“On The Road” With Keith Mott

Maxine Hibbert runs for Motor Neurone Disease

Johnny Keywood, the Three Borders Federation President, first met Maxine Hibbert while picking up his pension at his local Nation Wide Building society in Walton. She works in the shop and told John in conversation over the counter, that she had run 15 half marathons and 3 full marathons in the last 20 months for Motor Neurone Disease. Her brother, Paul, was diagnosed three years ago, at the age of 38, and he can no longer feed himself, walk, and talk. He needs 24 hour care from his loving wife and three children. Maxine told John, that MND attacks the nerves that control movement and leaves people locked in a failing body. This disease kills a third of people within a year of diagnosis, half within two years and at present there is no treatment or cure.

Motor Neurone Disease is a rare condition that progressively damages parts of the nervous system. This leads to muscle weakness, often with visible wasting. Motor Neurone Disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), occurs when specialist nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord called motor neurones stop working properly. This is known as neurodegeneration. Motor Neurones control important muscle activity, such as: gripping, walking, speaking, swallowing and breathing As the condition progresses, people with motor neurone disease will find some or all of these activities increasingly difficult. Eventually, they may become impossible. It's not clear what causes motor neurones to stop working properly. In about 5% of cases there's a family history of Motor Neurone Disease and this is known as familial motor neurone disease. In most of these cases, faulty genes have been identified as making a major contribution to the development of the condition.

John Keywood is a member of the Spelthorne club and they held their annual Breeder / Buyer auction sale at their club HQ in early April, and raised £5,000 for their annual Breeder / Buyer race to be flown this summer. Well done to Terry Smart on another great sale this year! John donated six extra youngsters, which Terry auctioned after the main sale and the £500 raised was donated to Maxine’s Motor Neurone Disease campaign. Thanks to Johnny! Maxine ran for Motor Neurone Disease again in the ‘London Marathon’ on 23rd April. What a great lady!

Ryan Noble-Mott walks for Charity

We have a few family matters flying around at this time and our young grandson, Ryan (Ginger), is staying with us. His school is Heathside in Weybridge and on getting up early in the morning I take him on the school run to Esher train station and then pick him up on his return in the afternoon. He carries his school books in a big old bag, which was split down one side and it looked so heavy hanging around his neck. I got on to Amazon and bought him a new quality bag that he could carry on his back. He can run with the new bag on his back and now catches the earlier train home. He looks like Rambo running down that station platform! LOL! When sorting out his old bag there were a couple old books and a stack of old paper work for the rubbish bin. I found one of Ginger’s really old essays in the bag, entitled ‘My Heroes’, which I thought was brilliant and have included in this week’s article:

My grandparents are my heroes! My granddad’s name is Keith Mott and once he gave me a £250 iPhone 4S. He likes buying me things and used to be in a famous rock band called The Impalas. He is a very kind man. Once I felt sad, because he was about to go on a train which crashed, but was late and missed the train. My grandparents try to make me feel better in my troubling times. My grandmother is a ‘hero’ because she also likes to buy me things and she also makes sure I am always safe, by me calling her every day. When we have a special occasion we would usually go out for a meal to a nice restaurant. We go on holiday to the New Forest to this place called Hoburne Holiday Park every year, where they have arcades and I nearly won an iPad mini at the arcade once. They let me play on their laptop, but I have my own now. By: Ryan Noble-Mott   Class: 8CED.

How about that? Just brilliant! I had to laugh at the bit where he said he was sad that I missed the train that crashed. I hope he meant that he was sad that I nearly got on it! I was working in the West End of London at that time and caught the same train every morning at Surbiton Station. I was late on this particular morning and my usually train was involved in the famous crash at Clapham Junction, and ‘lady luck’ was on my side that day. Ginger is computer mad and now has his sights on going to Guildford University in the future. Heathside School has a sponsored nine miles walk, starting at Walton Bridge over the river Thames, every two years and Ginger ‘walked the walk’ on 24th March and raised a few quid for charity. Well done to Ryan! A brilliant lad and we all love him!

