A taster from my forthcoming memoir: 

GRAMMAR SNOBS

The last days of Torquay Boys' Grammar School.

Thus we were styled by those afforded the jollity of going with established friends on to co-education at Secondary Modern or Comprehensive level.

If they only knew how unattractive was the proposition of walking alone at the age of ten into a completely alien institution with teachers out of Dickens and six hundred strangers, most of whom already knew each other from feeder schools at Chelston, Shiphay, Cuthbert Mayne, Ellacombe, Upton and beyond.

Many of these had done classics and geometry and equations and all sorts of things that hadn’t reached Paignton. A number had even been taught to record their thoughts in neat italics.

Some of us, on the other hand, were still wearing oversized shorts with our blazers, ties and caps. Our Mackintoshes made us look like refugees and our Bri-Nylon shirts stung our underarms.

Acton, Aggett, Brown, Cavaliere, Ellis, Grainger, Hirst, Houghton, Kay, Klemm, Madge, Mortimore, Oram, Perin, Perkins, Pike, Poblocki, Randle, Savva-White, Thomas, Waring, Whitehouse, Wilson, Worden, Wyman, Youll - we answered to our names when called by form master, ‘Chick’ Johnson, and even moved desk to sit in alphabetical order to be more easily told apart by the embodiment of the lesson of history, Gilbert Head-Rapson.

Mr Johnson taught us French by the phonetic method, a gentle procedure that none the less resulted in distressing and sometimes alarming cries, groans and grunts. Mr Head-Rapson favoured the methods of the Inquisition and instilled sufficient terror to keep utterances of any kind to a minimum.

The ritual initiation at Torquay grammar was a ducking in the school lavatories. Thanks to a kindly fifth former in a striped blazer, my own baptism was largely theoretical, just sufficient to count as a ‘done’.

Far more onerous was trial by ablution which required the boys to run naked through the ice cold showers attached to the Tech College gymnasium. Most of us had neither run, nor even been, naked in our lives, even in the presence of family members, and this grotesque procession would do little to foster body confidence, leaving one only with a deep distrust of the instigators and supervisors of such torture.

In that gym, in which we would later perform musically, we learned to climb ropes and bars, the meanings of sissy and namby-pamby and how to wreck yourself with a wooden horse. I had myself become quite proficient in the diagonal half-roll  by the time I achieved certainty that a future in gymnastics was not for me.

Running about in thick fog at Torre Valley or Shiphay added the rougher field sports to the scratch list and being struck by a cricket ball while the balance of my mind was with the netballers on the next pitch ended my fielding career when umpire Taffy Cannings diagnosed that I was definitely not not-out but in fact unconscious.

Forged parental letters did the rest and I and a few chums were soon indulging in altogether more cerebral sporting activities on Wednesday afternoons such as going down the Colony to see ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’ for the umpteenth time. ‘Ooh, Jamie!’

Adrienne Posta as Runny Linda.

Still, in the end and against the odds, my classmates in Form 1B would become Keith, Allan, Phil, Denzil, Bob, Ian G, Reg, John, Max, Carl, Henry, Nicky, Bob, Andy, Tony, Howard, Mike, Constantino, Andy T, Tony W, Ian W, Rob W, Paul and Bob Y. I would make many other good friends before I moved on and even settled down to an uneasy truce with the place and its masters. 

A taster from my forthcoming memoir: 

GOLDEN PLAYGROUND: Summers of Love on the English Riviera.

RE: CYCLING

New bicycles were rare items when we were growing up. Bobby Truscott had a Triang tricycle, which he sometimes let me use, though it was limited round our way with all the steps and the rough places we played.

I had inherited a green scooter from someone. I went all over the place on it, including up to the top shops, but was often covered in bruises and scabs from spectacular crashes. These were the result of the two locating sleeves that should have kept the front wheel at the mid point of its axle being absent. As long as the wheel remained in the free area of the axle I could hurtle along with abandon. If it reached either end, it would stop dead and throw me over the top into a sorry heap.

My first bicycle was like the roadsweeper’s broom. He kept the same trusty item for twenty-five years, though he’d had to replace the head or the handle from time to time.

This bike was all replacements and still old. It weighed a ton, had the obligatory male-only cross bar, its brakes operated by pulling against the wheel, there being no calliper mechanism, and there were likewise no gears. The maker’s name was Hercules.

