PAPER SUN (1967)
Geoff Meade and I shared a passion for cars and music. We would
often take a very long time after school getting to his house in Paris Road, as
we visited car dealers to inspect the latest models, grilling salesmen and
mostly being given carte blanche to
climb all over their wares.
 |
| Geoff Meade MBE today - veteran Europe correspondent. |
Geoff’s dad had recently upgraded his company car to a smart new
sheer line Vauxhall, and I remember the excitement with which we descended on
Tom Brown’s dealership around the corner from the school in Brunswick Square
for a first encounter with the final facelift version of the Victor 101 in May
of 67.
Geoff had a decent piano at home to which we would often adjourn
when we had finished our motoring investigations. One song I remember us
learning from sheet music bought at Harris & Osborne’s was Gimme Little Sign by Brenton Wood. And
it was at Geoff’s that we were first left speechless by seeing Jimi Hendrix
play Hey Joe on the telly.
 |
| Victor 101. |
An early season series of Sunday night concerts was coming up at
the Princess Theatre in Torquay, and we booked to see some of them.
The Moody Blues hadn’t gone psychedelic by then, so their gig was
built around familiar material, mostly, as was the general rule, reworkings of
black American songs such as Go Now.
They did that one twice in response to public demand and the piano solo sounded
exactly as learned then as it still does now. If it had been punched in, it would
have sounded the same, but it was a great song and a great evening.
 |
| Moody Blues. |
John Maus had recently gone solo along with his Walker Brothers
colleagues. We were all big fans of the Walkers and the powerfully produced
sound Phillips Records got with them. None of us was a Scott Engel, but many an
attempt was made on The Sun Ain’t Gonna
Shine Any More, Our Ship is Coming In
and Bacharach’s Make It Easy on Yourself,
while waiting in the school corridors for admittance to lessons.
 |
| John Maus, before and after the Walker Brothers. |
We knew we wouldn’t be getting any of the hit material when Mr
Maus played the Princess, but our main reason for going was the fact that his
backing singers would be Sue and Sunny, aka The Stocking Tops - top rank UK
session singers on a par with the likes of Madeline Bell and The Ladybirds. As
Sue and Sunny they had released a single on Columbia entitled You Can’t By Pass Love (sic). Like Chris
Farlowe’s Out of Time and the Troggs’
Any Way That You Want Me, it had been
the killer ’cello intro that had got to me first. It also had a Motowny shape
to it and it only needed us to see the girls doing it on the telly for us to be
sent, in a groovy 1960s happening kinda way.
The B-side was written by that same Martin and Coulter who would
find serious success with the Sandie Shaw Eurovision sensation, Puppet on a String. In those dark and
ignorant days, the composer credits for the A side meant nothing to me. Motown
loony that I was, the only people I knew from the production side of things
were Smokey Robinson and Holland, Dozier, Holland. To be fair to me, the music
press in the UK was still calling Berry Gordy Barry Gordon.
‘J. Hunter’ was, of course, Joe Hunter, the bandleader that
preceded Earl Van Dyke with Motown’s Funk Brothers. That’s Joe’s distinctive
piano on Marvin Gaye’s Pride and Joy,
Try It Baby. How Sweet It Is and loads of other Hitsville delights. Forty
years later I would have the honour of meeting ‘Papa’ Joe and was with him and
Jack Ashford at Ronnie Scott’s only a couple of days before he died, aged 80 in
Detroit. He was a real gentleman with a fine sense of humour and a ready stock
of Shakespeare quotations. No matter how successful he was during the ups and
downs and false promises of a musician’s life, he never turned down a gig.
Ronnie Scott’s was the last venue in a punishing European tour, but Joe still
fitted in one more show on his return to the Motor City.
 |
| 'Papa' Joe Hunter. |
Back in Torquay, John Maus was doing Long John Baldry’s and most
other solo males’ acts at the time. Midnight
Hour, Land of a Thousand Dances… Na-na-na-na-na, sock it to me one more
time.
Then Geoff and I struck really lucky. We booked to see someone
nobody had ever heard of: Procol Harum. I think we paid six bob (30p) each.
By the time we took our seats for the show, the band was number
one in the UK and a sensation all over the world, A Whiter Shade of Pale already on its way to legendary status in
the US, Ireland and France, and the world and his dolly bird were all wandering
through their respective playing cards as their ceilings flew away.
