Just as an experiment — I’ve got plenty of actual writing projects to be getting on with — I decided to experiment with coming up with another one.  The criteria?  That it had to combine a person or people I’ve seen with a story in the news.

The people part of it came easily, when I came across a bunch of bikers congregating at a drive-in McDonalds.  They were all in their fifties, and seemed to be an interesting hybrid: they were older bikers with expensive machines, yes, but they seemed more serious than the weekend road warriors I’ve come across who normally fit that category.  That impression came from their clothes: bulky leathers, some of them fringed in the manner of buckskin jackets, rather than Belstaffs.  They wore a variety of badges indicating solidarity with other fixtures of the bike scene, whether rallies, festivals, or particular cafes.  And they all seemed to be sporting t-shirts declaring that they were Lone Riders.

As a group, the bikers fascinated me.  Where were they headed, and what were their individual stories?  Unlike many middle-aged premium bike owners, this bunch still had a hairy demeanour: friendly enough, but with an air of having ridden as a pack for some decades.  Which in turn got me thinking about the distinctions between people who keep up a youthful pursuit, and those who abandon it.  In this specific case I was reminded of an anecdote from a friend who did some VJing at a Hells Angel clubhouse.  There were various photos up of members from across the years, but some photos had a figure blanked out.  Enquiring as politely as he could why this might be the case, he was informed regarding the absent figure, ‘He didn’t want to be the best any more’.

So, it all starts to come together: a group who consider themselves elite, still gathering thirty years after they started to ride together.  That sense of being apart from others is implicit in the name Lone Riders, as well as containing an obvious paradox: if they are lone, how come there are so many of them, and that they seek out each other for company?  That dynamic provides rich material for developing the individual characters within the group, especially with the other experiences of hanging out with bikers I’ve had over the years, from the guy in Coventry who cooked his breakfast in a hubcap to Soldier Blue, an ex-military biker group I encountered at a pagan festival, who maintained the hierarchy in civilian life that had given them identity in the army.

All I needed now was the news item to involve the bikers in, and the one that seemed to fit was this story in The Observer about a man given £46 after spending 27 years in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed.  Turn the imprisoned man into an associate of the bikers, an idiot savant about bikes, and you’ve got a reason for them to be rallying on his behalf.  They can be acting to get him out of prison, and their success in doing so is followed by the failure of the system to do anything realistic with him.

A bit more thought, and the story takes further shape to fit in with existing ingredients.  If the guy has been in prison for all this time, and now needs the support of the bikers, it can become a tale about the past coming back to haunt you.  All this time they’ve been campaigning for his release, and now they’ve achieved it…what?  Is this what’s held them together all this time?  Getting together every weekend is one thing, helping someone with limited faculties adapt to a new life after being institutionalised for decades is another, and could provoke tensions within the group.

All of which adds up to a feasible story: the success of a campaign to release a man wrongfully arrested leads to the collapse of the group who did the campaigning, as the reality of his condition creates conflict within the group supporting him.  Sounds like a tv drama to me, and one I’d be inclined to watch…and all inspired by the overlap of some people I’d seen and a newspaper headline.