Beanz, please excuse up.yours, as mentioned above he is pretty much a social hand grenade, atleadt i have the decency to whack off and not admit it...
im sure i was going somewhere with this... ah yes, i had a similar problem on the XJ when i started riding it after a year of it sitting in a garden unused, it was difficult to find neutral and i often found myself going too far down with the lever and hitting 1st or staying in second resulting in a poor start when i was racing all the rudeb0is off the lights in their corsas, turned out the clutch was dragging (not disengaging enough), there should be a small nut on the clutch cable (im guessing... left hand side of the engine?) which allows you to adjust how far out the clutch is pulled when the lever is engaged, in effect you want to make the cable slightly "shorter" (wind the nut in 1/2 a turn a time towards the casing until the symptoms you describe are resolved) if that doesnt work check back here, or drop in to RAF Benson if your local and either myself or one of the other MCC members will take a look at it for you.