Chapter 3 

Chapter 3

Weekends

A spin of the time machine selector dial ended up stopping by the folder marked ‘childhood weekends’ - let’s roll through the years and dip in and out of the files a few times to take a look at what can be recovered from the memory banks.

1966

‘A mouse lived in a windmill in old Amsterdam’ played on the radio as three kids squeezed around the small yellow Formica kitchen table, making grabs for a favourite cereal box.  Without the urgency to get ready for school or playgroup, breakfasts on Saturday were a more leisurely affair.  I could study the cereal boxes in detail…How many packet tops do I need to get the model of Concorde?  Why did you have to allow three weeks for delivery?  What was a Kellogg’s ‘employee’ and why couldn’t they, or any of their relatives, enter a competition?  Why did we have to have Noddy’s Ricicles just because Jackie liked them when I really wanted Golden Nuggets and to be able to enjoy reading the cartoon strip about Klondike Pete and his mule Pardner?  Mind you, anything was better than plain old Corn Flakes, even if you could bury them in sugar.  In winter we’d have hot milk on cornflakes but this was usually a disaster as they became instantly soggy. Better if it was cold to opt for Ready Brek.  The pack bore a picture of a couple of glowing, but rather goody-goody looking kids but it was okay provided the powdery oats and milk had been mixed properly.  Again, there was plenty of sugar involved.                                                                                  

Junior Choice provided the musical backdrop and after a year or two we could all predict the repetitive playlist and knew the lyrics of all the classic songs.  You can get them all instantly these days on Spotify, but back then it might be a week or two before you managed to hear one of your favourites repeated.

I loved the comedy songs far more than the fairy tale ones.  Give me ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’ anytime in preference to ‘The Ugly Duckling,’ ‘Teddy Bears Picnic,’ or ‘Sparky’s Magic Piano’.  I never did find out what ‘Cor Blimey’ trousers actually looked like though.  Other favourites included Terry Scott’s ‘My Bruvver’,  Val Doonican’s ‘Danny‘o’Rafferty’s Motor Car’ (my first single) or Bernard Cribbins’ ‘Right Said Fred.’  I could recite all the words far easier than repeating my seven times-table (probably still the case…)

Hopefully I could watch a few cartoons (Top Cat, Tom and Jerry) on the telly before we were dragged off on some form of shopping trip; perhaps to the new Fine-Fare supermarket down the road in Wollaton, or worse, an excursion into Nottingham.  This probably meant a few boring hours looking at furniture in various  department stores (Griffin & Spalding), or being dragged into clothing shops that offered something slightly different to the conventional stuff we usually obtained from the local high street shops in Beeston.  Sometimes we’d venture into a different sort of shop, something of an early Argos, where you could exchange booklets of Green Shield stamps for enticing items in a catalogue.  I think the most exciting thing we actually acquired was an orange sun-lounger.  I don’t suppose I even considered back then that Saturdays were the only chance my parents had to actually do any shopping. There was no evening or Sunday opening in those days and ‘online’ wasn’t even a word.  We were too young to be left at home so off we all had to go.  It wasn’t negotiable and being moody about it didn’t really help the situation.  There’s a vague memory of messing about in a shoe shop in Beeston: I must have been really out of order because I got a rare walloping when we arrived home.

Sometimes in the afternoon, if the weather was okay, a friend or two might come round and we’d get up to something in the garden. Usually it’d be football or some other self-invented ball game but if we’d had enough of that, or one of the mates was useless at football, we’d play ‘Drop Dead’ instead.  Never played it?  Easy!  If you’re on, you go to one end of the garden and your mates (enemy) take up positions at the other.  All you’ve got to do is run to their end (trenches) but, just before you make it, you have to ‘die’ in the most spectacular way you can in a manner they shouted to you before you set off.  Machine gun fire, poison, snake bite, land mine, or slit throat were all common choices giving plenty of scope for theatrical ‘deaths’…..The guaranteed grass stained shorts and dirty knees risked another dice with death when we showed up indoors for  tea complete with unwashed dirty hands.

Poor weather and winter days required indoor entertainment resulting in much leafing through encyclopaedias, Enid Blyton stories, and Lego.  If Dad hadn’t gone to the match the telly would also be on during the later afternoon for the sport and results.  I hadn’t turned into a complete sports nut at this stage but was already beginning to be indoctrinated into the Grandstand format (more later) which usually ended the outside broadcast features with a muddy rugby league match hosted by Eddie Waring from some northern town I’d never heard of.  The afternoon rounded off with the excitement of the teleprinter.  The unfolding suspense, joy, or disappointment that each printed character slowly revealed, only declaring the final result with the last tap, was far more fun than today’s instant notification of every goal, miss or offence.

