After BB it’s the CC show

There’s a long tradition of Danes running amok in Northumberland.

Never mind your Pedersens, Bagers, Ravns and Staechmans this marauding mob have been causing trouble since 793 in these parts.

He may have wreaked slightly less havoc than Ragnar Lodbrok – and would certainly get a much warmer welcome on Lindisfarne – but I have a hunch that Benjamin Basso’s demolition job on Saturday night would have tempted his forefathers to slaughter a succulent boar, stick a rabbit in the pot, neck a flagon or six and decree a week of celebration and merriment with optional pillaging.

Six rides, six victories on an away track. Smooth. Untroubled. Very, very classy. Pretty unique too – if degrees of uniqueness were not contradictio.

The great and the good have been scratching their heads trying to remember it happening before. A quest not helped by the fact that our guru on all things historically Bandits is currently sidelined – get well soon Gavin Renton.

Scotty Nicholls managed 17+1 for Peterborough in 2018, BB’s skipper on Saturday night similarly paid for the joys of six when he wore the black and gold at Poole last year.

But they both had a wealth of experience under their belts while at 21 Mr Basso is on track for a career which may take him where no Benjamin has ever ventured before. No, not Buxton but the world stage.

He seems like a nice boy too. Taking time out from personally winning twice as many races as the FTS Bandits, powered by Keenwood Karpets, combined to check on the health of a fellow countryman.

Jonas Knudsen had suffered a high-speed encounter of the needing clean boxers’ variety with the home straight safety fence courtesy of Claus Vissing’s somewhat out of control lunge in heat 12.

Despite a history of Danes knocking lumps out of each other on-track this was a simple racing whoopsie on Claus’s part, immediately apologised for, which ended with one of those rare occasions that a referee halts a race and applies the exclusion light with all four riders still – only just in JK’s case – upright.

Watching the as live BSN playback – fronted on Saturday by Borders K-Pop legend Greg Blair to the delight of his fan army, the BooBoos – as Jonas took a deep breathe and dared to open his eyes again and prepare for the rerun over came Mr Basso to offer a pat on the back and a quick “Du ok makker?” to his countryman.

Although this BB gun does occasionally misfire and apparently needs to give consideration to swapping his Coco pops and Ymer for a bag of Blue Circle’s finest as a first meal of the day.

At least that’s the view of a man who, himself, is no stranger to banging in maximums and generally tormenting the Bandits around Shielfield Park.

Yes Cookie’s in town on Saturday and it’s back in the blue and gold of Edinburgh.

Everyone’s favourite Cumbrian – expect perhaps members of the Bickley and Bewley households. Or the Lawsons, oh and the Roynons. OK the favourite Cumbrian of whichever team he’s riding for at any given time – Bickley family again excepted – switched coasts this winter and has made a typically noisy impact, on and off track.

For the first time in many a year it’s not, at least yet, in the number one race jacket. That’s worn by Josh Pickering who seems to be building a reputation as a man of action both with the Monarchs and down at King’s Lynn.

He certainly entertained at Shielfield last year, picking a line – three steps up The Ducket terracing from memory – that even Leon Flint or Chris Harris would deem “too wide”.

Our young skipper will need to invoke a combination of Henry V, Bobby Robson, Boadicea and Angry Gaz in his team talk as we look to finally get our season up and running.

Monarchs away and home in the space of 24 hours is as tough as it comes, especially when the previous outings at Redcar and against the Tiggers have ventured just about as far off plan as is possible.

With hindsight I probably should have anticipated Saturday night’s feverish Tiggering. Early season pass distribution in The Black and Gold was played out against the backdrop of Newcastle getting a 1980s vintage shoeing at Aston Villa. With some time to kill until the box office opened it seemed like a good idea to call in at Old Shielfield – Tweedmouth Rangers holding a one-goal lead when I arrived and trailing 3-1 by the time Emergency Sarah boosted me back over the wall an hour later.

Certainly not the day to buy a lottery ticket.

But not a total write off. Jonas and Connor continue to ride above their averages, Leon came to the party with a vengeance in the latter stages, his battles with Bomber the highlight for most home fans, and RooBoy scored solidly even on a slightly off night.

Plenty of room for improvement starting this weekend.

Tickets are on sale – save yourself two quid by booking online before midnight, Friday, and by the time the Monarchs are back on league duty in July you’ll  have enough in the piggy bank as opposed to those who pay on the day to consider it a philanthropic gesture from Messrs Courtney, Courtney, Flint and Dews, purveyor of fine speedway and unbeatable burgers to the masses.

Finally rumours circulated last week that the Scottish Government, riding high on the success of its minimum unit pricing in the fight against drunkenness had focussed on controlling unnecessary verbosity, especially in the elderly.

The solution, according to those worthies of the SNP not currently helping PC McPlod with her inquiries, is to tax verbs, synonyms and antonyms while making onomatopoeia an imprisonable offence.

One octogenarian was so disturbed by this attack on his hoard of shiny gold bawbees that he vowed to miss out the third, sixth, ninth, tenth and fifteenth word in every sentence for two hours every Saturday night until Humza Yousaf u-turned on this potentially ruinous policy.

Thankfully, common sense prevailed and normal verbosity will be resumed from 7pm on Saturday.

http://berwickspeedway.com/tickets