Motorcycle mayhem

A little time ago I wrote of my love affair with this bike, the Triumph Twenty-one pictured  here. Tonight I will make your blood curdle with the most scary time I had astride it, or indeed astride any motorcycle.
   To set the scene, I would say that at the time I lived in Portsmouth and made occasional trips to Plymouth to visit my Dad for the weekend. I would leave Portsmouth on Friday evening after work and reckoned to be in Plymouth, some 180 miles away by late evening. This particular evening I had set out as usual and had got as far as Ivybridge, only 10 miles to go. The bike was well capable of such a trip, having plenty of poke and an excellent headlamp.
  It was by that time very dark, being early in the year.  I left Ivybridge and accelerated hard along the road towards Lee Mill, at that time one of the few stretches of dual carriageway. There were  no streetlights and no traffic on the road as I reached cruising speed of 65 or so.  Suddenly stark drama-- the headlamp suddenly went out, plunging the scene into total darkness! It was as though I was riding the bike with my eyes shut, not a good thing at 65 mph! I didn`t panic at first, sometimes a main beam filament burns out and I did the sensible thing in flipping the dip-switch. Unfortunately this did nothing and now I did panic in earnest. I hit both brakes as hard as I dared and searched my memory as to where the road was going the last time I had seen it. It seemed to me it was trending slightly to the right and more importantly it had a solid looking post-and-rail fence on the left with which I didn`t want to get involved. I therefore veered slightly right, still braking as hard as I could For a nameless interval somewhere between a split second and a century I rushed blindly through the pitch darkness, till suddenly the bike ran onto the grass central reservation, span and fell on its side. Still in darkness it slid to a stop and the engine stalled. Everything was still and stationery.
  I made a mental check and found I was unhurt but coudn`t move my right foot. This was because it was trapped under the Triumph... I pulled hard and my welly came off, freeing me from the machine. I mentally made a short prayer of thanks, pulled out my boot and put it on profiting by the protection to give the recumbent bike a severe kick. The headlamp immediately came back on! I found that the `off-side-headlamp` switch on the headlamp casing had become worn and would turn beyond the `headlamp` position to a further unauthorised `off` position. I could have fixed this as soon as the light went out if I had known but tinkering with the electrics is contra-indicated at 65 in total darkness...
  The bike was substantially undamaged thanks to the wet grass and I was able to restart it and continue my journey. I will admit I have never been so frightened in my life before or since!