Learning to ride it seemed a hopeless enterprise with people such as my mum and dad and Keith Herbert taking turns to push me up the road on it, and then one of them strategically letting go before I realised I was doing it myself. You didn’t want to fall off that bike. As it was, coming to rest involved standing on tip-toes to avoid wrecking yourself on the adult-height crossbar.

Suddenly one summer, Rick’s mum turned up on a more modern Raleigh lady’s bike with state-of-the-art Sturmey-Archer three speed gears. She never rode it again and it remained round by the dustbins at the side of the house for some time before we purloined it. The chain fell off and the brakes were rubbish, but that made it all the more fun to ride off on into the unknown.

One or the other of us would get on it at the top of somewhere, cry ‘Banzai!’ and see what befell us - usually disaster and bruises for the rider, occasionally similar for anyone who didn’t get out of the way. Our favourite location for this was the public bonfire field which fell away sharply from Hoyles road and really provided a good start for what was to come.

By the time I went to Torquay Grammar, I had a more modern bike. It was great to go to school on because there were few difficult hills between Foxhole and Torre. Coming back, on the other hand, ended up with Maidenway, Blatchcombe or Marldon - all serious climbs.

Sometimes I would follow the Old Paignton Road and make my way to the top of Preston Down. It, too, involved a fair amount of mountaineering, but did at least leave you with a run down from Marldon to Foxhole.

More and more, though, I left the bike at School and walked home. I had bus passes to get me there in the morning, but was often too late to use the timed pass in the evenings having tarried too long in Torquay and, anyway, I enjoyed taking different routes home, including via Cockington, Occombe Valley or Barcombe Heights.

The home time 30 from Castle Circus was best avoided anyway because the lads from the technical school at Plainmoor had already claimed the back seat and were primed to throw satchels and other missiles at the back of your head.

Rick’s and my greatest cycling expedition occurred when my lot were going in the car to Fingle’s Bridge on Dartmoor.

We decided we would cycle and meet them there.

It was unseasonably hot and we made our first stop near the clay pits on the Chudleigh road to drain our water-bottles  before heading off up the Teign Valley in the direction of the moors proper.

Mid morning found us struggling up a very long hill, sweating and dehydrating rapidly. There was nothing else for it; we approached a farmhouse down a side lane and begged for liquid. The response to two young teenagers who’d taken on more than they realised was gently patronising, but bloody welcome all the same.

Suitably rehydrated we completed our assault on the hill from hell and found it easier going.

Completely shattered, we arrived at Fingle’s Bridge around mid-afternoon. The family had given up on us and gone home, of course. There was no way of discovering why we weren’t there, but the most likely assumption was that we had thought better of it hours ago.

We had enough money to buy sandwiches or pasties and a Coke from the kiosk, so we collected them and slumped on a nice soft area of springy moorland turf.

As we munched and swigged in welcome silence I became aware of another turf-seated individual staring at me with a less than pleasant expression.

‘Seen enough?’ says he.

‘More than enough,’ I told him at once.

A dim synapse flared somewhere in his brain cell. ‘Just bloody watch it,’ he cautioned.

‘I am watching it, and I’m not enthusiastic about what I see.’

Rick turned to make a dismissive face at him and, fortunately, he stumped off.

‘What an ape!’ we agreed and turned to considering our options. Essentially, they amounted to head for home or die where we were. So off we set again into the failing afternoon.

It was cold now and we had no appropriate clothing. We looked like we were having a gentle summer outing, but we were beginning to realise the seriousness of the situation and the urgency of getting back to civilisation where we could at least make a phone call.

Then the fog descended; the Dartmoor fog that arrives in moments and blots out everything, including your sense of direction. We leant the bikes against a wall and climbed a small tor to see if we could get our bearings.

From the top we could see less than we could from ground level. Climbing down was like descending into an enormous white lake.

We continued in the direction we had been going in and hoped we were right. Stories of escaped prisoners from Princetown wandering for hours to find they’ve gone in a circle and arrived back at their starting point exist in the essence of Dartmoor. Everyone knows them and, when you find yourself in one of those fogs, they are not hard to believe.

After another long stretch of near blind progress, we came out below the worst of the fog and recognised the hill down from Haytor toward the vale.

Of course, as soon as the fog cleared, motorists reappeared from wherever they had been holed up. 

We hadn’t even given a thought to lighting, so every time we heard a car coming behind us, we had to jump off the bikes and drag them into the hedge.

At last we were off the moor and able to find a phone-box. Rick reversed the charges to his father and hope was at hand.

