There is a particular silence that settles over the Kingsway car park at half eleven on a Friday night, just before the first Bellina rolls in from the Hanger Lane roundabout. It is the silence of anticipation. Everyone knows the scooters are coming, and when they arrive, they will arrive as a formation: twelve machines in a line, each one stacked with enough chrome spotlamps to signal ships in the Channel.
I spent three months riding with the South Bank Scooter Club, documenting the build. Terry Wallis showed me his 1963 Velocetta S3 and explained the logic: each mirror has to catch the one next to it until the whole front throws light forward in a single sheet.