It was the clothes, the music, the coffee houses, the Wimpy bars, the dance halls, the rockers, the beaches and piers and, of course, the scooters.

Being a mod in the 1960s was a way of life, a stylish identity for a group of teenagers emerging from the austerity of the ‘50s into a vibrant new era.

“You just felt part of a clan, and the scooters were a big part of it,” says David Chipping, the Vespa GS160 he’s owned since 1968 outside on the drive.

Mods and rockers era one of the best times of David’s life

“Goodness, it was one of the best times of my life looking back. We were very lucky in the ‘60s – the music, the buzz, everything about it was good.”

In the few days between arranging our interview and sitting down together in his Orpington home, David says that memories that are usually buried have come flooding back.

There’s breaking his jaw coming off his first scooter, a Lambretta TV175; getting punched by a rocker at Brighton; ‘borrowing’ a scooter and getting nicked; crashing through a Wimpy bar window in a brawl; and sleeping on the beach.

Born in south London in 1949, by his early teens David had been seduced by the sharp clothes and Italian scooters that defined the mod aesthetic.

Taken by the mod aesthetic

“On a Saturday night we’d go dancing at a place called Sydney Francis, or at the Locarno in Streatham,” he says. “I’d be wearing Levi jeans, desert boots, a grey crew jumper, a suede jacket with a crew-neck zip-up front, or a tailor made suit that cost £25 from Arthur Fox in Streatham, who all the Mods went to.

“I still like clothes now, and I still like the sort of clothes you wore back then.”

One night while at a friend’s house in Balham, a 13-year-old David came across a scooter…

“We didn’t steal it – or at least in my mind we didn’t steal it,” he smiles. “We rode it around for a night, and we were even thinking of going to Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey on it at the weekend.

“Anyway, we parked it round my mate’s house and the next day his sister, who was older than us, said ‘go on, take me on the back’. I said ‘come on then’.

“It was raining, and as we went down this road we came to a crossroads and there were two policemen on the right hand side.

“Of course, I couldn’t really ride a scooter properly back then, so I put the brakes on, and of course it skidded, and we fell off near enough at the feet of these policemen.

Three-year ban and the cane

“They looked down and they said ‘your scooter?’ I said ‘no’. ‘You’re not insured?’ ‘No’. I was given a three-year ban, but as I was 13 by the time I was 16 I was OK to ride.

“The worst punishment I got was that the school got to know about it and, because I went to a grammar school, I got the cane.”

At 14, David bought the Lambretta TV175 and, after stripping it down with a friend and respraying it, rode it for the first time on his 16th birthday.

It was 1965, The Who, The Kinks and the Small Faces were firmly established in the charts and clashes between mods and rockers at Brighton the year before had moved Home Secretary Henry Brooke to push for stiffer penalties.

David fondly recalls his own pilgrimages to the south coast, even if he did end up with a shiner for his troubles.

Iron-on tape helped you feel the part

“Going down the coast and sleeping out on the beach was a big thing,” he says. “We used to buy a plain white t-shirt from Woolworths, and you could get iron-on tape. We’d iron on ‘Mods’ or ‘RSG’ for Ready Steady Go and you’d feel the part, walking down Brighton seafront. You’d feel you’re one of the lads.

“But I did end up with a nasty black eye down there, being lairy. I think it was where the station was – I must have been going downhill and there were these rockers coming uphill.

“This rocker gave me a right hander, and I can remember my mates pulling me into a shoe shop. I’m saying ‘I’ve got to go home, I feel terrible’. I remember them saying ‘there’s nothing there’ and then I looked at my eye in the mirror and it was getting bigger as I was looking at it.”

Scooters were everywhere in south London, gathered outside coffee and Wimpy bars, cruising around Battersea Park or heading down to Box Hill in Surrey.

“You’d often see 20 scooters going down the road, it was nothing,” says David. “It was the greatest thing. We had the parkas – mine had horse brasses down the arm – I had a long leather coat, green I think, and also a big fur coat, which was a nutty thing. You didn’t have to wear a crash helmet back then so everyone wore a silly pork pie trilby hat.

Scuffle outside the Wimpy bar

“We’d go dancing at the weekend, but in the week it was the coffee bars – I don’t know how they kept going because you’d sit nursing a coffee all night long.

“There wasn’t a drinking culture – obviously there were drugs back then, like purple hearts, speed, but it wasn’t everyone and it wasn’t alcohol unless you went dancing.