We continued dodging the traffic until Stover, where we entered the gatehouse of Sanford Orleigh and stowed the bikes in the storehouse there.

We were quivering and verging on gibbering idiocy when John arrived.

A taster from my forthcoming memoir: 

GOLDEN PLAYGROUND: Summers of Love on the English Riviera.

1968 Maynard Ferguson Big Band

When we heard that legendary Canadian trumpeter Maynard Ferguson was in the country - he’d come to live at Oakley Green, near Windsor - and that his big band, which was featured on LWT’s Simon Dee Show, was scheduled to play Torquay, no power on Earth was going to prevent Rick or me from being there.

The gig at the Pavilion was life enhancing. To see so many great players in one place, and to hear them direct and unrecorded with Maynard’s extraordinary trumpet soaring above them in the stratosphere was proof-positive there was something out there beyond the mundane and the material.

Targeted by all those wind instruments, we really were ‘blown away’, and we came out after the encores in a mood to hold the moment.

While Maynard and the star players signed autographs at the stage door, others of the entourage were loading music stands, scores and instruments into a surprisingly disreputable old van outside the theatre.

‘What happens next,’ one of them inquired.

‘There’s an after party and some grub at a club in Paignton.’

Rick and I wasted no time and set off at our fastest walking pace the two-and-a-half miles for Station Square, arriving just as the old van began to disgorge the members of the band, who were then guided across the road to the club to sign in for the aftershow hospitality.

As they took it in turns to record their names in the visitors’ book, Rick and I joined on the end of the queue, signing on as the fifteenth and sixteenth members of the fourteen-piece band.

It didn’t worry us, and seemed not to bother anyone else, that we were half the age of the other members. We grabbed drinks and nibbles and sat among them, soaking up the stories and atmosphere, blissed out on being in such exalted company.

Unfortunately for us, the manager of the Blue Angel did think we looked a little out of place. He was (rightly) sure he knew us, and he kept looking at us from the other side of the club as if he meant to come and challenge us.

More fortunately, every time he did so, he was stopped in his tracks by some demand from the guests or catering staff.

Rick and I were both aware of this and knew the jig would soon be up. The scene was far too much like Edgar Kennedy determined to remove Chaplin from his premises.

Finally he got his way and blustered in the direction of the banquette we were sharing with one of the band. We readied ourselves to drop our glasses and finger-food, when the great bandleader appeared before us.

‘Everything OK, guys?’ he asked us.

‘Fine thanks, Maynard.’

Edgar Kennedy executed a perfect curve and went off to check the buffet table for napkins.

A taster from my forthcoming memoir: 

GOLDEN PLAYGROUND: Summers of Love on the English Riviera.

STEPPING OUT (Blues Festival, November 1967) 

Cousin Rick (right) and myself preparing for departure.

I was still sixteen and Rick was fifteen, but we had done proper jobs and earned our own money, such as it was, during the summer of ’67. We had also entered the fringes of the worlds of blues and jazz and were determined to see some of our heroes when they crossed the big water to play in London that year.

Our budget was pretty much non-existent. We could book some shows at the Hammersmith Odeon and a week’s sharing accommodation at the YMCA. Rail travel, or even the Royal Blue bus would be out of the question. We had hitched often enough between Torquay and Paignton, why not London?

As our parents fretted, we held our ground and gathered the necessities that would ensure that the mission went ahead. Rick had an old rucksack and a substantial coat. I managed to acquire a similar garment - an Australian bush coat - and enquiries at school turned up a rucksack for me.

Its kind donor Henry Madge lived in Cary Park. His camping equipment was very much of the time - none of the lightweight and lycra about the rucksack he offered me. With its heavy-duty canvas and what seemed like a steel girder frame, it took some carrying empty, so I was glad of a little time to get used to wearing it before the great day.

Knowing we would be attending concerts, my mother ensured I packed some decent clothes for the evenings, a jacket, some respectable trousers and a selection of neatly-ironed shirts. Some time was spent working out how best to place them in the rucksack, so they wouldn’t lose their crease.

Ever practical, she also issued me with a miniature bottle of brandy, to be carried in the inside pocket of my coat - for emergencies.

We set off very early on the morning in question. A photo was taken for evidence, and perhaps to remember us by. Once we had walked beyond the cul-de-sac we would be lost from the family’s sight. Unless we phoned home, no communication or monitoring of our whereabouts would be possible from that point until we were together once more.

