Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

“I’m going to buy a motorbike.”

These few words are enough to strike terror into a parent’s heart. No matter how hard you have tried to let them be independent, no matter how much confidence you have in them, a teenager who utters these words will be met with the blank gaze of a parent. Even if it only lasts a split second before you say, “Okay.”

My younger son was hooked as soon as he had met the ‘ped of his best friend. He wanted one, badly, and set about earning and saving the money to buy one.

I could understand his desire… I’d always wanted a motorbike, but in those far off days it was never permitted. I, in my innocence, still thought of mopeds as those contraptions that were little more than a pushbike with a small motor. It couldn’t, after all, be much more dangerous than…