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When You Want Something Badly Enough...
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As business owners I’m sure many of us are avid readers of ‘self-help’ material - essential to keep the enthusiasm and motivation topped up. No doubt you’ll have noticed many commonly recurring themes – goalsetting, positive thinking, visualising positive outcomes - including the powerful idea that once you set your sights on something definite, and take positive steps towards achieving it, the Universe will provide you – often unexpectedly and unpredictably – with the right circumstances or events to help you on your way.
I first stumbled across this ‘abundant universe’ concept by accident when I was 16. I’d saved up £150.00 to buy a 50cc ‘bike and had started looking at a few for sale locally. All 50cc machines registered after August 1977 were ‘restricted’ to 30 mph, so I was really looking for a pre-77 bike that I could coax up to a dizzy 45 – perhaps even 50mph. One Friday evening I was thumbing through some old brochures when I set eyes on what seemed to be an absolute dream-machine to a 16 year old: the Malaguti Monte. An Italian-made enduro-ped (like a motocross bike with lights) it could top 58mph AND looked fantastic - like a proper motorbike rather than a glorified moped. I simply HAD to have a Malaguti. What I didn’t realise was that my chances of finding one of these things – in any condition – was almost zero. They were imported in small numbers, never sold well (being comparatively expensive) and worse, they weren’t particularly well made. Most had either fallen apart or rotted away. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever having actually seen one other than the one pictured in the brochure ! But I was determined to find a Malaguti, so the following morning I phoned the UK importer’s number listed on the back of the 10-year old brochure. The address was in Ripley, Surrey and although the phone rang and rang, no one answered. I kept trying for ages but got no response. In the end I persuaded Dad to give me a lift to Ripley so we could check out the address. Although I knew Malagutis hadn’t been imported for years, I felt there might be some clues there – perhaps they still dealt in bikes, perhaps someone there might be able to point me in the right direction? After an hour’s drive, we arrived in Ripley to find that the address on the brochure was now a Suzuki Jeep dealership… I went inside and looked around. At the back of the showroom was the parts department where I spotted a pair of motorcycle forks hanging up behind the counter. Aha… this looked more promising. It turned out that although they’d stopped importing the bikes years before, they still had a massive stock of parts for them. What’s more, they were incredibly cheap – about a quarter of the price of Japanese bike spares. So if I DID manage to track down a bike, at least I knew where I could get parts for it. We chatted to the chap in the parts department for about 10 minutes and although he didn’t rate our chances of finding a Malaguti, he was impressed that we’d bothered to make the journey. Keen to help, he wrote out a long list of motorcycle dealers who had sold these machines back in the ‘70s. Oddly, the phone number I’d been dialling earlier was the right number so there was some mystery as to why he hadn’t heard the phone. But chances are he wouldn’t have taken the same trouble to help us if we’d had a phone conversation rather than meeting in person. Once back home, I started ringing round the dealers on this list. For some reason, I started at the bottom of the list and worked my way to the top. Every one told me the same story “A Malaguti – nah, you’ve got no chance mate. They were as rare as hens’ teeth even in their day. You’ll never find one of those…etc”. Finally I got to the last name on the list – Jack Lilley’s of Shepperton. Again I got the same story : “ A Malaguti… haven’t seen one of those for years” when suddenly the tone changed “Oh hold on a sec – you’ll never believe this. There’s a customer here in the shop who’s overheard our conversation and his son’s got a Malaguti for sale. Shall I put him on the phone?” So after a quick chat, Dad and I were on our way to Staines to check over this Malaguti… It was a little tired and needed a few new parts but of course I knew where I could get these cheaply. A deal was struck and the bike was delivered on Monday evening. The following Saturday found us back in Ripley to pick up the parts needed to get the bike back on the road. Total cost of bike and parts was exactly £150.00. So I learned an important lesson from this experience: despite the slim odds I was totally convinced I would definitely find a Malaguti and this conviction seemed to somehow trigger an element of synchronicity: the unanswered phone prompted our journey to Ripley which led to the list of dealers. The decision to phone through the list in reverse order. The fact that the customer selling the bike happened to be in that shop at the right time – and within earshot of the telephone. There a famous quote from Goethe which I’ll paraphrase slightly: ‘the moment you definitely commit yourself, providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help you that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, bringing all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance your way.’ ‘Sounds like nonsense’ you may well scoff, but strangely enough I think it actually works. (The bike turned out to be pretty crap by the way, but hey – that’s another story…) Hugh McClelland |
