Restoring Legends & Surviving SAS Hell | Manx Norton, MV Agusta & The Long Drag | The Parallel Four

The Parallel Four Book Two Chapter Twenty Six.

What do you get when two ex-Royal Marines discover a shed hiding two Manx Nortons, a pair of MV Agustas — and the bright idea of joining the TA SAS? Chapter Twenty-Six of The Parallel Four takes you from oily garage floors to the frozen slopes of the Brecon Beacons in one unforgettable ride.

Follow Stephen and Johan as they resurrect vintage race bikes with the devotion of mad scientists, while Vinka and Marlin look on from the kitchen, tea in hand, wondering if they’ve lost the plot. Then march with them into SAS selection: the Long Drag, Camp Phase, and the notorious Tactical Questioning that strips body and soul to bare metal.

Told by Tim Heale with sharp humour and unflinching honesty, this episode celebrates friendship, endurance, and the obsession that drives soldiers and speed freaks alike. Expect roaring engines, aching legs, and a respect for anyone who’s ever faced pain, pride, and passion head-on.

Writing The Parallel Four has been a journey in itself—a walk through memories, dreams, and all the little moments that shape who we become. Some parts of this story are true. Some are truer than I’d care to admit. And some—well, let’s just say they’re inspired by what might’ve happened if life had taken a different turn.

The characters you’ll meet in these pages—Stephen, Johan, Vinka, Marlin, Tim, and Petra—are fictional, but they live and breathe with the spirit of real people I’ve known, loved, and lost. Their world is stitched together from scraps of real places, actual events, and a few wild yarns that got better with each retelling down the pub.

Poplar, Hitchin, and the snowy reaches of Sweden aren’t just backdrops—they’re characters in their own right. They’ve shaped this story as much as the people in it. And if you happen to recognise a place, a turn of phrase, or a certain kind of mischief from your own youth… well, consider that my nod to you.

This first book takes us from scraped knees to stolen kisses, from playground politics to life’s first real goodbyes. It’s about growing up, making mistakes, and finding the people who’ll stand by you no matter what—even if they sometimes drive you round the bend.

To those who remember the ‘50s and ‘60s—this one’s a memory jogger. To the younger lot—it’s a peek into a time when life moved slower, but feelings still ran just as fast.

And finally, to Stephen, Johan, Vinka, Marlin, Tim, and Petra—six hearts bound by the wonder of first love. Not the fleeting kind that fades with time, but the rare and lasting kind that deepens, steadies, and endures—a love that grows with them, becoming part of who they are, and who they will always be. And though this is only the beginning, the road ahead will test them in ways they cannot yet imagine—through training, through battle, and through the choices that will shape the rest of their lives.

Transcript

Chapter Twenty Six.

Off we trotted, expecting a clapped-out Bantam, a lawnmower engine, maybe a wheel with dreams of being reunited with a chassis.

But when the old boy—proper character, flat cap, smell of Swarf eaga about him—whipped back the dust sheet in his dim little shed, we nearly collapsed in synchronised reverence.

Two Manx Nortons.

I’m not kidding.

Not one—two.

One M30, a 3 50cc thoroughbred, lean and mean.

The other, an M40—500cc of pure, vintage growl.

They looked like they’d been rolled straight off a 1950s race track and parked up for a post-race cup of tea. Slightly dusty, sure. A few bits missing, fair enough. But nothing we couldn’t sort.

And then—then—we saw the crates.

Crates, plural.

Stacked in the corner like some oily Aladdin’s cave.

Fairings, tanks, gears, exhausts, badges, spanners that probably hadn’t turned since the Queen’s Coronation.

I looked at Johan.

He looked at me.

And in perfect unison, we muttered:

“We’ll take the lot.”

But wait—it gets better.

Just when we thought we’d peaked—stood there blinking at the Manx Nortons like kids outside a sweet shop—he goes full magician on us. Casual as you like, he walks over to another lump in the gloom, grabs the dusty old tarp, and pulls it back with all the drama of a man revealing the Holy Grail.