The mad people who contributed to the letters page in the Melody Maker were already asking who
Procul Harum thought they were, and accusing them of imitating Bach, Reginald
Dixon, Chris Montes. Sooty and anyone else who had an organ on their record - a
sure sign of having made it, just as when Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson had
been accused in their turns of depending on big bands for the success of Yesterday and Good Vibrations.
 |
| Procul Harum. |
The combination of Gary Brooker’s voice and Matt Fisher’s Hammond
is, was and ever will be irresistible - and we were there at the beginning, in
Torquay, and for six bob!
We were also there at the end, in fact, as Torquay was the last
gig played by the band as was, both the bass player and guitarist Ray Royer
departing before the next outing.
Ray was not really a side-man by nature. Producer, Denny Lane,
remarked that during sessions he could either be original and exciting or
unable to play at all. I met him several years later and found him deeply
spiritual - scarily so in some respects, in that the universe as most
materialists conceive it and the one Ray could see were not necessarily
compatible. Riding in an open car with him was not for the fainthearted. He was
literally ‘laid-back’ before the expression was common coin, his attention on the
beauty of the trees passing overhead rather than prosaic matters such as
watching the road. I wasn’t going to beat him, so I joined him, and have him to
thank for that aspect of my own spiritual education.
 |
| Ray Royer. |
As May gave way to flaming June, the props, the scenery and the
actors were gathering to set the stage for what would go down in history as the
‘Summer of Love’.
Only a few weeks later, it was curtain up as the Fab Four
performed the signature tune, All You
Need is Love, across the networks and across the world. The summer was on
and some kind of employment would be needed to see cousin Rick and me through
the six weeks of school holiday.
The labour exchange sent us to Goodrington, one of the jewels of
the Devon coast, with landscaped boating lakes, a small-scale railway (with
bikini-clad engine drivers), playgrounds, a variety of cafés and bars, acres of
sand and a magnificent walk around the red cliffs to Paignton proper.
All Goodrington’s catering facilities were managed by a single
operation, known as Addison’s, though it was part of a larger combine called
Nuttall’s Catering, which also ran a café in Paignton’s Victoria Street and
another in the old fishermen’s buildings on the Strand in Torquay.
 |
| The 'bikini' line. |
The manager’s name was Whiting. He and Mrs W occupied a house on
the complex and it was there that we had to report for interview.
He was a shrivelled looking cove, like a Giles drawing of an
undertaker, with sunken cheeks, dark round glasses and a stooped, bent-legged
walk after the manner of Groucho Marx. His wife looked somewhat younger and
more robust.
In those days it was normal for employers - even jumped up
managers - to address male employees by their surnames, without even the
courtesy of a ‘mister’ or ‘master’.
Our paperwork was inspected by Mrs W and we were sent to be
interviewed by the under-manager, by the name of Aldridge. Like the Whitings,
he was a Londoner, but in place of Whiting’s sepulchral tones, he had a rather
piping, high pitched voice, and tended to lope about in his dark suit looking
harassed.
Whether or not he then had good reason for his demeanour, he soon
would have, as he took both of us on and gave us a start day almost
immediately.
Getting to Addison’s in the morning meant walking down over
Edenvale, Blatchcombe and Woodlands to the Torquay Road, through Paignton and
out on the Brixham Road, past the ‘Big Tree’ and over the railway bridge at
Tanners Lane into the complex - approx. 2.5 miles. There was a punch clock on a
wall that recorded the times of our arrival and departure. After a little
while, whoever got there first - usually a guy (Big Rick) with a bicycle who
worked in the fish café - would clock on for the rest of us.
Cousin Rick was led off by Mr Aldridge to work in the said fish
café, known because of its location as the ‘Prom’.
I was taken to a rather smaller affair near the entrance car park,
which would later be turned into an arcade. Then it was called the ‘Sands’.
My job would mainly involve dish and pot-washing - by hand in an
ordinary kitchen washbasin. Table-clearing was also part of the description,
but this was mainly done by the two girls who served and prepared the food,
Samantha and Lizzie.
Sands manager, Mr James was on his day off when I arrived.
Samantha asked me: ‘Is this your first day?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, accepting a proffered broom and helping her
sweep the floor.
