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.

Victor 101.

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.

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.

Procul Harum.

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.

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.

The 'bikini' line.

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 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.

As the season began to wind down, we were given our cards, one by one. No bonus or gratitude for sterling service. Only free fish and chips from the girls at the takeaway window and the satisfaction that came from having turned off the chicken fridge.

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.