INTRODUCTION

It may seem odd that I, a person of no particular note, should write an autobiography: perhaps even conceited and self-indulgent.  Maybe, but I make no apology.  Instead, I offer three reasons for setting down my life story. 

          Firstly, and most important, I’ve heard it said that memory is a “poor custodian of fact”.  I find that true, especially as my memory is increasingly best described by the computer term “random access”.  This had some influence on my decision to take early retirement, at the age of fifty, and try a different way of life. My father lived to be 98, but that was no guarantee of longevity for me nor, if it came to it, that anything much worth recording would happen from there on.  So, I began to record things while I could still remember them! 

          To me, life is a bit like a kaleidoscope: a limited number of bits of coloured glass are capable of producing a near infinite number of patterns, according to how you look through it.  I am an ‘ordinary’ person, but I believe that there is something extraordinary to be found in the most ordinary of lives.  I have four wonderful children, from whose upbringing I was separated by divorce; I wanted them to see the patterns in the kaleidoscope of my life as I saw them; to have my story, in my words, unfiltered by the experiences, interpretations and recollections of others.  I wanted them to know about my childhood, my upbringing, as well as those parts of my adult life of which they know little.  I also have a growing band of grandchildren who may not know me as adults.  They may not ask questions while I or their parents are able to answer them. I may not remember people or events to answer them if they do.   Certainly, I feel I have had an interesting life.  Others tell me that they think I’ve done interesting things, seen interesting places and met interesting people.  For me it has been frequently funny, sometimes painful, often challenging, but rarely boring.  

Secondly, when I began writing this story in 1997, after retiring from a long professional career, I felt I was at a place where I could view that career, what led up to it, and the influences it had on my life, with a little more perspective.  I wrote about it, then put down my ‘e-pen’.  Suddenly, it seemed, there was 20 years more (and counting).  My working life did not come to a ‘full stop’, there were new twists and turns, and forays into new places, new people, and new work. I wanted to record the best of that too, while I could remember, and so I started writing again.

Thirdly, and simply, I like to write and to play with words.  Over the years I have dabbled in poetry, lyrics, short stories, plays and TV scripts.  I even tried writing a novel, but it remains unfinished.  Although little of my scribbling has seen public scrutiny I hope that my children, my grandchildren, and any other reader, will enjoy my words as well as what they try to convey.  Over my life I hope I’ve been sentient, and I enjoy thinking.Though voicing my thoughts has, from time to time, got me into trouble of one sort or another, on balance it has been worth it to me.  I hope that, by the end, anyone reading this will think so too.

This story is in three parts.  The first deals with my life in a, more-or-less, chronological way up to the point of my early retirement in 1997.  The second takes that history forward to full and final retirement from paid employment in 2012, and then into the years beyond. 

The third part is separate and stands alone.  It attempts to draw some conclusions, and may clarify the ethical and intellectual framework of my story.  I have made this memoir as accurate as I can, but I am sure there will be errors of chronology, fact or interpretation, but they are not deliberate.  A few names have been changed, to protect an individual’s privacy and spare un-necessary discomfort.  There must be accidental omissions which alter the history.  If anyone wonders why I haven’t mentioned a person or event it’s almost certainly, simply, because I forgot.  It may also be because it, or they, did not register with me as important as it did to others involved or, despite the best of intention, that I unconsciously self-edited something uncomfortable. 

Finally, I accept that some people will have different recollections and perceptions about the events I do describe.  I haven’t tried to justify anything in my life, I’ll leave judgement to others.  Hopefully, though, it helps make sense of the patterns in my kaleidoscope.  If it does, I’d be glad, but remember it is my story – and that none of it may be true for you.

“What was true, and what was not, depends on whose version of truth that you got.” (ANON)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Relatively late in life I realised what made me ‘tick’ and to accept, even embrace, that the ‘tick’ was lopsided.  From time-to-time therapy has helped, but my insights (such as they are) aren’t often laser-like, and I’m still caught out by my own feelings or perceptions.  I realise that my thought processes, and consequent actions, must sometimes have appeared completely incomprehensible to others.  What’s more, I know that events and experiences that have been hugely significant to me have not even have registered in the consciousness of those with whom I shared them; the obverse must also be true.  So, to anyone who I have inadvertently wronged, in life or in these pages, I sincerely apologise.

The truth is that I have lived my life in “the fifth percentile”: a place unknown to the other 95% of humankind.  I don’t know why; my brain must’ve been “wired” that way.  I describe it like this: there are those who see the trees, there are those who see the wood, and there are some who even manage to see both.  These days I might be described as “neurally diverse”: for much of my life I’ve tended to see only the spaces between the trees.  Where some see pattern and order, I see incongruity.  If there are two ways of approaching or interpreting a problem I will, almost always, take the less direct and obvious one.  It’s not much of an exaggeration to say I can find ambiguity in the words ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, and so I often ask for clarification in things that others find crystal clear.  This has sometimes been a good thing and, in my working life at least, an apparent ability to think ‘outside the box’, or to question accepted wisdom, has been both helpful and appreciated.  However, there must have been many times when it would have been better to “stop faffing about and just get on with it”.  To live with somebody whose mind works obliquely, and apparently randomly, takes a particular kind of person.  Misinterpretation and miscommunication probably contributed to the failure of my first marriage, so I was blessed to later find and then marry Judy.  She understood me more than anyone I have ever known and, more to the point, managed to put up stoically with what still bemused and frustrated her.  I was grateful for her patience and guidance, especially when the wood, the trees, and the spaces in between, got confused.  Her gentle good nature was the safest of harbours in often troubled waters, and her ability and willingness to put up with my idiosyncrasies often steadied the ship. When she died in 2021 we had been married almost 33 years, which went by in a blink of the eye.  

I am also indebted to countless others: family (especially my children), friends and acquaintances that have enriched my life.  A Paul Simon song has these words: 

“When you least expect it, and you’re unprepared,

somebody will come, and lift you higher,

and your burdens will be shared”.

As well as Judy I have, from time to time, been lucky to know other people who have shared my burdens and ‘lifted me higher’.  I hope their part in my life will become clear in the telling of the tale.  I thank them all.

Andrew Gold © Saltburn, Ross-shire 2024

I was born in The Whittington Hospital (a.k.a. St Mary’s) in Archway, north London, at about 5.30 p.m. on Sunday 11 August 1946.  By all accounts I had a shock of bright red hair (long since faded to pale strawberry blonde generously fringed with white).  Mum used to say I was born in time for tea and never stopped eating thereafter: a liberty (but true).  Though nobody has ever called me a bastard, not to my face anyway, I have to concede that it is technically true since Mum and Dad were not legally married until a year after my birth.  My mother, Margaret, known to all as Peggy, was 28 at the time and had given birth to my brother David, in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, almost five years before.  My father, 40 when I arrived, was a well-known ‘Dixieland’ jazz musician and bandleader.  He had previously changed his name, for ‘professional reasons’, from Hyman Goldberg to Harry Gold.  If he had not formalised the change by Deed Poll, in the summer of 1940, I would have been Andrew Goldberg, not Andrew Gold.  To me they were Mum and Dad. I suppose ‘Mother and ‘Father’ might have been used for admonition, but otherwise it seemed ‘posh’ and I learned that we considered ourselves working class.  Of course, I had no understanding of class or fame as a small child, or the role they would play in shaping my life.

For the first 28 years of my life ‘home’ was Holborn, in the West Central district of London.  Mum and Dad rented a small second-floor flat in a tenement block called Dartmouth Chambers, above some shops at No 8 Theobalds Road W.C.1..  It is located between Kings Mews and the corner of the Theobalds Road junction with Grays Inn Road, overlooking the Inns of Court.  It may have been solicitors’ chambers at one time but became, and remain to this day, a ‘block’ of five private flats. 

Dartmouth Chambers

There was no lift, and the common staircase was lined with green faïence tiles that ran with condensation in the winter.  There were twelve or thirteen stone steps to each flight, and four flights in total to the landing that led to the front door of our flat, No. 3, and No. 2 adjacent (unaccountably there was no flat No. 1).  Each landing had a high ceiling, lit by a single, dim, and un-shaded light bulb which cast deep shadows, including those from the hanging fronds of peeling paint.  The very few windows on the stairs only faced onto a light well, so barely relieved the gloom for most of the year.  The half-landings had other doors that gave access to external stores for the flats or, closed off, to other rooms subsumed into the adjoining building.  For a small child the stairs were not a place to tarry, especially at night. Who knew what lurked in the shadows or behind the mysterious doors?  Of special terror was the basement, where the dustbins and coal were stored.  Occasionally I was sent down with refuse, or to fetch a bucket of coal, into the damp and even more badly lit cellar.  The shadowy cobwebbed recesses scuttled and squeaked, and I was scared.  Even just passing the closed door to the cellar engendered anxiety about who, or what, might suddenly spring out and “get me”.  As I got older traversing the stairs became more of a sport, as I tried to cover each flight in the fewest possible strides, or used the cast iron balusters instead of the steps and, of course, slid down the polished hardwood banisters. 

My old “stamping ground” was Holborn W.C.1.

David and I occupied the only bedroom, so Mum and Dad slept on a ‘Put-u-Up’ (forerunner of today’s sofa-bed) and, later, a double divan in the living room.  This arrangement continued until we left for homes of our own.  As a very small child I would actually climb inside the closed ‘Put-u-Up’ and hide, but never got sat on as I recall!  In my own bed I would lay at night and watch the reflections of passing traffic crossing the high, plaster-corniced, ceiling; the streetlights somehow picked up colour from the vehicles and cast it in fan shapes that radiated out from the top of the dark green curtains.  I could always tell the buses because of the red sweep across the ceiling; it was strangely comforting.  It was not until I had a home of my own that I fully appreciated the sacrifice Mum and Dad had made for us in giving up the only bedroom.  In the early years the floors of the bedroom, and the kitchen and bathroom, were covered in highly polished linoleum, an ideal surface for stocking-footed ‘skating’.  Only the living room and hallway had carpet, and that not fitted.  In those days there was no such thing as a fitted kitchen either, the largest piece of kitchen furniture was, what we called, the ‘dresser’.  The dresser was a war-time ‘Utility’ item made from painted pinewood, with a sheet zinc working surface.  It had a row of shallow cupboards at the top (in, and on, which were stored dry goods like sugar and flour, and some plates).  There was a large storage space beneath the worktop, with metal sliding doors that had Bakelite handles, for pots and pans.  There was a row of hooks under the eye-level cupboards on which were hung cups and other ready-access items. The kitchen sink was initially a deep fireclay ‘Butler’-type, with a wooden draining board, and supplied with hot water from a wall mounted ‘Ascot’ gas-fired ‘geyser’.  From the ceiling, above a working fireplace, hung a wooden airing rack which was squeakily hauled up on a pulley and, for much of my early life, activity in the kitchen was often conducted under a canopy of drying clothes.  Cooking was done on a gas stove, not in the kitchen but a tiny space no more than a change in direction of the hallway between the kitchen and the front door.  We had a long, narrow, bathroom with a large cast-iron bath, and a W.C. with a high-level cast-iron cistern flushed by pulling on a facetted rubber handle attached to a four-foot length of chain.  The washbasin had its own Ascot ‘geyser’, but hot water for the bath came from an exposed tank adjacent, heated by a large and unprotected gas ring, with a metal chimney that went through the wall.  The lighting of the gas was a somewhat nerve-wracking affair as the wrong amount of gas, or a delay in ignition, led to a loud “whoomf” which was pretty scary in such a small room.  The north-facing bathroom was cold in the winter, but the flat had an open coal fire in the living room as well as the kitchen and, later, gas fires and a portable (and very effective) ‘Paul Warmer’ paraffin heater.  The summers were cool indoors due to the massive old brick walls.  From the front windows, including our bedroom, it was possible to see into the formal gardens of the Inns of Court, where many solicitors and barristers had (and still have) their chambers: an almost rural outlook, right in the centre of London.

In my early years road traffic was very different from that which thromboses in London’s arteries now, and many of the main roads were cobbled.  There were still horse-drawn milk carts and those of the ubiquitous ‘rag-and-bone’ men.  Brewery drays (now mainly exhibits at country shows, fayres and the like) restocked the ‘Yorkshire Grey’ pub next door, and ice was also delivered this way, in huge sacking-covered blocks carried on the backs of straining men.  The gentle ‘clip-clop’ of Shire horse hooves on the road outside, occasional rivers of urine, and the attendant smell of manure was a part of everyday city life.  On occasional Sunday mornings, the Household Cavalry would also ride by on exercise.  There were still trams; the withdrawal of the trams, and consequent removal of the tracks, eventually led to the overlaying of cobbles with tarmac and arrival of the trolley-bus.  Other sounds of city life changed too: police cars, fire engines and ambulances had bells, not sirens, and the police (who were very much more in evidence on foot patrol than nowadays) had whistles to attract attention, not radios.  There was a discernible lessening of traffic at weekends and Sunday was very quiet.  It was even possible to eat at the very wide window ledges, using them as a standing table, in relative peace and without the food being covered in smuts of pollution; it was a pleasure to sometimes watch the world go by on warm summer days and ‘people watching’ remains, a great pastime.

          Before school began, at the age of 5, I spent most of my time close by my Mum.  When I was born my brother David was just starting school so, during the day at least, I enjoyed (if that can be said) the life of an only child.  I qualify this because, later, I came to believe that it resulted in a degree of loneliness, a lack of confidence, and an inability to mix.  Dad was often away with his band and, when not touring, he would work late into the night at one gig or another, so he was not as much of a presence as might have been the case in a family whose dad had a ‘9 to 5’ job.  When he was working late we had to be careful not to disturb his daytime sleep, and when he was awake he often wrote or orchestrated music – also not to be interrupted.  However, my earliest recollection concerns him: me, in my ‘nightie’, rooting about in his tool cabinet which was kept under the big geyser in the bathroom.  I must have been about 18 months old.  When he was not working Dad was willing, more than able, to do DIY and I was fascinated to watch him and, evidently, eager to get my hands on the tools.  Mum always did the decorating, but Dad did much of the “modernising” in the flat, like rewiring, even though Mum thought, correctly, that he occasionally ‘did a Heath Robinson’.  Mum and Dad had developed a good relationship with the landlord, Mr Starling.  Mr Starling was, in reality, the landlord’s agent, for the true landlord was a trust: ‘The Trustees of H.B. Atkinson (deceased)’.  Mr Starling was a small dapper moustachioed man, with a trilby hat, raincoat and leather briefcase.  He collected the reasonable rent in person, to some extent kept reasonable by both Mum and Dad doing odd jobs, like cleaning the stairs, in the building as a whole.  When I moved into my own flat in the same block, I was (together with my first wife Lesley) to fill the same ‘handyman’ role – but more of that later. 

Also relatively absent from my upbringing were my grandparents.  My maternal grandfather, George Alexander, died of stomach cancer on V.E. day, the year before I was born, and my maternal grandmother, Annie McLellan Taylor Alexander, lived 200 miles away in Yorkshire.  My paternal grandparents were Jewish and both alive: ‘Zeyde’, the Yiddish word for grandfather, was a tailor and had a shop at 152 Eversholt Street, just north of Euston Station.  He was really called Samuel Goldberg, and he and his wife Hetty, who we called ‘Bubbe’ (grandma in Yiddish) lived over, and behind, the shop with a small brown dog called ‘Chum’.  Although I remember visiting them there, and playing with a box of material cuttings under the workbench, I don’t think I went there often, or stayed a long time when I did visit.  Later in my youth Zeyde left Bubbe, when in his seventies, and went to live with my Aunt Sylvia, and her husband Roy, in Snodland, Kent.  I discovered, much later, that Bubbe drank heavily, and this caused the failure of her marriage and a split between Sylvia and her siblings.  After they split contact was limited and we hardly saw Zeyde again, and saw Bubbe rarely, though usually at Christmas.  Dad had learned a good deal about tailoring from his father, and as a consequence I learned how to press trousers correctly, from watching him doing his ‘working’ dinner-suit from time to time, and how to sew on a button properly. 

Mum was a great homemaker and cook, and could knit, darn and sew too – which was just as well, since David and I continually needed bigger, or mended, jumpers, socks darned or the frayed collars and cuffs of our shirts turned.  Although born and raised in Bradford, Yorkshire, her parents were Scots and she inherited the best of the stereotyped characteristics of those peoples.  She knew the value of money and education, she prized her family and would brook neither dishonesty, intolerance nor injustice.  She was down to earth, warm, physical and funny.  Together, they made a good team and shared strong political beliefs that meant my childhood was peopled by political activists (like Jack Dash, a leader of the London dock workers), was punctuated by meetings and enlivened by demonstrations.  I always looked forward to the annual May Day parade (now a historical footnote – even in Russia) partly for the colour and excitement, and partly because Dad’s band often played at the head of the march or on a ‘float’!  

Left: David, Dad, ‘Zeyde’ (with Chum) and me in Trafalgar Square circa 1954

Right: ‘Zeyde’ Samuel Goldberg outside his shop at 152 Eversholt Street circa 1947

          It was only very much later that I realised how much of my life was influenced by Mum’s roots.  Hogmanay was as important as Christmas; Scottish humour was appreciated. we watched “The White Heather Club” on TV (a Scottish Country music programme), my Mum sang “I belong to Glasgae”, and when I hurt myself Mum would say “Wheesht”.  These were some of many invisible strands that tied her, and us, to Scotland.  By the time I was born the immediate family had come through the Second World War, and the blitz of London, unscathed.  Mum and Dad were, in any case, often out of London following Dad’s work, although they managed to be in other cities where bombs fell – London was not the only city to be savaged.  David, who came along after the Luftwaffe had been re-assigned to the bombing of Russia, would sit on the wide window ledges and watch Allied ‘planes en-route to raid Germany, but he was still at risk: he was blown over by an exploding ‘doodle-bug’ V1 flying bomb.  He was later to say that his memory of air raids, and the eerie siren, was that they meant a cuddle, as he was scooped up in a blue blanket with a rabbit motif in the corner, and carried to a place of safety.  I, on the other hand, grew up with the aftermath, which was fairly benign apart from the rationing of sweets (a singular trial for a little boy who never stopped eating).  Dad had been excused military service due to badly misshapen, and extraordinarily flat, feet but one of his brothers, Sid, had been killed in Lebanon by a ‘Vichy’ grenade.  It was detailed precognition of the notification of this event that confirmed Dad’s belief in the spirit world. 

Holborn was pockmarked by “bomb-sites”, places that had been cleared by falling bombs, and even now the smell of old plaster, brick dust and old or rotting timber remains powerfully evocative of those times.  The bomb-sites were supposed to be ‘no-go’ areas for us children: what a hope!  I suppose Mum and Dad were more worried about unexploded bombs or collapses of unstable masonry than the risk of cuts and grazes but, to us, they were just acres of adventure playground.  Quite late into my pre-teens they also provided some amusement as the, then, Civil Defence Corps used them to practise putting out the fires of a nuclear holocaust with stirrup pumps and a bucket of water!  Even today it is quite easy to walk the length of Theobalds Road and judge, from the post war buildings, where a stick of bombs fell along the road.  One of the un-bombed parts of the area was home to “Mick the Barber”.  Italian Mick Schiavo, and his son Raymond, ran a barber’s shop adjacent to a huge bomb site off Red Lion Square and, later, in Lambs Conduit Street.  A short back-and-sides (or, if you were Dad, singeing with a lighted taper) and a squirt of scented water from a chrome-plated vessel to ‘slick’ our hair, was the order of the day.  I never understood why, at the age I was, Raymond always discreetly asked if I “needed anything for the weekend”.  In those days barbers sold condoms, but I imagine he would have been surprised if I had said “Yes”.  At that age a good weekend consisted of half a crown to spend, a bag of sweeties and a couple of comics! 

          We had, of course, no television then.  Much later Mum and Dad rented sets, first from Radio Rentals and later D.E.R. Instead, the wireless (as radio was then called) was our portal to other worlds.  Freshly scrubbed and warm in a tartan dressing gown, with long tassel-ended braided cord belt, I huddled up to the radiogram for “Journey into Space” or “Dick Barton” (the detective) and, especially, “The Goon Show”.  Much has been written about the Goon Show and the radical, anarchic, men who created it – sadly now all dead.  Because many of the scripts were based on war-time stories, or had war-time references, perhaps only those who lived through that time, and perhaps those touched by a little insanity themselves, will now fully appreciate the effect of the jokes, scripts and references.  Milligan, Sellers, Secombe and (briefly) Bentine were completely, unpredictably, surreal.  It is perhaps not realised how much of their humour is still, sixty years later, in our lives, both perceptual and linguistic.  For example, they coined the term “dreaded lurgi”, meaning some ghastly illness, and using the word “steaming” as a derisory adjective e.g. “You steaming great nit” – is another one of theirs.  Children’s radio was dominated by ‘Children’s Favourites’, hosted by ‘Uncle Mac’, and ‘Listen with Mother’.  ‘Children’s Favourites’ was an hour long record programme on Saturday morning, and I especially liked to hear the ‘story’ records, such as the adventures of “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and the sad demise of the “Three Little Fishes” that Frankie Howerd recalled “swam and swam right over the dam”, against their mother’s pleading advice, and to their implied grisly end.  Other favourite story records from that period were ‘Tubby the Tuba’, ‘Sparky’s Magic Piano’ and ‘Peter and the Wolf’.  Looking back, it seems a lot of our favourite stories had a dark side.

Speaking of steaming, my childhood was firmly rooted in the steam-railway age and, due to Dad’s work and Mum’s northern roots, we saw many miles of the rail network pulled by magical fire-breathing monsters.  Holborn is within walking distance of three major London rail termini: Kings Cross, St. Pancras and Euston. So, when I was old enough to venture out on my own, I would go down to one or other of the stations to see the, then, famous A4 class engines such as ‘Mallard’, ‘Silver Fox’ and ‘Sir Nigel Gresley’ (named after the designer of the A4).  They were wonderfully streamlined, and Mallard still holds the world’s speed record for a steam drawn train: 126 mph.  I say ‘then famous’ because now only railway enthusiasts have even heard of them.  My only discomfort was the crossing of open girder bridges, ‘criss-cross bridges’ I called them, which somehow terrified me.  On longer journeys we would buy, or have provided for us by Mum and Dad, small books from a series called ‘I-Spy’ which both entertained and educated us as we tried to observe, identify, and tick off the objects and sights along the way.  I tried to estimate the speed of the train by counting off the trackside distance markers and

A4 Class Locomotive ‘Kingfisher’

was fascinated by the technology, for example the process of taking on water for the engine’s steam boiler.  It was scooped from a trough in the centre of the track, without stopping.  We were also able, through Dad’s income, to travel occasionally by Pullman train.  These trains were ‘limited stop’, the equivalent of first class throughout, and based on an American idea for sleeping cars developed by a Mr George Pullman in the mid-nineteenth century.  The carriages were unlike any of the other railway rolling stock and were painted brown and cream, often each with the name of a woman or a flower on the side, and the windows in the entrance doors were a huge oval shape. Though not sleeping trains in Britain, every seat had a table, usually arranged in two facing pairs (four seats to a table), on which stood a brass lamp.  The seats were covered in plush brocade, with antimacassar headrests.  Food and drink was served, throughout the train, at the starched white-clothed tables by equally starched white-coated waiters.  Even the 55 minute trip on the “Brighton Belle” from Victoria allowed time for a great treat: tea and a huge freshly toasted tea-cake with butter.  I can’t remember how the fares worked in general, but I do recall that the Pullman fare to Brighton was the standard fare plus a supplement of one shilling to travel on ‘The Belle’.   I think that, in some way, these trips to stations and occasional rides on trains fanned a lifelong desire to travel, to see what is just a bit further up the road, both actually and metaphorically.  Apart from the wireless we had a few books, our own imaginations, and that wonderful institution the Saturday Morning pictures (Cinema was too ‘posh’ a word and the Americanism, ‘Movies’, had not really arrived).  Those whose childhood has been exclusively in the television and video age will scarcely believe that we queued every Saturday morning to have, for sixpence (and then a shilling), 1½ hours of cartoons and a “cliff-hanger” serial that ensured our presence in the queue the next week.  I say we had books, but that should not be taken to mean that we owned books in any quantity: in fact we had no bookcase or shelves as such.  Dad had a desk, made of oak with a drop leaf writing surface inlaid with worn leather, the ends of which had just four short shelves.  The books they permanently contained were, almost exclusively, musical or political, and I grew up in the presence of ‘Das Kapital’, and other left-wing works, rather than literature.  We did, however, have an atlas and Mum would take me on imaginary journeys to romantic places; places that she (and we) would later really visit.  Rather, my source of books was our excellent local library, in Theobalds Road.  Completed in 1960, it is described by the Twentieth Century Society as a “milestone” building and it had everything: books, periodicals, records (and later films) and you could even borrow works of art for up to 3 months!  It also had a periodicals reading room, which in winter smelled a bit of B.O. because it was also used by down-and-outs trying to keep warm. 

Holborn Library in Theobalds Road

I went often, to feed my nascent interest in aviation by reading “Commercial Aviation Weekly”. Built on one of the bombed sites, and only 100 yards away, I visited as often as three times a week for my allocated maximum of six volumes (three fiction and three non-fiction) with a little coloured card ticket holder for each ticket that was removed from the books you chose.  My preferred choice of reading, even as a child, was non-fiction.  Whether this reflected Mum and Dad’s own values concerning betterment and education I cannot say, but my only recollections of written fiction as a child are of Dickens and Kipling, the latter I used to read to Mum on the very rare occasions that she was ill in bed.  Whether it was the quality of my reading I don’t know, but I don’t think we ever got to the end of “Rikki Tikki Tavi” because she always fell asleep!  Later I became aware that Mum and Dad both had a penchant for crime fiction, by writers such as Ellery Queen and Ed McBain, a genre that has never been of much interest to me, with very few exceptions, except in film or television. 

          We did have a continuous supply of daily newspapers.  The News Chronicle, Evening News and Daily Worker (later the Morning Star) were supplemented by The Observer on Sundays.  David and I also had our comics: the Eagle, Knockout, Beano and Dandy were all sold from a kiosk that was erected close by our street front door.  On a weekday we could watch from the window to see the late editions being delivered, before scuttling down the stairs and back again with the “Late Final”, the smell of fresh ink still warm and strong as the flat was relatively near Fleet Street, where all the main London papers were then published.  Discussion of “issues”, whether party political or simply political, was the backdrop to my daily life and extended into our wider family, many of whom were politically active.  For example, Aunt Martha (Mum’s older sister) had married a trade union official and eventually became one of the first women to hold the office of Lord Mayor in Sheffield, Labour of course.  Aunt Janet, another of Mum’s sisters, was a member of the Independent Labour Party and eventually married the leader of the Labour council of St Pancras Borough – John Lawrence.  John, a one-time “Bevan Boy” sent down the mines during WW2, famously (some would say infamously) raised the ‘Red Flag’ over the St. Pancras town hall one May Day, got booted out of the Labour party for his pains and eventually imprisoned for political related action.  Dad was, I later learned, a sometime member of the Communist Party (as was I very briefly).  Our ‘phone was therefore tapped from time to time, and our mail ‘intercepted’, so it is hardly surprising that I grew up with a strong anti-establishment cynicism, and distrust of Government: another thread carried into my adult life.       