It would be sandwiches and cake for tea, gobbled down as politely as possible so we could make a start on the early evening viewing likely to be a Pink Panther cartoon followed by Doctor Who.  Hartnell was still the Doctor in 1966 and had Steven (Peter Purves, soon to become a Blue Peter stalwart) and Polly as his assistants.  It always seemed to be a family affair on Saturday evenings; I’ve no recollection of our parents’ friends even occasionally coming round for a meal or drinks. We’d often have some form of board game before bed.  Maybe Happy Families, Snakes and Ladders, or something called Beetle that involved a race to make up a coloured plastic ant-like creature using fiddly body parts acquired by the roll of a dice.  It was nothing too complicated.  By nine, even me, the eldest, would be packed off to bed, usually with a story, and knowing, almost without fail, what was on the agenda for the coming Sunday.

Church!  Or worse, Sunday School. Then a roast for dinner before either the grandparents would be over, or we’d go visiting them for tea before heading home late afternoon for ‘bath time,’ and then it would be off to bed because ‘it’s school in the morning.’

Spin forward three years – 1969

Saturday breakfasts were still (just about), a family affair.  More of a squeeze around the table though, and more of a fight over the cereals.  Noddy and Ricicles had matured into the Grrrreat! taste of Frosties, which apparently would put Tony the Tiger in our tanks, Coco Pops which turned the milk a sweet, muddy brown, or Sugar Puffs which invariably had coalesced into a sticky clump by the time you were halfway down the packet.

Ed Stewart now hosted Junior Choice and our repertoire of songs had grown exponentially.  We knew all the child-orientated stuff, the comedy classics and the occasional one-offs. (I was particularly taken with The Royal Guardsmen and their ‘Snoopy v The Red Baron’ ditty) but we’d now acquired a taste for Pop and could sing along to many of the other tracks that ‘Stewpot’ deemed suitable for his young, middle-of-the-road, audience.

‘When I’m Sixty-Four, O-bla-di-O-bla-da, Yellow Submarine, Puppet on a String, Morning Town Ride, Congratulations.’  In fact anything by The Beatles, Cliff, Sandi Shaw, The Seekers, Lulu, Rolf (boo), The Monkees, The Tremoloes, Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Titch; the list is endless.

Assuming it was the football season the rest of the morning would be taken up with Cub football. The previous year I’d been up against boys a year older who all seemed to be bigger, faster and better than me and, worse, I’d had to play in a kit that was like something out of the 1950’s.  My recollections are of regularly getting hammered, often being frozen, and embarrassingly trying to avoid having to head a lump of rock-hard leather.  Funny what a year and a change of manager can bring.  Harry (Wall, not Redknapp) took over Bramcote ‘B’ Pack, arranged some training sessions, acquired a great new blue club strip with the fleur-de-lis Scout motif as a badge and suddenly we were the biggest, best and fastest team in the local cub league.  A few dads would turn up to support and I was lucky that on one of the odd occasions that Grandad Harry Anthony, the ex-Notts County striker, was watching from the touchline when I managed to score.  Apparently I modestly celebrated with a one arm in the air salute similar to Alan ‘Sniffer’ Clark, the Leeds United striker.

To my shame I also remember having claimed to have scored a couple of goals at a game that Dad hadn’t managed to attend. I was rumbled that evening when he bumped into one of the other parents at some do or other. I got a ‘talking to’ about ‘telling fibs’ at breakfast the following morning and honestly don’t believe I’ve ever falsely claimed stardom since then.

If the football wasn’t on, and we weren’t being force marched around the shops, we could enjoy a good morning’s worth of viewing.  Anyone remember Zokko?  Something of a forerunner of Tiswas, it was a mix of magic (Ali Bongo), variety acts (plate spinners or tightrope walkers), a pop song and some second-rate animations or cartoons.  Zokko was a pinball machine with a face and robotic voice.  Tell me I didn’t dream this up….

