Mod
I once rode pillion on a Lambretta or Vespa
all the way down Duncombe Avenue
to the roundabout on Little Dock Lane
and all the way back up the Avenue
to Chatsworth Gardens.
Paul Giles (who was driving)
had just become a mod.
He wore a full length parka
the same shade of green as boiled cabbage.
It was the summer of Nineteen Sixty Four.
It was the year a mod from Hardwood Crescent
entered the Guinness Book of Records
for having more wing minors on his scooter
than our street had cars.
I was thinking about this
after hearing a convoy of scooters
pass through the city late at night
like pilgrims from Margate and Brighton.
And I was thinking that if someone
as young now as Paul Giles was then
were to drive a Lambretta or Vespa
all the way down Duncombe Avenue
to the roundabout on Little Dock Lane
(the roundabout that is no longer there)
and all the way back up the Avenue
to Chatsworth Gardens
would he consider himself to be a mod
or post-mod
and would he be a linguist and be fluent in Italian,
as fluent as I was that day in Nineteen Sixty Four
when I climbed off the back of that Lambretta or Vespa
and looked into a dozen wing mirrors
and saw the many faces of me
and realised I had the wrong kind of hairstyle
to be a mod.