          My childhood summers always seemed long and sunny, and we regularly visited parks, the zoo, and even spent whole days at our local open-air swimming pool, the ‘Oasis’.  Central London was, and still is, blessed with a number of parks and other open spaces, the nearest of which was Coram’s Fields on Guildford Street.  Coram’s Fields was known to us as ‘The Foundling’ because Thomas Coram, a Dorsetshire shipwright and philanthropist, had built a hospital for foundling (abandoned) children there in 1741.  ‘The Foundling’ was several acres of grass, playground equipment, football pitches, a large paddling pool and low Georgian buildings – all safely enclosed by high cast iron railings and walls.  In those days it was quite normal to go off for the day without adult supervision, as there seemed to be none of the fear of abduction or violence against children that prevails today.  At least, if there were, the fear of it was never transmitted to me except as unexplained general advice to “not take sweeties from strangers”.  The worst one could expect was scuffed shoes (a near capital offence in our house), ripped clothes or a grazed knee.  In the school holidays the grounds were supervised; indeed things were organised to entertain and, dare I say, educate children.  Throughout my childhood ‘The Foundling’ was a place of fun and adventure where I could play with my friends and, later, I took my own children there.  Nowadays an adult can’t get into the Foundling unless accompanied by a child!  A very special treat was a day trip to somewhere outside London, or a voyage along the Thames on a pleasure boat.  Mum always made food for these adventures, she would never buy food out.  Obviously this was partly for reasons of economy but also, I think, because she recognised that the food available was poor – “that muck”, she called it.  And here, I think, is another strand that has followed me through my adult life.  Amongst my earliest recollections are of a particular attitude to food.  I did not realise (what child does?) that the way we lived was not the way everyone else lived.  With Dad coming from an east-end Jewish family, many of the things we routinely ate were of Jewish influence or origin.  We had Latkes, both savoury and sweet (the latter at Pessach – Passover), Gefilte fish (which I never ate, but Dad loved), Matzos, Salt Beef with Chraine (a beetroot and horseradish sauce), Chicken Soup and, of course, Chicken Liver paté.  Dad would even eat the chicken’s feet, and most of the giblets…yuk.  There were special ‘breads’ too: Cholla (a sweet, plaited, highly glazed loaf), Rye bread with caraway seeds and Baegels (pronounced Bygles in our house).  All of these regularly graced our table, often mixed with other, non-Jewish, dishes.  The appreciation of such things also spread into our extended, non-Jewish family: it became a standing joke that my cousin, Martin Goffe, would appear at the door to Mum & Dad’s flat, excited and breathless, and say “Hello Auntie Peggy, got any Matzos?”  Now, many of these dishes have passed into the world community, their origins, perhaps, un-appreciated.

Despite the high fat content of some of these traditional dishes Dad, in particular, had an almost pioneering interest in what we now call health food: he and Mum were vegetarians for a long time when I was growing up.  We ate nut cutlets, drank vegetable juice, took Biochemic salts and other supplements for minor ailments, and visited an osteopath rather than seek orthodox medical treatment for some illnesses.  That is not to say that Mum and Dad eschewed orthodox medicine completely, indeed our local GP, Dr ‘Joe’ Naftalin, was called for the routine, and sometimes more serious, childhood diseases.  Dr Naftalin, a Scot, was occasionally peremptory in manner, and both his surgery and waiting room in Gray’s Inn Road were claustrophobic and dark, but I found him mostly kind and efficient.  Perhaps Mum and Dad’s ‘alternative’ attitude was as much formed by a tradition of ‘home cures’ as it was by the lack of a National Health Service until two years after my birth: calls to the Doctor would have been costly before then.  (Note: those in the medical profession today who proselytise the benefits of private medicine should consider that if we have to pay for medical treatment we might chose more, not less, of other remedies and therapies they so despise).  National Health dentistry, when it came, was something else: it bordered on butchery in my youth.  I think the first dentist I suffered under was Mr Levy, and in my mind’s eye I can see the surgery now.  Near Bloomsbury Square, it held the instruments of torture – including a mechanical drill which was slow and grinding by comparison with today’s high speed, air driven, technology.  There was no preventative dentistry then, so I think that my relatively poor dental health, especially up to 20 years of age or so, directly results from the fear of remedial visits to Mr Levy.  Nowadays technology, training and techniques, are vastly different, and a much higher level of awareness about dental health has meant that my own children have few, if any, fillings into their middle age. 

Immediately post-war, fruit was quite scarce because much of it was imported.  It was a rare treat to have a whole piece of fruit to oneself, especially an orange or banana.  More commonly I would sit next to Mum when she made apple pie, and scavenge the peel of the cooking apples that fell in long, curly, strings onto the kitchen table, and dip it into a dish of caster sugar.  Much later I found my own solution to the imbalance between my desire and availability by getting a Saturday job in the local greengrocers: sorting greengages in the basement – “one for you, one for me”!  Sixty or more years on, fresh fruit is still very important to me and, perhaps, is a comfort food that perhaps harks back to those times.  In all honesty, I cannot say that I felt deprived of anything material in my childhood though the relative ‘absence’ of Dad had its impact. 

While Mum was a convinced atheist all her life, Dad had other, shall we say esoteric, beliefs: he was a spiritualist, at least of a kind.  In his own autobiography, “Gold, Doubloons and Pieces of Eight” he refers to some of his own spiritualist experiences; when he was younger he was quite heavily involved and attended séances, even taking me on occasion.  He was frightened off by something, of which he never spoke, but retained his belief in another, unseen, world in which the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ continues after our physical death.  I have never been able to reconcile his obviously adventurous, and open, intellect with some of his more rigid attitudes, but I share his belief in a spirit, if not spiritual, world.  He had, I think, been shaken out of an attachment to more mainstream religion as a teenager, by discovering his father breaking the most holy of Jewish fasts, Yom Kippur, hiding in their attic and eating fish!  Such hypocrisy coloured the attitudes of both my parents to religion.  Until I started writing this book, I had not really thought about other influences from the Jewish culture and traditions that affected my life, and remain with me despite lack of any observance on my part but, of course, they are there and make me, in part, who and what I am.  Not least of the influences would be in the arena of humour, for I grew up with an appreciation of that particular kind of self-deprecating, ironic and neurotic humour that is so typically Jewish, and of the art of such comedians and writers as Woody Allen.  Into my vocabulary came words that, like the food, have also passed into the mainstream of the wider English speaking world: words such as Schlep, Schmuk, Megillah, Putz, Mensch and Drek, although not littering my everyday conversation, are there, mostly understood, and occasionally used – even by my children.   

I recall going by bus to “Petticoat Lane” market on a Sunday, just to buy pickled herring, Vienna sausages or get freshly baked Black Bread, Rye bread (with or without caraway seeds) or Cholla.  Then, the market called “The Lane” was not just one street but a collection of streets, between Whitechapel (then a strongly Jewish area) and Liverpool Street, centred more on Wentworth Street than Petticoat Lane itself.  It was full of hawkers and stalls selling all manner of things: clothing, gadgets and china, sweets, herring from large oak barrels and (forbidden to Jews) live eels – which continued to wriggle, even cut into pieces.  On a busy Sunday morning it was so crowded that it would have been very easy to get lost.  Today, like most markets, there is more clothing, cheap car parts, pirated DVDs and CDs etc. but, like Whitechapel (close to Dad’s birthplace at 261 Commercial Road) mostly now Asian not Jewish.  Nearer to hand were markets at Leather Lane, Exmouth Street and Chapel Street.  The latter, at the Angel, Islington, was a daily affair and by far the larger and more varied.  Street markets were the places most ordinary working people went to get their weekly shopping: there was no such thing as a supermarket then.  The nearest thing to a supermarket was the Co-op, but then our local one only sold groceries (although they had a separate butchery, with a wooden saw-dusted floor, next door).  Most neighbourhoods had access to a local street-market, at least within a short bus ride away, and people actually travelled from area to area if a market had some specialism, or operated on different days.  There was, and is, an intimacy about buying in the market that has not survived in malls and supermarkets.  We got to know the stallholders, and the shopkeepers in the market streets, and it is my belief that the fresh food and vegetables we bought then were both fresher and less “messed about” than they are now but, in any case, we lived quite near Covent Garden which was, then, the main wholesale fruit, vegetable (and flower) market for London.  Leather Lane was actually nearest to our flat, and led from Clerkenwell Road right through to High Holborn near the, then, Gamages department store.  I’m told that, before my time, my great-uncle Ike was a stallholder there selling chocolate.  It was not a great market, but the shops that were permanently open offered such things as broken biscuits (which were, of course, a lot cheaper than whole ones) bacon, cut to exactly the thickness, weight and style you wanted, and ‘Coleson’s the Bakers’ produced lovely fresh bread.  Freshly baked bread was something we took for granted: mostly we got ours from Holborn Bakeries in Lambs Conduit Street.  I remember the outrage when a large loaf went up in price to one shilling.  Although one shilling is 5p now, as a proportion of the then ‘average wage’, that made bread more expensive than an equivalent loaf now.  The journey to, or from, the market was also part of the adventure for a child.  There were always things of interest to see and learn from, things that enriched the whole process of daily life: one corner of Leather Lane was occupied by the ‘Old Holborn’ tobacco factory and the sweet smell of tobacco occasionally permeated the neighbourhood.  There were networks of Mews’, narrow quiet back streets (often cobbled) that ran parallel to main roads and they contained former horse stables and carriage houses that had served the many Georgian houses nearby.  By the mid-twentieth century, when the fine houses had become offices and cars had replaced carriages, these had become garages, workshops, vintners’ stores and had other semi-industrial uses with their own particular sights, sounds and smells.  In my childhood King’s Mews, North Mews and Brownlow Mews were just a shortcut to The Foundling.  Also nearby was Hatton Garden, then the diamond centre of the London jewellery trade, and the London Silver Vaults (which were then open to the public and which I visited a few times). 

          We went everywhere by public transport, or walked.  I was not allowed a bicycle, for fear of an accident, and we had no long-term car, although I believe we did have an open topped Standard Eight for a time when I was quite small. 

A typical Standard |Eight

In fact, although Dad was a good driver and had, on occasion, even driven the band bus, there was no real need for a car in London.  When there was a need one was hired, “self-drive”, although why it was necessary to go all the way to Lewisham to do so, as we sometimes did, is a mystery to me.  I think that I really learned the rudiments of driving by watching the bus drivers on my journeys round London.  I would stand behind them, just the other side of the glass separating their cab from the passenger compartment, and anticipate their gear changes by the pitch of the engine sound, twiddling the window winding mechanism back and forth as my gear change lever.  It must have been comical for the passengers to see, and probably irritating to the driver who could not fail to be aware of the little red-head at his elbow.  Sometimes they let down a concertina leather blind, shutting me out!  Tram and trolley-bus journeys were common in my early childhood and their passing, in favour of diesel-engined buses, was much mourned by me.  My favourite tram journey was to the Embankment and alongside the River Thames, because the tram went underground, from just outside Holborn tube station, to emerge on the Embankment underneath the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge.  We used to try to stand on the open platform of the tram as it swayed and clattered through the tunnel, much to the consternation of the conductors.  That tunnel is now partly a road underpass from Waterloo Bridge, under the Aldwych, into Kingsway but the remainder, several hundred metres in length, slipped into some other use when the trams no longer ran:  I suspect it is in some Government use.  Travel by ‘the tube’, the underground railway in London, did not feature much in my life until I was much older, but I used the public transport in and around London as recreation: London Transport used to sell a daily or week-end pass, the ‘Red Rover’, which allowed unlimited access to all red buses for 5 shillings (25p).  The red bus network ran deep into the outer fringes of London, even to the near countryside, and it was possible to get other buses, such as the Green Line network, even further afield.  One of my favourite journeys was to the Dunstable Downs, near Luton, where I would just lie on the steep chalk escarpment and watch the gliders from the nearby gliding club wheeling overhead, or visit Whipsnade Zoo.  This had a particular attraction, I suppose, because I was passionately interested in aviation, and another very special treat was to catch the bus to London (now Heathrow) Airport and spend the day on the roof of the Queen’s Building (now inaccessible to the public for security reasons) watching the ‘planes come and go.  The fact is that, in the 1950’s, a child living in the heart of one of the biggest, most populous, cities in the world was relatively safe moving about unaccompanied, and could be almost endlessly amused for no great expense.  Of course, as well as my route map, I generally took sandwiches and a flask of tea.  Being a child that had never stopped eating, these would rarely last beyond 11.30a.m! 

I did not visit the Millennium Dome when it was first an attraction in London.  It has been interesting to me that although the 1951 Festival of Britain was ‘on’ when I was a small child, as far as I can recall, I did not visit that either.  We did pass by on many occasions because the bus routes to my aunt Janet’s house, in Camberwell, ran along the north embankment of the Thames, or over Waterloo Bridge, and thus skirted the Festival site.  My only really vivid recollection of the Festival is of the “Skylon”, a tall shiny metal cigar-shaped feature, like a rocket on a launch pad, stayed by steel cables and dramatically lit-up at night.  Nearby there was “The Shot Tower”, a structure for creating lead rifle shot for by dripping molten lead from the top which, as the drops fell, developed a spherical shape. 

The Shot Tower next to The (Royal) Festival Hall

The Shot Tower was demolished to make way for The Queen Elizabeth Hall.  Permanent buildings on the South Bank, such as the Royal Festival Hall, were more often visited as I grew to adulthood.  I suppose everyone who lives with something special on their doorstep, whether it be town or country, tends to take it for granted.  We were within easy reach of all the major tourism and cultural sites and regularly visited, unaccompanied, the Science Museum and Natural History Museum (both in South Kensington) and, nearer to home in walking distance, the British Museum.  Of course, mass tourism did not exist and foreign visitors tended to be well off.  It wasn’t until I was well into my teens that I had to share my neighbourhood treasures with coachloads of ‘ordinary’ people from other countries.  It was even later that tourists became a year round phenomenon: for a long time there were definite ‘seasons’ to the comings and goings of our foreign visitors. 

          Other attractions along the river were the permanently moored ships: ‘President’, ‘Chrysanthemum’, ‘Wellington’ and Scott’s Antarctic ship ‘Discovery’.  Discovery has been moved to its birthplace, Dundee, where it is now the centrepiece of a so-called ‘experience’, and the second world-war cruiser, H.M.S. Belfast has been added to the static Thames flotilla close to Tower Bridge.  Even the bridges themselves were something of an attraction for, from them, it was possible to watch ships and tug-towed barges pass up and down on the surging tide, as well as the fast police launches charging about on more urgent business.  The London Docks were, of course, in full use during my childhood and in the Pool of London, just below Tower Bridge (itself an attraction with its raising centre spans) it was possible to see ocean-going freighters and, occasionally, passenger ships.  I was very, very, lucky to have been brought up so close to so many interesting places. 

Holborn is on the fringes of the ‘West End’ – London’s theatre land.  Had we the money we could have walked to a show in any of the major theatres and cinemas in the entertainment heart of London, including those in Soho.  By my early childhood the major Music-Hall venues had gone, or been turned into something else, otherwise the famous Holborn Empire would have been just around the corner.  Actually, other than to see a concert featuring Dad, we never went to a theatre when I was very young, but we did go to the pictures at times other than Saturday morning.  There were a number of ‘ordinary’ picture houses (cinemas) nearby: The Gaumont and Odeon were both in Kings Cross (the Gaumont later became The Century) and there was a cinema in what had been the Stoll theatre in Kingsway.  Seat prices were graded but we rarely had the better seats, in the circle; usually we paid something like ‘one and nine’ (one shilling and nine pence – about 7p now).  At the interval, between the supporting feature and the main film (there were usually two complete films, plus advertising and newsreels) the ice cream lady would appear, picked out by a ‘follow-spot’ light, and soon be the focus of a long queue anxiously waiting for tubs of ice cream, or ice lollies.

I have already said that I grew up influenced by the steam age.  The widespread use of coal had another influence on all of us – smog.  London was a very dirty city, and this was not helped by the common use of open fires for heating, the output of coal-fired power stations along the river, and the railways.  In the autumn and winter it was a regular occurrence to have fog which, in certain conditions, could turn into a choking and deadly yellow ‘smog’.  People died by the hundreds every year, not just in London but in most of the big industrial centres, from respiratory failure of various kinds exacerbated by pollution.  As a result of a five day smog in December 1952, when I was 6, and up to 12,000 died, a Clean Air Act was brought into force setting up smoke-controlled zones.  That Act saved the lives of countless thousands.  It was also the case that we still had gas light in the streets, and there were men who walked the pavements turning the lamps on at dusk, and off again in the morning.  I now realise that it was the experience of lighting and tending open fires, gained both my home and that of my Grandma in Bradford, has made me quite competent in these skills: skills which I have used in successive homes ever since.  What is more, I have only recently realised that my easy way with a small hand-axe, splitting kindling, was originally learned in Yorkshire, doing the same chore for Grandma Alexander. 

When I reached school age it was to St. George the Martyr Primary in Old Gloucester Street, off Queen Square, that I went.  Queen Square was in a sort of medical enclave, very close to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, The Italian Hospital and the Homoeopathic Hospital.  Although I wanted to go to school, like many first timers I was reluctant when it came to the event and had to be, more-or-less, dragged away from a lamp-post to which I had clung for dear life.  I don’t know who cried the most that day, Mum or me.  St George’s was a church school: it was ‘attached’ to the Church of England church of the same name across the road, where the junior school was also situated.  Each had its own playground: the primary had a concrete-paved one at ground level, with a wall and fence all around to stop us running into the road after a miss-kicked ball; the junior school had its playground on the flat roof, enclosed by a vaulted metal net.  Quite why I was not terrified of the rooftop playground, or its cast iron fire escape access stair, I don’t know because, in later life, I developed a real dislike of man-made high places that borders on vertigo.  Then, however, it was a place of excitement and adventure.  I enjoyed school, even though the lessons were mostly taught formally, by rote, and delivered in high Victorian wood panelled rooms that had windows too high to see out of.  Initially we had framed slates to write on, with chalk, and I demonstrated my dislike of the compulsory spoonful of malt by spitting it out all over my slate.  It made a heck of a mess and I never had to have malt again!

 Soon after I started school, the nation was gripped by Coronation fever when, in June 1953, Queen Elizabeth II was crowned.  My friend Stephen Osborne had a model of the gold coronation coach, complete with horses and footmen; the same ‘Golden Coach’ about which brother David and Diane Lee made, and released, a (briefly) popular record.  Apart from this, the only tangible evidence of the coronation was a mug, which we were all given at school, and the end of sweet rationing.  I can still remember handing over my sweet ration book at the tobacconist’s kiosk round the corner in Gray’s Inn Road.

There were exceptions to the formal teachers though and I can recall two, both young and temporary, who vividly affected my imagination.  The first, whose name escapes me, ran an impromptu “trial” of a miscreant who had fired an ink pellet at a girl in the classroom.  A ‘jury’ was sworn in, evidence was taken and, after judgement was passed, punishment meted out.  The second was a trainee called William Tapp.  Mr Tapp arrived just before we were due to move on to secondary education and he encouraged us in every conceivable way to express ourselves.  He was a chubby fresh-faced man who wore, no doubt with great pride, a blazer with his university badge on the breast pocket and a university tie.  Towards the end of his last term with us, we somehow got to put on a stage show.  I, my cousin Michael (now, sadly, dead), Roy Grace and another pupil, decided we would bring ‘The Goons’ out of the wireless and onto the stage.  Picture the scene: an assembly hall filled with expectant and cross-legged children and lined by, mostly cross-armed, teachers.  The curtains draw back to reveal an apparition (actually me completely covered by a white sheet and, except for two eyeholes in the sheet, invisible) wearing a tea cosy on my head and standing at a lectern.  Pandemonium.  For a while it went really well, and I recall one particular moment when I chased an animated boiled egg around the stage with a large spoon – “Come here little eggy” etc.  Unfortunately it was about this point that ideas, script and rehearsals all ran out together, and we had to be rescued from our own hiatus by Mr Tapp.  At the end of that year I won a school prize, for “Good Work and Behaviour” and chose a book by Captain Phillipe Tailliez, a French pioneer of scuba diving and friend of Jacques Cousteau.  Mr Tapp inscribed it for me: “One of the most prized of possessions is a sense of humour”.

Other things about early school I remember less well.  Miss Francis was a pretty woman who would cuddle us if we got our sums wrong: I have always blamed my relative poor performance with maths on that!  Mr Benwell was the Headmaster, and though I remember him as a kindly man in three-piece tweed suit, others remember him less well.  Sports days were held at the “Foundling”.  I was a pretty useful runner but messed up my best opportunity of sprint success when, ‘at the gun’, I got the heel of my sandal caught in the bottom of the chain link perimeter fence! Very Charlie Chaplin.  My contemporaries, quite literally, disappeared in a cloud of dust, the track being made of ash, but, despite pleas for a re-run, I was unplaced and left to nurse my first experience of injustice.  If I had a ‘best-friend’ at St. George’s it was Roy Grace.  Roy lived at Russell Mansions in Southampton Row, quite close to the school, and we entered three-legged races and the school choir together.  We sang better than we ran.  We were also taught to swim at Ironmonger Row baths, but I can’t say I enjoyed the experience of public bathing: the warm, wet, slippery, almost slimy, feeling of the changing room floor made it all too possible to imagine things that lived there: the dreaded verruca and athletes’ foot.

For quite a while I took my lunch at school: school dinners were free in those days.  They were, I think, not at all bad – certainly not as bad as the stereotype.  We had plenty to eat and my favourite was sausage, onions and mash.  We got “seconds” if we asked, and even had good puddings – often steamed, such as chocolate or ginger and custard or jam sponge.  However, there were times when I went home for lunch.  It surprises me now that I could run all the way home (at least half a mile) eat lunch, and get back again, all in the lunch break.  Other times we would bolt our food down at school and then go out to play large scale ‘chasing’ games, such as “He” (aka Tig) and “Run Outs” all over the neighbourhood. 

St George’s, 1956/7.  Mr Tapp far left, me front row third from left, cousin Michael front row far left, Roy Grace front row fourth from right, Christine Young second row third from left and John Theodosiou back row third from left. Mr Benwell, Headmaster, far right.

           “Run Outs” required a home team and an away team.  The objective was for the home team to catch the away team before they could regain the safe ground of the base, i.e. school building.  As far as I remember there were very few rules, and no places were off limits.  The result was children all over blocks of flats, up and down stairs and lifts, in and out of shops – everywhere, chasing each other furiously.  How nobody got hurt, nor were even (much) late back for the afternoon session, is a miracle.  The route to, and from, school could be varied, by taking one of a number of side turnings and mews’.  One such passed a sweet shop that dispensed, amongst many delights, ‘Tangerine Pips’, sherbet filled ‘Flying Saucers’, ‘Barley Sugar Twists’, ‘Cough Drops’, ‘Pear Drops’ and, in summer, a frozen orange drink in a triangular carton – ‘Jubbly’.  Anyone familiar with the television comedy  “Only Fools and Horses” will recognise Del Boy Trotter’s catch phrase “Luvvly Jubbly”: it came from the TV advertising song for that drink: “Lovely Jubbly, lovely Jubbly orange drink”.  If I was very lucky, once in a while, I might have three pennies to spend on the way back from lunch at home: ‘thruppence’ (three pennies) would buy a couple of ounces of sugary joy.  In the aftermath of the Second World War a Labour government had been elected, and with it came the National Health Service and a fledgling social security system.  As a direct result, as well as malt, we children were provided with orange juice, milk (1/3 pint per day) and cod liver oil, courtesy of the State.  Indeed free school dinners and milk persisted, for a while at least, into secondary school and one of the best ‘chores’ was to be the milk monitor, because if you liked milk it meant you could have extra bottles – garnered from those who didn’t!   Another other aspect of junior school that had some impact on me was the church choir.  Being attached to the adjacent church we were ‘treated’ to a weekly service conducted by the vicar.  The school was therefore a natural recruiting ground for the choirmaster, and since I enjoyed singing, I signed up.  Because our household was, at best, agnostic I had no real background in religious belief or convention, and it did not occur to me that singing in the church choir had any religious implications, or that I would be expected to have some grasp of the broad form of Christian worship.  I had a decent soprano voice, and even sang duets like ‘Oh for the Wings of a Dove’ with Roy Grace, who also had a good voice.  Being in the choir required us to attend practice every week, and sometimes two services on Sunday when we wore the full traditional choristers’ cassock, surplice, and ruff.  We also occasionally sang at weddings, for a small fee (another Gold performing for money!).  Eventually my lack of religious knowledge was cruelly exposed.  At a particular part of the normal service, the vicar would say ‘Let us Pray’:  I thought we were all supposed to say our own, quiet, prayer to ‘GOD’ so, on one occasion, shortly after being ‘miraculously’ gifted a football on the incoming tide at the seaside, I thanked ‘him’ for the football!  I got a hefty dig in the back from one of the senior choristers for my unintended blasphemy.  Eventually the religious side of it became more and more irritating until I finally withdrew, but not before enjoying a couple of riotous choir outings to Bognor Regis (getting badly sunburned in the process) and stuffing a potato up the exhaust pipe of the choirmaster’s car!  My first clumsy, and needless to say unsuccessful, relationships with girls took place at St. George’s too.  I still remember being madly attracted to Christine Young, a thin, curly headed, girl with mischievous eyes.  Christine could run like the wind, easily as fast as most of the boys, and we often played “Robin Hood and Maid Marion” beneath the flats where she lived.  This consisted mostly of me charging round and round the robber hideout on my imaginary horse, while Maid Marion stayed indoors cooking supper.  I wanted to marry Christine, but she just wanted to be friends, so that was that.  The next girl I asked said yes, but that comes much later in the story.

          The income of an entertainer, even a successful one, was uncertain and so, after I began school, Mum took up work.  Although she enjoyed the camaraderie, and the opportunity to use her mind, I think she felt guilty about it – especially not being there when David or I came home from school.  This was, in part, overcome by the kindness of good neighbours: Annie (‘Bebby’) and Mary Bedford. ‘Bebby’ (mother) and Mary (spinster daughter) lived at Flat No.6 at the very top of the building and were like an extra Grandma and Aunt to us.  They were already resident when Mum and Dad first took Flat No. 3, and over the years Mum and Mary became very close.  Mary had a business in Chelsea, designing and making clothes for the well-to-do, including the Royal Family, so she was often out, but Bebby would always be there to let us in after school and provide us with a cup of Earl Grey tea, and one or two digestive biscuits smeared with butter.  In the future Mary Bedford was to play a key role in my life, but again more of that later.