If Zokko didn’t really do it for you there were always a couple of other good cartoons or a slapstick misadventure with Laurel and Hardy.  We still had problems tuning into ITV so I’d miss out on The Flintstones but could easily be amused on the BBC by Deputy Dawg and the ‘darned varmint’ Muskie, or Wacky Races.

Another Saturday morning activity involved a fortnightly excursion to the treasure trove of knowledge that was Beeston Library.  I’ve got to thank my parents for exposing us all to the brilliant resource that a local library is.  I might not have been that enthusiastic about being dragged away from the telly but once there it fed an addiction to historical adventure stories that morphed over time into science fiction.  My three little library cards were in constant use and I can still hear the click as the usually stern-looking librarian stamped the label with the return date.

By dinnertime we were all back together.  Jack would have been to ballet and Rick had probably just been dragged along wherever the rest of us had been.  It would be a simple meal; gammon, chips and peas comes to mind, before Dad and I would head off to ‘the match’ at the City Ground.  Much more elsewhere on the joys of being a Forest fan. (See 'Mist Rollin' in from the Trent in Chapter 9) but three hours later, elated or deflated, we’d reverse the journey and arrive home just in time for me to run round to Coopers the newsagent, buy the Football Post and get back for tea of sandwiches and cake.

Saturday evening viewing was entering into something of a BBC golden age.  You could roll from Juke Box Jury (ding or buzz and a first chance to hear next month’s potential chart toppers) into Doctor Who, who’d metamorphosed into Patrick Troughton by then with assistants Jamie, who wore a kilt, and Zoe who, clad in a miniskirt, was the first of a sequence of female sidekicks that caught my attention. 

Next up were The Monkees (‘Hey Hey’), Basil Brush (cheekiest grin on TV ‘Boom boom’) or Dixon (‘Evening All’) of Dock Green.  If I was in luck I might be allowed to stay up for Match of the Day although Forest hardly ever featured.  The Cup quarter-final win against Everton in 1967 was an exception that sticks in the memory; black and white images of an Ian Storey-Moore hat trick on a City Ground mud patch.

The normal evening routine could sometimes be enlivened if we had a ‘baby sitter,’ usually a teenage son or daughter of one or other of the families in the neighbourhood.  Mum and Dad rarely escaped for a night out but if they’d managed it, we were usually guaranteed an extra biscuit and at least half an hour’s extra time before heading upstairs.  I’m sure we didn’t muck them about too much but there was usually a requirement to check under the bed for monsters five times before it was safe to turn off the light.  My bedroom was above the alley which led to the back door and I’d try and stay awake listening for my parents’ return.

Sunday - If I ever gave any thought to what excitement the next day would have in store it still wouldn’t require much imagination.  We were still doomed to a regular church trip, although now being ten I’d been diverted on some Sundays into something called Pathfinders.  A bit like a Sunday school for elder children it was a last desperate attempt by the local church and parents to keep us enthused. Fat chance!  If they thought a bit of turgid parable analysis and a few prayers, sweetened by a couple of biscuits and squash, would go down any better than the main church service they were misguided.  The majority of us attended under sufferance although, funnily enough, John Whitcombe, one of our number ended up training as a vicar and is now the Bishop of Coventry.

At least by this time of the late Sixties there was something to look forward to during the afternoon. We now had a telly, on hire from Redifusion, and it could get ITV!  Straight after our usual roast dinner and the washing-up had been done (by now I was being forcibly apprenticed into the use of a tea towel) it would be time for Star Soccer and the opportunity to watch highlights of one of yesterday’s matches featuring a Midland club.  You rarely knew in advance which match they had chosen although there were usually some clues.  It definitely wouldn’t be a game that had been on BBC’s Match of the Day the night before.  On the other hand, it was quite a safe bet to expect a local derby featuring clubs from the Birmingham area.  Of course if you’d been at the City Ground and seen the cameras high up in the main stand then you knew you were in luck.  Great if we’d won but a penance if we’d lost.

Imprinted on my memory forever are the adverts for beer that accompanied the broadcast. ‘Beer at Home means Davenports’ went the song ‘That's the beer! Lots of cheer! The finest malt with hops and yeast, Turns a snack into a feast’ or the catch line for M&B’s ‘Brew 11 - for the men of the Midlands’ or the catchy jingle ‘A Double Diamond works wonders, works wonders … so drink one today’.