And there they were.

Two MV Agusta's.

Yeah, you heard me right. Not knock-offs. Not “Aguster” or “MV August” or any of that dodgy knockabout nonsense. The real deal.

One a MV Agusta 350 3C, the other a MV Agusta 500 4C, both jewels straight out of Italy’s golden age. Engines like mechanical symphonies, double overhead cams, gear-driven cams at that, and enough polished alloy buried under grime to blind you once the elbow grease hit it. The dust sheets had done their job — just about — leaving the bikes looking like sleeping lions, forgotten but never tamed. Peel back the covers and you could smell it: old oil, varnished petrol, leather gone stiff with years of waiting.

The 350 sat there lean and eager, rev-happy and twitchy as a terrier on a leash. The 500 had the longer stride — a proper Grand Prix beast — wide crankcase, four megaphone pipes sprouting like organ pipes at the back, promising a sound that could strip paint off a shed at fifty paces.

Every line screamed pedigree: tank scalloped just so, frame triangulated like an engineer’s daydream, clip-ons low enough to fold you in half. These weren’t just bikes; they were rolling sculptures — relics hidden under dust sheets, waiting for someone mad enough to wake them up again.

Johan actually let out a sound. Not a word—just a sort of strangled gasp, like someone had punched him in the nostalgia.

And the spares?

Mountains.

Tanks. Pipes. Clip-ons. Levers.

Proper old-school stuff with real weight to it.

And the manuals… mate, the manuals.

Original, oily-fingered, Italian-printed beauties, with page corners turned down and notes scrawled in biro by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

I could’ve cried.

And then, just to finish us off completely, the old fella turns and says—completely deadpan—

“I just want a grand each for ’em.”

I looked at Johan.

He looked at me.

No words.

Just wide eyes and the silent, telepathic agreement of two men on the verge of making a glorious, reckless decision.

You’ve never seen two blokes empty a joint bank account so fast in your life.

Four thousand pounds. Gone.

Faster than you could say “retirement hobby” or “we should probably tell the wives.”

We drove home like we’d just robbed a museum—and somehow been thanked for it.

With time on our hands, a shed full of tools, and track-day glory dancing in our heads like sugarplum fairies on four-stroke, Johan and I threw ourselves into restoring the bikes like a pair of men possessed.

Possessed by what, exactly, was up for debate—passion, madness, or sheer refusal to knit socks—but whatever it was, it had us spending entire afternoons covered in oil, grinning like lunatics.

We kicked things off with the 3 50 Manx Norton.

Why?

Because it was the smallest, the lightest, and—at least in theory—the least likely to explode in our faces.

Stripping it down to the bare frame felt less like a mechanical task and more like undressing royalty.

We were reverent.

Careful.

Whispering terms like “precision” and “original tolerances” like we actually knew what they meant.

Every bolt, every washer, was laid out on a pristine towel like surgical instruments.

We even tried not to get oil on the carpet.

Didn’t work, mind you—but we tried.

The frame itself had a couple of hairline cracks—nothing catastrophic, but enough to earn a spot of careful welding. That sparked a bit of debate: leave the original patina for that rugged “barn-find” look? Or go full rockstar?

In the end, we did what any sensible grown men would do when faced with a high-stakes decision:

We flipped a coin.

Tails: go stock.

Heads: go mad.

It came up heads.

Twice.

We didn’t cheat. Much.

So, rockstar it was.

We sent the frame off to get nickel-plated—not just for strength, mind you, but because it would last longer than our backs during a rugby match and gleam flashier than a Sergeant Major at Trooping the Colour.

When it came back, Johan just stared at it for a good minute like he was looking at the face of a goddess.

“Stephen,” he said softly, “this is very, very sexy.”

And I had to agree—though I drew the line at lighting candles.

Next up: the engine.

