The well-worn Seat diesel clattered to a halt at the end of my drive, its all-obliterating red aerosol-spray finish making it look like a shapeless blob, gasping its last breath. Ralph, the driver, and a cycling friend , wasted no time on the niceties of a greeting as he prised open an unwilling door and disappeared almost bodily into the rear compartment, only to extracate himself seconds later accompanied by some choice Lancashire expletives as fork ends fought against ragged upholstery for their freedom.
A bulky and cumbersome man at most times Ralph was halfway along my drive thanks to an uncharacteristically agile gait before I could even utter the magic words "...it's an Opus". In a manner reminiscent of John Wayne, arms cranked out sideways, pistols cocked, Ralph lolloped towards me, the few remaining rays of sunshine just scrambling to catch the shimmering paintwork of the two frames suspended from his extended arms..
"Not far off..young Norris" he rejoined triumphantly "..but it's not an Opus, it's a Rixe"... thereby proving that the red-rose of the House of Lancaster can still , on occasion, get the better of the white rose of the House of York.. Ralph has never been known not to display overwhelming amounts of enthusiasm for anything remotely resembling a bike frame.
His right arm arced towards me, transmitting a rainbow of reds and greens and chrome flashes as the "Rixe" swung perilously near to my forearm. "Never heard of it..." was the best I could admit. "Knew i'd flummox you one of these days! What do you reckon?" Ralph rejoiced. And so the mystery of the Rixe deepened.
The red and green flamboyant paint had been negligently sprayed over a frame whose chromed tubes had had only the briefest of encounters with a polishing mop before being fleetingly immersed in the chrome vat, having studiously avoided the copper and nickle treatments on their way to third-class plating. The glance reminded me of the thousands of Carltons, produced under the Raleigh regime, where sports frames were crudely plated before being further insulted with a sparse coat of either red or emerald gren "flam"
The Rixe looked, from its decor, to be Italian... but it's top-tube decals proudly declared "Champion of France", and even though I lusted to better Ralph in my explanation of this mystery frame I knew that even he would not accept that even the grottiest of Italian factories would dishonour the Italian flag with such an atrocious display of spraymanship, although the decals would have made a nice joke at the expense of their trans-Alpine neighbours.
"Modele Special Andre Bertin" boasted the immaculate self-adhesive chrome-effect transfers on the seat-tube which had somehow, possibly as a tribute to the Frenchman himself, managed to outlast and certainly outshine the long term moribund chrome plating on which they were stuck. "RIXE" bragged the embossed aluminium headbadge without giving away any trace of its national origin.
By this time I was getting very unpleasant feelings about this stranger to my "stable" I like to know what I am going to let hang next to my Donisellis and Hilton Wrigleys, not to mention the dear old Henry Burton. And yet there was something horribly familiar about the intruder. The fork rake and crown were 1950s Italian, not unlike an Atala, the drop-outs could well be Agrati.. There were even some delicate reinforcement tangs on the inside of the seat-stays adjacent to the brake bridge.. not at all unlike a Urago or one of Fletcher's Special CNCs. Continuing ever upwards my eyes fell on the most grotesquely ugly seat lug and cluster that a hamfisted and half-blind trainee framebuilder could produce. The French have a superb very final-sounding adjective to describe such infinite ugliness "...laide!" pronounced even more finally and heavily than "lead" - as in the metal.
Grotty flam, crappy chrome, indescribable seat lug, numb head-badge were now all conspiring towards one conclusion.. "it just has to be Dutch, maybe though Belgian.. yes they did some crap paint jobs on the bottom-end frames.. and Begium isn't far from France. Yeah... it's got to be southern Belgium where they speak French.. and Bertin once rode for a Belgian brewery." For a man who has never been further south than the turn at the end of a 25 mile time-trial on the Lancashire / Cheshire border, Ralphs powers of deduction and reasoning were threatening to outdo those of Sherlock Holmes.
Ever the doubting Thomas I eyed the chrome-plated lugs.. hewn.. I really can't think of a more truly descriptive verb.. from heavy mild-steel plate with the finesse of a car-breaker cold chiselling a stubborn bolt. Hardly a curve in the whole length of any lug's perimeter, but even so still vaguely Italianate..
Now it's unusual for a Yorkshireman and a Lancastrian to admit that they're beaten, particularly to one another..."Have you got one of those computers?" Ralph ventured. In a sense a truce had been declared, an amnesty agreed, an treaty wordlessly signed..."Ok lets see what Google has to say.." I concurred.
So, if you've read this far you can go the extra mile...and investigate for yourselves. As the Yorkshireman's motto says "If tha' duz owt for nowt, do it foh this'sen !" I still have to investigate the Rixe's bottom bracket threads... perhaps they might be Swiss.. but they can wait until tomorrow,
"Now then, Ralph! The Rixe was in your left hand, what's that you got in the right?" "What's that you say... a Riviera? Which Riviera's that? The French or the Italian?... No don't tell me there's a Belgian Riviera as well .. no not at Ostend.." "Just could be, young Norris! Just think about it.. Ostend's not far from the French border is it.. and you know what those Belgies are like... they even let monks brew beer from raspberries! Nowt so queer as folk, young Norris ! " Ralph was determined to win the 2004 War of the Roses, even if it did mean verbally abusing the French and the Belgians in the process.
Norris Lockley.. hand-cuffed in the stocks, a prisoner of the Lancastrian.. Settle UK