All those years of practice when we were out of sight and out of mind somewhere on the estate or off in Bluebell Woods must have helped, but there was a good deal of trusting to providence in my mother’s wistful farewell.

Rick and I gave a final wave as we disappeared into the darkness beyond the streetlights and set our feet upon the road to London - the Tolkienish road that goes forever on and on - the Torbay Ring Road for a start.

We heard our first car approaching from behind, passing the Devon Coast Country Club, as we were about a hundred yards from our starting point, so we practiced thumbing.

The car stopped immediately.

‘Where are you going, lads?’

‘London, for the Blues Festival.’

‘Jump in. ‘I’m going that way myself.’

This hitch-hiking lark seemed very easy.

He told us he was in the music business and had been managing The Animals among others. That makes him either ex-Animals bassist, Chas Chandler, whom I always believed he was, or Mike Jeffery, who took over their management that year, and who would later take over (from Chas) the management of Jimi Hendrix. When I came to write this, I allowed some doubts to enter in and did as much research as possible on the two and their relationship.

Chas Chandler

In the final analysis, I have returned to my original belief that it was Chas. Although I’m familiar with his face now from old footage of the band, I think he more accords with the impression of the man who drove us to London and even bought us lunch on the way. Mike Jeffrey was a much more singular looking cove with glasses and long hair and would I think have been more memorable.

It’s too late to check with either of them. Chas died soon after a reunion gig with the band from an aneurism and Mike was killed in a mid-air collision over Nantes.

In any case, I must express my gratitude to someone who would doom themselves to a journey of over two hundred miles with a couple of smartass kids and treat us with such kindness and interest

.

He dropped us in London and we set about finding our way to the YMCA. This was when we discovered something that has proven true all my life: Londoners have no idea where they are. They know which bus or underground train will take them where they want to go, but don’t know where it is in relation to where they are now.

One way and another, we arrived in Great Russell Street and the YMCA was before us. We presented our papers to the man at the front desk and he told us we were too early. Our room would not be ready for a couple of hours.

YMCA Great Russell Street

We asked him to put our bags behind his counter so we could go out and get our bearings.

After a cheap café lunch, we explored the local area, marvelling at the newly completed Centrepoint and Foyle’s famous music shop.

Our two hours up, we returned to the YM and asked for our bags. A hatch opened and they were slung the full length of the foyer. Rick and I did a double take as they flew past between us.

We were given our room number and made our way to the lift. I think we needed floor 4, but the lifts were in an advanced state of psychosis and took you to the top floor, the basement or anywhere in between without consultation. Eventually we arrived on a floor near ours and made the final approach by way of  the stairs.

The room was pre-swinging London dark and grim with an impression through the grimy window of unchanged and unchanging routine down below. Modern Routemasters made their way among pre-war LT buses from which the drivers still gave hand signals before pulling out and clippies often got off to count people on at bus stops. Black taxis ran the gauntlet for spaces between the buses, the odd horse and cart, Evening Standard vans and delivery bikes, waved at and directed by a stout policeman in a cape and white gloves.

When I had come to visit with my mother half a dozen years previously there were teddy boys among the passing parade of old soldiers and pinstripers. Now there was a bit of colour about, the ‘swinging’ crew having reached beyond Carnaby Street and the Kings Road.

When the beautiful art-deco Hammersmith Odeon first opened its doors to a potential audience of three and a half thousand people it commanded a generous corner position across the wide carriageway from St Paul’s Church and its famous school. By the time we stood before it, forty odd years on, the churchyard had been carved up, its incumbents disinterred and Ernie Marple’s monstrosity of a flyover unceremoniously plonked across the view, robbing the building of its form and elegance.

Hammersmith Odeon

Rick and I had got there much too early, but better safe than sorry. As we stood on the wide pavement surveying the supporting arches, we got talking to a guy who would be attending the gig later that day. He told us how he had met Bo Diddley at just that place when he was playing the UK. He’d asked the great man for his autograph and if he would pose for a picture.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet of photos - Bo Diddley standing normally, Bo Diddley standing on his head, Bo Diddley doing a cartwheel.

Bo Diddely

He’d hardly left us to go off and get ready for the show when a Bedford Duple bus pulled up to the kerb. Inside was the who’s who of blues legends who would be taking the stage that evening. No one was there to meet them except Rick and me. There was Little Walter, Koko Taylor, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee - even the legendary Son House and Bukka White. Some of these guys were powerfully old, Sonny Terry had been blinded in two separate accidents and Brownie didn’t walk too well.