Mary and Annie (‘Bebby’) Bedford

During all this time I was only vaguely aware of Dad being someone ‘famous’, but was somewhat self-conscious, even embarrassed, by how it made me feel ‘special’ too.  It is certainly true that both David and I travelled with him to some extent, and there were summer seasons at various places, so that was part of the ‘difference’ in our upbringing.  The ones I most remember were at Cayton Bay, near Scarborough, where he had two consecutive summers at Wallis’s holiday camp, and Warner’s in Seaton in Devon (though we stayed at Beer, just along the coast).  In both cases we stayed, at least for a time, in a caravan – which I found very enjoyable.  Dad took us mackerel fishing in Devon, and I liked that too.  I also remember being near Sunderland and having to forego a promised visit to a ship launching because of a toothache.  Another ship-related memory is of travelling on the elevated railway that, then, passed Liverpool docks, and seeing the upturned hulk of a burned-out liner, the ‘Empress of Canada’ in 1953.  The sight of the charred flotsam and oily water is still clear in my mind.  Another indication that both Dad and his occupation were ‘unusual’ was the assortment of ‘fans’ that called from time-to-time.  Of these, I particularly remember two.  The first was a Master Sergeant in the American Air Force: Ben D. Acma.  I can’t recall what the “D” was for, but Ben was Hawaiian (before Hawaii became the 50th American state) whom Dad met during one of his several concerts at Air Force bases throughout England.  I believe Ben was stationed at RAF Bentwaters and came to Theobalds Road on a number of occasions.  He brought me a model airliner on one visit, I think a Pan American Boeing Clipper with working propellers.  Ben continued to correspond with Mum and Dad for years after he returned ‘stateside’, got married and had family of his own.  The other was George Saynor, a farmer and Jazz fan from Hambledon in Hampshire.  George, who became “Uncle George” would bring a turkey at Christmas, together with other produce, even a tree, and I visited his farm.  I think this was my first real contact with farming as a way of life and I was immediately attracted to the outdoors, the animals and the freedom that the open air offered: an attraction that remains with me to this day.  It was also there that I suffered my first loss of a pet:  Uncle George gave me a beautiful tortoiseshell kitten that got run over by a reversing milk wagon.  I can still remember the bulging eyes.

‘Uncle’ George Saynor (left) and me with pony at his farm in Hampshire

          Although Mum and Dad considered themselves to be “workers”, partly for political reasons but also from their own upbringings, the truth is that David and I had a relatively privileged childhood.  This is nowhere more evident than in our ability to have holidays.  Although there were occasional short visits there, we spent extended time in Bradford with our maternal Grandmother and her, then, unmarried son Willie.  I remember Grandma fondly; she was a tiny lady with pinched features, a kind heart, a soft voice and laughing eyes; uncle Willie was a big, even rotund, man with a balding head and a penchant for Capstan Full Strength cigarettes – 60 a day.  They lived in an area of Bradford called Bierley, at 83 Roundell Avenue.  It was a semi-detached council house with outside toilet, in a street of similar houses.

Grandma ‘Annie’( McLellan Taylor) Alexander with David, left, and me at 83 Roundell Avenue, Bierley, Bradford. Note, I am wearing a kilt.

Bierley was on the very outskirts of Bradford then, almost in the country, but now absorbed into the metropolis.  The local children of our age came round to play and, with Willie, we would visit the working-mens’ club to play dominoes, and drink Dandelion and Burdock cordial.  The house had a small kitchen, but the huge black ‘range’, on which all cooking was done, was in the living room.  On the coal-fired range Grandma produced amazing Yorkshire puddings, but we also had wonderful fish and chips from the local shop – wrapped in newspaper of course.  On one of our extended stays, Mum and Dad were away in Paris: an exercise in lone-holidaying that was repeated on at least one other occasion when David and I went to a children’s hotel in Bognor (I think).  My only recollections of those holidays were Mum and Dad bringing me a small diorama of Native Americans (we then called Indians), complete with tepee, and getting stung by a wasp in Bognor.  On other occasions I was taken to Bradford in the cab of a friend’s lorry.  I can’t remember his name, possibly Roy, but he worked for a maker of cardboard cartons which he delivered to confectioners.  It was a great treat to be presented with a bag full of “damaged” chocolates at the various factories and workshops.

Uncle Willie (William) Alexander

Before I was eight we had already been abroad, first to France (Le Touquet and Paris) and later to Italy (Alassio).  The trips to Italy brought me my first experience of flying.  We went by BEA (British European Airways – which later co-founded British Airways when it was joined with BOAC, the British Overseas Airways Corporation).  We left from the London Air Terminal (then on the South Bank near the Festival Hall) to London Airport, and from there to Nice.  Flying at night, presumably for economy, we flew in an Airspeed Ambassador, popularly known as an Elizabethan, or to us a ‘Lizzie’.  The ‘Lizzie’ was one of those flying machines that I think are beautiful standing still, with just the right lines, and became one of my favourite aircraft.  It was a high wing, twin piston-engined, ‘plane with a triple finned tail.  Because of the high wing you got splendid views as the earth slid past beneath and the centre section seats were arranged, facing a shared folding table, much as a table arrangement on trains these days – a super layout for a family travelling together.

The ‘Lizzie’ Inside and Out

On my first flight, Mum tried to calm my natural nervousness by saying “When the plane takes off, just go with it”.  She didn’t expect me to take her literally, and try to stand up holding on the edge of the folding table with white knuckles.  The table folded up as I rose higher and higher!  I was very sad when the ‘Lizzie’ was prematurely retired by the coming of the turbo-props, themselves made obsolete soon after by the coming of the first pure jets, the Comet, the Boeing 707 and the French, Sud-Aviation Caravelle (also stunningly beautiful), but I digress, as I often do.  In Nice, at least once, we stayed overnight with friends of Mum and Dad who had a flat there.  I recall two Siamese cats that had been taught to use the toilet, sitting on the bowl, and that the husband had a very superior ‘Marklin’ model railway. It is true that Italy opened me more to foreign travel than France had done, partly because I was a little older, but also because the food, customs, heat, cafe society, and Latin ‘lifestyle’ in general, were more attractive to me than those in the rather cool and austere northern France, where the beaches were still littered with the detritus of war, and where David and I played at ‘war’, amongst the dunes and bunkers with spent cartridge cases, pretending our cricket stumps were rifles. 

From Nice we caught a train to Alassio where it seems we always stayed at Pensione Martini, right on the beach.  We often spent our evenings, after dinner, sipping cappuccino and listening to live music in one of the many cafes round the centre of the town.  Two of the cafes were nicknamed by us ‘Runkle Chunkle’ and ‘Clatterbang’, because they issued percussion instruments (maracas, tambourines and even bongos) for the customers to join in: it was great fun.  I also developed my rowing skill, first learned on the boating lake in London’s Regents Park.  I liked, and still like, messing about with boats and was allowed to hire catamaran-hulled rowing boats.  Given that Mum and Dad thought a bicycle in London too dangerous, it is inexplicable that I was allowed to take a boat out in the sea, alone, but I was a strong swimmer and swam underwater quite well.  In fact, even more extraordinary, I was allowed to buy an enormous spear gun in Alassio (if I remember correctly, for 1500 lire) and went snorkel fishing.  Dad took this photo of me holding up a fish, the size of a small sardine, which I had shot clean through with the middle prong of my trident.  I was so horrified by what I had done, and the pathetic sight of this poor fish, that I never went spear fishing again.

Jacques Cousteau, I wasn’t.

On one of our holidays in Alassio we ran across the comedian Eric Sykes who was there making a television series called “Roman Holiday” – he very kindly posed for a photograph and gave me his autograph too.  Not all celebrities were so obliging; I remember once approaching Danny Kaye, the American film star, who grudgingly acquiesced while muttering “Bloody kids” – this is the same Danny Kaye who became a UN special ambassador for children!  My autograph book, which I still have, was mostly empty but had some interesting signatures from the worlds of sport, entertainment and politics.  I had the autographs of Louis Armstrong (legendary jazz trumpet player), Stan Getz (ditto saxophonist), Ella Fitzgerald (ditto vocalist) and Jim Laker (Yorkshire and England spin bowler – first to take ten wickets in a test match innings, and nineteen in total in the same match).

          The small collection of these two classes of signatures points to two more areas of influence on my upbringing.  Obviously, Dad’s profession meant that music, and particularly jazz, was an integral part of my everyday life.  Not only the music but also its appreciation, and we sometimes went to see, and hear, the current “greats” when they were in concert in London.  I was privileged to hear Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, The Modern Jazz Quartet and others live during my childhood.  Mum and Dad, and my cousin Martin Goffe, were particularly interested in cricket and so we would go to Lords and the (Kennington) Oval, to watch both county and test match cricket.  I remember one occasion when Martin got a whole row of spectators involuntarily bouncing up and down in sympathetic excitement when his nervous knee jigging was transmitted along the continuous wooden bench seating.  How my Mum laughed!  On test match days the queuing crowds were entertained by various street performers, and one sticks in my memory: a man who made all manner of things out of folded and/or torn newspaper.  His finale was to construct a ladder from continuously rolled papers, complete with rungs, rising perhaps ten feet above the crowd.  I thought it was brilliant, and always looked for him at these events.  Another sport to which I was exposed in my youth was horse racing.  My uncle Willie was very fond of the “gee-gees”, and by the time I was perhaps 10 or 12 I had been to Kempton Park, Alexandra Palace, Epsom, Brighton, Newbury, Newmarket.  I even went to York, presumably when visiting Grandma in Yorkshire,  but the others must have been on his visits south to see my Mum and his other London resident sister, Janet (Martin’s mum).  It was through these visits to the races that I saw “Prince Monolulu”.

‘Prince Monolulu’

 Ras ‘Prince’ Monolulu was so famous that he appeared in the very first television broadcast in 1936, but he was neither prince nor African, as he claimed, but a Guyanan former boxer.  He was a tipster who would go to all the major meetings and could be heard, long before his ostrich feather head-dress hove into view, calling his catchphrase “I gotta horse”.  He would pass a slip of folded paper to the punter, naturally in exchange for money, on which the name of the favoured nag would be written.  You would have had as good a chance of finding a winner by sticking a pin in the race card – you would still lose, but without the added cost of paying the ‘Prince’ for his expert advice!  I was fond of Uncle Willie, and I think he was of me.  In his later life he married Meg Waddington, and named his only child Andrew.  Andrew ‘came out’ in his teens (he was ‘gay’) but almost immediately distanced himself from the family, which is a pity because he would have found open-minded acceptance.

          Martin and his younger half-brother Ian were regular visitors to our flat, as were we to their homes.  In my early childhood we went to see them in Trafalgar Avenue, off the Old Kent Road, but later they moved to Camberwell and lived the rest of their childhood and adolescence there.  I especially enjoyed visits to their Camberwell house, in Love Walk, which had the luxury of both front and back gardens.  I used to potter about in the gardens, planting seeds, cutting grass and pruning the roses, and my first pet (a budgerigar) was buried there.  Martin and I remain friends, if not physically proximate, to this day.  Of course, when one is a child, the subtleties of adult relationships are beyond our understanding (and, if truth be told, beyond our caring).  I did not know that Martin and Ian had different fathers, and neither did they until much later on, but I knew and liked both men.  People just came and went in our lives – were there, or not.  This was more dramatically demonstrated for me by the discovery many years later that Dad had been married before, and that I had twin half-brothers, Morton and Leslie, 15 years older than me.  I think our parents’ generation were embarrassed by such details and simply didn’t talk about them.  I shall always regret not knowing my half-brothers better when I was young and, although we have got to know each other since, there is a lot that can never be recaptured.  In their youth they both played musical instruments.  Morton played drums, and Leslie trumpet, but neither followed Dad into a life of professional musicianship.  Both did their National Service in the RAF.  Morton, who is the elder by a few minutes, has had a variety of occupations, including book-keeping, but much of his working life involved driving of one kind or another. Morton was much married, and had at least four children.  Unfortunately, he tended to treat the law as ‘flexible’, and compliance as optional, resulting in spending time in Wormwood Scrubs prison thanks to the infamous Kray twins. Though he is funny, and warm, I wouldn’t trust him with my last £5.  More than once Mum had cause to regret trusting him, as did I later on.  Leslie emigrated to America, after starting in engineering design with De Havilland Propellers (but later actually working on the Blue Streak missile programme).  In California he went on to other engineering design work, designing computer-manufacturing machines and, latterly, bespoke fitted furniture and landscaping.  He was married twice and has four children.

David had gone from St George’s into St. Marylebone Grammar School, and in September 1957 I was expected to join him.  The ‘eleven-plus’ examination barred the way. and being born in August I was not yet eleven when I sat the exam.  Despite exactly attaining the 75% pass mark I was judged to be a “borderline case”, an un-necessarily cruel label which took me years to shake off.  As a result I had to pass a rather daunting interview, in the headmaster’s study at St Marylebone, for acceptance as a “Governors boy”: a few places were granted at the discretion of the school governors.  Another ‘label’.  I remember that it was Mum who accompanied me to the interview, and that I was ‘interrogated’ on my knowledge of the day’s current affairs.  I’m sure I was helped by the fact that our family was very political, and that discussion of current affairs was part of our everyday life at home.  I suppose that they also decided in my favour partly because David was already there, and was acquitting himself well academically; anyway, whatever the reason, I got in. 

At the time of transition from junior to secondary education I was introduced to Rugby Football.  That summer Dad was doing a season at Wallis’s Holiday Camp near Scarborough and for my birthday, which fell in the holidays, I received a rugby ball – presented on stage, by Dad in full view of the audience, at the nightly entertainment.  How embarrassed I was by that.  Unlike me, David (who had been asthmatic in earlier life) was not particularly sporty or physical.  Nevertheless, he taught me how to tackle, pass, and receive the ball which helped me considerably.  Later I became quite fearless and played with such blind enthusiasm that I once tackled one of my own side when the ‘red mist’ came down!  Whatever my attributes, they helped overcome my relatively slight stature, and immature nature, to the point where I was selected to represent my house, Portman, and later the school.  Games were conducted on the school playing fields at Sudbury Hill, to the north-west of London.  To get there we had to go by steam-train from Marylebone Station, a short walk from school.  The train journeys were almost as much fun as games days, especially if you could get into one of the ‘closed’ compartments (those that had no access from any other part of the train) because, once we were under way, there would be nobody to watch us.  The school doctor, “Doc” Burrows, had responsibility for the under-13 XV and he took a shine to me, inexplicably (for I don’t think he was a Scot) calling me “my wee Andy”. 

I believe I only disappointed him once, when scoring the only try I scored in my whole school team career.  The opposing team had a try, or maybe a penalty, and our team had retreated, as required by the rules, to stand on the try line and await the attempted kick.  Their kicker stepped back but, at the critical moment, the ball fell over, and he moved forward to replace it without asking permission of the referee (on this occasion ‘Doc’ himself).  The moment he moved, I rushed forward (also permitted under the rules) and beat him to the ball which I ‘fly-hacked’ up-field.  I think the other players thought I had gone mad, but I gathered the ball and ran on to score.  ‘Doc’ blew his whistle to award the try, but there was no jubilation or congratulation: I suppose what I had done was, in those days, considered unsporting. 

I may be smiling, but I was very embarrassed.

The school P.E. master was Colin Bosley – a Welsh tyrant with delusions of former personal glory on the rugby field.  However, even he was won over by my total commitment, both on the field and in the gym, and I think he also was only disappointed by me once: when we were being “auditioned” for the school cricket team.  We were required to bowl to him, and I comprehensively beat him with a slow left-arm leg break.  “Do that again”, he demanded.  I did.  “Can you bowl off breaks?”  “No sir”.  End of audition, and of school cricket career, for Gold minor.  In one way it was a blessing:  Mum had made me a fluffy white cashmere cricket sweater that wasn’t quite the thing.  I hated cross-country running, but we were only required to do it infrequently – usually when the ground was too hard for rugby – and it did at least teach me how to move across rough ground confidently, a skill which, unlike my ability to move quickly anywhere else, remained with me for most of my adult life.  My school team position, as hooker (in the centre of the scrum), was not threatened for three years.  Other members of the school team had genuine skill and talent and were both a joy to watch as well as good to have on my side, rather than in opposition, as was the case in inter-house competition.  Ronnie Cole, who played fly half, was in Moore House; Mike Lee, scrum half, was in Portman with me, Phil Leonard and Ken Clarke were both in Abbott House.  Ken played full back and was, I always thought, an elegant, almost delicate, player.  Like all good players he never seemed short of time to pass or kick the ball.  Regrettably, even my enthusiasm could not outweigh (literally) the opposition as my physique continued to lag behind that of my contemporaries.  Comparatively small and light, being almost the youngest in my year, it was inevitable that I would give way to someone bigger, but I was bitterly disappointed to lose my place in the school team, to Phil Leonard, when on the threshold of attaining the coveted “colours” of a second and, hopefully, first-fifteen player.  I think the loss of this important part of my life may have been one of the contributory factors in my early departure from school, at the age of sixteen.

Under 15XV Winter 1960/61. Me front right

Some of the rugby team also played Fives, a sort-of Squash played with a gloved hand instead of a racquet, but I never once stepped inside the school’s own Fives court.  The Fives court was accessed off the playground – a courtyard enclosed by the school buildings.  To the north was the wing containing the gym, with Assembly Hall above; to the west, mostly classrooms (including the art room) and the staff room, to the south was the oldest part of the school which housed the octagonal shaped library, the headmaster’s study and secretary’s office, some classrooms and the Fives court; finally, to the east, the school kitchens and the toilets which, apart from the obvious function, for some was a venue for some to view ‘rude’ pictures, at a shilling a go, or have a sly cigarette.  The walls of the courtyard were covered in Virginia Creeper that produced a glorious display of colour in autumn and, through the use of the stalks, allowed us a variation of the game ‘conkers’ (normally played with a chestnut on a string).  For a few weeks every year, break-time had groups of boys ‘thrashing’ at each other’s vine stalks to see whose broke first! 

St Marylebone Grammar, ‘The Philological School’, was a school of traditions, having been founded in 1792.  It was sited at the corner of Lisson Grove and Marylebone Road, and many of its traditions were based on those of the English public schools, to whose status I think it aspired.  Staff were masters, not teachers, and wore gowns; pupils with brothers were given Latin names, e.g. ‘Secundus’; the deputy head, Mr Crook, had a cane as did the Head (which he called Caractacus) and which he used freely, though never on me.  There were no girls.   I generally enjoyed my time there, although I saw very little of David – he being an exalted upper-school type person and me a “little squit”.  He once blamed me for him not being made a Prefect: he having failed to maintain discipline in a music class he had been sent to ‘mind’, a class I was in.  Later I discovered it was more likely his penchant for pranks.  Of all my lessons, other than P.E, I enjoyed Geography, Art and English best.  I couldn’t get the hang of Latin at all, and the sciences were completely mystifying.  My mystification was made all the more intense by a science master, Mr Manning, who delighted in pouring apparently corrosive liquids into test tubes and, with only his thumb for a stopper, shaking them in our faces.  The poor man was very short, so maybe it was some sort of compensation to terrify us.  Apart from rugby, most of all I enjoyed School Camp.  Camp came once a year, in summer, and we were away in deepest Surrey, at Forest Green near Dorking, for a whole week under canvas – complete with open fire cooking, earth closet latrines and a swimming pool more akin to an open pond: it frequently had wildlife in it including, once, a dead cow.  Disappointingly our first visit was rained off, with ground water pouring through the tents, but subsequent years were warm, if not hot, and the life of open fires and country walks added to my earlier experiences of George Saynor’s farm.  “Mums and Dads” were allowed to visit on the Sunday, camp running Wednesday to Wednesday; you could tell which of the boys found camping a trial to be endured, by the way their parents behaved, whereas those of us who liked the life almost found parental visits an irritation – we’d rather be off in the fields and forest.

          Another school institution that I enjoyed immensely was the annual school play.  Our English master was Guy Back, on whom I think my mum had a ‘crush’.  He was the son of a famous British stage and screen actress, Kathleen Harrison.  Every year a play was produced that ran, I think, for a whole week.  Both David and I were in various productions, but the only one I can remember us doing together was a Greek tragedy – ‘Antigone’ (or Anti-gone, as I called it) which was all makeup and togas! 

‘Anti-gone’ – David centre stage and me, looking angelic, front right.

I also played ‘a faerie’ in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.  I remember my green tights had a hole in them, which had to be disguised by make-up, and I also had to ‘shoot’ a bird with an imaginary bow and arrow, its demise signified by an off-stage ‘Swanee Whistle’!  Less enjoyable were school concerts, mostly because they were so bad.  With a professional musician for a father, and a sharp musical ear myself, I found the often out-of-tune renditions excruciatingly embarrassing.  Dad, when he came, found them funny to the point of hysteria and quickly decided that his attention would be better applied elsewhere: probably the nearest pub.  The only genuine exceptions to the mediocrity were both classmates.  One, whose name I cannot recall, sang (what was then called) ‘Negro Spirituals’ with a surprisingly powerful baritone voice and great feeling.  The other was Jonathan Cohen who played piano and was the only pupil, while I was at St Marylebone, to be allowed to play the large pipe-organ in the school hall: Jonathan went on to a career as a professional musician, and appeared on television.  I continued my singing interest by joining the school choir, under Henry Doughty, but eventually had to leave because I couldn’t read music.  I felt that was particularly harsh, since I could hold a tune and even managed to perform in ‘Zadok the Priest’, and such works, perfectly well from memory, even in the Albert Hall once.  At home my musical education was erratic.  Both David and I had the benefit of piano lessons, from Miss Elsie Clarke, which were delivered on an oak ‘baby’ upright that stood in our living room.  I wasn’t very good at practising and had the unequal comparison of David’s progress to live with.  Over the years I was also given clarinet lessons by Dad, and Guitar lessons.  Being left-handed presented problems in these instruments, as my hands and fingers seemed to naturally fall the opposite way to the construction of the instrument – especially so the guitar, which was strung right handed.  Oddly, the only instrument I have ever taken lessons on as an adult is the drums, and even the drum kit and sticks seemed the wrong way round!   I am naturally ‘percussive’ (and am a fan of tap dancing) and my teacher thought I could make a drummer, but I didn’t persist.  Though nothing was ever said, I suppose the truth is that I felt the weight of expectation to excel in musicianship too much to bear.

The journey from home to Marylebone, normally by No.18 or 18b bus, took about half an hour.  Occasionally, for reasons of strikes or lateness in getting up, the bus was missed and a combination of routes, including the tube, became necessary.  More than once I walked all the way – and on these occasions I was very late.  Lateness was a reportable offence, and absence during the school day required a parental letter, either before or after the event.  A parental request for absence would result in an “Exeat”, an ausweis to the Gestapo.  Being caught outside school in school hours, without an Exeat, had much the same consequences as being caught by the Gestapo without an ausweis!  Marylebone reached out to influence us in other ways too.  We had to wear a uniform, which included a tie and school cap.  Caps had to be worn when in uniform, even away from school.  This didn’t matter too much to the lower school, but the more senior boys, naturally, found it an embarrassment beyond bearing, not to mention the effect on carefully coiffed hairstyles of ‘sixties’ youth.  They found ever more ridiculous ways of wearing their caps in casual or rakish ways, until common sense prevailed, and senior boys were excused caps.  Over the piece we all committed various offences, some more serious than being caught “sans chapeau”, as we experimented with our own ethical boundaries.  Three I remember still, but only one with acute embarrassment.  The first is shoplifting.  There was a “tuck shop”, a local sweetie shop, which regularly was overrun at lunch times by a mob of pushing and shoving boys.  To most of us it was more in the nature of a sport, to see if you could get away with a free bar of chocolate, and we quickly stopped.  To others I suspect it was a prelude to more serious criminality and there were boys who went from dark chocolate to other dark things.  The second is telephone “tapping”.  In those days, when a telephone call cost three or four old pennies (and it was necessary to have command of buttons ‘A’ and ‘B’) it was possible to connect to the desired number by “tapping” the handset rest rhythmically, precisely the same number of times as the telephone number digits.  In other words a number of, say, 123.1234 would require you to tap, in sequence, once, then twice, then three times, pause, then once, twice etc.  This had something to do with the electro-mechanical system that operated coin boxes at the time, rather than the digital, electronic, equipment that replaced it.  Anyhow, it was easy to make free ‘phone calls; not that it was often necessary, as in those days young people were not glued to telephones for hours because of the ubiquitous mobile telephone.  We just did it because we could.  The last is the embarrassing one.  Our Latin master, Mr Linden, was a small and shy man who had recently married.  In due course we learned he was to become a father, and some of our class thought it would be great fun to play a practical joke on him: he was presented withed several boxes of chocolates for his wife.  He was clearly very touched by this gesture, only for his warmth to be doused by the realisation that the boxes were confectioners’ shop-window dummies.  I shall never forget the hurt, then anger, that he showed, but especially the hurt.  It was a wicked thing to do and, even now, I regret it.  Despite his shyness this master reached boiling point occasionally, and he once broke the glasses of ‘Ellie’ (Roy) Ellison when he slapped his head.  The decency of the man showed, though, in his reaction to having done this: shocked disbelief.  Ellie was a good friend; tall, gangling even, and funny.  We were, more than once, dismissed from classes for being uncontrollably hysterical with laughter and he came to our flat in Dartmouth Chambers.  I was sad when he left (as did Roy Grace), eighteen months before me.  Many years later we reconnected through the use of “Facebook”.

Our teachers were, I suppose, like those in other schools and, like us, both good and bad.  However, I was lucky to have a good art teacher – Ken “Arty” Leatham.  Mr Leatham was a rather camp individual, taken to disappearances into the stores cupboard for, it was alleged, a swig on the sherry bottle.  However, I found him to be patient, kind and encouraging.  Anyone who showed aptitude and interest was allowed to use the art room outside of lesson times.  Ken was also my form master in fifth year, and I think it is due to him that I did so well in the ‘O’ level exam.  We had two geography masters, George Hartshorne and Mr (inevitably “Ned”) Kelly.  I think Mr Hartshorne, my form master in fourth year, took us for physical geography and Mr Kelly for political and economic geography.  We were lucky that they both enthused about their subjects and could teach.  Mr Kelly was a large and rather volatile man prone to hurling the blackboard rubber at miscreants!  Unknowingly he touched my compassion for teachers as human beings: one day, when he was the duty master at lunch, I saw him eating his pudding at a window ledge.  He was trying to balance eating with keeping an eye on the assembled foragers, a really pitiful sight.  On one occasion, when he was sent to stand in for Mr Doughty in a music class, he was so out of place that he told us to “be quiet and compose a concerto, or something”.  Mr Baines was a maths teacher who, unfortunately for him, had to deal with the terrorists of set ‘D’.  I say unfortunately, because he was, in manner and appearance, the least equipped to cope with those whose mathematical aspirations were confined to counting the minutes until the end-of-class bell.  An obviously shy man, tall and thin to the point of emaciation, he could be reduced to foaming at the mouth (literally) by two particular tricks.  The first involved the boys at the back of the room pushing those in front of them forward, complete with desks (which were a one-piece seat and desk, on metal runners), so that the class eventually crept right up to the master’s desk.  The second involved switching places when the master had his back turned.  We committed other ‘normal’ crimes, like throwing paper darts and reading comics, and Mr Baines gave me one of only three detentions I had at school.  My lack of comprehension of maths was partially overcome by the provision of private tuition, but I never really got to grips with it, except geometry where I excelled (probably due to the teacher Mr ‘Spike’ Spiers).  Spike was so called because, as well as his name Spiers (Spears!) he also played the double bass!