Phil Reis of Stoke-on-Trent

Phil Reis has led a ‘colourful’ life in his 60 years, being a percussionist in several top bands, including ‘Talk Talk’, in the 1980’s and now following his present occupation as an actor. With both of us being fellow pigeon racers and musicians, Phil and I have been good friends for many years and quite often have a ‘yarn’ about pigeons and music on the phone. Phil and his family lived in Morden (London) and he was very successful at racing his pigeon in the Three Border Federation for many years. In recent years he has moved north to Stoke-on-Trent and is enjoying his pigeon racing up there in his rural new home. He is racing his birds on the ‘roundabout’ system to his smart new 60ft loft, but tells me the Sparrow hawks are a problem in the area. Phil has recently spent some time in the recording studio and turned out a smashing little song called ‘Magic Eyes’, which he sent me a copy of in the post. He sings on it, so it must have been a really good recording studio! LOL! Only joking mate, it is great! There were three versions of the song on the disc and I liked the ‘Radio’ one best. To obtain a copy contact Phil on email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

He has written lots of articles in the pigeon fancy press over his years in the sport. A few years ago he spoke to Mike Shepherd from the Racing Pigeon ‘Pictorial’ magazine about which birds were doing the sprinting, and his help brought him right up to date almost overnight. After numerous phone calls, Mike asked Phil to make a note of anything he felt was worth publishing and so started his new interest as a pigeon ‘scribe’. Phil enjoys good success racing his birds and one of his last season’s racing in London saw him win some premier positions including: 10th open L&SECC Alencon and finished in great style by recording 1st club, 4th Three Borders Federation, 4th SMT Combine Yelverton, in the last race of the season. Phil’s Yelverton winner was his good blue chequer cock, ‘Arena’, so named as his last two numbers are ‘02’ and when I handled him the day after the race I noticed he was a ‘darkness’ youngster, just coming up on his second flight. His sire is a blue Staf Van Reet bred by Paul Arnold of North Cheam, when mated to a Van Meldrt stock hen and Phil tells me he had every race in the Three Borders Federation young bird programme, only missing the first race from Blandford. This game little cock has been paired up all season and was separated from his hen a week before the Yelverton race, only seeing his mate for five minutes before going to the marking station.

Phil Reis was born in Stockport Cheshire, and his first loft was made from old front doors rescued from the November bonfire piles the other kids had kindly stacked up near to his back yard. He still doesn’t think they were aware that it was him who nicked them. When I recently spoke to Phil and he said, ‘so, sorry lads my need was much greater than yours and the legacy has also lasted much longer than the fireworks that accompanied those roaring flames. All I had to do was hump a few doors over a couple of gardens and cover them up until the November arsonist had other things on their minds. I think a couple of those theft victims even helped me to build the box.  I say box because that first loft was the same size and shape as an old red Telephone box. Remember those?’ His first club was Cheadle Flying Club and he flew gift birds form the top flyers in that club, including birds from David Brown and Kirkpatrick pigeons from Fred Bale. In 1976 Phil took his first average trophy, winning the young bird season by six minutes with a hen from ‘Silver Queen’ scoring a fourth from the last race, which was Weymouth 200 miles. Phil moved out of the family home and got married. With the new house came new loft built by professionals and next came a trip to Howard Barnie’s for a kit of his KO-Nipius birds. It was all starting to fit into place, and then he sold up and moved 200 miles south. He didn’t know it then but there would be no pigeons for 16 years and the call of Rock and Roll took him all over the world and into some very sticky situations. Phil’s eldest son was looking through some old photo’s one afternoon and asked him why he didn’t race pigeons again, now he had left the flat in Wimbledon Park and he had stopped touring. Ten days later they had built a loft and joined the Hackbridge Club, as Reis and Son.

Phil bought a pair of Staf Van Reets bred by the late Joe Grant, who was one of the best fancier in his area and always bought the best he could. He bought these and halved the odds by joining the Morden club thus racing in two different Federations. First race back and Phil recorded 1st and 6th in the Morden club 2nd 3rd 5th in the Hackbridge. Phil says all the fresh enthusiasm is what won those prizes, training every day and nothing left to chance. He maintains young bird racing has always been about educating the babies and hoping for the best, still is. He finished the early seasons high in the prize lists, achieving second in the averages twice and was given the title of ‘bridesmaid’ after finishing behind Mo Butt and then Bill Johnson on consecutive seasons. He has since flown in another two clubs; Wimbledon DHS where he topped the Three Borders Federation from Taunton, and the South Downs Premier Sprint Club, winning races in both organizations. There you have it, the Rock n’ Rolling pigeon scribe that is Phil Reis! I know another guy who fits the same description!

Well that’s our article for this week! I can be contacted with any pigeon ‘banter’ on telephone number: 01372 463480 or email me on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

TEXT & PHOTO BY KEITH MOTT

(www.keithmott.com)