If we were over at Harry and Ethel’s the match would be followed by a compulsory board game.  ‘Snakes and Ladders’ had by now evolved into a more competitive Ludo, that would usually end in an argument before tea arrived on the dot at 4pm - guaranteed jam or ham sandwiches, homemade fruit tarts and canned peaches or apricots with some Carnation milk to mix into the syrup.  If we were over at Dud and Mim’s it was a similar pattern but the Victoria sponge cake was usually the highlight, and we’d hope that we’d be allowed to watch The Golden Shot before driving home.

Often there was a bedtime stay of execution if The World About Us was on BBC2.  Deemed suitably educational, we’d follow fascinated the monochrome undersea adventures of the crew of ‘The Calypso’ or watch a young David Attenborough fighting his way through dense jungle to film yet another wonder of the animal world.

As the decade drew to a close a new Sunday priority appeared.  It could be found at 5pm on 247 MW radio and marked the advent of a period of a few years when the latest singles charts assumed almost the same stature as the weekly football results.  Alan Freeman often lost out to a grandparent visit but when he’d won I’d be twiddling with the dial, trying to get a decent static-free signal, eagerly anticipating an upward rise of my current favourites.  There were plenty to choose from.  The six months between my 10th birthday in March and October, when the awful Sugar Sugar reached the top, included classic Beatles (The Ballard of… ,Get Back), Marvin Gaye (Heard it..), Stones (Honky Tonk Woman), Credence (Bad Moon).  At this time I was caught in a limbo zone. I still enjoyed ditties like The Scaffolds’ ‘Lily the Pink’ but was increasingly drawn to music with a rockier sound.  The Beatles bridged this divide despite Mum telling me that they’d gone ‘all hippy’ and she didn’t like their latest songs.

Time to move on; a lot can change in four years.

Saturday Night’s Alright…..1973

How does a 14-year-old occupy a Saturday in the early seventies?  Well, if you love sport, have supportive parents, and a school with teachers prepared to commit time at the weekends it’s easy.

No more sitting down with Jackie or Rick at breakfast.  It’s a gobbled DIY version followed by a quick scramble to get ready. ‘Mum - where’s my rugby socks? Dad I need some subs?’ and then a hurried forced march with Robbo round to the school to catch the bus if we were away, or meet up in the changing rooms if we were the hosts.  This was my peak rugby year - coached by the passionate, dictatorial, Welsh woodwork teacher, Dai Williams, we went undefeated for the entire season.  I can’t claim my performances as scrum-half really were pivotal in our success but at that age I was quick, could catch and throw a decent pass and that was good enough.  The more talented individuals carried the team and included a captain, Ian Dunbar, who was selected for England School Boys and Dick Spittal, a small full back, who could fearlessly bring down anyone twice his size.  There’ll be more on school sports in another chapter but on Saturdays, if it wasn’t rugby, it could be cross-country, in which I did seem to have some talent, or, if it was the summer term, we’d play cricket, in which my enthusiasm and aspirations tended to exceed my ability. 

Home in time for a bath before dinner.  Tepid communal showers after the match didn’t hold much appeal to self-conscious young teenagers.  It was better to soak in your own dirty hot water even if you’d be reprimanded later for leaving a grimy tide-line on the bath and a mucky towel.

Hopefully Mum and Dad had managed to do their Saturday shop during the morning, whilst somehow simultaneously transporting Jackie to her riding lesson and Rick to whatever he was up to.  This usually meant Dad was free to take me and Rick to the match if the Reds were at home.  Unfortunately Forest were now down in what was then Division Two so it was sometimes hard to get too excited about the prospect of losing to some other mediocre team.

The summer presented the option to head for Trent Bridge.  By 1973 I was a complete cricket nut and Robbo and I would catch the bus into town, run the mile to the ground and join a small group of like-minded mates to support Notts and enjoy the limited privileges that being junior season-ticket members granted us.  We weren’t allowed in the pavilion, steeped in tradition and history as it was, but could sit in any other stands or prowl the boundary in search of an autograph from a fielder, or use the outfield to play our own mini-matches with a tennis ball during the lunch and tea intervals.

