My old mucker Barry the Builder has two bikes. Both of them are Triumphs. One’s a proper classic Bonneville, one of the first unit-construction jobs from 1963. It had been his father’s – not from new, but he was the second owner. Barry restored it after the old man had a stroke (it had been rotting in the garage since the Eighties anyway). He’ll never part with it. For me, that’s the definition of “a keeper”.

It’s the opposite of bikes like the Huskie Nuda I tried the other day: a bike that you probably won’t hang onto for long but is great fun while it lasts.

Barry’s old Bonnie isn’t actually much fun, of course: it’s a temperamental brute of a bike that will run sweetly one day then splutter and stall on the next, for no apparent reason. I helped him rebuild the engine and though it’s pretty basic, fettling it left no knuckle unskinned and despite our best efforts it’s still not quite free of the traditional Triumph oil leak. It’s frustrating, for all that it is a keeper. So Barry does need a second bike.

Barry’s other Bonneville is a modern one. And he told his wife that it’s a keeper too. That’s why she agreed to let him get a second motorcycle. She really doesn’t care too much about the bikes: they just sit under covers and waste space in the garage as far as she’s concerned.

The covers are crucial to Barry’s scheme. Because his other Bonnie, the modern one, is anything but a keeper. To my knowledge he’s had three in the past ten years. There may have been four. His wife (don’t worry – she loathes bikes so she’ll never read this) has never lifted the covers or even noticed that it keeps changing colour…

Clever fella, that Barry.

Tags: Triumph, Triumph Bonneville