“It was fantastic, it was life, a good time, an enjoyable time. I feel sorry for the kids nowadays really that they don’t have that.”

Things did occasionally get out of hand though, David recalling a scuffle outside a Wimpy bar in West Norwood involving one of those ‘silly hats’ and a plate glass window.

“I had taken the mick out of his hat I think, we’d ended up outside having a rough and tumble and we actually went through the Wimpy window,” he smiles. “My mum and dad used to go to bingo at the Regal just across from where the Wimpy bar was, and I can remember thinking ‘don’t come out yet’.

“They didn’t, thank goodness, but the guy at the Wimpy bar knew us – we were always down there – and I had to go with my mum to see him and pay for the window.”

Demise of the Lambretta

One trip to Box Hill, where the mods and the rockers would use separate coffee houses, resulted in the demise of the Lambretta.

“I was supposed to take my GCEs on the Monday and we’d gone to Box Hill on the Sunday,” remembers David. “On the way back from Box Hill, either my sunglasses or the hat I was wearing came off, I turned round in the road and my friend behind me hit me.

“I ended up with a broken jaw that had to be all wired up, and another friend of mine who was on the back of me ended up in a bush. He had a concussion. That was the end of the TV175 – it was in a bit of a state to say the least.”

For a while, David borrowed scooters here and there before moving into cars, initially Minis before buying a Ford Corsair.

When that was stolen in 1968, David needed transport for work as a self-employed painter and decorator, so bought his brother-in-law’s 1964 Vespa GS160 – maybe not the obvious work vehicle for a tradesman.

Vespa helped David earn a lot of money

“That scooter, you would not believe the work it’s done, and how much it’s earned me one way or another,” he says. “I used to carry gallons of paint on it, from Croydon into the City. I then did an apprenticeship as a lift installer and all the work was in central London.

“I worked for Marryat and Scott, and if you carried some of the equipment that you needed – lifting tools, brackets, parts or whatever – you would get paid for carriage, and I used to carry all this stuff on that scooter, it was unbelievable the stuff I had on it.

“I had a rack on the back but I also had stuff going across the floor. It sounds crazy now but you got away with it in those days. I used to earn quite a bit of money from it.”

One job involved installing the lifts at the Fortnum & Mason department store, often working in the evenings when the store was closed.

“I used to park the scooter in a yard off Duke of York Street, and there was a club there called the Directors Lodge,” says David. “The topless girls would stand outside, so I would go and get my scooter at 9pm and it used to take ages to start the scooter for some reason…

“So the Vespa saw quite a bit of action one way or the other.”

David met his wife Pat in the same year he bought the GS, the couple marrying in 1969 and moving into a terraced house on Hamilton Road, West Norwood.

“My mum used to come round and I remember taking her back home on the scooter,” he says. “All I had was a plastic building site helmet for her to wear. I can always remember thinking she was very good on the back. Sometimes people don’t like leaning, they try to stay upright, but my mother was very good on the back of a bike.”

The Vespa was in regular use for about five years, but David never thought about selling it, even if it was only used a handful of times a year.

Vespa is a “pretty bike”

“I’ve been offered money for it quite often, but it’s too much fun and I like looking at it, strangely enough, it’s a pretty bike,” he says. “I also quite like doing things up, making them look nice, though I could do a bit more to that now.

“These days, I wouldn’t go down to the coast on it, just fun rides of about 25 miles or so in the sunshine.

“I love getting it out, they’re easy to ride and people smile at them, the same as with old cars.”

Back in the ‘90s, the Vespa gained another fan – David’s parka-wearing son Jamie, a frequent visitor to Carnaby Street when scooters and retro clothing were once again back in fashion thanks to the likes of Paul Weller, Blur and Oasis.

“He said to me one day  ‘dad, can I have a go?’” says David. “I said ‘of course you can, let the clutch out slowly…’ and he ended up in a bush on my drive.

“He’s 43 now and he’s never got round to doing his test, but he does have a bike. He loves it, he gets a lot of buzz out of it, and I think he’ll probably have mine in the future.”

On a bright, crisp Kent morning, David sits astride the scooter he first rode more than five decades ago, and reflects on what it means.

“It was my youth, my growing up, being a mod,” he says. “In my mind, I’m still young, still the same, even if I’ve probably not got the same energy.”

The years may march by, but for David the Vespa is a permanent reminder of the time of his life.