. I suppose my brother can be compared to those first brave aeronaughts. I couldn’t help feeling jealous, and proud.

At length, after the two men had talked about it and eyed it like workmen preparing to build a wall, my brother lent forward and gently squeezed the throttle: the putput disappeared, and the kitten turned into a lion, proud as any in Africa. My father was in love/

Of course, my brother was under strict orders from my mother not to let dad get on the thing. She knew that dad would simply fall in love with the damn machine at first sight, and she was quite right. Mum had been totally against Luke buying what she saw as a toy in the first place.

“It’s dangerous.” She had said, probably half a thousand times. “if you killed yourself, I don’t know what I’d do.”

For my part, I had to agree. I hated the idea of my little brother hurting himself. Truth be told, I’m very fond of him. Yet before me sat this great half-ton lump of plastic and chrome which sang like Hendrix’s guitar, and all I felt was admiration.

Luke’s gone out riding, playing with his new toy. Which, I suppose, is part of the problem: mum still likes to think of him as her littlest son, still wrapped in a white blanket. Today I saw Luke, a man with a damned fine motorbike, ready to make his own way n the world.