Now this—this—was where things got properly serious. No more polishing frames and admiring curves. This was mechanical surgery. Precision. Focus. Grease under every fingernail and a permanent smell of degreaser in the kitchen, which Vinka swore was going to cost me my eyebrows.

We stripped it down completely—every nut, bolt, spring, pin, and mysterious widget—carefully labelled, laid out, and catalogued like a pair of museum curators on caffeine.

Johan even made a little logbook.

Column headings, cross-referenced pages—the works.

Honestly, if archaeologists find it in a thousand years, they’ll think we were some kind of oily monks.

The big and small end bearings were replaced, fresh as daisies.

Piston rings? Swapped out, honed, gapped to perfection.

The clutch? Brand-new plates, installed with military precision and only two bloody knuckles.

The rest of the engine? Surprisingly sound.

Not a rattle, not a groan.

Almost like the parts had been holding themselves together out of sheer respect for what they were—a Manx Norton, no less. You don’t fall apart when you’re built for legends.

Then came The Great Ignition Debate.

We could’ve kept the original magneto setup, of course. Period-correct, all that.

But there’s something about the idea of bump-starting a race bike — sprinting alongside, praying it fires before your lungs give out — that loses its charm once you’ve hit middle age. Doing that in the paddock is heroic; doing it every weekend is orthopaedic.

So, we did what any rational pair of grown men would do in the modern age:

We found a British firm that made electronic ignition kits for classic bikes.

And we ordered four.

Because obviously, one per bike is good… but four? That’s preparation.

When they arrived, it was like Christmas morning—shiny bits, tiny screws, wires coiled like treasure.

Then came the wiring loom.

We built it ourselves, old-school style—no fancy kits, just lengths of cable, a roll of cloth tape, and the deeply flawed belief that we remembered enough from basic vehicle electrics to pull it off.

In the end, it only took:

One minor electric shock,

Three inventive swear words, two in Swedish.

And an argument about which wire was definitely not supposed to be live when Johan poked it with a screwdriver.

But we got there.

While the frame was off getting its chrome makeover, we thought—we’ll do the wheels too.

Because let’s be honest—no one wants shiny bones with rusty shoes.

So we stripped, scrubbed, polished, re-spoked, and trued them until they spun like a roulette wheel in Monaco.

Then came the fairing.

Now, she was a bit worse for wear.

A few battle scars, stress cracks, and what looked suspiciously like an old wasps’ nest tucked up behind the headlamp cut-out.

But with a bit of filler, some paint, a lot of sandpaper, and even more swearing, we breathed new life into her curves.

By the time it was all back together, standing proud in the sunlight, she looked… stunning.

A silver bullet from a bygone era, glinting with menace and nostalgia, just waiting to howl once more.

Of course, being a proper race bike, the Manx Norton didn’t believe in silly things like kick starters.

No no.

This was old-school.

It demanded respect.

It demanded… a bump start.

So we lined it up at the top of the lane, took a breath, and gave it the first shove.

First push.

It fired.

With a throaty growl that echoed off the hedges, set off two car alarms, and sent Mrs. Jenkins’ cat sprinting into exile under the Anderson shelter.

Glorious.

We took turns—down the road and back—each pass a little faster, a little louder, grinning like a pair of schoolboys who’d just found a fiver behind the bins at break time.

It was magic.

And with that high still buzzing in our bones, we couldn’t wait to get started on the MV 350 next.

So we rolled up our sleeves again, dove straight in, elbows-deep in Italian engineering, covered in oil, laughing like idiots, and loving every second of it.

Miss Horsefield taught us well.

She always said “you lot’ll never amount to anything, but at least you know your way round a spanner.”

Turns out, she might’ve been onto something.

It was a Tuesday night, and the kitchen smelt like cardamom, brake cleaner, and betrayal.

Marlin and I were perched at the table, tea in hand, staring out the window at the faint glow coming from the garage—again. It was like they’d moved in out there. Honestly, if it had heating and a kettle, we might have been signing divorce papers already.

