This picture was taken on Friday September 14, 1984 at The Square in Polesworth. It shows the start of the much publicised scooter convoy that guided the Dream Factory from Tamworth down to Weston-super-Mare for their first headline appearance at a scooter rally.
Although you can't make us out, both Tim Goode and myself are in the centre of this photo and surrounded by a lot of fellow scooter riders from Tamworth, Polesworth,
Atherstone and Nuneaton.
The convoy started with Tim on his red Vespa 100 scooter and me on my red Servetta (Spanish Lambretta) 125 scooter leading the gaggle of machines out of the Square and we headed down into Tamworth town centre to meet some more scooters and then headed off past Drayton Manor to Brum.
At the Tyburn House pub we met up with members of the Brum Runners Scooter Club and another two different Midlands based scooter clubs who fanatically followed the band about and then we headed further south down the A38.
At Bromsgrove another load of scooters joined in the convoy.
It was quite incredible and very exciting and kind of summed up what was a snowballing following that we had. I remember that by the time we reached the West Country it was almost midnight and as we rode on we started to attract the unwelcome attention of the local lager louts who were driving around in cars dangerously close to us on our scooters, pumping the car horns at us and generally being a nuisance.
We were mentally preparing ourselves for a fight which wasn't nice!!
Further up the road these cars had stopped to block the road and we thought "uh uh! Here comes the punch up!" but in fact these local "youths" merely wanted to welcome us down to the West Country and were, rather kindly, dishing out some ultra-strong local scrumpy cider for us to swig out of their flaggons!!
All very surreal.
And the last 20 or so miles were crazy because we were all basically p*ssed up - not a good thing and something you'd never do in this day and age but it all added to the kind of legendary status of what was a fantastic way to get to a gig!!!
The rest of the band took the comfortable route and enjoyed a nice drive down in a mini bus!!!
Mark Mortimer 