If there was no match at the City Ground or Trent Bridge on a particular Saturday it was never a complete disaster. It just meant I’d be glued to Grandstand from Football Focus at lunchtime until the teleprinter at 5pm; often popping round to Robbo’s to combine viewing with a game of Subutteo.  Apart from the obligatory horse racing, which we hated, we’d absorb a constant stream of different sports - motor bike scrambling, five-nations rugby or the usual rugby league match with Eddie, maybe even Test Match cricket.  Or, if we were desperate, we’d flick over to ITV for the wrestling. Loafing around on the carpet where the Subbuteo match might be in progress we witnessed, live, some classic sporting moments of the year:

• the greatest try ever in the New Zealand v Barbarians match when Gareth Edwards  completed a mazy sequence of moves that had begun back deep inside the 25 yard area

• a world record 10,000m by the moustached, red-socked David Bedford, and ....

• a 1-0 win by the under-dogs Sunderland in the FA Cup final over Don Revie’s hated Leeds United.  Jim Montgomery’s miraculous save was to be re-enacted many times in park football in the following weeks.

After the usual race round to Cooper’s the newsagents to get the Football Post (by now my PB was under five minutes each way) my evening activities could go in one of three directions; a TV night with the family, a swimming gala, or occasionally a party.

It was classic Saturday night viewing on the BBC.   We’d roll from Dr Who, Sarah-Jane and the Brigadier saving Earth from the Cyber Men, via The Pink Panther or Tom and Jerry, and onto an hour of slapstick with Bruce and Anthea in The Generation Game.  We’d then settle down for the show section.  It might be Cilla, Mike Yarwood or the unbeatable Eric and ‘little Ern’ but the format would be reassuring familiar: a guest, a dance group, a pop band, a few sketches.  Morecambe and Wise with their ‘Play what I wrote’ and the cheerful ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ sign off are an abiding memory of a Saturday night in during the early seventies.

Whilst A Man Called Ironside protected the citizens of San Francisco from a variety of criminal low-life, it was time for supper.  Usually a plate of cream crackers or Ritz biscuits though I did go through an extended phase of really enjoying toast and dripping.  Of course the evening would be rounded off with Match of the Day and occasionally I’d hang around to watch Parkinson.

Such families Saturday evenings together were being threatened, however.  My swimming seemed to be progressing and the three sessions a week I was now doing with the local club, had resulted in selection for their competitive team.  This meant galas at various pools around the county or at towns up and down the M1 for inter-club events in the newly formed Motorway League.  Good fun for me but it usually meant either Mum or Dad had to come along as well and sit with the other parents on small plastic seats in a hot, humid atmosphere through the three or four hours of racing in which their child might feature for only a few minutes.  At this stage I’d only race a maximum distance of 200m and, because I was still very much on an improvement curve I’d generally do okay, despite always getting nervous beforehand.  The best bit was being part of the team, especially as my increasing success permitted a level of indulgence from the older swimmers, and I was able to hang around the edges of their enviable, self-assured sub-group, listening to their conversations about which girls they fancied or what album they’d be buying the following week.  Within another year or so I’d have leapfrogged them on swim performance but it was going to take longer to develop a similar level of misplaced swagger and bravado.

If we’d been ‘away’ for a gala the ride back on the team bus to Bramcote Pool was invariably entertaining.  Clear demarcation ensured the adults sat at the front with the younger kids behind them.  The older squad members occupied the rear seats and the rest of us tried to get as near to the back as could be tolerated.  This was where the action happened, where the sing-song was orchestrated, where the mucking about went on and where, for a few adventurous types, the snogging occurred, usually accompanied by all sorts of whistles and cheers.  I was in an odd limbo land, joining in with great enthusiasm with all the songs and trying to be part of the banter, but pretty clueless when it came to figuring out how to get to sit next to Heather Wilson (and what would I do if I did) or, as an alternative, why Veronica Fairley would rather talk to my mate Mick than me?

This dilemma would be repeated if the Saturday evening activity happened to be a party.  No problem going round to someone’s house or the village hall with a few of my friends, swilling down the sandwiches and crisps with some coke or lemonade and talking about sport or the latest single by Slade, The Who, The Faces  or the new guy on our scene David Bowie.  The problems started when beer, dancing or girls were involved.  How does a 14-year-old pick their way through this minefield?  More on this elsewhere but for the moment let’s just summarise as follows:

Beer - rely on someone else to bring a Party Seven and try not to spill your plastic cup on the host’s parent’s carpet.