Rick and I helped them down from the bus and they signed our programme for us - Son House and Bukka taking a very long time about it, Sonny Terry took out an ink pad and stamped his autograph for us. I got to look after Koko Taylor’s pie while she added her name to the roll of honour.

Koko Taylor

Finally, with the aid of the bus driver, we managed to raise someone from the venue to receive the artists and get them to much needed hospitality and dressing rooms.

In those days there was a café opposite the theatre. As we fortified ourselves for a long night, we looked around at other tables occupied by blues legends. I guess the café was pretty well used to having famous musicians pop across the road for a cup of tea or pie and mash. We thought it was wonderful to see these heroes in such an English setting chatting about still other heroes: ‘I was over to John Lee Hooker’s house the other night…’

The gig itself received mixed reviews, but to be in that glorious venue listening to Walter’s amplified harmonica raising the rafters and to sit in hushed reverence as Son House and Bukka White took us right back to the birth of the blues - bottleneck and open chords on iconic steel guitars - was more than enough for Rick and me.

And when the show ended, the feeling went right on. We gathered alongside such luminaries as the Melody Maker’s Chris Welch, whom we would meet in the same place at each gig we managed to attend. Walter and his band were clearly happy. Drummer Odie Payne was obviously the bus clown, playing tricks and jokes on the rest of the party.

Rick always had a mouth harp about him so, when we got to meet Walter, he offered one to him.

At that point, the manager appeared at the stage door and told everyone to move on. We feared this would mean an interruption of our meeting, but Walter said: ‘You want us to move on, man; we’ll move on,’ and came with us out toward the road. 

Little Walter Jacobs

 He played a few note-bending phrases and regarded the instrument quizzically. ‘Man! This harp’s gone!’

We asked him where they would be playing next. ‘Some town out east,’ he told us: ‘Sweden.’

Over the next few nights we would witness some of the best jazz and blues players in the world, and we got to meet all of them in that hallowed alleyway beside the Hammy-O. Guitarists Larry Coryell, Barney Kessel (with whom we had a long conversation) and George Benson, then a top jazz picker (his singing career started much later) were there and, in my role of porter to the stars, I held  Sarah Vaughan’s shopping bag while she signed autographs and posed for photos.

Barney Kessel

Sarah Vaughan

For us one of the greatest thrills was meeting blues guitarist extraordinaire Buddy Guy. As we were talking to him, a car drew up to the kerb and somebody approached him to say there was this guy called Jimi Hendrix playing across town and the car had been sent to take Buddy to meet and jam with him.

Buddy Guy

We could have got into that car with Buddy. I think he was more or less expecting us to. Idiots that we both were, we missed out and only waved to him as the car drove away.

In his autobiography, Buddy says that he met Hendrix at the Newport Jazz Festival. Technically, this series of shows was the Newport Festival on tour. I can only report the way I heard it.

The housekeeping side of the trip was not quite the success that the musical element had been.

On our first return to the YM, I opened the wardrobe to find all my neatly pressed and packed shirts and the other contents of the rucksack screwed up and strewn about. Nothing was missing, but this seemed a strange way for the cleaners to behave. Rick thought it was hysterically funny and immediately set about fitting it into the standard legend that everything would go wrong and we’d wind up ‘bleedin’, bleedin’ in the gutter’. I don’t know why this was so funny, but it made us laugh anyway and there seemed little to be gained by complaining to the rude man on the desk who had launched our belongings across the foyer in the first place.

Half a century later, in a rare access of honesty, Rick confessed that it was he who had been responsible.

Before the week was half over, we were broke and starving, so we reversed the charges to Rick’s parents - who had a telephone - with the result that my parents wired some money for collection at Soho post office.

We had been frequenting the wonderful Dobell’s record shop in Charing Cross Road whenever we weren’t concert-going. The records, the books and the magazines were a magic storehouse for us. Following the arrival of telegraphed bounty, we could now become paying customers.

Felice Taylor

I bought a copy of Billboard, the only copy I ever saw. It was priced at a staggering eight shillings (40p), but was so full of marvellous stuff from across the pond that I thought it was worth it, even though it cost more than my other purchase - a single called ‘I feel Love coming on’ by Felice Taylor, produced by some bloke called Barry White. If truth were told, it was taken a bit at the trot, like those ‘live’ Motown albums that turned out to have been speeded up to fit on a side of an LP. But its big attraction was that the B-side was the backing track minus Felice, so we would be able to play or sing over it when we got back home.

