May 1985, about 5 am on a beautiful sunny spring morning I was driving home with a couple of crew mates in my trusty 2000E after a shift working on the River Tay salmon fishing. Coming in to Perth there was a police car blocking the road and I was flagged down by a sergeant accompanied by a fresh-faced young constable. I'd seen neither of them in my life before, but immediately I recognised the sergeant. Chinny, the crew foreman, lived with his dad, who was a police sergeant. Chinny was nick-named thus on account of having a chin bigger than Jimmy Hill, a feature also possessed by the polis man who'd flagged me down. I wound down the window.
"Where you going sonny?"
"Home. I've been working at the fishing. Ron's the gaffer"
Having said this I fully expected him to tell me to be on my way, but no, he told me to get out and open the boot. This I did, while the constable occupied himself with poking at the rust and kicking the tyres.
At this moment the early morning stillness was broken by the sound of an approaching motorbike, still out of sight but obviously going very fast. All three of us turned to look down the Dundee Road as it screamed round the corner at about 70mph, saw the police car, slammed on the brakes, went down through the gears and burbled slowly towards us.
Just at the point where two of us recognised both the rider and the bike, it revved up, popped a huge wheelie and roared past, straight through the red traffic lights at the next junction before it disappeared out of sight.
The constable fumbled frantically for his radio, "I got his number Sarge, I got his number!"
The sergeant said "Nah, you can't have seen it properly, he was going far too fast"
Always wanting to help our brave boys in blue, I added "Sergeant Tindall, I definitely got his number."
He gave me one look before shouting "Get back into that f***ing heap of shite and get it out of my sight
now!"
Arriving for work the next evening I met Chinny, moving sufficient belongings into the bothy for a few days, as domestic relationships had got rather strained and he thought it best to keep away from his dad for a while.