I gave Marlin a look. “Do you think they’re in love with those bikes, or just afraid of us?”

She didn’t even blink. “Both. Definitely both.”

We sipped our tea like two war wives waiting for news from the front.

Only instead of gunfire, we had the occasional rev, a thud, and Stephen yelling, “Johan, I said the left spanner, not the bleeding caliper!”

It had started as a harmless little hobby.

Something to keep them busy between selection weekends, baby maintenance, and pretending they weren’t semi-retired military lunatics.

But now?

Now we were on week six of Operation Chrome Fever, and I was starting to feel like I was being cheated on… by a Manx Norton.

Marlin rolled her eyes and reached for another biscuit. “I mean, I get it—they’re beautiful machines. But honestly, if Johan stares at that nickel-plated frame any longer, I’m going to start leaving lipstick on the brake levers.”

I nearly choked on my tea.

“That’s brilliant. I’ll leave a note on the saddle: ‘She can polish her own tank next time.’”

We both laughed, but there was a touch of truth behind it.

They were obsessed. Totally and utterly smitten.

Still, I suppose there were worse things they could be doing with their time.

Like rugby tours.

Or buying more Volvos.

Marlin stood up, stretched, and peered out the window again. “Alright. Five more minutes. Then I’m dragging him out by his tork wrench.”

“Deal,” I said. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t scream ‘not the MV!’ when you do.”

As the weekends ticked by—each one booked solid with mud, maps, and muscle ache—the training steadily cranked up from “mildly savage” to “what fresh hell is this?”

And then, without ceremony, we hit Test Week.

Now, if you’re imagining something like Commando test week—four days of agony followed by a green beret and a pat on the back—forget it. This was the SAS version: same level of horror, but stripped of encouragement and wrapped in passive-aggressive silence.

You’d slog for hours, neck deep in pain, only to be met with a clipboard glance and a quiet,

“Mm. Carry on.”

The crown jewel in this parade of misery?

The Long Drag.

Forty-five miles over the Brecon Beacons, bergen's loaded with the kind of weight that makes your spine write its will.

Our kit felt like it had swallowed a Land Rover.

Every step was a negotiation between knees, willpower, and gravity.

Johan and I?

We didn’t speak much—nothing to say, really.

We just settled into that slow, brutal rhythm of two stubborn mountain goats, heads down, legs churning, lungs burning.

Every so often, we’d swap a glance.

No words—just that unspoken message:

“What the bloody hell were we thinking?”

We passed blokes collapsed at the side of the trail, DS crouched nearby, scribbling quietly.

No shouting.

Just ticking boxes.

Failed. Withdrawn. Gone.

But somehow—don’t ask me how—we both finished.

Upright.

Inside the time.

Still moving.

We didn’t celebrate.

Just dropped to the ground and let the pain creep in like a tide.

Then came the word:

Cleared.

The next phase?

Camp.

Sounds soft, doesn’t it?

Like marshmallows, fireside sing-songs, maybe a canoe.

Nope.

This was SAS Camp.

Less marshmallows, more suffering with structure.

Like a survival course taught by blokes who’ve forgotten how to blink.

Leading up to Camp, things took on a different flavour—less boot-up-the-backside, more psychological chess.

Gone were the days of the shouty PTI breathing steak pies and fire into your face.

This was the SAS, after all.

Nobody shouted.

Nobody barked.

No one told you to “drop and give me anything.”

It was all… eerily polite.

The instructors moved like ghosts in olive green—butlers with grenades, if you like.

Impeccably turned out, quiet, composed, and deeply terrifying.

Their entire attitude said.

“If you can’t motivate yourself, then kindly fail and bugger off. No hard feelings.”

They didn’t care who you were before.

Didn’t care about your rank, your regiment, or your last tour of somewhere sandy.

All that mattered was what you did today. Right now. Under pressure. Without complaint.

There were no pep talks.

No team huddles or motivational nonsense.

Just a steady, simmering expectation—an invisible pressure that wrapped around your ribcage and squeezed.