‘’Ard luck!’ She introduced me to Ernie, the cook, whose pots I
would be washing, and a man who liked to laugh. Also, at the sandwich counter,
was a third girl who turned out to be so kind and funny that all the many
trepidations of starting my first official job of work melted away by the end
of the first long day. Theresa - Terry - was the ‘older woman’ (probably about 20)
we lads fantasised about in free periods at school. She had poise and
experience; she was what we then called ‘dusky’ (black) and beautiful.
Soon enough, I was a gone swan.
Even washing people’s pots and dishes seemed like a reasonable
thing to be doing if it meant I could be around her - just talking, joking and
laughing in a comfortable way that didn’t happen with girls my own age -
especially on a brief furlough from being banged up with six hundred other
lads.
Her day off seemed endless and miserable, but there was worse to
come.
Not much more than a week after I started she disappeared
altogether. Lizzie told me she had been betrayed and sacked on the spot.
For days I was inconsolable - not that anyone tried to console me
or knew what I was going on about. The combination of the injustice of her
dismissal and the fact that I never had a chance to see her again was all I
needed to bring on the teenage angst I was fully qualified by age and innocence
to make the most of.
Piling on the agony, I decided to skip the weekend beach party and
sulk at home, too stupid to guess that she would be there, so it was my own
fault I lost touch with her.
However, another day, another load of washing up. Then Mr Aldridge
loped back into my life. It seemed I was to hang up my rubber gloves and follow
him to the Prom fish café, where my week of training and experience was in
demand.
The Prom had forty odd tables, a counter at one end serving fish
and chips to eat in, or via a takeaway window, and a much longer counter
running along the back wall for snacks, drinks, sandwiches and the like.
The till was at the left hand end and the trays at the right. Once
you had chosen your food, the order was shouted through a hatch at someone in
the kitchen. Among the things you could wash it down with was an orange liquid
that issued from a transparent box with three plastic oranges circulating
inside it, or tea from a pot that received an additional catering size tea bag
every time it was topped up with boiling water. Its liquid was very brown and
viscous and tasted more disgusting as the day wore on.
At each end of the counter was a set of swing doors leading to the
kitchen. This ran the full length of the café at a lower floor level, so was
reached by a few steps at either end.
I entered the kitchen from the rear outside door. To my right was
an edged plinth designed to receive the table-clearing trolley on a level with
the café. Next to this was a dishwashing machine with worktops on either side
and a semi-cylindrical lid that could be revolved to the left to slide in trays
of dirty crocks, and to the right to withdraw the cleaned items.
The sloping floor was covered in flattened out cardboard, most of
it stained with food and dust. At the midway point, next to the left hand work
surface, was an arrangement to hold the clean dishes, glasses and cutlery. A
separate sink was provided for pots and chef’s equipment.
Next to this again was an aluminium dustbin containing food waste.
Every so often the chef would shout: ‘Bin Brigade!’ and he and the assistant
chef would each take a handle of the bin and march it outside to a waiting
paladin for emptying.
The chef - Ralph - and his assistant, John, both wore flowers in
their beards and longish hair à la Scott Mackenzie.
Ralph would get occasional visits from a girl named ‘Cosie’, whom
he always referred to as ‘the woman of the moment’. Cosie was in charge of a
kiosk opposite the front of the Sands Café, from which she sold ice-cream,
knickerbocker glories and the like. The big attraction of Cosie’s kiosk was the
donut machine. On the counter was a sort of oil bath with a chain driven
mechanism running through it. Cosie would insert an uncooked donut in one end
and it would fry in the oil as it was dragged by the mechanism from one end to
the other, to emerge hot, perfectly cooked, wonderfully moist and encrusted in
sugar.
Cousin Rick had been promoted to fish and chip duties, so had his
own domain in a separate backstage area behind the fish counter, where he was
in charge of a dalek-like potato peeling machine, two chip baths with a
chipping machine where the soap rack would normally be, and a metal surface on
which to batter fish.
Aldridge demonstrated the workings of the dishwashing machine and
showed me two bowls containing coloured powder or flakes. ‘Always use the
green, never ever the pink,’ he told me, and loped off.
Everyone had heard this last admonishment, including Rick who had
come through to welcome me, so we immediately set about charging the machine
with the pink substance.