Dancing - adopt a safety in numbers approach. Despite Mum’s efforts to show me how to do a basic ‘bop’ in a relaxed manner I was far from happy if isolated from a large group on a dance floor.  I’d happily jig around to the latest pop songs or classic party tracks although it wasn’t always a great selection.  We lads relied on Quo, Slade, T-Rex, Suzi Q, Elton John and the Stones to rescue us from the more popular, cringe worthy ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’ or something by the Osmonds, David Essex, David Cassidy, and Sweet or the dance of the time ‘The Monster Mash.’  I could only dream of a slow dance to a Roberta Flack or Diana Ross ‘smoocher’ with Sally Thomas, or, for that matter, any other girl off my top ten list from classmates or the swim team, but lack of confidence would keep me leaning on the wall or in the kitchen.

Girls - something was going on.  Why was I now noticing that the skinny, quiet kid who was at the back of the class in my first two years had actually developed a smiley, interesting personality, along with a few curves.  How could I get to sit closer and try and open a conversation on her favourite group or (less romantically) offer or request some help with last night’s homework?  Why did the girl who swam in the next lane suddenly look good in her Speedo?  Maybe she’d be ‘promoted’ to my lane in the next few weeks; maybe she wouldn’t have to rush off home straight after training.  What if she was in the team on Saturday? On the team bus even?  The problem was that I wasn’t sure how to proceed although the answer was the same as it always has been and always will be.  I just had to take a step forward and learn by trial and error, usually nudged along by some dodgy advice or misplaced encouragement from a mate.  It helped if one of the girl’s friends had dropped a positive hint but that really only ensured I wouldn’t fall at the first fence and what happened after the first move was still a big unknown.

Sundays had a new focus

One word can be sum up what came to represent an unwanted activity inserted into my weekend timetable: HOMEWORK.  It was an unwritten rule that I could do what I liked on Saturday provided that any outstanding homework was completed before tea time the following day.  It was deal I signed up to.  I’d read the sport pages in the Sunday Times and then retire to my bedroom, stick a tape into my rather basic cassette player and crack on. If it got chewed up I’d have to revert to the Noel Edmunds show on the transistor radio; not exactly my cup of tea but better than nothing.  Time allocation was the key: Math’s, French or a science subject were easy to allocate.  I could either do it or I couldn’t.  It was harder with the others to hit the right balance between writing too little, often the case in English, RK or History, or too much which I’d sometimes do in Geography, usually by copying straight out of the text book.  Hopefully it was all done and dusted by dinner time so that the afternoon could be devoted to watching Star Soccer, one-day cricket (where BBC2 would now show a game from the 40 over John Player League), or athletics.

If we weren’t hosting the grandparents, our tea had evolved into a slightly more adventurous salad, usually with tuna or ham, and some great home-made trifles or gateaux’s.  Suitably fuelled we’d often have a family board game or I’d head for my bedroom to read my current science fiction choice.  The cassette would be on again, playing whatever I’d managed to record even if the flippin’ DJ had butted in and spoilt the first or last few bars.

It was strange but I seemed to be going through a transition in music.  The BBC weekly charts that I’d eagerly awaited only a year or two before had replaced Alan Freeman with an unknown DJ called Tom Browne and moved to mid afternoon.  I’d also started to recognise that a big chunk of the singles chart was a load of sentimental dross that did virtually nothing to get me going or excited.  The wasted effort in listening to hour after hour of the same recycled hits in the desperate hope that something that I liked might be played was becoming increasingly less appealing.

I’d been enlightened by the likes of Robbo and Nico plus a few of the older lads in the swim club that there was a whole world of new and exciting music out there just waiting to be discovered.  A world where you didn’t have to be told what you were going to listen to; a world where you could choose what you really wanted to spend your limited pocket money on; a world of albums, super group and live music.   Whilst I still had an ingrained loyalty to Thursday’s TOTP (Pans People or Legs & Co might be wearing something slightly revealing), by the end of 1973 I was ready to jump with both feet into the different scene; one championed by John Peel and Bob Harris and inhabited by ‘real’ musicians with odd or inspiring names like Ziggy, Led Zeppelin, Wishbone Ash, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music and many others.

However for now I reckon we’ve spent long enough looking back at some weekend snap-shots from my first 15 years.  It’s time for a change.

Let’s revisit the family heritage and consider the different backgrounds my parents experienced growing up and the somewhat fortunate events that brought them together.

Images removed to avoid copyright risk:

Ricicles, Top Cat, Green Shield Stamps, City Ground in the Sixties, Cyber men and Zoe, Basil Brush, Morecambe and Wise, Party Seven beer.

Just paste those items into Google images for a brief nostalgia trip.