And strangely… it worked.

You didn’t want to impress them.

You didn’t want their praise.

You just… didn’t want to fail.

Didn’t want to be that bloke whose name quietly disappeared from the roster.

You pushed because it was you on the line—not for a badge or a nod, but because the idea of letting yourself down became the most unbearable thing of all.

That…

That was the real test.

Drill nights got a whole lot more interesting, too.

Gone were the tidy little lectures and civvie-friendly drills. Now, we were neck-deep in weapon systems most people only ever saw in war films or dodgy 1980s action flicks.

Ak's. G3's. M16's.

If it had fired somewhere between Vietnam and the Falklands, we had to know it like our own toothbrush.

Strip it.

Clean it.

Reassemble it.

In the dark.

Under pressure.

While being rained on by something the DS referred to—completely seriously—as a “Welsh breeze.”

Which, in reality, felt like horizontal sleet with a personal grudge.

Weekends?

Oh, they were no longer just “hard.”

They became a festival of tactics.

How to move silently over rough ground.

How to cross barbed wire without adding to your scar collection.

How to river-cross with your weapon held aloft like you were carrying the crown bloody jewels, trying not to drown or let your boots float away.

And always—always—more PT.

Hill sprints that made your lungs squeal.

Bergen carries that turned your shoulders into angry concrete.

Log races.

You haven’t truly hated life until you’ve played “pass the tree trunk” with nine other knackered men in the rain.

Every muscle in our bodies was protesting in unison.

But by this point, we were too far in to quit… and too sore to argue.

We just kept going.

Because that’s what everyone else was doing...

Because we hadn’t failed yet.

And because, deep down, the thought of going back to a normal life with dishwashers and roundabouts felt… worse.

By the time we finally marched into the infamous two-week Camp phase, our numbers had been well and truly culled.

From the original mob of a hundred hopefuls—blokes who’d swaggered in fresh-faced and full of bravado—we were down to about thirty-five.

And none of us looked fresh anymore.

We were grim-looking.

Eyes sunken, stubble patchy, limbs twitching at the sound of zips and Velcro.

Most of us had developed the thousand-yard stare, and a shared dependency on boiled rice, ibuprofen, and blind optimism.

The dropouts?

Oh, they vanished in waves.

Blisters the size of fried eggs.

Knees that gave up halfway through a march.

One lad who had an actual breakdown on a contour line.

And plenty who suddenly remembered they had “other commitments” the moment things got hard.

Weddings. Funerals. Golf. Sorry lads, can’t possibly storm any hills this weekend.

But we were still standing.

Backpacks heavier.

Legs thicker.

Senses sharper.

We didn’t talk much anymore.

Didn’t need to.

Just glances. Nods. The occasional grunt that said, Still here, mate. Still breathing.

Camp kicked off with plenty of time down the ranges.

First up. zeroing the trusty SLR's—which by now felt like a third limb, or a long-term partner who occasionally kicked you in the ribs.

Then came the Annual Personal Weapons Test—marksmanship under pressure.

Not just accuracy, but speed, positioning, changing mags like your life depended on it.

Because one day, it might.

After that, we moved onto pistols—the Browning Hi-Power to start.

Very James Bond, if Bond hadn’t slept for a week and smelt like foot powder.

And then, just for fun, we got stuck into foreign weapons.

Klashnekoffs...

Rusty HK G3's.

Clunky carbines from former colonies.

Grenades that looked like they came with their own tetanus.

Apparently, we had to be prepared for the possibility of operating somewhere where everyone else was armed with Cold War leftovers and bad intentions.

When we weren’t shooting, we were on patrols.

Endless patrols.

In and out of tree lines, across open ground, round imaginary villages full of imaginary threats.

We learned to build observation posts so well we could’ve moonlighted as tree-dwelling interior designers.

Cam netting, natural foliage, all tucked away so neatly the DS had to squint to spot us.

One even complimented us.

