Scrambling For Enthusiastic Beginners : How I Survived the 1960s With A Smile (Frank Melling, 2021)

If you were a champion motorcycle racer, captain of the school rugby team and had the girls queuing up for a date, this is not the book for you.

“Scrambling For Enthusiastic Beginners” is the story of what happens to an extremely ordinary young man as he struggles to grow up in the “Swinging 60s”.

The people in the know always say: “If you can remember the 1960s, then you weren’t there…”

This is probably true for the rock ‘n’ roll superstars – but Melling was most definitely there!

In 1960, he remembers getting a good smack from his mum when his home made cannon blew up and burned a hole in his school sock.

He can also recall his super smooth chat up line when he discovered girls. It was “Hiya.” There was nothing else: just the single word because that’s all he had.

When he began work as a labourer, Melling was at the epicentre of the corruption and incompetence which pervaded every part of British industry and nowhere more so than the British motorcycle manufacturers.

There were tears and laughter but all the time there were motorcycles as his saviour - buying, selling, riding, racing and inculcating a passion which burned into his very soul. Bikes were Melling and Melling was bikes – then and still now.

So this is the story which you will not read elsewhere. Not that of a rock star, surrounded by hordes of beautiful girls, or a World Champion spraying champagne from the top step of the podium.

This is the tale of the most naïve young man in the universe, ricocheting from one disaster to another in his efforts to grow up – truly, scrambling for an enthusiastic beginner.