Mr Phillips took us for French, another dashing young man who attracted Mum’s eye, and there were Messrs Horwood, Tom Derry and Mr Warre-Cornish (a.k.a ‘Zombie’).  ‘Zombie’ was my form master in the upper-fifth and, despite his rather forbidding nickname, a kindly man.  Mr Horwood was a short man with horn rimmed glasses and violent temper, who gave me my second taste of injustice.  We were at the end of an exam, sitting in long single lines, and the procedure for collecting the completed papers was for those at the back to pass them forward to those in front.  For some reason, the papers in my line did not come forward, and I turned to see what the hold-up was. BAM!  I was caught by a fierce slap across the head – fierce enough for the follow-through to knock my milk bottle flying across the room.    Unfortunately for Mr Horwood, I was already imbued with the attitude that injustice was to be fought, and I complained to the Headmaster, securing an apology.  He never hit me again.  Looking back it seems that all the really nasty or violent masters were physically small – perhaps they were trying to compensate.

One of the privileges that was bestowed on us by school was a geography studies field trip, I think in fourth or fifth year.  When I look back I can see how important it was, both in its educative value but also, unwittingly, its political impact.  Taken by coach into the industrial heartland of England (with a sidestep into Wales), we experienced a hot-strip steel rolling mill, the Stork margarine factory, a cutlery maker and silversmith and a deep coal mine. In the steel mill we saw ingots of red hot steel being pressed into sheets of steel plate that hurtled along at 30mph between successive sets of rollers; in the cutlers we saw massive hammer presses pounding out the blanks of knives and forks, for the likes of you and me, and exquisite solid silver pieces being hand-made for others; at the Stork factory I was put off margarine for years by the nauseating smell from vats of the green palm oil base, and the revelation that it had “Fullers Earth” in it.  At the end of the trip we went to the Lake District and, believe it or not, walked over Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England, in mist and wearing nothing more protective than “Pacamacs” and ordinary school shoes!  Even now I remember the exhilaration of running down the scree slope from the summit to the waiting coach below.  I went down with ‘flu, in Kendal, followed by thrush and was ill for a month.  Nowadays the health and safety implications of such a trip would almost certainly make it a non-starter: can you imagine taking a bunch of fourteen or fifteen-year-olds 1500 feet down a working mine and have them crawling, as we did, on hands and knees through the shale at a coal face that was only 3 feet high – the ‘roof’ held up by a forest of hydraulic jacks?  After that trip I was a supporter of the miners, from the rare perspective of a shared experience, not dogma, until the Thatcher government crushed them in 1985.  It was at about this time that I experienced what then passed for school careers advice.  One day we were told to line up in the assembly hall: a long single file that ended at a small table where sat an ‘adviser’.  After waiting an interminable time, I arrived at the head of the crocodile line: “What would you like to do when you leave school?”  David had a good friend, Mick Annette, who had gone into the merchant navy, and I had seen some of his slides of faraway places – “I was thinking about the Merchant Navy, Sir”.  The reply?  “Very good. NEXT!”.  Actually, I had considered the merchant navy, and might have tried to get in as an apprentice deck officer had it not been for the impossible requirement to be good at maths, for navigation purposes.

At the end of my fifth year, I sat my ‘O’ levels.  It had been predicted, by several of my school reports, that I would struggle to pass many, and this proved to be true.  However, despite managing only three passes, in Art, English Language and Geography, I was allowed to stay on into the upper fifth, perhaps because I had passed these quite well.  Nevertheless, after a further year I became bored (and perhaps, subconsciously, afraid of the ‘A’ levels) and persuaded my parents to let me leave.  I think that the education provided by St. Marylebone was as good as could be got in the state system, as proved by the academic record of its students and the numbers that went on to tertiary education, or achievements in the wider world.  However, it didn’t work for me.  I know now that all my life I have been ‘hearing a different drummer’ and that I belonged in that 5% of the population who were intellectual misfits because their minds work differently from the mainstream.  I suspect I was (and still am) what we would now call “neurally diverse”.

          As I said at the beginning, my upbringing was, effectively, that of an only child and my pastimes tended to be solitary and introspective.  That is not to say that I was lonely, especially not in my early childhood, as there were other children in my life.  First of all, there were my cousins.  Martin and Ian I have already mentioned; also, living near us in Handel Street, by St. Pancras, was Dad’s brother Laurie (also a musician), his, then, wife Margot, and their three children Marilyn, Michael and Martin.  Marilyn was more David’s age and Michael more mine:  Martin was the youngest.  I can’t remember if the others were at school with me at St George’s, as Michael was.  They were touched by tragedy too: Marilyn went on to work as a TV floor manager at the BBC, on such programmes as “All Creatures Great and Small”, but drank too much to the point where she died in her thirties.  Michael went into the Air Force for a while and, amongst other things afterwards, maintained pub gaming machines until his very untimely death of a heart condition in his early forties (50s?).  Apart from “Maid Marion”, I had other friends at primary school and both David and I also had friends that were siblings, and so we were occasionally played, if not exactly together, in company.  Amongst these were the Osborne brothers, Tony, the eldest, Edward and Steven. Tony was too old to be of interest to us but Edward was my brother David’s friend (who became ‘Egward’ due to one of us having childish difficulty with pronunciation) and Steven was my friend.  They lived in Lambs Conduit Street, which is roughly half-way between where our flat was and both the “Foundling” playground and St George’s.  Their flat was above a rather superior ladies’ clothes shop (fur coats, stoles and such) that was run by Steven’s aunt Joyce.  Steven’s dad was a banana wholesaler in Shorts Gardens, off Covent Garden, and I once visited the ripening room where long stalks of bananas hung from the ceiling.  He was also a ‘student of the turf’ – he gambled on horse racing.  I always felt that they were well off, financially that is, but their lives seemed more controlled than ours and I can remember that toys were something kept in cupboards rather than were played with (at least while I was around!).  Occasionally we would meet as families and share a picnic on summer days in the Foundling but our friendships drifted after the Osborne sons went to St.Aloysious, a Catholic school, after the eleven plus. We called it ‘Ally Wash-house’ and I didn’t want Steven to go. Other friends were Robin Aung, a bright boy of oriental extraction (who left to live abroad), and Roy Grace, who I have also already mentioned and who went on to St Marylebone with me.

As I recall none of us spent time in each other’s houses, though, and our play together was mostly outside or at school.  At home my play was solitary (except with Martin and Ian).  Being a child of the immediate post-war years, much of my play was around war themes.  I rolled torch batteries off my wooden pencil case, depth charging imaginary U-boats under the blue green sea of my bedroom lino. I created a bomber cockpit.  Wearing swimming goggles, sitting on an upturned kitchen chair with the wire mesh fireguard for a cockpit canopy, I navigated over London using a London Transport bus route map. Why German? I don’t know, but “take that you Englander Swine!”  Like all children I also did some pretty anti-social things: from the living room window I fired at cars (and people) with my pea shooter, and also dropped water bombs (paper bags full of water) onto the pavement below.  Good grief!

Also among my school friends, in both St. George’s and St. Marylebone, was John Theodosiou.  John’s mother, Lenke, was a Hungarian Jew, a restaurateur (with her Greek Cypriot husband George) and very superior patisserie chef.  Lenke and my mum were good friends who often played cards together, in a ‘school’ that moved in rotation around the homes of the school members.  I would often travel around the ‘circuit’, sometimes to escort mum to, or from, the games but sometimes to spend the evening in front of the TV.  It was on one such occasion that Leah Rabin discreetly asked how long I had been deaf, only to discover that I was plugged into one of the first transistor radios.  John Theodosiou and I were not close friends, I would say, and we drifted apart after we were each married.  Our paths would cross again more strangely when we were both divorced and I met, and married, his ex-wife Judy: but more of that later.  Other than Ellie, Roy, John, and to a lesser extent his older brother George, I had few secondary school friendships and fewer still lasted into adulthood: I remained loosely in touch with Ellie, and briefly Ron Cole who emigrated to Israel, thanks to ‘Friends Re-united’.

          During the period of my early teens, three interests emerged that lasted: two were concerned two-wheeled transport, and the other with boats and the sea.  First, although I was denied a bicycle of my own, at age 13 I was allowed to borrow cousin Martin’s new “sit-up-and-beg” roadster.  Looking back, it was an extraordinary act of generosity, not to mention confidence (given my lack of experience), to let me use his bike at all.  My first adventure was to ride it, alone, all the way to Brighton and back in the same day – a distance of 112 miles.  Although new it was heavy, and had just 3 hub gears, so it took me a long time to get there.  I arrived, sat on the pebble beach for perhaps three quarters of an hour, ate my sandwiches and went home again!  By the time I got back to Croydon, and the long hill leading out to the north, I was exhausted and really felt I would die – but with a last lunge I made it, and was very proud.  Even now I look back with pride on that achievement.  Later, after I left school, I took up cycling very seriously as a sport, even considering it as a profession for a while.  The second interest was in motorcycling.  Quite where that came from I do not know, but I suddenly found myself looking at motorbikes, drawing motorbikes and going, alone, to Brands Hatch to watch motorbikes.  I would even go there on practice days, when there might only be two people testing, just to smell the ‘Castrol R’ oil and hear the thrilling sound of a racing engine.  Later I was to meet Barry Sheene, twice 500cc Grand Prix world champion, (and design his first fan club sticker), and have several motorbikes of my own – but, again, more of that later.  Finally, at about the age of thirteen I, and John Theodosiou, joined the City of London unit of the Sea Cadet Corps.  Quite how that came about I also don’t recall, but the unit HQ was quite close to our respective homes (just off the foot of Kingsway in Portugal Street, I think).  Unlike the cubs, which I had briefly joined until I failed to get a “woggle”, I persevered with this ‘junior navy’ and wore my uniform with considerable pride.  I enjoyed every aspect of the cadets: the seamanship classes, the drill (being part of the guard and marching through the streets of London with shouldered rifles and bayonets), occasional weekends on the unit’s converted motor fishing vessel, tied up in the London docks, canoeing at Eel Pie Island on the Thames and even, in 1961, going to Plymouth for a week at a Naval shore station – HMS Drake at Devonport.  The highlight of this was my meandering progress up the Hamoaze, part of the tidal river Tamar, trying to steer a straight compass course between parallel lines of anchored warships!  There was a ‘class’ photograph, now lost, of me at HMS Drake in my ‘number eights’, as we called our working uniform.  I really enjoyed that week, and even the food was alright: I remember going to the mess for lunch on the Sunday to find a notice outside stating “Today, being Sunday, there will be a choice – take it or leave it!”. Service humour.  This interest in boats lasted and, much later, both John and I had boats of our own.  John ultimately bought a large ocean-going yacht, and really went to sea, while my own boat was a much more modest affair.  Cousin Martin was also quite a serious sailor and had several dinghies; he and I went to the International Boat Show at Earls Court in London on more than one occasion.  Many years later, having abandoned the idea of the merchant service while at school, I even enquired about joining the Royal Navy.

          Another interest blossomed, rather than emerged new, at the same time: opposition to nuclear power and, particularly, nuclear weapons.  I have already mentioned the background of politics and the exposure to the notion of protest and marching.  The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was becoming a serious force for protest under the ever-lengthening shadow of the cold war.  Many of my contemporaries were in the Young Socialists or the Labour Party, but many more were in CND.  I began to involve myself in non-violent demonstrations (at least the demonstrators were non-violent) and went on several of the annual Aldermarston marches.  Setting out from the atomic weapons research establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, the march took place at Easter every year.  It was both exciting and educative to be part of that movement – especially when lists detailing the whereabouts and telephone numbers of the Regional Seats of Government were illegally circulated.  RSGs were, supposedly, secret underground installations from which the few survivors of a nuclear war would be governed (probably outnumbered by the governors).   In 1962, when I was still at school, the Cuban Missile Crisis took us all to the brink of annihilation.  I vividly recall the day when the American blockade of Cuba was to be tested by Russian ships carrying more missiles; it was a regular school day – we were going to Sudbury (where our games fields were) – and I got off the train thinking “I am going to play rugby now, as if everything is normal, but I may never see home again”.  It was surreal at the time but we now know that the world did come within hours of oblivion.  Later I would be nearly arrested on several occasions at CND demonstrations and, eventually, was “lifted” (along with others) by the Special Branch, held illegally and photographed under coercion, at a peaceful demonstration in the Isle of Lewis.  More of that later.  All of this did nothing to dispel my belief that our “democracy” was, and remains, largely a cynical sham, manipulated by forces, both elected and otherwise, bent on their own agendas. Yet again, more of that later.

In 1963 the decision about where the family would spend the annual summer holiday was passed to me, on the basis that I had complained (!) about “always going to Italy”, and I went in search of as many ‘Package Tour’ brochures as I could find.  Although the sophisticated mass tourism industry we know today was far off, there were still a number to choose from, and it took some time for me to find, then suggest, Romania.  The Swans Tours brochure description, and the modest cost (allied, of course, to the Socialist status of the country) made a convincing case and we booked.  This was the first of several trips there; most of our companions were political “fellow travellers” and I had to share a room with a teacher called Eddie Pellow.  Dad was so impressed (it was a wonderful holiday in Mamaia, on the Black Sea coast) that, on our return, he became drawn to the British Romanian Friendship Association – ultimately becoming chairman – and, much later on, I also briefly served on the committee of that organisation.

          By this time David was already a young man.  He left me behind at St. Marylebone to begin his career in the music business, joining a music publisher to do copying, and later arranging.  I think his decision not to go on to higher education, having passed “A” levels in Latin, Greek and Music, disappointed the school.  In some ways it was through David, not Dad, that I was exposed to much of the music that formed the backbone of my adult appreciation of jazz.  David had a record player and, since we shared a bedroom, I listened to whatever he was listening to.  Mostly this was not the chore it might have been, and I learned to like the repertoires, among others, of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles and Mahalia Jackson.  More of a chore was learning to cope with the results of excess alcohol: David was very prone to over-indulgence in his teens and many was the night that I lay in the dark listening to him retch over the bucket that, for a time, seemed to be an almost permanent fixture at his bedside.  That experience may have led me to be relatively abstemious until well into my thirties.  It was also during this period that David did me the only harm that I recall him doing to me, a psychological rather than physical blow, the scar of which I still carry over 60 years later.  I cannot remember how the argument started but David, who was by then working, said “you’re just a passenger in the family”.  I was devastated by the cruelty and the injustice of the jibe: quite what he expected of me, since I was still at school, I don’t know, but I finished up in floods of tears and truly distressed.  It was like a knife in the gut and I have wondered if this also underlay my premature departure from full-time education.  I have certainly carried the scar of it ever since, and it lies at the root of a sense of detachment,  pursuit of solitary activity and an inability to ‘join in’. I have since discovered that David had been upset by my arrival in the family just as he started school, and that his desire for a place at university had been prevented by lack of funds, which may also have been behind his swipe at me.  Much later, with the benefit of a hindsight illuminated by therapy, I realised it underlay a need to prove myself “worth my passage” in all things – personal and professional.  When I spoke to him about it many years later he had no recollection of the incident at all: it just shows how an inconsequential comment to one person can have profound impact on another. 

David and I moved into a flat of our own by 1964.  I say flat: it was, in effect, a dormitory.  Flat No 5 was directly above Mum and Dad at No 3, and became vacant when the occupant, Dr Winifred Page, died.  Miss Page, as we addressed her, was retired, and her Doctorate was a PhD.  She reviewed books, mainly natural history, which she often passed to us for reading before they were returned to the publisher.  When her flat became available Mum & Dad, being on the spot and friendly with the landlord’s agent, got first crack and took over the tenancy to provide David and I with rooms of our own and they, at last, a bedroom too.  No.5 was in poor condition and we continued to live, in all other respects, in No.3.  However, not long afterwards, David left home entirely, leaving me, briefly, as the sole occupant.  The flat was large enough to accommodate others and, as a way of covering the rent, Mum & Dad agreed to take on two former Marylebone school friends of mine, William Ward and Jeff (Sid) Lawrence, as sort-of lodgers.  Sid’s father had access to second-hand furniture and the flat was soon equipped with redundant study-bedroom furniture from some educational establishment.  It didn’t really work, however.  I was, by then, at work and they were still in education.  Our lifestyles simply didn’t mix, and they went their separate ways.

          I now think Mum and Dad were very tolerant to allow me to leave school with such ill-defined, if not bleak, prospects.  My school reports at the time spoke mostly of unfulfilled promise and struggles with subjects that were “really too difficult for him” and I think Mum, at least, really believed that academic achievement was beyond me.  It was agreed that I could leave provided that it was into a ‘proper trade’ and, being in a printing-related firm herself, Mum got me an interview, and entrance examination, for an apprenticeship in the same industry.  For a grammar school boy, even an ‘under-achiever’, the entrance examination was easy and I was duly accepted into the black art of colour retouching, and the mysteries of the union chapel.  From the summer of 1963 I worked hard at the premises of John Filmer, in Southwark Street, doing unmentionably dangerous things with acid and trying to learn how to create high quality printing plates, for illustrations, by etching the copper plates for £2 a week.  Like all apprentices I was sent out on messages, though never on an archetypal fool’s errand for a “left-handed pencil”, a “jar of electricity” or “tin of striped paint”.  The camaraderie was good and the people, for the most part, kind: we played cricket on the roof at lunchtime using paper balls, bound up with sticky tape.  Despite writing proudly to my former school classmates about the prospect of achieving the holy grail of £20 per week, as a time-served journeyman, I could see that automation was already making inroads into the craft-based work: the future was by no means certain. It was not for me and, after a year, I persuaded Mum and Dad to get me released from my indentures.  Next step was the cycling.

          During my year at John Filmer, I had managed to buy my first bike.  At first used for commuting, but I got seriously into cycling as a sport.  I joined a club, the Leo Road Club (no reference to my astrological birth sign), and my weekends were spent watching sprint meetings at Herne Hill Velodrome cycle track, competing in time trials and going on club runs.  There were several things wrong with this arrangement.  Firstly, the club was based in East Ham and I lived in central London.  This meant that on ‘club nights’ I would have quite a long ride to join up with my club mates.  Secondly, the club racing events were orientated towards Essex, which meant that on race days, usually Sunday, I would sometimes ride fifteen or twenty miles before a race, then ride a 25 mile time trial, then join my club on an 80 mile run and finally return, on my own, to home.  As time trials often started at six or seven in the morning, this meant getting up at four-thirty or five a.m. and not getting home until ten or eleven at night.  I was very fit, but knackered.  Lastly, it reinforced my already somewhat solitary existence.  Nevertheless I did enjoy the competition, the sense of belonging to some sort of community, and such comradeship as there was.  I was sufficiently keen to think that, if I tried hard, I might make a career out of cycling; so it was that when I left the print, with the incredible tolerance of Mum and Dad, I spent three months training in the gym of the YMCA and riding my bike.  I did improve considerably and managed to land myself a job with Condor Cycles.  Condor was one of the leading makers of hand-built racing cycles and they had a semi-professional racing team sponsored by ‘Mackeson’ stout.  It was the pride and joy of Monty Young – himself a fine track cyclist in his younger years.  Monty ran Condor from two locations, one in Grays Inn Road near my home and the other in Balls Pond Road – I got to run the Balls Pond Road shop Monday to Friday (and prepare race bikes for some of the 1964 British Olympic team) and serve in the Gray’s Inn Road shop on Saturdays for £6 a week.  £1 a day. Coincidentally it was here that my first wife, Lesley, saw me for the first time.  In those days cyclists racing jerseys were a fashion item among certain young people, and we sold many more jerseys to fashion victims than we ever did to genuine cyclists.  Lesley apparently came into the shop and noted the young red head behind the counter, though it wasn’t until years later that I discovered this.  I did win a handicap time trial by riding 25 miles in 1hr 08 minutes, but the competition record then was about 54 minutes so I had to face the fact that I was not likely to be good enough to be a professional cyclist.  I owed it to Mum and Dad to do something “serious” about a job.  This led me to browsing the situations vacant columns of the London evening papers.  Later, in 1967, my cycling ‘hero’, Yorkshireman Tommy Simpson, killed himself taking drugs in the Tour de France and I realised then that my decision had been correct: if someone that good had to take drugs to keep up, I would never have made the grade.  In the early ‘sixties there was full employment, or rather the illusion of full employment, and an incredible feeling of confidence that one could attempt anything – if it didn’t work out you were more likely than not to find another job by the next day and try again.  I had the vague notion that, since I liked ‘Art’, I ought to do something ‘creative’ and was attracted by an advertisement from an architect’s practice: “Office junior required, opportunity to progress to the drawing board after 12 months”, or words to that effect.  I had only the flimsiest understanding of what an architect did, but knew it was something creative and so applied for, and got, the job.  I started at 5 Southampton Place in Bloomsbury – within walking distance of home. 

          I had no clothes that were suitable for an office job.  The clothes of an apprentice colour etcher were old, covered by a full-length brown warehouseman’s coat, and shoes that were liable to be splashed by acid.  Working in the bike shop often saw me wearing a tracksuit, or tweed “plusses” (plus twos) and a jumper, all day.  Though relatively informal, even bohemian, the atmosphere in a 60s architect’s office required something else.  I had no money for new clothes, and so it was that I parted company with my time-trials racing bike, and with the proceeds I acquired two outfits: both with corduroy trousers and polo neck jumpers – though of different colours.  I bought a pair of suede ‘desert boots’, and a pair of elastic sided slip-on boots, and my new working wardrobe was complete.  It was 1964 and my road to being an architect began with Richard Sheppard, Robson and Partners.

          I cannot say RSR&P was the best UK practice, but it was certainly one of the best and had a deserved international reputation.  The founding partners, Richard Sheppard and Geoffrey Robson, produced well-designed buildings from a background of ‘the modern movement’ and sympathy with (if not actual embracing of) socialism.  Most of their projects were socially relevant – housing, education and so on.  I was diligent, hard-working, and interested: apparently something of a novelty in office juniors.  Being a little older than the usual ‘juniors’, I was able to develop my own style of contributing, even at the low level position I found myself occupying.  Mr Sheppard (I never dared to call him by his first name) was a formidable man, in intellect, personality and physically.  He terrified me.  Disabled by polio as a young man, he dragged himself around on crutches and you could hear him coming long, long, before he appeared.  His upper body was very powerful, and more akin to that of a rugby prop-forward, I suppose as a result of doing all the work of moving himself around.  He drove himself, in a Renault ‘Floride’ convertible or his Mercedes, and hauled himself up and down the stairs of the building as there was no lift.  My first meeting with him was almost comic: I was torn between helping him and standing back, as I watched him wrestle himself out of his car and up the steps to the office where I stood to hold open the door.  He had handed me his briefcase at the foot of the steps, but when inside the door said, in his deep and very “plummy” voice, “and who might you be?”  I introduced myself and he held out his huge hand, which I took and shook vigorously, before realising that he expected his hand to be filled, instead, by his returned briefcase!  He developed a soft spot for me and certainly took an interest in what I was up to: it was he that encouraged me to study architecture properly, rather than remaining a draughtsman.

I think my battle with “The Colonel”, marked me out as something different to Mr Sheppard.  Sam Lucas OBE, a former army lieutenant-colonel was employed to manage the office.  One day Colonel Lucas, as we mortals were required to address him, asked me to clean and sterilise all the office telephones once a month.  I explained that my schedule did not allow for the time to properly clean 40 or more handsets, and, anyway, to do so only once a month seemed inadequate if sterility was the desired objective.  He insisted.  I decided that the only thing that would convince him would be a message from the partners, and the only way of convincing them of my case was show them some facts.  I approached three firms that provided this sort of service (Phonotas was one) and asked them what would be required to properly clean the ‘phones in our, then, two offices – and how much they would charge for it.  I presented the results in the form of a report, which clearly showed that I could not possibly include worthwhile ‘phone cleaning with my other duties and that the cost of a contract to do it properly was very modest.  I never cleaned a ‘phone.

          The other non-design “department” was accounts.  It was run by the only other person in the office who tried to bully me – the office bookkeeper, Joyce.  She was a small, neat woman but, in colloquial parlance, “tight-arsed”.  One of my duties as office junior involved distributing incoming mail and collecting, enveloping, weighing, stamping and posting the outgoing mail.  I was also required to manage and balance the postage stamp book.  It was this last that continually brought me into conflict with Joyce, who reacted with anger and contempt if the book was so much as a half-penny out.  She would imply stupidity or criminality in turn, though how I would have got rich on fiddling the post-book by a half-penny here or there defeated me.  Over time I began to argue back, and eventually she said “You’ve got an excuse for everything haven’t you?”  She gave up in frustration, when I rebutted with “Not an excuse, a reason”.  Our relationship settled into an uneasy truce after that.  However, Joyce had an assistant, Lesley Wren, who was friendlier and eventually I asked her out.

          Another duty was making morning coffee and afternoon tea, both of which were served as a semi-social event, in the office library, at a designated time.  After I had mastered the art of preparing tea and coffee in the various ways that people wanted it, including for the partners, I thought it would be nice to offer something different, and soon the staff were able to have lemon tea too.  The librarian was a rather glamorous lady (at least she thought she was) called Angela Zimbler and she had an assistant called Linda Bunney.  Angela and Linda were rather like Penelope Keith and Felicity Kendal in the early years of the TV series “The Good Life”.  I liked Linda a lot – she was a bubbly, petite, young woman with long blond hair but was just a bit too old to be interested in me.  Office life was very friendly.  We had a cricket team that played against other teams from professional offices in the neighbourhood, usually after hours, and the firm provided the kit and the refreshments.  Mr and Mrs Sheppard held a garden party every summer at their home in Little Berkhampstead, although I never went as I felt it too much like the master entertaining the estate workers.  How silly of me.  There were other social events such as Christmas parties and, later – when Lesley and I had become a couple – some of the architects would invite us to their homes for dinner parties.  When I started there I think I was earning £520 per year, but this rapidly grew to £1000 a year and then £1500.

         My life as a draughtsman was interesting.  I was allowed to contribute, in my own small way, to the design of some fine projects: Worcester College, Churchill College (Cambridge), Brunel University, The King’s Fund Centre and, among others, Imperial College Sports Centre in West London.  There I was lowered, in a bucket, down a 3 ft. diameter pile shaft through 80 ft. of unsupported London clay.  When I got there, a man was at the bottom sweeping by the light of a naked bulb!  Mr Sheppard still terrified me.  One day, hunched over the drawing board and drawing gravel (to scale!) in some construction detail, I heard the unmistakable ‘thud, thud’ of his approach.  Eventually the ‘thud’ stopped behind me and his huge shadow seeped across my board.  After what seemed an age his plummy voice boomed “Every time you draw one of those (sic pebble), it costs me sixpence”.  ‘thud, thud; thud, thud’.  It was a lesson in the economics of practice that I never forgot though, regrettably for other employers, did not always apply.