The workings rattled into life and began to rumble and gurgle in their
prescribed manner for a few moments before, to everyone’s delight, beginning to
issue a thick pinkish-white foam which first filled the work surfaces before
taking off ‘Blob’ like to conquer the rest of the kitchen.
It was more than worth it to be standing in two feet of foam and
having to mop up and change all the cardboard. I had joined the team at the
Prom and would remain there for the rest of the season.
The nearest thing Aldridge could manage to my name was ‘Rande’, so
Rick started calling me that, and would do so for the rest of his life.
Treated as idiots and addressed by our surnames, we, whose only
vision of work had come from Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Drake and Mr Pastry,
were loyal and conscientious to a fault, especially as we were working all
hours and receiving such untold riches in the way of remuneration - 3/6 an hour
(17.5 pence).
Actually, we did work hard and more than earned our money, but each passing day took us further toward
complete anarchy.
A young lad called Sid and I moved among the customers and cleared
the tables with the legendary trolley - a substantial affair with five inch
castors. There was a bin on the top for cutlery and another for slops. I don’t
recall from the entire season anyone finishing a meal, so there were always
plenty of slops, and trying to eat at a nearby table while Sid and I added to
the bin’s contents was guaranteed to produce more.
We had a dry cloth with which to wipe the tables, so crumbs and
other detritus mainly went on the floor. If a customer occupied an uncleared
table - and especially if he or she shoved the contents somewhere else, piling
plates up with the leftovers in between - a flick of the cloth delivered the
crumbs into their laps.
‘Accidents’ at the swing doors were a daily occurrence. If two
people approached them on opposite sides with loaded trays, the result could be
especially joyous.
Sid and I piled dinner and side plates as high as we could on the
top level of the trolley. Pushing it through the swing doors was enough to
cause the piles to totter. Running it against the retaining rim of the plinth
could do the rest.
We all had other jobs that we were called off to do from time to
time, such as making and wrapping the sandwiches with a heat sealer or making
up a ghastly concoction called ‘Millac’, which was supposed be powdered milk, but
could have been anything.
I was once called to a table by a woman who had ordered a glass of
milk from Winnie on the counter. ‘Excuse me, young man, is this milk fresh?’
‘Certainly,’ I told her.
She tasted it again and pulled a face. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I should know, madam, I made it myself ten minutes ago.’
We were issued with white coats from the laundry, which rarely
stayed that colour for long. Apart from slinging tea bags at each other and
divers items of food, the favourite trick was to drop an egg in someone’s
pocket, then break it. I don’t recommend the sensation of putting your hand in
your pocket when this has been done, and the practice wasn’t restricted to work
clothes.
Back at my dishwasher, I would look up to see Rick come to visit.
As I pulled a tray of freshly washed dishes from the machine, he took his hands
from behind his back and smeared them all with batter.
I did a double-take and made a deep ‘Ohhh!’ like Bluto in the
Popeye cartoons. Sometime after, I would visit him in the chiproom and
introduce some of the dishwashing powder to his potato dalek with a similar
response from him as the foam began to arise from within.
Since Paignton and Torquay were all about catering, there was a
grapevine between the various establishments. If inspectors were spotted
anywhere, everyone knew about it, and all the staff at Addison’s were detailed
to forget about the customers and get on to cleaning duties. Even this would
not have earned the place a ‘one’ on the current hygiene ratings, however.
Winnie, behind the counter, was a voluble cockney and an obvious target
for our dubious sense of humour. If she was serving a family with children
further along the counter, we would shake up the Coke cans, so that when she
opened one, it would spray up the wall, soaking her in the process.
‘I’ll have you, you buggers,’ she would yell before sitting down
at the till to find we had removed her seat. For some reason, despite this, she
used to tell everyone - and especially the girls that she ‘lived-in’ with -
that I was her favourite. I really didn’t think this was doing me any favours,
when I was trying to appear cool and tough. Of course, that’s all I knew, and
the only girls that liked me probably thought I was more sweet than cool for
the abovementioned reason.
A few girls were regulars in the prom and we would ‘hang out’ together
most days. One was Jane Wellins, who had been in the last year at Hayes Road
and was nursing a broken leg in the summer of 67. She introduced me to the
works of Tolkien. ‘You remind me of Gollum,’ she said.
One day, for reasons I don’t recall, we arrived late. Opening the
swing door slightly, we found the place teeming with customers. Trays of
leftovers were piled up on every surface and staff had been drafted in from all
over the complex to handle the situation.
