All gone in a blink of an eye
By John Dickinson on 25th May 07
They say that time flies when you are enjoying yourself so I must have been having a ball...
30 YEARS of Trials and Motocross News is the themefor this week's paper - and it certainly makes you stop and think,whether you have been a reader from issue one or if you are a recentconvert. In reality, as far as putting the paper together goes it isjust another week with yet another tight deadline. As they say, timeand tide wait for no man, and we are up against the clock for issuenumber 1563 just as founding editor Bill Lawless was for issue one. Andyou can read Bill's welcome article on page 39 this week!
Thirty years is either a long time or it is a mereblink of the eye, depending entirely on the context. Speakingpersonally, it seems like those 30 years have disappeared in the blinkof an eye, probably because in the T+MX office we don't get time toblink - we work flat-out on one issue eyes wide open, then it is goneand we are straight-away squabbling over the next.
To the editorial staff, when the paper is gone itis gone. Each issue is finished and consigned to the printer's onTuesday evening, anytime between eight o'clock (we wish) and 10.30pm(more than likely!). After that it is history. By the time Friday comesaround, and someone comes on the phone wanting to discuss something inthat issue it is often quite difficult to get your head around whatthey are talking about because we are already concentrating on the nextone. It is to this constant, never-ending drumbeat that the whole thingticks-over and which probably contributes heavily to the sense oftimelessness.
Only one man has seen every issue take shape andthat is Mannix - and you can read what he has to say opposite. It isquite a story. Compared to Mannix I am a genuine Johnny-come-lately asT+MX was an established three-year-old by the time I arrived on thescene.
It was 1981 and the first real assignment I wasgiven was actually covering the Spanish World Round of that year. How Idid it was left entirely to myself. I was on my own with Bill's wordsringing in my ears, ''Just make sure you are back at work on Mondaywith the report and pictures, mate!''
Back then the only regular Barcelona flights werefrom Heathrow which meant a rail and tube trip from the grim north.Martin Lampkin and Nigel Birkett agreed to pick me up at Barcelonaairport which - pre-Olympics - was more like Leeds-Bradford. Then itwas off to sunny Olot - except it wasn't, it was hammering down, theplace was a muddy bog and I had no wellies. Never mind, Birks' Transitcontained several pairs of shiny clean trials boots so, with the ridersdeparted, I donned a pair and squelched happily round enjoying everysecond of my very first World Championship round. On my return to thevan though I discovered that I hadn't been sloshing around in a pair ofBirks' boots but in Martin Lampkin's! Oops! I felt pretty guilty tryingto wipe the two-inches of muck stuck to them but to his eternal creditMart was very good about it.
After the trial I had to hang around and wait forthe results - pre-computer days - so Birks and Mart gave me the name oftheir hotel and disappeared to Barcelona. I blagged a lift to Barcelonacentre about an hour later and then hopped a taxi to the Hotel Amigo.No sign of our dashing duo but a quick trawl of the local bars - nomobile phones to track them down remember, you lot have it lucky thesedays - soon located them and the first beer of the night.
Monday saw a dawn bus to the airport, plane, tubeand train in that order and back at T+MX in Morecambe central bytea-time and settle in for the night to TYPE in the report while MarkPrice developed my pictures and sorted a few useable ones out - one ofwhich, of Manuel Soler, made front page that week. Was I proud or what!
All of which seems like yesterday... well maybe not yesterday, but certainly, as I keep saying, not getting on for 30 years.
I actually met Manuel (a member of the famousBulto family) a couple of years ago at the Barcelona Indoor andarranged to send him a copy of the black and white pic that graced T+MXall those years ago. As Jim Royle would say, ''Thirty years my a**e!''