 I also met some good people there, among them one who became a long term influence on my life:  David Arditti.  David was an Architect, and an Associate of the practice – one step away from being a partner – when I joined.  David was more ‘moral’ than most, and I think his lack of ‘fit’ with the growing commercialism and management style of RSR&P eventually precipitated his departure.  However, he was also involved in other, more esoteric, things and studying to be an Osteopath.  Eventually he gave up Architecture altogether, moved on to Osteopathy and then (having taught himself Chinese) studied to be an Acupuncturist and ran a clinic in Waterloo, South London.  Over the years David and I became friends and remained, albeit very loosely, in touch ever since. 

As I have said, Mr Sheppard wanted me to study architecture and qualify properly.  This meant five years of full-time study, and a ‘year out’ in an office, in the middle.  A further year of practice was required before sitting the final qualifying exams, so, it was a seven year haul – minimum.  It also meant that I would have to pick up another two ‘O’ level and two ‘A’ level exam passes, to add to my existing three ‘O’ levels, as that was the minimum entry requirement for any school of architecture.  I was given a day off a week to go to further education college, but I would also have to go to night classes.    

Also, by this time, Lesley Wren and I had become an “item”.  Very soon after we began going out together we decided (at least I think it was mutual) that we were heading in the direction of marriage.  Mum and Dad were shocked by the bald announcement that we were engaged, at the ripe age of 18, but I sold my remaining racing bike (to the champion of Jamaica, no less) and bought a small solitaire diamond ring – so that was that.  We became more or less inseparable, and whenever we weren’t at work we were in one parental home or the other – or out looking at things for the “bottom drawer”.  Flat No.5 began to assume a different importance, as our potential matrimonial home, and gradually work to improve and decorate it began.  Lesley’s dad had died when she was only 10, at the age of 49.  He had been a painter and decorator and I wondered if the inhalation of paint fumes, allied to his smoking, was the cause of his heart attack.  This left Lesley’s only sibling, her elder brother Albie, as head of the household – a position that, I think, he abused by treating his mum very badly.  Two examples only: he was very fastidious about his clothes and appearance and, if his clothes weren’t ironed exactly as he wanted them he would throw them, literally, into his mums face.  He once wanted to try tripe and onions and insisted his mum cooked it for him.  I remember her standing over the evil concoction, retching, for hours.  He took one taste and, not liking it, pushed it aside without as much as a hint of recognition for the agony his mum had been through for him.  Lesley’s mum, Edie, was a nice woman who had struggled with weight for many years – she was just constitutionally large and no amount of dieting, which she did valiantly, was going to change it.  I think that Edie liked me well enough, and Albie and I got on OK too, partly because we both supported Arsenal football club and partly because he was working in the print (as did three of his uncles) and in a branch closely related to that in which I had been apprenticed.  We had even been in the same union S.L.A.D.E. – the Society of Lithographic Artists, Designers and Engravers.  Funny thing, that: my maternal grandfather had been a lithographic artist too.  Highbury, the then Arsenal ground, was within walking distance of Lesley’s home, at number 41 Mackenzie Road, and Albie and I would go to the home games.  We also played a lot of darts together in his bedroom at Mackenzie Road, but we never socialised in other ways that I can remember. 

For my 18^th birthday Lesley bought me my first motorized two-wheeler: a second-hand Lambretta 150cc scooter.  It cost her £30 – quite a lot of money then.  We increased its engine size to 175cc, for more power, and although it was never completely reliable we did manage to get to the south coast, and the freedom it gave us round London was tremendous.  If you rode on two wheels with a motor, you fell into fall into one of two camps: ‘Mods’ or ‘Rockers’ (a.k.a ‘Greasers’).  Rockers rode motorbikes, wore jeans and leather jackets, had long ‘Brylcream’-ed hair.  Mods rode scooters, wore suits and Ben Sherman button down shirts with ties, under ex-NATO parkas (preferably with a fur trimmed hood) and had short hair.  There were some near riots involving clashes between these two tribes:  sometimes several hundred would battle it out at Margate or Brighton, and the general population came to look on Bank Holidays with some trepidation since it was usually on such weekends that the confrontations took place.  This tribalism is well covered by the feature film “Quadrophenia”.  Lesley and I did wear ex-NATO parkas and, sometimes, “Bovver boots” (like army boots) but were never proper ‘Mods’, and never went anywhere in company with another scooter rider.  The small wheels made the scooter unstable in rain, but I only fell off it once, when coming home alone from visiting brother David at his house in Fulham.  It was late and a drizzly night, and I over-braked at some red traffic lights in Charing Cross Road.  I slid off, ignominiously, into the gutter.  Two policemen, who had been sheltering from the rain in an adjacent doorway, stepped forward, but they were not interested in my condition – only whether I had stolen the scooter!  Later we decided that more wheels might be safer, and bought an Isetta bubble car for £30 from somewhere in Kingston, or Richmond – that felt so unsafe that we parted with it in all of three weeks! 

On the whole my sex education had been woefully inadequate, which is inexplicable in the context of the ‘swinging sixties’ and having parents who were, on the face of it, uninhibited and openly physical.  I realised that they were, in fact, quite discreet about such matters when, many years later, they were very embarrassed by my discovery that they had not been married at the time of my birth.  My Dad’s only attempt to enlighten me was a non-specific query, “Is there anything that you want to know?”, delivered without context.  I didn’t know what he was talking about so I didn’t, and the conversation ended never to be re-opened.  I was eighteen when I discovered masturbation, and that was by accident, so my adolescent experience of sexual satisfaction, and curiosity, was entirely via the medium of ‘men’s magazines’.  In one summer holiday (1965), Lesley joined us in our family in a trip to Romania.  David and I shared a room, while Lesley had a room of her own.  Naturally, most nights saw me in with her, rather than David, although there was never any sex: we, literally, just slept together – and then not always, because of the heat.  The following year we went away alone, to Rimini, flying by a beat-up old Douglas DC4 from Manston in Kent to Basle, Switzerland.  Once there we boarded a coach for the final part of the journey, over the St. Gothard pass to the Adriatic.  We only had one room (although we had told our parents that we had one each) and the accommodation was on half-board basis.  It cost us the enormous sum of £33 each for 2 weeks!  I am sure that our parents probably thought that we were ‘sleeping together’, but to have admitted it, particularly to Edie and her family, was unthinkable.  People at work assumed we would get married, something I encouraged by turning up to work one day in a three-piece suit with a flower in my buttonhole, but I think many people expected our relationship to fizzle out with growing maturity.  However in August 1967 we married in an Islington church and set off, via a honeymoon in Budva, then Yugoslavia, on married life.  There was no lack of desire, or opportunity, but despite the assumptions of others, we still had not had sex.  Even now I can look back on that innocent time with real affection; we had a lovely honeymoon in a beautiful place, though both marriage and Yugoslavia were later battered out of recognition.  I think that our mutual naiveté and immaturity, then, was another factor in the eventual failure of the marriage. 

With the benefit of hindsight it is easier to see defining moments in personal history: points in the course of events that, had they been handled differently, might have profoundly changed the way subsequent events developed.  No sooner had we returned to work from our honeymoon than I resumed part-time studies, while working at RSR&P with a view to starting Architecture School in the following summer.  Lesley had previously gone on to work elsewhere (at Liverpool Street).  I think we both thought that it was not good for us to continue in the same place of work, given our relationship, although we frequently lunched together as Liverpool Street is only 4 stops on the tube from Holborn.  I recall the ‘exoticism’ of chicken vol-aux-vents and ‘fanned’ avocado in some restaurant there! 

It had already taken two years of part-time study to get another ‘A’ level and ‘O’ level, in Art and Economics.  Part of the next ‘A’ level course, in Geography, involved a week-long field study trip to Devon – and there were two outcomes of this for me.  The first was a project folder of such high quality that it was referred to the examiners for special mention.  The second was a totally unexpected, and un-nerving, attraction to one of the female students.  It had never occurred to me that, only recently and happily married as I was, I could be attracted to anyone else.  Nothing came of this at all, of course, but again points to my naive state and immaturity at the time.  At the end of the academic year 1967/68 I thought I had, once more, failed my “O” level maths and, as this was a mandatory requirement to Architectural study, decided on a break in employment.  Lesley and I left our jobs and embarked on a hitch-hiking trip across Europe.  We bought a Blacks ‘Good Companions’ two-man tent which was (then) of lightweight and advanced design.  It had an “A” frame pole arrangement that was external to the accommodation, thus allowing all of the internal space to be used, uncluttered by poles; the tent also had a separate flysheet that went over the “A” frame.  We bought two rucksacks and a brilliant little, petrol fired, stove that folded away into its own case.  Packing clothes, food and a set of nesting cooking pots, we set off with the vague idea of going to Greece and /or Turkey.  The journey took us through Belgium, Germany, Austria (where we waltzed at the request of the patron for our breakfast in a B&B) and Hungary, but ultimately it foundered on a beach in Romania, after days of continuous heavy rain.  Actually, we were ‘rescued’ from a soggy campsite by a man and his wife who took us to their little state-provided flat for three days to dry out.  It was one of those curious coincidences that he turned out to be the Regional Architect, and we corresponded for a number of years afterwards.  After six weeks we had both had enough of life on the road.  British tourism to Romania was well established by then and as we had already been there as a family it was relatively easy to arrange “repatriation” by buying two empty seats on a charter flight: what had taken six weeks to achieve was reversed in three hours.  I remember being met at Victoria station by our families, who thought we looked very thin! 

I resumed employment at RSR&P but shortly after our return came unexpected news: I had passed my remaining exams and was thus eligible to enrol in a school of architecture!  Mr Sheppard had wanted me to try for the Architectural Association school (where he had also gone).  The AA was a private school, with a world-wide reputation for producing designers and architectural theorists, and very difficult to get in to.  Despite a good reference from Mr Sheppard, and a reasonable performance at both the previous spring’s entrance exam and interview, I was not offered a place.  Now, in September, it was just before the start of the academic year and the only school in London with places left was the, then, Brixton School of Building.  Dick Sheppard gave me his, somewhat disappointed, blessing (Brixton School of Building was not on his, or indeed most other peoples, list of places to be educated as an Architect) and I was on my way.  If that place had not been available, or I had not passed that maths exam then, perhaps I would never have gone on to be an Architect.

It is very important to understand the nature of society in the late 1960’s, both economically and socially, the influence that this had on my life as a young married man starting on a long course of tertiary education and, perhaps, to compare it with the life of my own children and grandchildren at a similar stage of their lives.  Firstly, the ‘sixties’ (especially the early 60’s), swinging or otherwise, were a time of great optimism and economic freedom.  I have already said that with near full employment, especially in the south-east of England, it was, quite literally, possible to walk out of one job in the morning and have another one by tea-time.  Lesley and I lived in a very nice, rent-controlled, private flat with a secure tenancy – bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen for about £2.50 a week (which was, even then, very cheap).  As a mature, and married, student I received the maximum grant that together with Lesley’s salary, and care, was enough to realistically live – not just exist.

I was one of the very few students who were married and, having not come straight from school, I was also one of the oldest in my year even at the ripe age of 22.  They were quite a mixed bunch, though there were few foreign nationals: I remember one Danish lad, with blonde curly hair and a very ‘sixties’ mini-car with union jack painted roof, and an Israeli, Yahir Sahar, who left after first year to do his national service.  I have wondered, from time to time, whether he survived all of the Middle Eastern wars and troubles since.  It was a time of enormous political upheaval, worldwide.  Ché Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary, had been caught and executed in Bolivia the year before.  In France, a revolution led by students was under way; the Russians had just invaded Czechoslovakia in August (while Lesley and I were in Romania!); the North Vietnamese had all but over-run the Americans in their Tet Offensive.  Robert Kennedy, brother of the late American president John F., had been assassinated in June and Martin Luther King had also been murdered.  It was a brilliant time to be a student, especially one with a background in left-wing politics, despite the ever-lengthening shadow of the ‘cold war’. 

The course work in the first year was very broad.  We designed bridges out of balsa wood to carry bricks; we painted; we visited museums; we played a lot of snooker and table football.  There were, of course, ‘lectures’:  History of Architecture (the lecturer, Roger Dixon, sadly died prematurely during our year out), Art (with knee-booted and mini-skirted Bridget Jackson – who most of the male students lusted after) Construction subjects (Martin Wilkinson and Robin Barry) and so on.  The lectures also included ‘Social Studies’ (Mona Eldridge) which was more like a discussion bordering on group therapy– exploring the nature of relationships within the group.  As a consequence, a bond developed between us as ‘a year’ that was never really broken, and several of the students remain in contact to this day.  Some members of staff were part-time, amongst the most significant of these was Don Smith.  Don was a sort of ‘hippy in a suit’ who seemed, much of the time, to be on another planet – rather like ‘Dylan’ in the children’s TV programme “Magic Roundabout”.  I was never part of his group, or a particular fan, but he had a loyal smoke-shrouded following. 

The school was organised, traditionally, in chronological order: first year, second year, third year and so on – students progressing through the school together with their ‘starting contemporaries’.  Many of us felt that this was artificial: for example, each year’s entry had students of varying age, ability and experience (several in my year had, like me, already worked in offices).  It seemed to us that we ought to be organised in groups, with students of all years represented, and that we should be able to undertake projects, and attend lectures, that most closely fitted our stage of development and interests.  Further, we suggested that groups could undertake common projects, with the students contributing to, and benefiting from, the project at their own level.  This is, of course, how things are organised in practice but, though something similar existed at the AA, this was revolutionary thinking in mainstream educational terms.  Nevertheless, in the social and political crucible of 1968, revolutionary thinking was ‘normal’ and the lecturers were prepared to discuss, and even implement, change.  

A core of ‘radical’, or active, students quickly came together.  Chris Wood, Bob Taylor, Vassos (Vas) Savvides, Kevin Barnaville, Les Burke, Terry Garland, Niko Xenakis, Roger Smith and Chris Page amongst them, were watched from the periphery by a larger group of more ‘conservative’ or passive students who just wanted to get on with the work and not rock the boat.  I do not mean to imply criticism of these students – they had their priorities, and ways of seeing the world, which were valid for them.  For our group, it seemed that there was a better way of organising what was, after all, our education.  Because of my activism, I suppose, I became chairman of the ‘Architectural Society’.  ARCSOC, as it became known, did not confine itself to strictly architectural matters, but was an umbrella organisation (largely unstructured) that arranged trips to other schools, buildings of interest and invited people to come and talk.  It was with ARCSOC that the school authorities ‘negotiated’ course matters and representatives of ARCSOC were joined into the formal committees of the school administration.  The tactic of neutralizing revolutionaries by absorbing them into the establishment is an old one but was only partly successful in our case: things got ‘looser’, the course was re-organised, and we actually won.

Our groups had tutors assigned to them, rather like form masters (Bridget being the obvious exception), and we also had personal tutors.  In my time at college I was lucky to have two of the best at Brixton: Tony Morgan and Ross Jamieson.  The activities of ARCSOC meant that we travelled the country to proselytise about our way of education (an incredible conceit) and we even gave an interview to BBC Radio Sheffield which was, I recall, highly critical of the city’s modern council housing.   The projects we undertook were very varied and often interesting: a day centre for autistic children is one that stands out from the first three years.  We also did some amazing socializing as a tight group.  For example, we ‘kidnapped’ Kevin Barnaville, on his birthday, and sent him off to Brighton by train.  He was blindfold, and his hands tied, but we enlisted the help and participation of the other passengers and train staff, to confuse and mislead him as to his eventual destination.  Two of us travelled with him, as much to ensure that he honoured his promise to not escape his bonds as to ensure his safety.  On arrival we were greeted by about 15 of our comrades, who had travelled ahead by road, and a good time was had by all – regrettably resulting in Kevin taking an impromptu swim in a bitterly cold English Channel, and getting a bad dose of bronchitis as a result.   On another occasion Lesley and I entertained a whole group to a pancake supper in our flat.  Lectures were, for the most part, confined to one day of the week, leaving us to pursue our course work and projects as we saw fit.  Being young and easily distracted we got up to all sorts of things and there are many incidents that still sparkle in the memory.  Roger Smith lived in a flat at Clapham and he had an old, white painted, upright piano with which he wanted to ‘endow’ our studio.  Roger, Kevin, Chris Wood, Vas and I manhandled it down into the street and pushed it, on its metal castors, through the streets to the college building in Ferndale Road.  We must have been quite a sight, with wisps of smoke coming from the overheated metal castors, but Roger and Vas, who took turns to play blues and ‘boogie-woogie’ as we went along, compounded the effect.  We were saved from a kerbside conflagration by passing firemen who gave us a lift, piano and all, the rest of the way!  The snooker, already mentioned, was played in the student union common room, which was, as luck would have it, one floor down and directly below our studio.  It was inevitable that we were always first to the table when we had spare time.  We also did silly things like race each other along the corridors, up and down stairs, and once this almost cost someone their life.

A group of us were running around the common room when Sam Tamam, another of our close circle, pulled a chair into the edge of the room to make a kind of hurdle.  Rapidly, other chairs followed until a manic steeplechase was in full flow.  Not being content to jump normally, Sam took it into his head to attempt a clearance with both feet together, like a kangaroo.  He didn’t make it:  his feet struck the edge of the chair, which shot out from under him and he came down on the floor, striking the back of his head with a sickening thud.  At first we laughed, and Sam lay on the floor shaking and shuddering to heighten the joke.  Only he wasn’t joking: something was seriously wrong.  I thought Sam was having some sort of fit, but when I reached him, and prized open his clenched teeth to prevent him biting through his tongue, I saw that the impact had caused some gum that he had been chewing to lodge in his windpipe: he was choking to death.  Without hesitating, I reached inside his mouth and plucked the gum out.  Though absolutely the wrong thing to do, it came out: Sam regained consciousness and, although he had to go to hospital overnight, made a complete recovery.  This was the first of several times that I was in a position to administer first-aid in a life-or-death situation, a fact that I have pondered more than once, and which partly resulted in me becoming an Auxiliary Coastguard years later.

At the end of our first year I returned to Sheppard Robson to earn some money in the long summer vacation, and this enabled Lesley and I to travel overland to Greece with Niko Xenakis in his mini.  It took us four days of, more or less, non-stop driving to get to Thessaloniki where Niko’s stepmother and father lived, and it was a journey of great adventure including almost getting arrested, twice, for motoring offences in Yugoslavia.  Transgressing local traffic laws was not difficult, since they seemed both arbitrary and secret.  It was not, I think, an accident that our first brush with the law, having already crossed France, Belgium, Germany and Austria without incident, occurred soon after the Yugoslav border: I overtook somewhere I shouldn’t have, and they were waiting for tourists.  The imposition of on-the-spot cash fines made it all the more suspicious: certainly I suspected it was a ‘nice little earner’ for the traffic cops.  Niko had no money until he got ‘home’ but we couldn’t plead poverty because my wallet was lying in plain sight on the dashboard.  The second, and potentially more serious, offence occurred very early in the morning, after driving through the night.  We were running out of petrol. The road in question was allegedly a motorway, but physically a single piece of tarmac with the two, single, lanes of opposing traffic separated only by a white painted line representing a ‘barrier’ down the middle.  We were not supposed to cross the line, but it seemed as if all the petrol stations were on the opposite side of the road.  Without petrol we were soon going to be stationary on the motorway, presumably another offence, and at dawn there was absolutely nothing else in sight, so we pulled off at the next petrol station.  The proprietor was helpful but, by a mixture of French, German, English and sign language, made it clear that we were now certain to be stopped by a motorcycle patrolman, who was lurking under a bridge just down the road.  He showed us how to regain the correct side of the motorway without re-crossing the white line but, sure enough, out popped a motorcycle cop, complete with jodhpurs and ‘pudding-basin’ crash helmet, vigorously waving his ‘lollipop’ at us.  We were nicked.  I climbed out and feigned ignorance – quickly followed by a pretence that we had been stopped because fuel was visibly leaking from the cap of the over-filled tank.  Ostentatiously I wiped the excess from the side of the car and, equally ostentatiously, shook the policeman’s hand in thanks for saving us from certain immolation.  ‘Plodovic’ became exasperated, pointing to the white line in the middle of the road, making a clear sign of something crossing it, and repeatedly saying ‘Verboten’.  We continued to feign non-comprehension, but things began to look bleak as he made it unmistakably clear that we would have to follow him to the police station.  At this point, in a desperate masterstroke, I pulled out my Yugoslav phrase book and pointed to a line that translated as ‘Please have the maid bring fresh towels to my room.’  I imagine that the poor policeman could see the end to his long night-shift descending into chaos, with three foreign idiots pinning him down at the station in paperwork.  He threw his hands up in defeat, and waved us onwards.

After recuperating from the drive in Niko’s family flat, the three of us drove across Halkidiki to the easternmost of its three peninsulas, where Mt. Athos is situated.  The whole of this peninsula was then a self-governing religious community, with wonderful working monasteries and accessible only by sea from Ouranopolis.  It was permitted to visit, as tourists, although access was limited and a permit required, first from the Tourist Police in Thessaloniki and then from the ‘Parliament’ on the peninsula itself.  Niko and I wanted to see the architecture, but no females (allegedly, even animals) were permitted to land.  Lesley bravely agreed to stay behind, in bed & breakfast accommodation, in Ouranopolis.  Mt.Athos was fascinating and we managed to stay overnight in two separate monasteries, as well as attending services at 4am.  The services were surreal, with the visitors perched in narrow, individual and high-backed, wooden stalls so shallow that we were more standing than seated.  The air was thick with incense and the shadowy, hooded, figures of monks glided in and out of the darkness, which was punctuated only by small pools of candlelight, carrying various relics to be kissed by the celebrants.  Of course, I did not understand the service except for the repeatedly droned incantation “Kyrie eleison(?)” which I think means ‘God have mercy on us’.  I imagine tourists were a real nuisance in the lives of the monks and their hospitality was occasionally less than wholehearted; we understood that it was the duty of the monks to give food and shelter to anyone who presented themselves, humbly and in need, at their gate, but we had to resort to raiding one monastery garden for raw vegetables to stem our hunger.  After we had returned to Ouranopolis, where Lesley had been well treated, we went back to Thessaloniki and parted company from Niko.  Niko was a sincere Socialist but, from my living background immersed in British working-class politics, it was amusing to see this middle-class Greek, wearing a velvet jacket, and open his briefcase to distribute political tracts and copies of ‘Socialist Worker’.  Very few students even had, or wanted to be seen with, a briefcase.  But Greece was, at the time, in the grip of a fascist military dictatorship, which we knew as ‘The Colonels’, and it must have been painfully difficult, if not dangerous, for him to be in Greece while for us it was merely chilling.  I later regretted my instinctive doubt of the sincerity of Niko’s intellectual Socialism: he was genuine, and politically (and in other ways) more educated than I was.  He was a talented artist and went on to a long career dominated by community action.  Lesley and I made our own way, 12 hours by ferry, to Heraklion in Crete where we spent almost three weeks.  Our time there was spent reading and eating; we did little sightseeing except visiting the palace at Knossos which was very impressive.  We intended to make the return journey via Igoumenitsa on Corfu, to Brindisi in southern Italy, and then overland by hitch-hiking all the way home.  In a bizarre coincidence, while waiting for the ferry, we were woken from a fitful sleep on café chairs, by a voice recounting the story of our ‘arrest’ in Yugoslavia: Niko was waiting for the same ferry!! As luck would have it, we picked up a ride in Brindisi with a young American couple who were touring ‘Yoorp’ in a newly-bought Volkswagen Beetle, which they had collected from the factory in Germany and were intending to ship back home from Amsterdam.  We were in no particular hurry, so we thought it would be no problem for us to tour with them, and in this way we called on Naples (and Pompeii), Rome and points north.  Unfortunately the couple, whom we privately nicknamed Bill and Ben, spent a considerable part of each day bickering, and it was a superhuman effort to stay with them as far as Belgium – especially as we had, for economy’s sake, to sometimes share a hotel room with them.

Soon after, I restarted at Brixton for my second year we bought our first ‘proper’ motorbike: a twin cylinder Honda CB77E of 305ccs.  This was my first experience of using my feet to change gear and at first I drove across London, from Holborn to Brixton, barely in control and often in the wrong gear.  It was clear that the machine had seen better days, and it was replaced by a green Mini Van (the van version of the mini car). The Mini Van had a folding bench seat in the back and was a good little car, until I made a mistake, about three months after passing my driving test, which allowed someone to drive into the passenger side door.  The resulting damage caused its premature sale, and then replacement by a white Hillman Imp – courtesy of a loan of £345 from Lesley’s mum (I think).  The Imp was a small 2 door saloon car – fast and light:  it was ahead of its time in some respects, not least for its ‘hatch-back’ window and rear mounted aluminium engine.  The engine was designed and built by Coventry Climax, who also made racing car engines.  I remember that John Theodosiou had one some years before. People used to race the Imp too, and it is now a classic.  It also had to go, when the engine started to smoke and threatened expensive repairs that we couldn’t afford, but not before we had done some long trips, including up the M1 at 85mph, with Chris Wood, to hear the Black Dyke Mills Brass Band play in Huddersfield (Chris’s hometown).  Then followed our first new motorbike, a Honda CD 175: a brilliant little twin cylinder bike with very good weather protection, adequate performance, and a chromed luggage carrier.  Most importantly, it was reliable and comfortable.  Having gone this far, we also bought the best, fully enclosed, helmets (which were then quite rare) and proper waterproof over suits.  It must seem that life as a student was self-indulgent.  With my grant, and Lesley’s income, we were able to have holidays, buy things for the flat and go to the cinema and theatre.  Much more importantly, we could afford the time to do the extra things that broaden education, which is as it should be in tertiary education.  The majority of students today have jobs, and are saddled with loans and debt, to pay for tuition fees and living expenses. 

Throughout the ‘sixties, the world tottered from one crisis to another.  After the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the most serious of these (and much longer lasting) was the Vietnam War.  Like students all over the world, we were worried and enraged in turn, by the ever increasingly desperate measures that the government of the USA used to fight that war.  We went to demonstrations and meetings, doing our bit by chanting “HO, HO, HO Chi Minh” at the bemused police and getting into very ugly scenes in Trafalgar Square and in Grosvenor Square where, outside the American embassy, and through its bullet-proof plate glass windows, we could see armed American marines, in full combat gear, ready to come out against us.  The war was fought by three American presidents, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, before Nixon conceded by withdrawing in 1972, leaving behind 50,000 American, and countless Vietnamese, dead and a devastated country. 

At the end of third year (1971) the first serious academic hurdle presented itself, as we had to present a portfolio of project work from the preceding three years as well as being required to sit examinations (as we were every year).  It was the equivalent of a first degree, although we would receive a Certificate.  These days, schools of Architecture grant Bachelor of Arts or Science degrees at this point.  It was prerequisite for passage to the Diploma course, years 4 & 5, that a pass was achieved in this examination.  The pressure was really on, and the final 10 days of the period leading up to the portfolio exam saw me bent over a drawing board almost 24 hours a day, and taking Benzedrine (illegally acquired from Dad) to keep awake in order to get my drawn work up to scratch.  I passed.  Lesley and I had decided on another hitch-hiking trip to Greece for the summer and had arranged to meet her Mum, who would make her own way by package trip, in Corfu.  Unfortunately, no sooner had Lesley and I set foot in Ostende, when the efforts of the previous weeks caught up with me and I collapsed from exhaustion.  We managed to find a hotel, where I slept for 24 hours straight, but we had to return to UK as it was clear that I hadn’t the energy and strength to undertake the trip.  Poor Edie was committed, and had to endure her holiday in Corfu solo.  What happened next was to have an important effect on the rest of our lives.