Rick and I shut the door and looked at each other for a response.
‘I’m not going in there,’ I said.
Outside we met the gardener/handyman who was about to take a load
of boxes to the furthest reaches of the Addison’s empire - the tea stall at the
far end of the ‘bikini line’ railway track. We told him we were there to help
him and climbed on the back of his Lister flat-bed truck for the slow chug
there, where we helped him unload, and back again, by which time the rush had
evaporated.
Some years later, I got talking to the gardener in the London Inn
and he told me he had always entertained an ambition to go into the church. I
got hold of a copy of the Church Times
and helped him with some letters to the powers that could grant him his wish.
On one occasion, the management were absent for a day, both the
Whitings and Aldridge, we assumed summoned to some kind of court of hygiene.
Ralph and John disappeared around this time and, of all people,
Rick was promoted to cooking duties. As his signature dish, he incinerated a
piece of toast and did something of the same with an egg, placing the latter on
the former and putting a lump of butter on each of the four visible corners.
The resulting horror was put on the counter on a cracked plate with a notice
saying ‘Egg on toast, our speciality’.
The following day, I was called before the presence of Mr Whiting.
‘I’ve had reports you’ve been kicking my machine,’ he told me. I had gone there
in some trepidation lest my sins should find me out, but was in the frame for
the one thing I certainly had not done, and of which I could claim angelic
innocence.
I must have been believed, because the axe didn’t fall. How he
never found out about any of our real transgressions was hard to understand.
However, a new characterisation was born and we would now approach other staff
with the Groucho walk, our cheeks sucked in, using our forefingers and thumbs
to ring our eyes and looking about us suspiciously: ‘I’ve had repotes…’ The
cockney accent was vital, as it was with our impersonations of Aldrich: ‘Er,
got any fowkes?’
We had various stock routines that Rick and I cooked up. In the
middle of my explaining or describing something to Rick, he would look at me
disparagingly and say, ‘Don’t be rrridiculous!’
I would shake with mock rage, stamping my feet, and reply, ‘Allll Right!’
Aldridge loped up to me one day and asked me to go on some errand
to another one of Addison’s many premises, next to the Brass Monkey pub, in his
hesitant and piping way; ‘Er, Rande - go to the Bettabar, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Er, go to the Bettabar, right?’
‘Allll Right!’ Everyone
roared with laughter, and the exchange became another of our quotidien comedy
routines.
 |
| The Bettabar amd the Brass Monkey have been absorbed into the new Premier Inn. |
Outside the front of the Prom café, on the promenade proper, was
an automated vending machine for an orange drink - orange in colour, anyway.
According to Mr Aldridge, the thing had become empty, so I was
detailed to take Sid with me to attend to it.
Opening the front panel with a supplied key revealed a sort of
sticky metal bomb surrounded by wasps. We were supposed to take this object to
the stores and exchange it for a clean new example.
As we took it from the machine, we realised the wasps were
following us. It was quite a long round trip to get to the stores, outside the
building, and it struck me as a much more amusing plan to carry the thing
through the restaurant. So it proved. Chairs went over and cutlery flew into
the air as customers fled from the bomb, us and the posse of wasps.
Ralph and John never returned to the kitchen following their
sudden disappearance, so the management, not having been witnesses to his
signature dish, and unaware of the fact that he had negligible experience in
eating, never mind cooking, put Rick in permanent charge of the short order
stove.
Foremost among the tools of his new trade was a seriously large
carving knife which rested near at hand on a wooden table. In quiet moments, he
would grasp it and brandish it in my direction, a murderous glint in his eye.
Waving my arms in the air, I would flee through one of the sets of swing doors
into the packed restaurant, where he would pursue me behind the full length of
the counter, uttering bloodthirsty cries. We’d crash through the opposite set
of doors back into the kitchen with him in close pursuit - the customers’
mouths hanging open in horror.
After a brief silence, Rick would hand me the knife and I would
chase him back the way we had come.
There were some great people working at Addison’s in ’67 - Stan,
who ran the fish and chip operation went on to run Gayton’s in Coverdale Road.
Some of the girls that came to Goodrington as waitresses would later work in
the Pacific in its heyday. (Rita and Audrey.)