Well—he grunted, which in SAS terms is basically a standing ovation.

Honestly?

It felt a bit like Northern Ireland all over again—

Just colder.

And with a lot less tea.

Now, the last few days of Camp—that’s when the fun really, stopped.

All the discipline, all the conditioning, all the polite-but-terrifying instructions… suddenly gave way to something darker.

Something colder.

Purpose-built misery.

They ran us into the ground, day and night, with near-zero sleep and meals so small they made airline food look Michelin-starred.

We were running on fumes.

Not even adrenaline anymore—just some stubborn primal glitch that wouldn’t let us drop.

And that was exactly the point.

Because the grand finale wasn’t just about how far you could walk or how well you could hide in a bush.

It was about breaking you down.

So that when we were finally—inevitably—“captured,” we’d be nicely worn out for the next delightful phase:

Tactical Questioning.

Oh yes.

It was all part of the plan.

And captured we were—by a group of regular squaddies drafted in for the task, clearly given the briefing:

“Make them suffer, but don’t technically injure them.”

So they bundled us about like sacks of potatoes with attitude problems.

No names.

No explanations.

Just shoved, barked at, and blindfolded—then dumped in holding pens that smelled like sweat, damp canvas, and career regret.

But nothing—and I mean nothing—prepared us for the interrogators.

Because up until then, it had all been physical.

Tiring. Brutal. Sure.

But something you could push through with muscle memory and a bit of stubbornness.

This next part?

It was mental.

Personal.

Surgical.

Those folks?

Pros.

Slick.

Merciless.

Trained not just to ask questions—but to dig for the soft bits in your soul and poke them with a pointy stick.

Repeatedly.

The rules were dead simple:

Name.

Rank.

Number.

Date of birth.

And the golden phrase:

“I cannot answer that question, Sir or Ma’am", depending on who was dismantling your psyche that hour.

That was it.

Say anything else, and the game got worse.

The whole thing was like being trapped in an aggressive game of “Guess Who?”

Except instead of flipping tiles, they flipped you.

And instead of being told “No, I don’t wear glasses,” you got shoved into a stress position until your knees forgot they had a job.

At one point—I kid you not—I was dragged into a freezing room, naked, because obviously and left to stand in front of a woman who could’ve been in a Bond film…

If Bond films were written by Kafka.

She had a smile that could curdle milk, and eyes that said “I’ve seen men like you cry in six languages.”

And then she laughed.

Actually laughed—at my… well, my frostbitten dignity.

I very nearly cracked, right there.

Right there in the chill of hell, with my morale hanging lower than anything else in that room.

But I bit my tongue.

Bit my lip, nearly clean through.

I Stayed on script.

“I cannot answer that question, Ma’am.”

And that, my friend, was pure mental warfare.

Eventually, after what felt like a year in purgatory, a shadow moved through the doorway.

A DS walked in, no drama, no flourish.

He said calmly:

“The exercise is over. Do you understand?”

And I—running on fumes, drool, and shattered pride—croaked:

“I cannot answer that question, Sir.”

He paused...

Looked me up and down.

Then said, with just the faintest hint of mercy...

“Son… it’s endex.”

And right there, in that moment… I could’ve wept.

I didn’t, though.

Not properly.

Didn’t have the energy.

Didn’t have the dignity left.

But inside, something curled up, sighed, and said:

We made it.

Johan and I both agreed—while sitting in our kitchen in matching dressing gowns, looking like shell-shocked pensioners—that nothing, not even Royal Marine training, Commando tests, or childbirth, vicariously, of course, had come close to the sheer soul-wringing brutality of Camp.

The Tactical Questioning alone had drained every last drop of bravado from us.

Left us wrung out like flannels in a force ten.

When we finally staggered home that Sunday evening, looking like we’d just crawled out of a trench in a black-and-white war film, we could barely string a sentence together.

There was no debrief.

No celebration.

Just tea, toast, and the thousand-yard stare of men who had truly seen things.