          It seemed that I really needed complete rest, but we couldn’t afford an expensive holiday.  We bought a paper called Daltons Weekly in which, amongst other things, B&B establishments, caravan owners and farms advertised holidays.  I was attracted by the idea of a peaceful farm-based holiday, and we found one that sounded ideal, in a small Cornish Village, just on the edge of Bodmin Moor.  We telephoned, and there was a room available.  As we were already packed from our aborted trip to Greece, we were able to immediately get ourselves, complete with motorbike, onto a train to Plymouth where, in no time, we disembarked and rode the 30 or so miles to Trekennick Farm.  And so it was that we met, and became part of the extended family of, Will and Joan Retallack.  Trekennick Farm was an 80 acre, mostly dairy, farm on marginal ground about 10 miles west of Launceston – just over the Devon/Cornwall border.  The farm was about a mile outside the pretty village of Altarnun, which had stone houses, a river, a couple of shops and a 12^th century church – St.Nonna’s – known as the Cathedral of the Moors.  Will was a little reserved, at first, but Joan was very welcoming and we quickly settled into the rhythm of a working farm.  It was our intention just to stay 2 weeks, but we were so captivated by the place, and I was so tired, that a fortnight extended to a month – by which time we were helping with small chores around the house and the farm.  I was now facing my ‘year out’ from college, during which I was expected to work in an architect’s office.  Since we were so happy there, both Lesley and I decided that a job in that part of the world would be very acceptable, and we returned to London to set about finding one.  It wasn’t long before an opening came up at the offices of A.J.R. Miller-Williams, in the Barbican district of Plymouth, and Will and Joan offered accommodation at their farm, only 30 miles cross country from Plymouth, until we could find somewhere to stay.  We arrived with the basic household necessities of life in a temporary home, including our pet budgie, Yo-Yo, but could not readily find anywhere to stay, and so Will & Joan accepted us as long-term members of their house.  We had, of course, kept the flat in London, as that would be needed when I resumed full-time study, and the cost of commuting to and from Plymouth had to be allowed for, but we paid a small rent, which I am sure in no way covered the costs of us being there.  Lesley helped Joan around the house and farm during the week, and I joined in on evenings and weekends, to such an extent that I became quite proficient in tractor driving, muck spreading, harrowing, sheep dipping, milking and shooting rabbits.  Lesley had a go at tractor driving too, but didn’t have the strength necessary to manage the steering and once ‘nudged’ the hen house!  We helped out with calving too, and assisted in the caesarean birth of one calf when the cow got into difficulties.  With winter coming on we bought an old powder-blue Vauxhall Victor three-speed saloon, for £125 from a garage in Callington, and put the bike into storage on the farm.  The car was useful for the commute to work and the occasional trip up to London, one of which was to return some un-needed household goods that we had initially brought down.  On that particular trip we almost collided with a herd of black cows that were ambling across the high-speed A30 dual carriageway in the dark night rain.  How we managed to not hit anything I do not know, but we stopped to help get the animals off the road – only to be accused by another motorist of being responsible, or rather irresponsible, for the animals.  Obviously we had begun to look like farmers too!  On another occasion we broke down, near Wincanton, when the alternator failed.  We had stopped in a dangerous place on a bend and, in order to get off the road to safety, let ourselves onto the forecourt of a closed petrol station to await the rescue services.  After a while I became aware of a man coming up behind us – carrying a shotgun.  ‘Get off my land, or I’ll let you have it’ he said.  I tried to explain that we were unable to comply, but the threat seemed real enough, so we managed to limp another 50 yards down the road.  The RAC took us to an all-night garage where a new alternator was fitted.  I say ‘new’, but it was, in fact, taken from a crashed car and, to add insult to injury, the mechanic broke the fan belt pulley wheel and re-fitted the one from our own car.  The bill, and its amount, did not acknowledge second-hand parts so, as soon as we were able, we asked the RAC to pursue the matter, and they got some of our money back.  

Will & Joan had two married sons, Peter and Brian.  Peter was thin, open-hearted, and also working on a farm, whereas Brian was stocky, reserved and worked as a builder.  Brian’s wife, Sandra, seemed to take against us after a while:  I don’t know whether she felt we were insinuating ourselves into Will & Joan’s affection, which was of course nonsense, but she was often ‘frosty’ and uncommunicative.  It was during this time that Lesley had a nasty shock: her mother suffered a heart attack.  We jumped into the Vauxhall and sped up to London where Lesley, and brother Albie, had to confront the awful possibility of losing their other parent.  Albie was very distraught, I remember, and at the time was remorseful about his previous treatment of his mother.  Fortunately Edie recovered, and so we returned to Cornwall – I think to Sandra’s chagrin.

We began to blend into the village life, the church, local football, fệtes etc. and gradually, although I was designing a fire station, training building and headquarters building for Devon Fire Brigade, I began to resent going to work in the office:  I would rather have been on the farm. We even considered stopping my studies at this point to stay in Cornwall, and take up farming as a way of life, but life had other plans.  Throughout the previous couple of years I had suffered intermittent bouts of bowel disorder and a crippling loss of energy.  While we lived on the farm, and I worked in Plymouth, this re-appeared and became sufficiently disabling for me to visit the doctor, who referred me for investigation – in London.  Although both of us were, in every other way, in glowing health it seemed that the best thing to do would be to return to London, sort out my ‘plumbing’, and complete my ‘year out’ by working with RSR&P again.  The investigations at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital are memorable to me only for two things.  Firstly, during the initial consultation, I was examined by a student – Bart’s being a teaching hospital.  Having a Doctor’s finger probe your rectum is never a pleasant experience, but this occasion had a certain extra tension, due to the fact that the student in question was female.  She asked questions to ascertain my general medical history, which included detail of any medications I had been routinely taking.  I told her that I had been taking Kaolin and Morphine – then commonly prescribed for people with ‘runny tummy’ as an anti-spasmodic and binding agent.  She couldn’t have heard the Kaolin part, for she rushed off to tell the consultant that I was a drug addict on Morphine!  Secondly, the way in which I was ‘conned’ into ingesting the foul Barium medium for the x-ray.  “Can you drink this?” enquired the nurse, offering me an eggcup-sized portion of ‘Polyfilla’-like stuff.  I bravely downed the gloop.  That wasn’t so bad, I thought.  “Very, good”, said the nurse, “now drink this” – and she pressed a pint glass of the same into my hand!  The test results proved very little, other than I had nothing obviously wrong, and so I resumed work until the summer, when Lesley and I joined my Mum & Dad, on the spur of the moment, in flying to California to see my half-brother Leslie and his family. 

This holiday ranks amongst the worst I have ever had.  Brother Leslie was, at that time, married to a well-meaning but neurotic, and therefore interfering and overbearing, woman called Shirley.  They had three sons:  Steven, David and Alex, and one daughter: Julie.  The house seemed to be in a near-permanent state of conflict and I wasn’t particularly ‘with it’, since part of my treatment involved taking Valium.  On our first evening, still disoriented from the flight, we were dragged off to have dinner with Shirley’s brother and family and I was continually pressed to give my ‘professional’ opinion of their house – which was difficult to do, politely, since I didn’t think much of it at all.  Nevertheless, we spent time touring some of the local sights, such as Big Sur and 17 Mile Drive, and hitched into San Francisco where we survived the scary mistake of walking though the Haight-Ashbury district, which had been famous in ‘the sixties’ as the centre of ‘flower power’ but had, in the meantime, become a black ghetto.  I got to drive Leslie’s big American car, and we also joined everyone in a family trip to Lake Tahoe where Leslie and Shirley had taken a ‘cabin’, by our standards a quite large and luxurious house.  Only three things stick in my mind now from the trip to Tahoe:  how David an Alex fought for possession of the air conditioning outlet in the car, taking turns to bury their faces in it; how Lesley and I were challenged as under-aged in a Casino (having to get our passports to prove that we weren’t), and taking David and Alex ‘fishing’ at a trout farm.

On our return from Cornwall Lesley took a job at the Examining Board in England, which arranged exams for the medical profession.  The offices were in Queen Square, in a building very close to my old junior school and our home.  The resident ‘house engineer’ (janitor, cum odd-job man) was Frank (Franco) Sheene, father of Barry Sheene who was later to become World 500cc Grand Prix Motorcycle Champion.  I had been at school with both Barry and his sister Margaret (who went on to marry another professional racer, Paul Smart).  I knew of ‘Franco’ because of my interest in motorcycle racing – he was then one of the foremost tuners of two-stroke racing machines, especially of the Spanish marque ‘Bultaco’.  In the service yard at the rear of the building, where the Sheenes also had a flat, they had a large garage and workshop in which Barry and ‘Franco’ would work on the bikes that Barry raced, and occasionally on those of other racers too.  It was a magnet for me, whenever I called at Lesley’s office, and I often found myself in the workshop watching the machines being fettled, or just looking at them.  By this stage in his career, with the help of’ Franco’, Barry had already come very close to winning a world title, on a beautiful ex-works 125cc twin cylinder Suzuki which leant against the garage wall.  It was a major achievement for a so-called ‘Privateer’ and was recognised by another Japanese factory, Yamaha, who gave him a works ride in the 350cc class.  Barry was a bit of a ‘lad’, more than a bit really: he was rarely without a pretty girl somewhere, never without a ‘Gauloise’ French cigarette, he was good looking, young and had long hair (not fashionable in his line of work then).  He called me ‘Ace’, which I enjoyed, but looking back I expect he called everyone ‘Ace’!  All racing machines (and therefore the machines of devotees of the sport) were adorned with self-adhesive stickers that promoted products (for sponsors) or, as in Barry’s case, an image.  I think he was the first British motorcycle racer to promote his ‘image’ with the same professionalism as he applied to his racing, and he had a sticker which became his trademark:  a hand in the colours of the American ‘Stars and Stripes’ making a ‘V’ sign – mimicking his habitual gesture when passing a rival!  All motorcycle racers also had distinctive, individual, designs on their helmets, and Barry’s was a full-face view of a laughing Donald Duck.  I don’t know if this was a subtle use of rhyming slang, but Barry’s reputation as a joker was appropriately reflected by the cartoon character, that grinned from his helmet.  Barry wanted his own ‘sticker’ and, having some graphic skill, I offered to design, and have manufactured, one that Barry could distribute to his fans: he agreed.  After approval of the draft, and then printer’s proofs, Barry took delivery of 150 round stickers depicting him ‘doing a wheelie’ (also then a trademark action of his, but now commonplace) towards the viewer.

The final sticker was round, and didn’t have a black background.

They were effective, and he was very pleased:  I still have one stuck to the cover of a ring binder, and the original artwork.  Interestingly it shows him racing with a number 1 on the fairing, not his trademark 7 which came later. 

Lesley and I were in the market for another motorbike for, although it was comfortable and reliable, our little 175cc Honda was slow, especially for longer trips ‘two-up’.  Barry offered to use his contacts in the dealer network to source a 350cc Yamaha, at a substantial discount, for us.  So it was that Barry and I drove in his van to South London and collected a YR5 twin-cylinder sports bike, still in its shipping crate.  Back at Queen Square we unloaded at Barry’s workshop, and he proceeded to assemble the bike.  Within a couple of hours Barry was saying “Come on, Ace, let’s go for a ride and see what it’ll do”.  So, clinging on for dear life, I was treated to a breath-taking, not to say terrifying, helmetless pillion ride round the nearby streets of Holborn behind a future world champion.

As Barry’s commitments and fame grew, along with his success that season, we saw less of him, although we did visit him in hospital after he shattered his collarbone at Imola, in the Italian Grand Prix.  The x-rays showed parts of bone held together with wire, though he was back racing 3 weeks later with a DIY harness on!  I made him a ‘get-well’ card which showed Donald Duck, with a large throbbing lump on his head, saying that, in future, perhaps he should ride the bike and Barry should ride on the helmet!  

The ‘Yam’ proved to be less successful, both in competition for Barry and in normal use for us.  Barry had to wait a few more years to claim his two world titles, in the ‘senior’ class on a 500cc Suzuki, before the advent of MotoGP.  We found the ‘Yam’ to be lightning fast, and very exciting when it worked properly – I had to concentrate to avoid ‘wheelies’ when pulling away from traffic lights.  Unfortunately, it was also temperamental.  Being an air-cooled two-stroke, it required two sets of spark plugs, one for town and one for the open road, which meant that every trip into the country required two changes – one going and one coming.  The set-up of the ignition timing was so precise that, in order for the engine to run correctly, I found myself regularly checking and adjusting it so, eventually, we traded it for a Honda CB 350cc twin cylinder four stroke.  In fact, although it was a lot less troublesome in day-to-day riding than the ‘Yam’, the Honda was never satisfactory either; it rode like you were on ice, and felt insecure, as if the frame was bent.  Being new, we had the dealers inspect it more than once, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with it.  Eventually we fell off it after hitting a patch of spilled diesel fuel, hurting Lesley’s knee on her way to an exam, and that sealed its fate. 

While we students had been away on our ‘year out’, Brixton School of Building had been absorbed into one of the many new educational institutions springing up in a major expansion of tertiary education:  The Polytechnic of the South Bank is now a University but SOBOPOLY, as it became known, was multi-campus and had buildings in Wandsworth, Elephant & Castle, and other parts of south London near to the Thames.  The School of Architecture was located in studios at a new, purpose built, building in Wandsworth Road and we were amongst the first intake there.  The fact that we had already been together as a group gave us ‘returners’ a certain cachet amongst the other design-based students, and we quickly re-established ourselves as organisers and activists within the student body.  One day, at Wandsworth Road, our architecture group was approached by some new students of Interior Design who were looking for advice and guidance on how to change their course, in the way that we had changed ours three years before.  They had, like us, come from another institution and were seeking integration with wider design course work, including architecture, which seemed very sensible to us as, in ‘real life’, all these disciplines work together.  One or two of our number did joint projects with Interior design students, and some of us sat in on Interior Design lectures.  Our fourth year of study was very different from the third:  as individuals we were much more mature and, having worked outside, had begun to see which directions we might go in as architects.  The more ‘conservative’ students were already preparing themselves, at least mentally, for practice and to some degree old alliances began to break up whilst new ones formed.  And it was about this time that something significant happened which was to set in train even more significant things in my personal life. 

I had a lot of friends at college, of whom the closest was Kevin Barnaville.  Although “Kev and (as I was known then) Drew” were a double act within the walls of the college, we did not really socialise outside.  Kev went off to Mexico at some point during the year out and (I believe, under the influence of drugs he took there) came back changed.  He suffered a mental breakdown so serious that he was hospitalised.  I went to see him, at the request of his ‘Ma’, and was badly shaken by my total inability to communicate with my friend who had become paranoid and spoke of suicide.  I think I must have been very scared for, to my everlasting shame, I never went back and to this day I carry the guilt of abandoning my friend in his time of need, even though he has since spoken warmly of my support for him.  About a year later one of the female Interior Design students, Lorna Wain, came up to me in the canteen to talk about course work but I intuitively felt that, beneath the conversation, she was really troubled by something else.  I said something along the lines of “If ever you need to talk to someone, I’m a good listener”.  The exact detail of what followed is no longer clear to me, but there followed an intense conversation while she talked through the break-up of an unhappy, occasionally violent, marriage.  We spent a good deal of time together at college in such conversations, often in the canteen where other students saw us, or walking, or at her flat in Crystal Palace Park Road, or in her Morris Minor Estate car travelling between all these places and occasionally to the day nursery where her 3 year-old daughter, Anna, was cared for during her own attendance at college.

 Nothing had been said that might even hint of an emotional attachment between us, either way, but I was aware of the danger and that lines should be drawn so, sitting in a park somewhere near college, I said out loud that there could never be anything between us but friendship.  I still do not know whether that was un-necessary, because we never discussed it.  I don’t know what might have developed had I not been married, but there was never any kind of physical contact between us except when, two years later, I called to say that Lesley and I were leaving London for Norfolk, and we hugged each other goodbye.  Although little was said by her, I was aware that Lesley was un-nerved by the amount of time I was spending with Lorna, and the amount that I spoke openly about what was happening to her, particularly since I once went from our home to Crystal Palace very late in the evening to help resolve some threatening emergency with her husband.  Since I was absolutely committed to our own marriage, and sure of my fidelity and trustworthiness, I wasn’t prepared to abandon my friend and withdraw from the situation.  Whether my shame in ‘abandoning’ Kevin had any bearing on my unwillingness to distance myself from Lorna I cannot say, but it was clear that some negotiating was going to happen between her and her husband Anthony (Norwell), if she were to extricate herself from this violent relationship safely.  I thought that as a couple we might be helpful, in a mediating and supportive role, and I suppose I also hoped that Lesley might see that there was no threat to ‘us’ in this friendship. I suggested to Lesley that she should become involved too, and she did accompany me to Crystal Palace to meet Lorna and Anthony, but it was only once and so I continued my support alone until the situation stabilised.

With hindsight I concede that my actions were naïve, and naiveté about female relationships is a feature of my whole adult life.  Lorna was very attractive, and I accept that from the outside it must have seemed as if we were having an affair, such was the closeness and intensity of our relationship.  Only Lorna and I know that this was not the case and I think it possible, since we have remained good friends ever since, that there might still be some who would not believe us – including a male student friend (Chris Page) who, perhaps encouraged by the situation, was showing a degree of ‘interest’ in Lesley, and she in him, at the same time. My immersion in study, the intellectual hothouse that I lived in daily, and the other pressure, could have led to Lesley and I drifting apart.  We had married young and were therefore still developing as characters; Lesley had not had the benefit of a long secondary education and had continued to work in various offices.  It seemed, I think to both of us, that it would be good for her too if she could resume her education.  To this end she left her job at the Examining Board and enrolled in a college to study sociology.  She did well, and I think that she was enjoying it too, until the imminent arrival of our first child cut it short, but more of that later.  Somewhere in all this, my interest in the sea re-emerged and Lesley and I travelled to boat yards on the south coast to look at boats for sale.  The only way to have financed this would have been for me to give up my studies, and go back to work, so the fact that this was being considered at all shows, again, that I was not at all unbreakably wedded to the idea of being an Architect.  It perhaps also hinted at ‘escapism’, though I don’t know what I might have been trying to escape from, or to: it might make an interesting subject for psychotherapy.  It was quite a turbulent time, and the impact of all this returned years later to haunt Lesley and me.

Lesley and I had been trying to start a family, I think somewhat precipitated by our experiences on the farm in Altarnun, which changed our outlook on many things including, for example, vegetarianism which we had embraced on our return from America.  Our attempts to start a family had been so unsuccessful that we began the process of undergoing testing for infertility but, three months into my final year and before we could start any treatment, Lesley suddenly discovered she was pregnant.  I well remember one of my contemporaries, Mary-Lynne Edwardes (ML to everyone) coming up to me in the studio – I must have been looking pleased with myself.  I didn’t say anything, but simply drew a child’s dummy on the corner of my note-book.  I don’t know who was the more ecstatic – ML was very excited too!

I had decided that my final year (1973/4) project should somehow be about the farming community and Altarnun in particular.  Lesley and I were, by then, committed vegetarians and it seemed that a good project could be made out of addressing modern farming practices and their impact on our quality of life, and that of the built and wider environment.  The project had to result in a design for a building of sufficient complexity to demonstrate that I was a competent designer, both architecturally and technically.  It also had to show a capacity for analysis of, and solution to, a design problem.  Launceston was the market town near Altarnun:  a farmers and livestock market was held, every Tuesday, that attracted people from the farming community over a wide area.  The town was coherent in planning terms, with a very large and cohesive conservation area – so fine that some of the buildings were praised by Sir John Betjeman as “amongst the finest Georgian terraces in Britain”, and all grouped around a Norman castle.  It seemed to me that there was an inextricable relationship between the maintenance of these fine buildings, and the wider prosperity of the town, which was now threatened by the direction of farming practice.  The site of the market was smack in the middle of the town and market days resulted in terrible traffic congestion, both in the town and within the market site, due to the ever-larger vehicles being used to transport the livestock.  The large scale of the vehicles was a direct result of the increasingly industrial scale of agriculture.  It was glaringly obvious to me that the market site, in a prime location, was ripe for profitable redevelopment.  Either the site and buildings had to be re-designed, to cope with increased traffic and be more efficient, or pressure for relocation outside the town would become irresistible.  In my view the loss of the market would ultimately mean a loss of peripheral trade in the town, and therefore general prosperity, which would be reflected in a lessening of property value and inability of property owners to maintain the quality of the built environment – especially the conservation area.  Q.E.D.  Or so I thought.

Under the guidance of my long-time tutor, Tony Morgan, I researched the agricultural industry and the patterns of marketing throughout the south-west of England.  I designed a series of simple buildings using a mixture of industrial and local materials that fitted well onto the steeply terraced site, and I produced a dissertation-sized report document that explained the research and the underpinning philosophy.  Before being presented to the Royal Institute of British Architects’ examiner, projects had to first pass examination by a panel of the school’s own staff.  Tony told me baldly “We have passed it, but I don’t know how the external examiner will view this.  It will either pass with distinction or fail”.  On the day of the portfolio examination I waited, like everyone else, in front of panels to which my project drawings were pinned; I also had a model of the site development.  Finally, the examiner appeared and his first words to me were “What on earth made you choose this as a project?”  I failed.  I had, however, succeeded in another way:  three weeks later, our first child, Lida, was born! 

Lida’s birth was quite the most wonderful experience, which made the trauma of my exam failure disappear. Lesley had one false alarm, when ‘practice’ contractions appeared but, ten days late, Lida was induced into the world at the Liverpool Road (Islington) site of the Royal Free Hospital.  Throughout the labour we listened to Bach’s Double Violin Concerto and, when the final stages came, the pre-recorded tape was replaced by a blank and the delivery and first cries recorded.  Lida was healthy and weighed in at 3kg exactly.  I went off in dazed relief to get a cup of tea while the midwives delivered the afterbirth and cleaned everyone up, but the canteen was closed.  I think the staff took pity on me, seeing my ‘otherworldly’ state, and made me a cup of tea: I must have smiled for a week.  During these early days Lorna held Lida, so we must have still been in close contact.  It was immediately apparent that Lida was very precocious – in the nicest possible sense.  She followed people around the hospital room with wide-open saucer-like eyes and her face was not in the least new-born like:  she was like a tiny person, not at all wrinkled and puffy.  One nurse commented, “She’s been here before”, and I should say that the concept of new and old souls, reincarnation and the like, was perfectly familiar and acceptable to me.  David Arditti, who I have already mentioned, had introduced me to some Chinese philosophy and we had, for example, consulted ‘I Ching’ together.  ‘I Ching’ is an ancient method of divination, which regrettably had become something of a parlour game in the 70’s, which I had, and have, found to be helpful from time to time.  In fact, it was during this period (72/74) that I had my first out-of-the-body experience: oddly while waiting for a bus to college in Southampton Row!  Anyhow, I did feel that Lida was, somehow, more ‘knowing’ than fitted her infant status, and this continued through her early childhood – no doubt reinforced by the close attention she had as a precious and, then, only child.

The arrival of our firstborn was the stimulus to think again about a life outside the city, and I began to look for a job in the country somewhere.  It wasn’t too long before an opportunity came to move to a small town in the Breckland part of Norfolk: East Dereham.  Local Government was going through one of its periodic reorganisations and The Breckland District Council was expanding its Architects section within the Surveyor’s Department.  Being unqualified I got a job as an Architectural Assistant and we moved, in early 1975, into a brand new council house and then, after six months, into a house of our own.  Sheddick Court was a small, modern, cul-de-sac development of brick-built houses on the northern edge of the town, and number 14 was a detached 3 bedroom two-storey house with gas central heating.  It also had a garage and small front and rear gardens, but had been empty for some time, and seemed somehow sad and in need of some loving life.  Our life there, and in Norfolk more generally, was very enjoyable.  We were again living in a rural context, had a nice house and made friends.  Dereham was a small community; it was possible to walk more-or-less everywhere and it had small independent shops and a weekly market.  There was little industry, but the town had two main employers:  Crane Freuhauf (making trailers for heavy goods vehicles) and Metamec (making clocks). The county town, Norwich, was not that far away and had everything one could wish for, and the seaside and Norfolk Broads were all at hand.  Being about 125 miles from London it was possible to drive back to visit, or have family visit us, relatively easily.  Our friends were, in the main, those we made through my work although we had good neighbours too:  David and Susan Powell lived at No.23 with their two sons Neil and Simon:  David worked as an insurance agent for Guardian Royal Exchange.  Both he and Susan were bubbly, cheerful people and we all got on well.  As well as other Architects, we were friendly with Terry and Rosemary Povey, a town planner, who lived in Quebec Road (just round the corner) with their daughter and son.  Lida was of roughly the same age as their daughter, and they became good friends too.

The house needed some minor alterations to make it more suitable for us; it had a sizeable utility room with double drainer sink and a fitted, but undersized, kitchen.  By taking some of the utility room space, which involved demolishing and relocating a wall, we were able to create a large family sized kitchen which was then completely re-fitted.  Off the living room, in an open plan ‘L’ shape, was a narrow dining space that looked onto the back garden.  We felt this was, visually, too much part of the living room but resolved this by constructing an archway between the two.  The planning of the ground floor was such that it was possible to enter the hall and pass, through the utility room, kitchen and dining room and back, through the living room, into the hall.  Lida used to ride her tiny wooden tricycle round and round this ‘racetrack’, much to her, and our, amusement.  The garden was largely undeveloped, being mostly just grass.  We extended the front garden, by taking in an un-necessary extra gravelled parking space, laid paths and planted trees and shrubs.  In the climate of East Anglia, things took hold very quickly and the garden matured nicely.

I also had interesting work to do, building and modernising houses.  One of these was a very special house for a young woman who, despite having no arms and only one functional leg, had type-written a book.  She was living with her ageing parents, and it was felt by her social workers that she needed to be made more independent – although her unmarried older brother said he was going to stay on and look after her when their parents could not.  I designed a self-contained addition to a new house that was being built in the village of Colkirk:  the family would occupy both.  The design process included many hours of close contact with the client and her family, and assessments in the Occupational Therapy Department of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital and resulted in a home that could give our client the maximum amount of choice in terms of balance of support and independence.  Regrettably, the social services had not done the same amount of work in preparing her psychologically for the move and, when it came to it, she refused to move in.  To some people the prospect of independence is too much, for others it offers an escape – her brother suddenly got married and left home.

