wealthiest new resident that private transportation is a must. Buses run well and fast, but often at odd hours and not, until recently, late at night. Taxis are equally fast to devour a pay cheque. The smart thing for those not supplied with a company car - ie. most of us - is to buy a bike.

I purchased one early in my second week on the Island for $175 from a fellow about to leave the office, and drove it that very night to a farewell dinner for him. Manufactured by Honda, it was "a vehicle whose capacity does not exceed 50 cubic centimetres'', and as such, I was advised by the seller, not in urgent need of registration. Other minor details overlooked in the excitement were a Bermuda driver's licence and any form of insurance for the rice-burner.

For that matter, I had not driven a motorbike for years. The bravado of youth rendered that shortcoming a meaningless abstraction. This was a time, 1975, when attitudes to drinking and driving were less enlightened than they are now. Like everyone else at the party, held at another colleague's house in Flatts, I became what I would later learn to recognise as "full hot.'' Then, I just thought I was drunk. No one tried to stop me driving the bike to my lodgings when the evening unravelled. Flatts to Spanish Point. North Shore Road all the way. No problem.

To what extent my condition contributed to the events of that journey is moot, but somehow, it was never clear just how I found myself roaring down the South Shore Road in the rain towards the Elbow Beach Hotel and the western parishes which lay beyond. Fate intervened as the bike careened down the slippery hill past the entrance to the hotel in surprisingly thick traffic. Attempting to stop to review my whereabouts, I lost control of the vehicle, if I'd ever really had it in the first place, and drove at full tilt into the stone wall at the top of the Tribe Road leading to the beach.

As I lay bleeding, my crash helmet continued the journey down the South Shore.

For one dazed moment, I imagined that it must still contain my head. I was still lying by the wall, searching gingerly for broken bones, when the wailing siren of a police car brought me to my senses.

An extremely gentle policeman helped me up and carried me to the squad car, while the other amassed what remained of the bike and tracked down the helmet.

Skilled professionals, they diagnosed my condition as nothing more than road rash and a dose of shock.

I was, I fear, drunk in charge. Without a leg to stand on in law, legless in reality.

The kindly police officers drove me to the hospital, and waited while I received medical ministrations and a tetanus shot. Little of the hospital interlude remains in my mind, with the exception of two stark facts. The first, the disruption caused by my having no health insurance, resulted in the second: the payment in cash, in advance, of $36 for the shot. In today's money, that's close to three hundred bucks.

The two courteous police officers drove me to my residence in Spanish Point.

The conversation, miraculously as clear now as it was then, centred on the charms of Bermuda, the many attractions of Island life, and the comparative qualities of female company to be found in each of the discos. Both Samaritans declined the offer of a late-night cup of tea. It was suggested that I go directly to bed, since I would likely feel bruised and somewhat fragile on the following morning.

This part of the story may strain the reader's credulity to the limit. The next day, one of the policemen, off duty, telephoned my place of work to arrange to pick me up and drive me to collect the bike from Elbow Beach. Not once did either he or his colleague ask to see a single document relating to me or the bike, which was just as well. Not a single document was all I could have offered them.

A different time, a different Bermuda. And a different me, truth to tell. Now, instead of having no legal documents, I have dozens of them. And instead ofhaving dozens of drinks, I have none. Teetotal, more's the pity, these seven long years since.

That started after another utterly deranged driving feat, this time heading in the right direction, physically if not morally, in Devonshire. Equally hot, hot, hot after a belt-loosening dinner and alcoholic Christmas celebration at Henry VIII, I drove down the South Shore from the Botanical Gardens to Collector's Hill entirely on the wrong side of the road. Only the lateness of the hour enabled me to avoid a potentially fatal accident. When I woke up the next day, and began to recall through the haze the enormity of what I had done, I swore off the booze forever.

I've come a long way since then, baby. Much of it on foot and all of it completely sober.

RG MAGAZINE APRIL 1993