By the end of the last concert, we were broke again, and had to walk back to Great Russell Street from Hammersmith.

We had less than two shillings between us as we trudged westwards the next morning - enough for a Mars bar and a couple of packets of crisps. We knew we would have to walk to the outskirts of London before we got a lift and we were looking at signs for Staines when we both subsided on the grass verge and slept.

We awoke with a start to the sound of galloping horses - not the Mongol hordes, but an outing of young nag-straddlers who were not expecting people to be sleeping in their path. Fortunately we managed to arise without frightening the horses and sat awhile in thought.

Neither of us felt inspired to continue, but just then I remembered my mother’s miniature brandy. We took a slug each, hoisted our burdens and trudged on.

As we proceeded the weather worsened - rain accompanied by a mounting wind. As the downpour became heavier and the wind stronger, Rick opened the umbrella that features in the evidence picture of our departure for the first time. The wind turned it inside out, whipped the top off it and smashed it against a nearby hedge, leaving him with only the handle.

Later, still trudging liftless through the storm, Rick’s rucksack gave up the ghost and we were forced to remove its contents into Henry’s heavy duty model and abandon it in another hedge.

The remaining rucksack was now even heavier and more cumbersome, but at least we could take turns carrying it.

At this point we ate the Mars bar and crisps. The winter afternoon had closed in and it would soon be dark.

The sky was black as we staggered alongside the beginnings of a dual carriageway to be met with a sign that said ‘No Stopping; Clearway’. We were both freezing, our feet almost too cold to ache, and we’d done in the brandy. Now there was nowhere to go. We had no way of knowing how long the ‘clearway’ lasted, so we stopped where we were and dropped the rucksack on the grass verge.

I don’t know how long we waited; how many times a slowing vehicle brought hope that was soon dashed.

Finally, miracle of miracles, a lorry stopped. It was all we could do to climb into the cab, and be grateful that lorry drivers are not as particular about having soggy Herberts in their vehicles as private motorists.

He was going to Salisbury, which at least was a place, so we signed up for the duration. We were both completely exhausted and slept most of the way, in my case more than once on the driver’s shoulder, waking with a start.

The kind man deposited us in the middle of the city. We knew we had no strength to continue through the night, so we made for the police station.

As we were given some nice hot strong tea and parked next to the radiators we managed to resist the temptation to burst into tears and passed on through chattering teeth the details of Rick’s parents and their telephone number.

Surprise, surprise! It was not Rick’s doting parents in one of John’s brand new company cars who turned up to rescue us at six o’clock in the morning, but my mum and dad and brother Pete in my dad’s self-maintained Austin A60 automatic. I need not tell you how delighted we were to see them.

Thanks and farewells to the Wiltshire constabulary, who continued to occupy a special place in my heart until one of their cameras popped off at me on the A303 sometime n the next century.

Dad took us all straight to a Little Chef where the no longer condemned men ate a hearty breakfast. The world seemed a little over coloured, but we had survived our ordeal and were full of stories.

Fed and watered, we put our coats over us and settled down in the Austin’s red leather rear seat, while Dad turned the starter. Nothing. He moved the little gear selector from ‘drive’ to ‘neutral’ to ‘park’ and back again. Were we doomed to be broken down after all that?

He opened the bonnet and checked for obvious problems, clouted the starter motor with a vicious looking spanner and scratched his head.

Suddenly something agricultural - Jeep, Land Rover? - too early for a Toyota or Nissan - bumped onto the car park. ‘Do you need a tow, mate?’

‘It’s automatic,’ my dad explained.

‘Should work if we can get it up around twenty.’ He rummaged in the back and came out with a stout rope.

Dad looked doubtful but the options were few. ‘Everybody out!’ he barked, like Miriam Karlin in the Rag Trade, and we trailed our blanketing coats back into the Little Chef.

Soon the tow rope was connected, the road cleared and the rescuer gunned his monster truck. A lurch and the A60 was after him. They were actually doing fifty plus, a tow-rope’s length apart, when it sprung to life.

Dad was a bit white around the gills and more inclined to regard his saviour as a ‘bloody idiot’ once the politenesses had been exchanged and he was out of earshot, but he was back behind the huge, spindly wheel and we were on the road again, and would be home in the beds we sometimes thought we would never see again by lunchtime.

And we were in them for several days before we were ready to contemplate more adventures.