The summers of 1976 and 1977 were incredibly hot, dry and long:  especially 1976.  The whole of England was required to save water by, for example, putting a brick inside the w.c. cistern (to reduce water capacity) and re-use bath water wherever possible.  We used ours to water the garden, which had cracked and resembled a desert, by syphoning it out with a hose.  Almost as soon as I started at Breckland District Council I began a new project for submission to the Polytechnic, in another attempt to get my Diploma.  I changed tutors and began to work with Ross Jamieson, an expatriate Dundonian, who as it happened also had a holiday house in Norfolk.  I remained committed to the principles that underlay my ‘failed’ project but packaged them differently:  this time the scheme was for a council depot.  It still involved designing large simple buildings in a rural landscape, and it was not ‘glamorous’.  One of the problems with my earlier project was that the examiner had felt that my choice of subject was inappropriate for an architect.  I was clearly running a bit of a risk and, in one way, history almost repeated itself: on the run up to the exam I worked through the night on several occasions and got very tired.  The heat that 1976 summer was so intense I often wore swimming trunks while working, and put a towel across the drawing board to stop sweat staining the drawings!  This time the examiner said “I’ve been so looking forward to this ever since I read your report.  What a pity this is a re-submission, it’s worth a distinction.”  I passed.  Win some lose some!  However, the arrival of our second child was slightly differently timed in relation to this exam, as Duncan was born in the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on 27 May 1977 – perhaps his conception was celebratory of my passing the Diploma exam!  To take the title of ‘Architect’ I now had only to pass one final hurdle, the Part 3: Professional Practice exam, which I did with flying colours in June 1977.  I was an Architect at last.  I wrote to Richard Sheppard, to give him the good news.  His letter of reply, which I still have, was cynical and, it proved later, accurate.  “Please tell your wife how pleased I am for you both.  I wish it were more than an empty hope that you will derive some satisfaction from it (sic being an Architect)”.  Oh dear.

1976 was an eventful year for another reason:  Lesley’s mother, Edie, died.  This was a traumatic event for all of us for, in addition to the obvious emotional effects, we were with her at the time or, more accurately, I was with her.  Edie had been staying with us in Dereham for almost a month and we were returning her to London, travelling down after work on a Friday, in our first new car – a Renault 6.  On the way we passed a site, at Weeting, where some council houses were being built under my direction.  As we passed I noticed that some foundation concrete being poured looked far too watery, and had to stop, inspect, and then condemn the work.  It took quite a long time to sort out the mess, and so we were much later than we had meant to be when we drove into London and reached her new flat in Warlters Close, to which Edie had moved due to the redevelopment of Mackenzie Road by the council.  So as not to further delay our eventual arrival at Dartmouth Chambers, where we were to stay for the weekend, I left Lesley and Lida in the car while I helped Edie into her flat.  I put down the first lot of luggage and set off to the car for the remainder, hearing Edie call out, as I was going over the threshold, “Just a minute Andrew…”.  I knew I would be back immediately and called back, “Hang on, I won’t be a minute”.  I wasn’t a minute either, but when I came back into the house it was to discover Edie lying face up on the living room floor.  Anyone who has been in this situation will instantly recognise the dreadful dilemma: whether to give immediate aid or call for help.  This was before mobile ‘phones and the landline ‘phone was in another room.  I dialled 999 first and then went back to give Edie mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (before the days of CPR).  I suspected that she was already dead, as evidenced by the loss of control of her bladder, but pressed on until the ambulance came.  The arrival of the ambulance team was very slow because Warlters Close was not a road, but a pedestrian walk off a one-way street that had only recently been built.  They couldn’t find us for half an hour.

I could tell from the crew’s attitude that they knew Edie was dead, but I pleaded with them to try their own resuscitation.  They obliged, for a while, but it was no use:  Edie had gone.  All this while Lesley was sitting patiently in the car, unaware of the tragedy that had overtaken her mother, and was about to descend on her.  The ambulance crew agreed to take Edie’s body to the nearby hospital and they wheeled her out of the house, upright in a chair, to the ambulance which was parked next to our car.  I can only imagine what impact the appearance of the ambulance crew, wheeling her inert mother, had on Lesley.  I tried to lessen the blow by not telling her that her mother was already dead – rather that the ambulance crew were taking her to hospital.  This bought precious time in which to prepare Lesley for the inevitable, private, interview and “Mrs Gold, I’m sorry to inform you….”.   I discovered later that the event had also left a lasting impression on Lida who, though in the car, was after all only 2½ years old.  Edie was interred at St Pancras and Islington Cemetery in Finchley Road. 

We had also, soon, to face the realisation that my achievement in qualifying as an Architect was not going to lead quickly to improved circumstances.  It became clear that my position at Breckland D.C. was going to limit my experience, professional progress and salary.  There was no scope within the establishment of the Council for another Architect post and, in truth, there was insufficient work to give me more responsibility and added experience.  There was already a very good design Architect, David Summers, there.  Then David left, to start his own practice but was replaced by another experienced Architect, David Everett.  The writing was on the wall: if I was going to progress, financially as well as professionally, we were going to have to move.  The little white Renault gave way to a bigger car, this time a red Renault 12 Estate, partly because the newer car had turned out to be the French equivalent of a ‘Friday’ car:  perhaps made on the eve of Bastille Day!  It had so much wrong with it in its short life that the dealers took it back in part-exchange.  Later that year, 1978, we left Breckland and I made, what turned out to be, one of the biggest mistakes of my life.  We liked living in Norfolk, but the job that came up was in another East Anglian local authority, but in Suffolk:  the Borough of Ipswich.  We did another temporary move, living in a caravan on Felixstowe beach (where our third child, Hannah, was conceived!) and the bigger car became a necessity!  We bought a house at 12 Appleby Close from the, then, Labour MP for the area, Ken Weech, who liked the area enough to simply move across the road.

12 Appleby Close was a nice house, and Lesley made a friend in our nearest neighbour Linda, but my life in the office was disastrous.  The place was full of bickering and in-fighting, and there was little real work to do:  I spent a great deal of time being an assistant again, even to unqualified staff, and had only a peripheral hand in one interesting project: a crematorium chapel.  I bought a small motorbike, a Yamaha 100cc two stroke, and used it to commute to work as well as, occasionally, taking Lida on short trips to playschool or to a pick-your-own sweet corn farm.  It was necessary for her to wear a crash helmet, but poor Lida was so small that her neck wasn’t strong enough to hold the weight of her enclosed head upright and it would loll on one side.  She was comically waiflike, her feet barely reaching the footrests (a legal requirement for a pillion passenger), and she sometimes sat in front, rather than behind me, holding on to the handlebars and tied to me by a thick leather belt.  Looking back, that was irresponsible, and probably illegal, but it must have been enjoyable for her as she has since ridden pillion with me many times including, like all her siblings, at more than 100mph. 

By the time Hannah arrived, on a snowy 13 February 1979, I had already been applying for jobs to get us out of Ipswich, which (apart from the house) I think we both disliked.  Such was the desperation caused by my abject failure to even get an interview, that I once enquired at the local Royal Navy recruiting office where I was told, quite correctly, to “f***off” by a tattooed Marine.  I must have been mad.  I think Lesley would have given anything to go back to Dereham, and unknown to me at the time, had not wanted to leave in the first place.  Then something odd happened: something really, really, odd.

It was my habit to grab the ‘Architect’s Journal’, as soon as it arrived every Thursday in the office, and turn to the job adverts in the back.  Week after week the jobs were either too senior, too junior, or in cities.  Then, out of the blue, an advertisement appeared seeking no fewer than three, and recently qualified, Architects.  It was placed by Comhairle nan Eilean (The Western Isles Islands Council) in the Outer Hebrides – off the west coast of Scotland.  At last: a job at the right level, in local government (which meant no removal costs and possibly temporary housing), and in a place that was, most definitely, rural!  I could not explain then, nor now after all these years, why I was so attracted to this job, but attracted I was.  And it wasn’t desperation either.  In fact, I felt as if the advert came right off the page, grabbed me round the throat, and said “This is your job”.  I was so convinced that one of these three posts was for me, that I applied and waited for the call to interview.  In fact, while waiting, I turned down a couple of interviews in places that we really didn’t want to be.  One of those was at Alyn and Deeside District Council in North Wales.  I drove clear across the country, to Connah’s Quay, but because of the truly awful heavy industrial environment there, withdrew my application before the interview could start.  The councillors’ interview panel was not pleased, but at least I got my travel expenses! 

The idea of living in a place like Lewis, so much ‘on the edge’, was very appealing, especially in the context of our developing philosophy of life which, since Cornwall, had continued to embrace ‘alternatives’.  In such a place, where even basic services and shelter were subject to the whims of nature, we could shape our children’s future and, perhaps, prepare them for the world we believed they would inherit: one short of resources.  We believed that a challenging environment would help our children to grow up with a different set of values, and the experience gained would enable them to be flexible and resourceful – as they would surely need to be.  [I say “We”, but in the light of later events and a reassessment of what had gone before, I cannot say with certainty that it was not “I” rather than “We”]. 

I started looking for any information that I could find on life in the Western Isles, but most of the books were at least 30 years out of date.  After a suitable period had passed, I telephoned to ask whether a short list had been drawn up, and got the devastating and incomprehensible answer: “Yes, but you’re not on it”.  I was completely unhinged.  This was my job!  How could I not be on the short list?  For about a week I was in a daze and then the ‘phone call came.  “Somebody has dropped out of the short list so, if you are still interested in a job, can you come up for interview next week?”  The week passed in a blur of organising travel and research.  The only way to get there in a reasonable time was to fly, and this meant going to London Heathrow and changing ‘planes in Glasgow.  Came the day of the interview, not long after the birth of Hannah, the weather was still bad.  I settled into my seat on a British Airways Trident, but it was soon evident that the journey would be anything but straightforward.  “Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking.  I’m sorry to say that the bad weather is closing all airports as we proceed north, including our destination in Glasgow.  At the moment, the only two places open are Prestwick [Scotland], and Heathrow.  We will attempt to land at Prestwick, but if that cannot be done I regret we shall have to return to London.”   We made two attempts to land and, seeing only the grey cold Irish Sea through the snow, roared up again.  At the third attempt we made it and I disembarked to make my own way the 30 miles north to Glasgow Airport, in a taxi driving behind a snowplough.  At Glasgow, where there was no prospect of an immediate flight to Stornoway, I telephoned the Western Isles Depute Chief Architect, Alec Reid, to inform him of the situation.  I promised that, if it were humanly possible, I would get there – but I was going to be late.  What did they want me to do?  Alec said to come on, if I could, but to keep them informed.

By about 3.30 in the afternoon the weather had lifted enough for the Stornoway-bound Vickers Viscount to get off, and an hour later (but already very late for the intended interview time), I arrived.  And here happened the next inexplicable thing.  I stepped out of the aeroplane and felt like I knew the place: it was oddly familiar.  I rushed to the Council offices and was met by Alec Reid who ushered me immediately round to the town hall where the interviews were being held in front of a committee of councillors and the head of department, Guy Copeland.  Although three jobs had been advertised, this was not strictly true because Alec Reid wanted to step down from his management position and one post had been earmarked for him.  Of the other two jobs, one was to be based in a satellite office in Benbecula, on the island of North Uist: there was only one job in Stornoway, where most of the facilities and transport links were.  Outside the council chamber I met another candidate, Donald MacDonald and wondered if he would he get the job, not me.  The interview went well, and I was called back to be offered the Stornoway post – it turned out that Donald actually wanted to go to Benbecula!  I had been informed prior to interview that the rule was, should I be offered a job, I would have to indicate acceptance immediately.  This seemed unreasonable to me, especially given the circumstances of my journey and arrival.  I had been catapulted from aeroplane to interview, in the gathering the dusk of a bad February afternoon, without an opportunity to look around, meet my future colleagues, or see my place of work.  I declined to decide.  Fortunately for me, the councillors and Guy Copeland agreed, and they gave me 24 hours grace.  That night Donald and I were entertained to dinner, and a first-class marketing job, by Guy and his wife Mina at their house outside Stornoway.  I passed a sleepless and cold night in a B&B, trying to decide what to do, and the following morning Guy gave us a quick guided tour of the near island sites and developments.  When the time came to decide, however, I felt that I could not commit for Lesley and regretfully declined.  The journey back was uneventful, but with no mobile ‘phones in those days I had to ‘phone Lesley from the airport to tell her my decision.  Her response stunned me.  “Oh, really; why?”  Had I completely misread the situation?  It seemed so. 

As soon as I was physically back in Ipswich, Lesley and I discussed the offer which I had rejected and she suggested that, if I wanted to change my mind, and they were prepared to accept me, I should telephone them.  I spoke to Guy Copeland who said words to the effect that “as I have already stuck my neck out for you once with the committee, you had better be sure: I don’t want you changing your mind again.”  With some persuasion, Guy spoke to the committee convenor: the job offer was repeated and accepted, and I was soon again in Bed and Breakfast accommodation outside Stornoway while Lesley began preparations to join me as soon as a house could be found.  My B&B ‘hosts’ were Noel and Marion Eadie, whose modern house had a garage which had been converted into a recording studio.  My colleagues were helpful and did their best to make me feel at home, both socially and at work, as did Guy and Mina Copeland.  One of my new colleagues had, simultaneously, decided to leave.  Perhaps he saw my arrival creating an obstacle to his advancement as I had seen created to mine by the arrival of David Everett in Breckland.  Anyhow, as luck would have it, this colleague had just completed the building of his own house and it was for sale. Scots property law is so different from that in England and Wales that it was then possible to purchase property, and move in, in very quickly.  I don’t remember how, and in what time frame we sold the house in Ipswich, but just three weeks after agreeing to buy 10 Braighe Road, the family Gold arrived in Lewis.

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The House at 10 Braighe Road

At the time of the move our youngest, Hannah, was only four months old but, unknown to us then, Lesley was already expecting our next child, Fiona.  It seemed that the gap between each successive child was getting less and less, and I joked that, while it took us a long time to work out what to do, it seemed we now couldn’t stop producing children.  Lida was 4½, and we tried to get her into school because she had already begun her education in England.  However, in Lewis at least, the education authority held the view that no child should be in school until the term after their 5^th birthday: she had to wait until September.  Lesley and I felt this was very harsh on a child that was already reading, and used to school, but it had to be.  Both Duncan and Hannah were still in nappies, so Lesley had her hands very full while I went off to work.  10 Braighe Road was not in a community, as such, with shops or even an adequate transport system.  The house had four bedrooms (one of them downstairs), a huge family kitchen/diner, a bathroom (also downstairs) and an upstairs w.c..  The living room was also upstairs, to take advantage of wonderful views, and there was an integral garage.  It was positioned facing south on in a ¼ acre plot, the standard size for a building plot in Lewis, overlooking (across a road) the sea about 100 yards away.  The sea in question is the North Minch a strip of often-turbulent water between the Outer Islands and the mainland of north-west Scotland 50 miles away.  On very clear days, with binoculars, it was possible to see the Isle of Skye, the Shiants and other islands,  and even the tops of mainland mountains from the picture windows of the living room.  It was, perforce, very exposed to any salt laden weather that might hurl itself, unchallenged by terrain or trees, from anywhere across a 120° arc of the compass.  Gardening was going to be a challenge. 

The house was heated by a ‘Rayburn’ solid fuel stove which ‘drove’ radiators in the principle rooms as well as providing cooking and hot water; there was also an open fire in the living room that had a back boiler linked into the heating circuit.  We were not used to the subtleties of managing the Rayburn, and had not realised the importance of ensuring the firebox, flue ways and chimney were always kept clean.  We had not checked, and so it was that we suffered our first chimney fire within a month of moving in.  Anyone who has never experienced a chimney fire cannot imagine the panic that can be induced by the sounds they make.  In this case, the fire started in the Rayburn itself, so enamelled pipes began to make cracking sounds, with the rapid rise in temperature, which added to the ferocious roar (not to mention sparks and dense smoke) emanating from the flue and chimney pot.  We decided that discretion called for the services of the Fire Brigade, which is when I found that the crew were volunteers and composed, in the main, of colleagues from work.  Needless to say, it took me a long time to live that down.

Life in Lewis quickly settled into a pattern.  It was, and is, a unique place but my feelings of ‘belonging’ did not alter at all.  We had neighbours: immediately to our right (about 60 metres away) was the home of my boss, Guy Copeland, and to our left the home of Hugh Pollock, a school teacher, his wife Jean and their two daughters.  Hugh and Jean kept a couple of goats, and we later helped to look after them (including milking) when their family were away; this experience stood us in good stead when we later acquired our own nanny kid, Suzie.  Guy and Mina had a daughter who was a similar age to Lida and therefore they became friends. 

We made few alterations to the house at first, and they were principally concerned with security and warmth in bad weather.  The upstairs ‘Velux’ windows, in the living room, were very large and, despite being double-glazed, flexed alarmingly in the common severe gales.  We had some insulated storm shutters made that could be lifted, and secured, inside the windows so that, in the event of a window breaking, we would not lose the roof too.  I crawled into the very shallow space below the ground floor to insulate it with polystyrene slabs.  Much later, after Fiona’s birth, we set about more ambitious changes.  The roof was asymmetrical: it had a steep pitch to the front, overlooking the sea, and a much shallower pitch to the rear.  This meant that, under the building regulations, the original owner / occupant could not legally declare, as habitable rooms, the spaces formed under the roof to the rear: these had been defined as “stores”.  As such, although roughly finished with plasterboard and having lighting, they had no windows or even ventilation.  We set about converting these two, very large, spaces into usable accommodation, with the installation of small ‘Velux’ roof windows and heating.  One became Lida’s bedroom (with built-in wardrobes following the shape of the sloping ceiling) while the other became a small television / playroom: although television had never played that great a part in our lives and we still had, as our only set, an 11” Sony black and white portable which we had bought at the time of the 1972 Olympics. 

The arrival of Fiona was fraught, as Lesley had suffered a difficult pregnancy and had been bleeding intermittently.  The cause was identified as the condition ‘placenta previa’ – potentially life-threatening to both mother and child due to the risk of uncontrollable haemorrhage, before or during the delivery.  As a consequence, Lesley was rested (even hospitalised briefly) and, with two other children still in nappies (and a third just started in primary school), was supported by a local authority appointed home-help, Annette MacDonald.  When Fiona arrived, following the longest of the four labours, she was also the heaviest.  Because of all the difficulties during this last pregnancy, the fact that each succeeding birth had been more difficult than the previous one, and that we now had four children, Lesley agreed with the medical staff and me that she should not risk any further pregnancies and was sterilised before leaving the hospital.  I think that this is one of the defining moments of our relationship.  It was not the right time to make such a decision: we should have waited until the immediate memory of pain and difficulty was over and I have occasionally wondered whether Lesley felt coerced and resented me for the loss of her ability to have further children.  Lesley and Fiona came home, but immediately Fiona showed signs that all was not well, and she was re-admitted to hospital where Tetany was diagnosed.  The hospital said they hadn’t seen a case in 30 years, but then there was another within a matter of weeks!  In due course we became very friendly with both Annette, her husband George (who worked as a painter and decorator for the Council direct labour organisation) and their children. 

Although we felt comfortable in Lewis, to a degree at least, there were a number of adjustments to be made.  Three things dictated the rhythm of life: the Sabbath, the weather and the ferry timetable.  We had not fully understood the extent to which the influence of The Free Presbyterian Church would touch our everyday lives.  Sundays in Lewis were special days – whether you were an adherent to the Free (or indeed any) church or not.  It was not possible to do anything remotely identifiable as pleasurable, or work, without incurring the disapproval of the church, and therefore our host community.  Everything was closed on a Sunday: even the swings in the park were chained up lest the innocent pleasure of a child might lead to corruption of their mortal souls.  Housework had to be done discreetly, washing could not be hung out (even if that Sunday were the first dry day for a month) and it was even frowned on to play with a ball on the beach.  Such restriction often leads to hypocrisy and churchgoers still found ways to both work and play, on Sunday, without being ostracised.  Those people who were ‘fond of a drink’ could not publicly consume, or buy, alcohol on Sunday but ways were found – including hiding bottles in peat stacks, walls or abandoned cars (of which there were, regrettably, many).  

Shopping was, to some extent, a lottery.  Items were either in plentiful supply, or had run out, according to deliveries.  Everything was more expensive: I remember being initially pleasantly surprised to discover that apples were the same price as they had been in Ipswich, only for the truth to dawn that the price quoted was each – per apple – as they had been per pound in England.  There was (then) no large supermarket as such, and it was often necessary to visit several shops in order to meet all the requirements of the weekly shop.  Now we view this as a good thing, and the dominance of big supermarkets as bad.  The unpredictability and variable quality of supplies was largely due to being at the end of the supply chain and, of course, the weather.  Almost everything for the island came from the mainland, even the milk, and sometimes the ferry could not sail.  Newspapers came by ‘plane, most of the time, but Sunday papers didn’t arrive until Monday due to the church preventing sailings, or flights, from operating on the Sabbath.  Once we stopped being inconvenienced by these restrictions it became a pleasure to do nothing on Sundays but walk, or take a drive to a beach – for the purpose of walking somewhere different. 

This only hints at the power of forces that were at work on us as a family, and it is only now, with the perspective inevitably granted by hindsight, that the effects are understandable.  We were in a physically challenging place, radically different from anything in our experience; we were “incomers” (outsiders) separated from close family who must have thought we were mad; we were under pressure from our growing family.  I think now that, in some ways, I felt the pressure of the family more than Lesley, for while she had more of the practical burden, and probably felt the distance from her wider family more, I began to feel the emotional and psychological pressure.  This manifested in two ways.  I became both unpredictable and occasionally violent with the children.  While this violence was, for the most part, verbal it was no less hurtful to the children (and Lesley) than my smacking of them, which was sometimes barely controlled.  This culminated in our asking for a social worker to come and see us, but she said that the problem lay more in a lack of communication between Lesley and me than between me and the children: unfortunately there was no further discussion or advice offered.  I also became involved in, what I would now call, ‘displacement activity’:  I absented myself, either bodily or intellectually.  At the time these activities were perfectly capable of rationalisation, both in the context of the community we had joined and the interests and beliefs that we espoused, but perhaps they were also, to some degree, a way of ‘opting out’.

I have previously referred to ‘life-or-death’ incidents that had occurred in my life.  Before leaving England, as well as those involving Edie Wren and Sam Tamam there had been another situation where I had been ‘first on scene’ at an accident.  One frosty morning we had been out walking when a man fell from a first floor window ledge, quite literally, at our feet.  I sent Lesley home, with Lida, while administering first aid and organising the rescue services.  I found myself taking control of the situation, in a calm way, and even directing the police to protect the man (who I correctly diagnosed had broken his pelvis) from the falling snow, with pub-garden umbrellas, until the ambulance arrived. 

Then, not long after Fiona was born, it happened again.  Guy Copeland had an aneurysm and knew his time on earth was very limited.  He had been advised to stop both drinking and smoking if he wanted to make the age of 50 but, typically, he had decided his present quality of life was more attractive than a slightly extended, but boring, one.  Early one morning, while we were still not dressed, Mina Copeland came urgently to the door – Guy had, she thought, suffered a heart attack: would we please come quickly?  The scene was all too familiar to me, but Mina and I applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and heart massage, to her lifeless husband until the ambulance came.  In fact Guy’s aneurysm had ruptured and he had died instantly.  This event traumatised the whole of the Architects department and had a lasting, profound, effect on me.  I was beginning to think I was being ‘told’ something.  The consequences of Guy’s departure were significant in other ways, not least in his replacement by his depute, a man almost universally disliked within the department, and his consequent replacement as Depute by a man who was much later to become a significant figure in my story: Stewart Henderson.

Living, as we did, overlooking the sea we naturally spent a great deal of time looking at it – both deliberately, through binoculars, and casually.  This pastime was made all the richer because my long-term interest in things nautical gave me the knowledge and experience to interpret what I saw.  The daily comings and goings of the ferry service to Ullapool, the movement of general shipping in the Minch, passing surface and submarine warships, the activities of the local and foreign fishing fleets, not to mention the sightings of wildlife such as seals and whales, all created interest.  We also had frequent sight of aircraft arriving or leaving Stornoway airport, because the centreline of the single runway was only half a mile away, and these included the Vulcan ‘V’ bomber (then part of Britain’s nuclear deterrent) which were regularly trained in electronic countermeasures by the R.A.F. signals unit at the airport.  I also watched the small Stornoway based, and visiting, yachting fraternity.  The feeling that I was ‘being told something’ was given one more twist, as a result of all this gazing out to sea. 

One Saturday, while scanning the view with binoculars, I saw a yacht rounding the nearest headland to the east.  Something about the motion of the yacht, and its slack sails, indicated to me that it was either in difficulty or was being sailed by novices.  I watched it for a considerable time as it slowly rounded Chicken Rock and, moving parallel to the headland towards us, eventually disappeared from view behind another part of the land.  I thought no more about it until, on the Monday, I saw the lifeboat hurrying in that direction and learned that the yacht had, indeed, been in difficulty.  It had, in fact, been taking in water when I saw it, and had later sunk, leaving the crew desperately clinging to a cliff for 36 hours until one of their number bravely went back into the sea and swam to raise the alarm.  The fact that I had seen this incident unfold, and had done nothing about it, made me finally listen to ‘the voice’ when, only days later, The Coastguard Service advertised for auxiliary staff.  I applied.

The Coastguard was (and is) responsible for the co-ordination of all maritime search and rescue operations and it seemed most appropriate that I, living in a maritime community, with a background understanding of the sea and ships, and a demonstrable ability to act calmly under pressure, should ‘answer the call’.  I viewed it as a sort of ‘community service’ and it wasn’t until after I had been accepted for training that I realised Coastguard Auxiliaries were paid and that we had to wear a uniform.  The job entailed being ‘on watch’, in six hour shifts, at the Coastguard Station – then a wooden shed on top of the cliffs overlooking the entrance to Stornoway harbour.  Stornoway was an important maritime location and, as such, the station there was a Maritime Rescue Sub-Centre (MRSC), under the control of Clyde Coastguard based in Greenock, near Glasgow.  The most senior regular officer in Stornoway was the District Officer, Ernie Dagless, and he was responsible for a number of stations, each of which, like Stornoway MRSC, was under the control of a Station Officer.  Our role as auxiliaries was to assist the regular Coastguard officers by manning telephones, doing clerical work, making tea and, most importantly, monitoring the radio and weather reports and recording what we heard (or had not heard) in a log-book.  For this last duty we had to be trained and qualify, having been examined by the Department of Trade, as Search and Rescue Radio Operators.  We also had to sign The Official Secrets Act for, occasionally, we were required to act as intelligence-gatherers passing on sightings and movements of ‘Eastern Bloc’ shipping.  There were also documents and books about the station that were ‘Classified’, although at a very low level, because the ‘cold war’ was very much in progress.  The auxiliaries came from all walks of life.  Some were housewives, some were unemployed, there were even a couple of crofters and a poet, but most of us had jobs – amongst them a schoolteacher, a solicitor and, of course, an architect.  Almost none of the regulars spoke Gaelic but several of the auxiliaries did and this was a decided advantage in monitoring the casual radio traffic amongst the local fishing fleet.  To a large degree we were accepted by the regulars, but there was an undercurrent of resentment, even jealousy, from some of the officers who regarded us as threatening their jobs, taking their money and, what is more, earning more money in our ‘day jobs’ than they did in theirs.  Of course, since I had a full time job, I could only be rostered for my shifts at weekends, in the evenings or on days off.  The duty rosters were arranged in 4 shifts of 6 hours: 0100 to 0700, 0700 to 1300, 1300 to 1900 and 1900 to 0100.  The regulars worked a rolling shift pattern, of six hours on and twelve hours off, which meant that every successive period of duty for them began at a different time of day (or night).  The auxiliaries, to a very large degree, could pick their duty slots, which was another source of irritation to the regulars, many of whom had come from a branch of the military services.  However this meant that, with a little manipulation, it was possible to share a watch with one of the friendlier or more interesting staff, both regular and auxiliary.  When sitting for hours on end, sometimes in a dark a howling gale, and with little or no radio traffic, it was really important to have somebody on watch with you with whom you could converse or, if he was a regular, from whom you might learn something useful.  The worst watches were those where the regular officer fell asleep.  If it was one of those occasions when there were only the two of us – a regular and an auxiliary – this was, at best, a boring way to spend six hours and, at worst, a terrible responsibility.  On one such occasion I found myself being given control of the whole Clyde network, when the Greenock centre was evacuated due to a bomb scare, while the regular officer slept.  The red phone rang and the message was in code: “We have Bikini State Red – you have control”.  I thought we were at war!