The seasonal staff included a large proportion of musicians -
especially guitarists - and a lot of people called Rick. There was Big Rick,
aforementioned, Rick Moxham, who lived in Southfield Road and played guitar,
and there was Rick Pralitz.
I’d known Keith Tonkin
since infant school. For reasons of his own, cousin Rick christened him ‘Buke’.
He accompanied himself on guitar while singing songs from the Bob Dylan
Songbook, and once came around to mine so we could work together - me playing
glockenspiel. Wot?
There was a guy in the stores, who might have been R Pralitz
aforementioned. He was a serious guitar player who spent his time learning
Hendrix two-handed chords for his 3/6 an hour unless somebody interrupted him
by wanting something. He went on to play in local bands such as Ulysses and Atlas.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, we soon formed the Chiproom Blues Band -
cousin Rick on harmonica (blues harp), various guitarists and me on a
Woolworth’s reed organ, the property of that same R Moxham, similarly
aforementioned.
One of the biggest hits in those early days at Addison’s, hardly
played now, was Gin House by Amen
Corner, on which Blue Weaver accompanied Andy Fairweather-Low on a double
manual Vox Continental. This, and I’m A
Man by Muddy Waters were ideal outings for my little organ.
The most frustrating thing for a keys player then was the fact
that every venue had a shit piano. The alternatives were not only limited, but
even if you could run to your own Hammond, it was a nightmare to move about.
 |
| Vox Continental. |
New contraptions began to appear around then - the Vox Continental
with its drawbars and optional pedalboard was favourite. Farfisa did a good
range, including the ones used by Pink Floyd. The Teisco WEM single keyboard
was mainly designed for glissando ad
nauseam, and for frustrated bass players like me, there were singular
weirdnesses such as the Livingston-Burge Tubon, made by the makers of
electronic church organs - a thing like a bazooka on a strap with a short
keyboard let into one side that played various footages of bass twenty years
before keyboard bass became the next big annoyance in the 1980s.
I wanted one then but, perhaps fortunately, it was not to be.
The musical soundtrack to 1967 still takes me right back there.
The juke box at the Prom was rarely silent and it was such a productive and
inventive period. All You Need Is Love
was played over and over, and so was the B-side, Baby, You’re A Rich Man one of my Beatles favourites and so rarely
played now that it exists still in that time. Traffic were huge then, Hole In My Shoe being a big hit, though Paper Sun really captures the atmosphere
for me, and its instrumental B-side was also played repeatedly. Art Conley’s Sweet Soul Music, Aretha’s Say A Little Prayer, Percy Sledge, Keith
West’s Excerpt From A Teenage Opera, See Emily Play, Let’s Go To San Francisco, Reflections
by The Supremes, Massachusetts and
the New York Mining Disaster, I Was Made To Love Her, Daydream Believer
- mountains of great new music, not to mention The Monkees’ Alternate Title.
But 1967 was also the year of the ballad. Tom Jones Green Green Grass of Home, Funny,
Familiar, Forgotten Feelings and my favourite (composed, I recently discovered,
by Lonnie Donegan) with its three-four arrangement owing more than a little to
Lincoln Mayorgis: I’m Never Gonna Fall In
Love Again; Engelbert Humperdinck’s Last
Waltz, Long John Baldry, Let The
Heartaches Begin, Vince Hill’s Edelweiss.
What most people thinking back to those days of I Feel Free, Strange Brew, Hey Joe and
Purple Haze seem to forget was the
sheer weight of musical ballast such as Barbra Streisand’s Second Hand Rose and
Frankfurter Sandwiches, Danny La Rue’s Mother
Kelly’s Doorstep and - do me a favour - Fanlight
Fanny, The Floosy Nightclub Queen, by Clinton Ford.
I joined the staff of the prom in a time of change. Not only did
Winnie join but there was a turnaround in waitresses. I never really knew the
previous incumbents, but Audrey and Rita joined just after me.
Since they ‘lived in’ in the firm’s chalets, they didn’t bother
with street clothes under their white overalls. Naturally, this was sufficient
provocation to dump them in Rick’s chip bath.
Although an anarchist with a brutal sense of humour, Rick was
anything but one-dimensional and was actually an enthusiastic worker, often
working evenings on the fish counter. The same was true when we both worked as
postmen, when he often did a second round while the rest of us had had more
than enough with one.
No comments:
Post a Comment