David McKirdy: poet, mechanic, bike nut, car restorer, but Hongkonger above all

ALL ABOARD I was born in Greenock, Scotland, a shipbuilding town at the mouth of the River Clyde well known, along with Dumbarton on the opposite side of the river, for building the bigger ships for the British empire. Many of the expatriate staff in both Taikoo Dockyard and Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock (where my father worked) were recruited from these two towns. My father was engaged at Kowloon Docks, in Hung Hom, and, after his probationary period was up, the family was sent for. We boarded P&O ship the Carthage and sailed out to Hong Kong in 1960. I was four years old at the time, but I can remember aspects of the journey like it was yesterday. We sailed through the Suez Canal and Egypt made a strong impression, with the Gully Gully man doing magic tricks for a few coins. I can also remember India and Singapore, where we visited the Tiger Balm Gardens. Scotland was a rather bleak, cold and austere place in 1960 but conditions on board and in the Hong Kong I arrived in were so much more comfortable and wondrous for a little boy.

KOWLOON PLAYGROUND In the dockyard quarters, we were accommodated in a massive, three-storey terraced house in a compound housing around 50 families. We had three local amahs: the main amah, Ah Foon, was a formidable woman and punished any misdemeanour with a whack with a feather duster or a wooden clog; the washing amah, Ah May, stayed with the family until my father retired in 1979 and was like a second mother to me; and a young woman new to the job called a “makee learn”. We had very good amenities … and lots of wooded areas where we could build tree houses and play hide and seek with all of the other kids who lived there. We had access to Tai Wai beach, which was just outside the lower gate of the compound, and here we would play with the boys from the squatter village on Dyer Avenue – they were our nearest neighbours and we were forbidden from fraternising with them, supposedly because they were refugees suffering from TB, cholera and other communicable diseases. A friend and I once found the body of a young man washed up on Tai Wai beach. We all attended Kowloon Junior School, in Perth Street, Ho Man Tin and then King George V School. Although we were privileged gwai jais, we lived bang in the middle of a working class Chinese neighbourhood and would roam the streets observing life, including the slaughtering of animals for the dinner table, street scribes reading and writing letters for the mostly illiterate working class folk, apothecaries, snake shops, stationery shops that also sold sports equipment, kites and – most important of all – fireworks. The local people always loved children and were very indulgent with us poking our noses into nooks and crannies, temples and other places we had no business being. We only got chased away when curiosity got the better of us and on a dare we entered the Hung Hom funeral parlour for a look around. We rode our bicycles everywhere and I recall going out to Clear Water Bay when the approaches around what is now Diamond Hill and Choi Hung MTR stations were farm land. We also visited the Kowloon Walled City unaccompanied – after 1968 it was the one place where you could still buy the by-then banned fireworks.

I left school after my O-levels, to work in a motorcycle garage. Thereafter I tried my hand as a shipping clerk, maintenance engineer in a toy factory in Tsuen Wan and a junior engineer in a building company that supplied concrete additive to the High Island Water project. It was very hard for a young foreigner to get a job in Hong Kong; there was a notion that a local guy needed the job more than you and that you wouldn’t be able to communicate and bond with your local colleagues and would probably leave after a fairly short period of time. The only sure-fire option for a British kid like me with limited academic ability was to join the police. My mother worked in Special Branch as a confidential assistant and there was a bit of pressure on me to take this route, until I wisely left for London at the age of 20 to attempt to become the world motocross champion! 

I first learned to ride a bike at 12.There was a youth programme run by a guy called Jim Atkinson, who lived at the YMCA. He was supported by the World Council of Churches to set up and run a trade school for local boys, to teach them about vehicle maintenance and repair, but on weekends he organised for expatriate kids to be involved in canoeing, learning to drive cars and motorcycles and go-karting on Sek Kong runway. Both of my elder siblings had participated in this programme so, when I was 10, I enrolled in the car driving course, which took place on some waste land where Pik Uk Prison now stands, mainly with ex-army Land Rovers and Volkswagen vans. At 12, I was old enough to do the motorcycle course, mainly on Honda 90s. I was hooked and thereafter rode a bike any time I got the chance.

My father bought me a dirt bike for my 16th birthday and, when I was old enough to join races at the Motorsports Club, I did so. I was sponsored by the Honda importer one year, the Czechoslovakian trade representative for one year on a CZ – a Czech machine – and, finally, the Yamaha importer. I was Hong Kong champion three times before I left for the UK and two more times after I returned, in 1982. I retired in 1986 after representing Hong Kong in the MX des Nations, in Maggiora, Italy.