I had a lot of good times as an Auxiliary Coastguard.  Although most of the time we were shut inside, we also got to drive the Land Rover, go on patrols and do liaison work with the fishing boats.  One night we had an invitation, over the radio, from a famous Scottish actor to join him on his recently arrived yacht after the watch.  I and the other auxiliary on watch that night went down to the harbour only to find said actor, and his crew, unconscious from the effects of a milk crate full of vodka bottles!  We did get to handle real rescues.  The most important of these, for me, and a total vindication of my decision to ‘join up’, was the Maersk Angus incident.  One evening, in December 1981, I came on watch at 1900 hours just as the captain of a large oil tanker, the 101,000 ton ‘Maersk Angus’, declared an emergency.  His ship, in ballast and en-route from Milford haven to Dundee, had lost power and was drifting off the west coast.  Although he was not in any immediate danger, and had not broadcast a ‘Mayday’ (indeed had declined the offer of a tug), I knew that very large crude carriers could ‘sail’ at respectable speeds due simply to the action of the wind on their enormous bulk – particularly when un-laden as this one was.  I was good at navigation and chart work, having done night classes some years before, so I went to the chart table and worked out the predicted drift of the tanker.  I went to the duty officer with chilling news: if unchecked, in the prevailing conditions of wind and tide, there was a real risk that the ‘Maersk Angus’ would run aground on one of the St.Kilda group of islands.  Quite apart from the obvious risk to the lives of the 32 crew aboard, the environmental damage caused by any leakage of the 4000 tons of fuel oil from the ship could have been devastating to the unique wildlife of those islands.  It perhaps needs to be explained here why the captain had refused assistance from a tug: it was just a matter of money.  If the master of a salvage tug got a line on a stricken ship, he could claim a potentially enormous sum (multi-millions in this case) in salvage fees.  The master of the ‘Maersk Angus’ would have been acting under the instructions of his owners to avoid this at all costs and to not accept help, until the last possible moment, except from another ship of the same company.  The Maersk company dispatched tugs from Aberdeen and Peterhead, far to the east, the ‘Maersk Ranger’ and the ‘Maersk Retriever’. 

As the evening wore on it became ever more likely that an accident would result, with the master steadfastly waiting for his own company tugs rather than accept help from one that was nearby.  As the duty radio operator it already fell to me to monitor, and relay, messages.  However, eventually, the master decided that his crew was at risk and asked for a helicopter to come and lift off the non-essential members.  I therefore became the co-ordinating link between the Coastguard and the two RAF Sea-King helicopters that were scrambled.   Proper radio-telephony procedure is both clear and concise (unlike that which we see on the television or in films where, for example, people will say “Over and Out” – which is improper, since it effectively means ‘I expect a reply but I’m not listening’!.  The R.A.F. pilots were masters of brevity, often acknowledging messages with one word “Roger” or “Copied” and starting one with “Stornoway Coastguard – Rescue Three Seven” without even an ‘Over’.  Once the helicopter goes ‘into the hover’ over a casualty it is standard procedure to maintain radio silence, to allow the pilot to concentrate.  You can imagine the tension in the watch room as we listened intently to the blank hiss from the radio set wondering what was going on out in the wild darkness of the Atlantic.  The rescue was successful: the crew were lifted off and the tanker missed Stac an Armin, an outlier of the main St. Kilda island Hirta, by just 2km – about 8 ship lengths.  It was eventually taken in tow by a Maersk tug, but I was so carried away by the excitement, and adrenalin, that I overshot my change of watch, the helicopter ‘lift’ coming at about 0100 hours – and I was very late home.  It was out of incidents such as these that a cry went up for all tanker traffic up the west coast to pass well to the west of the Hebrides and not use the Minches, or the Pentland Firth, between the mainland and Orkney, at all.  It also spurred on my involvement in environmental organisations such as ‘Greenpeace’ and ‘Friends of the Earth’ – becoming the Western Isles Co-ordinator of the latter for a time.

The extra income from the job meant that it was, finally, possible to indulge my long-standing desire for a boat.  On one occasion Lida and I travelled to the mainland, borrowing Alec Reid’s car to do so, to inspect one but decided against it.  There was the added complication that, should a boat be bought ‘off the island’, it would somehow have to be got back home.  Eventually I bought a boat from a council colleague, a ‘Caprice’ class 18 foot Bermudan sloop, ‘Valkyrie’, with bilge keels and a small cabin.  For the first winter (she was bought, as boats often are, at the end of a season) ‘Valkyrie’ sat outside the house on a trailer, but the spring saw a lot of activity as she was prepared to go back into the water.  Some woodwork was replaced, new handrails fitted, and anti-fouling paint renewed.  One or two small items were purchased to make the interior more comfortable, including a small gas stove on which to make hot drinks and food, and some navigational instruments and charts were acquired.  The boat had come with a small inflatable dinghy, and a Seagull long-shaft outboard, but there was no mooring available as the previous owner was retaining his mooring position in readiness for a new boat.  The harbour in Stornoway has quite a large tidal range, but the bottom is muddy and is good holding for a weighted mooring.  A very large piece of flat steel plate (redundant stone-crusher jaws from a quarry) was acquired and to this were attached lengths of heavy-duty galvanised anchor chain.  Attached to the chain was a rising rope, topped off by a float (formerly a commercial fishing net float) with ‘Valkyrie’ painted on it.  In due course, the whole contraption was motored into position and dumped overboard.  We had a mooring.  The launching of yachts is a major event at the start of every sailing season, in any harbour, all over Britain.  In Stornoway this was a co-operative effort as everyone wanted to get their boats into the water as soon as spring came, and share the cost of hiring the massive crane needed to hoist them from their winter cradles and into the water.  The co-operation also meant that there were plenty of hands available to hold ropes and so on.  Alec Reid also owned a boat: a junk-rigged sloop called Kasi-Kasi.  Alec was born in Fiji and so gave his boat a Fijian name.  She was kept on a mooring nearer to his home in Leurbost, in Lochs district, but Alec came up for the communal launching.  Valkyrie was therefore craned into the sea without difficulty and soon riding comfortably at her new mooring in the harbour off Cuddy Point.

Launching ‘Valkyrie’ with Alec Reid

The reality of boat ownership had been described as “standing under a cold shower tearing up £20 notes”.  This was not the case for me, but I suspect that the reason for that was that she had very little use.  Between working Monday to Friday, working evenings and/or weekends at the Coastguard and taking my part in family life, there was precious little time to take the boat out.  There were few occasions when I managed to get Lida or Duncan on board (and then only moored safely in harbour) and Hannah and Fiona were both too small to do even that.  I don’t think Lesley ever set foot on her and, the following year, ‘Valkyrie’ was sold.

Many aspects of life on the island were wonderful and we began to fulfil the raison d’etre of the move there.  For example, we consolidated our vegetarian way of life.  As I have already said, our next-door neighbours at No.11, Hugh and Jean Pollock, kept goats.  We thought we would like to try our hand at animal husbandry, and had already decided to have some hens, so access to our own supply of goat’s milk was a logical next step.  I should say that, up to that point, we had been taking goat’s milk, delivered frozen, from a couple (Mike and Trish) who lived in Uig, on the west coast.  We had occasionally helped Hugh out, by feeding and milking their goats when they were away, so we knew the fundamentals.  In due course, one of their goats produced a nanny kid and we set about constructing a combined hen and goat house in the back garden.  Once the ‘shed’ had been completed we were able to take delivery of ‘Suzie’, a sweet little fawn-coloured British Alpine.  Of course, it would be some time before ‘Suzie’ was old enough to produce a kid, and thus milk, but she would meantime make an excellent family pet for the children to grow up with.  We now had a cat, six hens and a goat.  ‘The Good Life’.  The garden ground had been largely undeveloped by the previous owner.  When we arrived, the south-facing front garden was a maze of 3ft. high green windbreak fabric.  Some form of shelter was necessary, both because of the exposed site and the salt-laden atmosphere (on windy days it was possible for the salt spray to turn the front windows of the house opaque).  However the house had been constructed right at the rear of its rectangular plot, so it was not possible to gain much shelter from the house itself.  It was also necessary to secure the garden perimeter from marauding sheep, by erecting a stock-proof fence.  The croft adjacent, between No. 10 and No 9 (where Guy and Mina Copeland lived) was quite low lying – about 3ft. lower than our own ground – and a burn ran through it to the sea via a small culvert under the road.  The sea, 100 yards away, was only a further 6 or 8ft lower – less at spring high tides – so there were times when the croft flooded, much to our consternation.  This problem was eventually resolved by the replacement of the culvert with two much larger pipes.  We were enthralled by the views out to sea and were very distressed when another of our neighbours began to push for the introduction of streetlights, and a pavement, along the road in front of the house.  The particular neighbour came from a prominent family, and was also a councillor, so we lost the battle.  I had a poem published in ‘The Stornoway Gazette’ railing against the loss of our night vision out to sea, and our view of the starry sky.  This sudden foray into the writing of poetry presaged an interest in writing, both factual and creative, which developed rapidly in coming months.

Another sight, out to sea, was less welcome: the approaching ‘Vulcan’ bombers.  I have already mentioned the signals unit at the RAF base in Stornoway, and their role in training bomber crews in electronic warfare countermeasures.  The bombers would fly at about 400ft. over our house, with bomb bay doors open, to simulate an attack.  Once they had ‘delivered the weapon’ on the airport, it was their practice to turn and, with afterburners at full power, climb almost vertically away.  The ‘Vulcan’ had the same type, and number, of engines as the ‘Concorde’ supersonic airliner, so you can imagine the noise.  The engines were very dirty, and it was possible to see the approaching ‘plane by the smudge of smoke on the horizon, so we were rarely caught unprepared.  However, on one occasion, I had to leap through the open kitchen window, to comfort Fiona who had been startled by one such ‘Cheeky Monkey’ (as they had been christened by my Mum) flying low overhead when in her pram in the garden.

Yet again, the ‘voice’ came.  Hugh Pollock fell from his roof, fully 25 feet to the ground, when a ladder broke.  I saw it happen and rushed over the fence to find that the jagged broken end of the wooden ladder had gone right through his upper arm.  I rushed him off to hospital and, fortunately, there were neither broken bones (amazing in itself) or long-term consequences.  I have already mentioned the impact that the death of Guy Copeland had, both as an event in itself and the effects that followed from it at work.  Alec Reid had stood down from his post as Depute Director in order to return to design work, at the same time that I had joined the Council, and his place was taken by John Patterson, interestingly in competition with, amongst others, Stewart Henderson.  John arrived for a pre-start introduction to the office, wearing denim jacket and trousers.  He also wore a formal white shirt with tie, black formal shoes and white socks.  Coming to an office where the boss (Guy) wore a fringed Western-style jacket and cowboy boots, the impact of this sartorial mixed message was one of shock and misgiving.  The misgivings proved to be well justified as his style was rigid and unapproachable – quite the opposite from Guy and wholly inappropriate for the islands community.  He simply didn’t fit.  Then, when Guy died not long afterwards, John became Director and, for a time, worked without assistance.  Such were the feelings in the department about John’s style of management that when the vacant post of depute was advertised, several people from the department applied, including me.  The successful person, however, was Stewart Henderson.  Stewart moved to the island with his wife Gill and their daughter Mhairi – a child of similar age to Hannah.

Stewart’s style was quite different, very much in tune with the island and the feelings of the staff, and he was an astute operator in the internal politics of local government.  Before long John’s style, and misplaced attempts at imposing a ‘Central Belt’ style of working, and discipline, on the staff set up tensions that led to open conflict.  The atmosphere in the department became intolerable as the new ways of working had to be applied by Stewart, as Depute, and he didn’t agree with them any more than we did.  So, when an opportunity came to move into private practice locally, I left – citing in my letter of resignation the ceaseless conflict as my primary reason.  A councillor, on hearing that I was leaving, took me on one side and asked me to reconsider if they (the councillors) could “get rid of John”.  Even if I had believed that possible, which I didn’t, it was too late for that.

I was, in many ways, sorry to part company with the Comhairle.  I had good colleagues many of whom, in such a small community, were also friends.  The wives of some who were married were also friends of Lesley.  The work was interesting and the job, relatively, secure but my colleagues gave me a good ‘send-off’ and presented me with a fob watch, and a tweed deer stalker hat.  The watch was inscribed in Gaelic, inexplicably with the birth date of the person, Fred Courtney-Bennett, who had been given the task of arranging the engraving!  And so it was that I joined Thomson, Taylor, Craig & Donald (TTCD), in Hill Street: my first spell in private practice in 7 years.

Lewis and Harris had been, until the most recent reorganisation of local government in Scotland, administered as part of the County of Ross and Cromarty – the county town of which was (and still is) Dingwall in Ross-shire.  The Stornoway office of TTCD was run by Donald MacKillop, a Gaelic speaker originally from Harris, as a satellite of a large Aberdeen-based practice.  Donald ran another branch office in Dingwall, which meant that I had to run the Stornoway operation with only occasional input from Donald.  The two offices ran as a common resource, with projects or parts of projects being handled wherever there was capacity.  Donald, with his long-established contacts (both social and professional), took the lion’s share of responsibility for getting new work, but my role demanded a change of status, and I became an Associate, as was my immediate predecessor Colin Porteous and my name was added to the headed notepaper.  I relished the responsibility and the freedom to develop the practice, but the workload (including a project I had brought with me from the Comhairle), was such that it soon became necessary to have another member of technical staff.  In due course a recently qualified Architect, Andy Bruce, arrived from the mainland and together we set about modernising and growing the business.

The offices were on two floors:  the ground floor consisted of a shop window with an open-plan reception room where our part-time secretary worked.  At the back of this room, behind a screen, was the plan printing machine which, in common with all such machines of the day, ran on liquid ammonia as a developing fluid.  Adjacent to the printing machine enclosure was the narrow dog-leg staircase that led to the upper floor where the drawing office, and another room for Donald’s personal use, was located.  Donald’s room was directly over the downstairs reception, but the drawing office was overhead our neighbour in Hill Street: a fish and chip shop!  It takes little imagination to conjure up the smell that occasionally overwhelmed the office, made as it was of a mixture of ammonia, fried animal fat and cigarette smoke – Donald also smoked then, as had Colin Porteous.  The first thing we had to do was smarten up the accommodation.  Andy, who was principally a designer, produced a scheme for interior decoration which included opening up the shop window as a way of promoting the work of the office to the public.  This was achieved by using metal mesh, painted silver, on which photographs and small drawings could be displayed, both in the window and on the freshly redecorated walls of the reception area, and bright red clip on spotlights with curly electrical flexes – very 1980’s! 

While I was busy advancing my career (and with it the prospects and living standards of my family) other things were happening.  ‘Raygun Ronnie’ Reagan was president of the USA, and Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister of Britain, had taken us to war in the Falklands.  The ‘Cold War’ was pretty chilly, more so with these two belligerent right wing leaders in power.  It had been announced that the Stornoway RAF base was to be substantially upgraded, and extended, to be a forward operating base for NATO forces.  The base’s role was to be intercepting the horde of Russian ‘Backfire’ bombers that were, we were told, imminently expected to sweep across the northern flank of NATO – through the so-called “Iceland-Faeroes Gap”.   The base, such as it was, was technically already part of NATO’s assets and it had been decided that Stornoway was to plug the ‘gap’.  There began an intense period of propaganda, both for and against, and my involvement with the anti-nuclear movement, and CND, reactivated.  The works were considerable (valued at £40 million in 1983), involving a parallel taxiway (in effect a second runway), an off-shore re-fuelling point, increased fuel storage and, significantly, aircraft shelters which were intended to be ‘hardened’ against nuclear attack.  Although it was not publicly known at the time, similar work was going on at the other main western isles military base in Benbecula, where a nuclear-bomb proof underground control centre was being built.  There were fears, of course denied, that Stornoway airport would, in times of ‘international tension’, become a store for nuclear weapons.  We felt we were in the front line and expendable. 

The Comhairle, to its credit, decided to call a public enquiry into the planning application for the extension.  In fact the Comhairle had no legal grounds to challenge the planning application as the works were on Crown land and therefore did not require planning permission.  However, it was M.O.D. policy to run such works through the system as part of a ‘democratic process’ of public consultation – before imposing their will.  Such methods also provide the security services (MI5, MI6 and the Special Branch) with masses of useful information about potential ‘enemies of the state’ as all those who come forward to express a view, or take action, on such matters are scrutinised and filed for future reference.  If one were cynically disposed, one might even consider that the decision to call a public enquiry (rather than simply take advantage of it) was part of that process.  No doubt, I already had a file – if not also a footnote in my Dad’s file – due to my earlier activity as a demonstrator, both as a student, sometime member of CND, as well as then being in Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.  I expect I was in ther column marked subversive and potentially dangerous – a view to be reinforced quite soon.  The turkey was going to be stuffed, but was consulted about which hand did the dirty work!  Expressed public opinion, orchestrated by both sides (including the security services), was divided between two camps.  The pros were largely for the short-term gain of construction jobs and ‘national security’, while the cons thought the whole thing was a waste of money.  Naturally, we fell into the second camp.  It was our view that nuclear war was not survivable, so preparing for war on the basis that it was made no sense:  indeed it made war more likely.  We also believed that the jobs issue was an illusion, at best a short- term gain for a handful of people.  In due course the work began, and a campaign group was formed called ‘Keep NATO Out’ (KNO) under the chairmanship of Angus MacCormack, a teacher at the local secondary school – the Nicolson Institute.  KNO co-ordinated letter writing, meetings and, ultimately, a demonstration that resulted in me, along with several others, being ‘detained’ by the Special Branch. 

Amongst the support being received from ‘outside’ the island, KNO was helped and encouraged by the Highland Federation of CND Groups – several of whose members were living in a remote part of the western seaboard of Ross-shire in a community at Scoraig.  I should explain that by ‘community’ I do not mean ‘commune’.  Scoraig is a place (it used to be a township before the clearances) on the southern flank of the peninsula between Loch Broom and Little Loch Broom.  It was, and is, inaccessible by road and the empty houses had been progressively occupied by families and individuals of an ‘alternative’ mindset, and many of them are still there.  InSeptember 1983KNO called a demonstration, a peace vigil, at the works entrance to the airfield.  The call went out for support and several people from the Highland Federation of CND groups made the journey to Stornoway.  Unknown to me then, the great cogs of life were in the process of aligning for a devastating event but, I regret to say, my attention was elsewhere and so the blow, when it came, was completely unexpected.  I have since learned that there were already signs of impending disaster, seen by others, that manifested at this weekend.

It was necessary to find accommodation for some of the visitors and it was decided that the indigenous protestors would meet the incoming ferry to arrange places to stay for the weekend.  As my office was near the quayside, I agreed to open it as a sort-of clearing house, where people offering accommodation could meet up with those needing it.  At the end of this process there were three people left who came home with me:  Sundara Forsyth, ‘Topher Dawson and Gavin (whose surname escapes me).   At the same time a Ceilidh was organised for that night, at Andy Bruce’s house in Benside.  The plan for the weekend was straightforward.  We would demonstrate by standing, all Friday night (after the Ceilidh), at the works entrance to the airfield.  Saturday was not a working day, therefore there would be no conflict with workmen, and we would not interfere with normal commercial flight operations because they had a separate access to the field.  At some point on Saturday we would disperse and, of course, Sunday would be a day of ‘leisure’.  I was not able to stay at the Ceilidh long, due to my other commitments to the event as a whole and the need to get our guests settled. 

It was clearly impractical for both Lesley and I to take part in the vigil all night, but I did get up in the early hours, while it was still dark, and joined my friends at a brazier burning heartily in the cold night air.  Lesley joined us, with the children, after breakfast.  Everything was very jolly, with no chanting, singing or placard waving that I recall; in fact it was all very low key until the Special Branch intervened by ‘manufacturing’ an incident.  There was clear evidence of collusion between the plain-clothes police on the scene, and two lorry drivers, who suddenly appeared with their vehicles at the entrance, one coming from the public road while the other came up the track from the works site.  The intent was to trap the demonstrators between them as they couldn’t both pass through the single gate, or traverse the single-track road, simultaneously.  The site was not working, and neither truck was laden, so it was obvious that their only objective was to create a situation where we were technically causing an ‘obstruction’ against which the police could act.  The vehicles pushed forward, compressing and intimidating the demonstrators, and the police moved in to clear the demonstrators from the entrance.  Those of my readership who have any knowledge of demonstrations in the ‘60’s (especially CND demos) will recognise the instinctive response of our motley crew: we sat down.  Immediately we did that, two things happened.  Firstly, people started singing “We shall not be moved” and other traditional demonstration-type songs.  Secondly, and revealing of the sinister nature of our security services, the senior plain-clothes officer began moving very deliberately through the small throng of men, women and children, singling out individuals to be forcibly removed.  I should record here that there were three kinds of police present that day.  There were the local uniformed officers, whom we all knew; there were other uniformed officers that nobody had seen before; there were a couple of plain clothes officers, one of whom was clearly in command of all the police, who nobody knew.  It was clear that, for this occasion, the local police force had been augmented by officers from the mainland, and the police who actively participated in all that followed were only those from outwith the island.  I was ‘lifted’, without any resistance from me (a golden rule of demonstrations is to resist passively to avoid the situation turning ugly) and I joined some of my companions in the back of a police van.  At this point the whole situation took on a ‘Keystone Cops’ complexion as we were driven three miles into town and told to disembark on the harbour quayside.  I briefly thought that we were actually going to be deported on the ferry but, in fact, we were released.  At this point I thought “They’ve just removed us far enough that, by the time we walk back to the airfield, we wouldn’t be able to take any further part and it will all be over.  How civilised”.  Wrong.

Suddenly, as we were walking along the road, a police car drew up and our plain clothes men re-appeared.  We were ‘invited’ to accompany them to the police station, where we were joined by others who had been brought direct from the demonstration site.  There were 7 of us altogether.  We had committed no offence, had not been formally arrested, cautioned or charged, but the plain-clothes men threatened us with detention throughout what remained of the weekend, unless we co-operated with them by allowing them to photograph us!  As an added inducement, we were told that if we were detained over the weekend, the police would find something to charge us with and we would be obliged to surrender our fingerprints as well as our photographs!  Very, very illegal:  what price democracy?  We were able to get word out, by calling through a window, that we urgently needed representation.  In due course a Solicitor, Angus MacDonald, appeared to negotiate our release, but not before a number of us had been photographed between two uniformed officers.  We all had to give our names and addresses, and it was obvious that the off-island police were embarrassed by the fact that almost every one of us gave a Lewis address:  they had clearly expected to find that we were ‘imported’ troublemakers sent by CND!  No charges ensued, as was noted on the reverse side of the photograph which appears below. 

I cannot recall much of what occurred in the rest of the weekend but our guests, Topher Dawson, Sundara Forsyth and Gavin, provided much entertainment, and not a little thought.  Sundara was a ‘free spirit’ who taught therapy through dance; Topher was an engineer who had decided to be a boat-builder instead.  I cannot describe Gavin other than to say he was following some internal spiritual quest – and it showed in his face:  I have never, before or since, seen anyone who actually glowed as he did.  Some might describe these three as ‘hippies’, but that would be a gross disservice and denigration of their individual spirit and capacity for hard-headed living.  Certainly Topher (who had built his own turf roofed round house out of reinforced concrete) and Sundara (who lived with a man called P.P.) had chosen to live in Scoraig, a remote place on the west coast, where even basic survival needed hardiness and determination.  They were anything but woolly minded or romantic.  Gavin was wandering the country, playing his guitar, and seeking, I guess, his idea of God.  Sundara, Topher and Gavin made such a huge impression on me that I wrote two poems about it.  I felt, somehow, that collectively they represented parts of my character and life that I had allowed to lie fallow and I wanted to do something about it.  Both poems were written on the weekend of the demonstration and are reproduced here.

“September 1983 – Andrew arrested at Stornoway Airport for ‘Breach of the Peace’ with 7 others in CND & Keep NATO Out demonstration.  Charges dropped by Sheriff due to police conspiracy and other irregularities”

Ferry Boat

Ferry Boat

what did you bring us?

Three links from an infinite chain

forged in love,

each tested and calibrated to carry the load of the other.

Such strength.

Ferry Boat

how did you bring us?

These three, and not some other,

from that tangled quayside heap of humanity,

to join us to an anchor

more substantial than steel or iron.

Ferry Boat

what is this food?

That takes away our hunger

without eating or drinking

and sustains with word and touch.

This dancing body,

these creative hands,

 this musical mind.

You brought us we.

 Ferry Boat,

Where will you take us?

There is no doubt about the impression that these three had made on me, and the questions that were formed in my mind about how we were, or were not, fulfilling the intentions and aspirations behind our move to Lewis.  The second poem is even more personally introspective and speaks of the turmoil that, perhaps, underlay my restlessness and ‘displacement behaviour’.

The Mirror

This day I was made a gift of myself.

A kit of parts, each individual and precious

but, all in one, the whole greater than the sum.

A mirror in three pieces

suffused with light of a quite extraordinary kind.

And in this mirror I see myself

more clearly than for eleven years.

Five thousand days, dawns and sunsets

lost in meaningless, pointless, unnecessary struggle,

inflicting cruel punishment

on my loved ones and myself, in living a total lie.

Five thousand days. Dear God!

What waste!

Forgive my vanity and my sloth. Do I deserve this chance?

I cannot, must not, will not let it pass.

No clearer sign of the way will I see.

No better guide will come along. It is time. I am ready. Into this vacuum, un-noticed by me, had come Stuart Bagshaw.  Stuart was another Architect on the island, who had also moved on to private practice after a spell with the Comhairle, and whose personal life had become closely intertwined with our own in the immediately preceding months.  Stuart’s business was going reasonably well and, as a sole practitioner, he needed help.  One evening, over a bottle of ‘Bulls Blood’ (Hungarian red wine), he asked whether I would be interested in joining him.  I felt an instinctive unease and, as there is no point in being in a business partnership with somebody that you do not trust implicitly, I declined the offer.