The Better Part of Valerie: The Day My Mother’s Chin Fell Off

michelvis:

My mother was a tearaway moped rider in the early ’60s, carving up the streets of Eltham, South London in her peaked helmet, secured by a simple strap under the chin. Revered by her contempories as Vespa Val, and by everyone else since as a total loon, she must have looked quite the cool socialite in Swinging London in her capri pants and tight pink sweater, perched femininely upon the seat of her shiny white Vespa.

Then one day while riding through South London she spotted the gentleman she had been stepping out with riding with his family in a car on the other side of the road. She knew she looked the part and attempted to attract their attention by waving at them with great zeal and enthusiasm as she passed by them at speed. Vespa Val looked in through the windows of the car and caught sight of her new beau, Grahame, and the awe struck faces of his family as her own reflection  projected onto the glass that they peered out from.The sun was glinting off the chrome on the Vespa and the peak of the helmet and she felt fabulous.

It must have been at precisely this moment that the tree arrived directly in her path and Vespa Val found herself riding skywards towards the upper canopy via the trunk. For a split second she realised that it wasn’t awe on the faces of the occupants of the car but horror. I think it must have been precisely after this that Vespa Val realised the benefits of buying a helmet with a chin guard, as her own chin was lying somewhere on the ground away from the rest of her body.

What a lesson should have been learned that day, so much tragedy could have been avoided, but no…Grahame took pity on the chinless wonder and a few years later they were married and several years hence, I was born.

Source: michelvis

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