Mylife on a stick by Pablo Byrne

MY LIFE ON A STICK

TRANSPORTS OF DELIGHT

Sean Byrne

Contents Introspection 00/00/00 Buggies and Juggies Austin Special Roadster Our Island Home Getting Car Born & Horny Music In the Blood C.U. later then PFTR Legover London No Big Deal Balloonatics Turning over in Mexico Lost & Found Brazil Mexican Honey Superman Calls Fixxing It for the Fixx and Some Penguins Morocco By Tonka Between Times Heller Hey Steven over here Heller II Hot Snowflake and a Road Trip All shit shaped and Bristol Fashion Jordan Shutting Up Shop Pictures Visiting Time Four Poems

9 11 13 29 49 99 109 119 133 149 157 181 199 217 227 231 239 245 263 273 291 295 321 327 347 365 379 399 429

Introspection Rather than an autobiography this is just a go at trying to remember a few things. Here appear many of the people, places, projects and events that have adorned my passage through time and helped shape the first 42 years of my life. What started as a treatise, in the style of Jeremy Clarkson, on the raggedy collection of wheeled vehicles that were part of or traversed my journey up to now, soon boiled over into much more but retains the perspective of Transports of Delight! Most of my meagre earnings have come from music; participating with the aerial units in films; hot air balloon adventures and running large projects and productions usually involving flying, all Transports of Delight for me and those who enjoyed the results. From solitary rural beginnings, I have stumbled through a magical melange of music, wondrous wheels, glorious girls, gifted friends and family, fanciful flying machines, movie making and airborne art living in two of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest cities and rarely being sure about what was to come next, mostly guided by a desire for challenge, travel and adventure. It has been difficult pinpointing dates and the order of things as I have never kept even a working agenda let alone a dairy, so as I ricochet willy nilly up and down memoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bumpy old cul du sac, taking pause for thought, there will be those in the know who may question the whole sequence of some events but I hope they will be tolerant and enjoy the naĂŻve realism of these recollections and reflections with a lot of digression along the way. Actually there are even a few complete fabulations which will probably seem obvious!

00/00/00 For those for whom dates signify something, my parents Patrick Garratt Byrne and latterly Joyce Florence Byrne nee Reynolds produced me, Sean Garratt on December the 14th 1950 and my brother Liam Garratt on March the 21st 1954 both in Royston Hospital. Flint Hall Farm, Royston, Hertfordshire was the family home from my birth to their death. I attended Market Hill Infant School in Royston, Holloways Junior School in Barley, Hitchin Grammar School and nearby Cambridge Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Emmanuel College where I read Engineering from 1969 to 1971. I married Claire Ann Heyes my University girlfriend in 1977 when she became pregnant with James Robin Alexander Byrne who plopped onto the starting grid in Paddington on April the 19th 1978. In 1980 after separating from Claire, I met Dianna Alejandra Marin Reyes in Mexico City during June 1980, proposing to her in Brentford Middlesex on the 14th of February 1984 and tying the knot on the 29th of that same month. We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have children until Pablo Alejandro Byrne Marin was plucked from the womb in Bristol on the 13th of March 1990 followed by Ana Cristina Byrne Marin who first smudged cotton in Mexico on August the 22nd 1991. My brother Liam was killed in a car accident in August 1980, my father passed away suddenly and rather carelessly aged 73 October 27 1987 and Mum at 70 in March 1993 after a short bout with Cancer. We moved to Mexico arriving on the Day of the Dead 1st November 1993 to live in Tlalnepantla, Estado de Mexico just outside Mexico City where we are to this day.

BUGGIES AND JUGGIES!

Wriggle and squirm your way back down memory lane through the less accessible tissue banks, and strengthened synapses,

spongy recesses, clustered and administered by our hardly understood grey matter as far as you can go, way before puberty, way before the shock of teachers or jabs of vaccines, wheedle your way into the post-lactating, post-nappy and post-crawling times but before taste, escape and danger were of comprehensible concern, when first catchphrases and serious food preferences were being formed and around the time of those early face-to-the-wind street cruising or in-restaurant dalliances witnessed from behind some thematically decorated towel or blanket while in your little carriage. Big faces peeping in and you completely out, oblivious, giving your parents a few precious and last minutes to kid themselves it would always be that easy! There you are betrayed, bespoke and bewildered, on the point maybe of spitting out your comforter for the last time! If my own children’s progress is any guide it seems there is a strong wish to rise into the more autonomous species-defining bipedal stage and pretty soon to the scooter and bike pedal phase and out of these restrictive trolleys. Having said that as long as you were in one you were a baby sorta and fair game. I remember a Brazilian girlfriend, Nalu, helping to ‘put down’ my first son Robin one evening and stroking my little chaps little chap, telling me that they liked that and it sent them off. Well hey what’s new!

Out it goes again! Searching through photographs I was pleased to find a picture of me sitting bolt upright in a pram. Surely everyone has one. Imagine the next few frames where, having dropped the brush, I move a little more to the front of the carriage and all hell breaks loose as I tumble dress and all into the wet grass surely

banging my head on the only protruding stone, root or abandoned tent peg in an otherwise perfect lawn causing a centripetal tug of attention towards yours truly. Always it’s willing recipient, falling over in this way, down stairs, off chairs, on stage during concerts in fact buffoonery at any given opportunity continues to figure in my life spasmodically, still waiting for the screw that keeps my head on to be fully tightened. I think the name ‘baby carriage’ was an apt description for earlier porta-totties, unfortunate though the implication is of horse/parent doing the tot-porting: pulling, pushing and puffing however wagon like the wheels and springy the springs. For my brother, my Mum opted for a rather splendid Silver Cross affair as shown up top, the wheeled equivalent of a four poster I suppose all majestic and bouncy. I am surprised no one has ever thought to put a little electric motor on these things so that once full of baby, paraphernalia, shopping, laundry and library books it could receive assisted passage. Hang on they have – meet the 50 mile an hour totwagon and that looks exactly like David Partridge who you will meet later!!

Terry Gilliamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision of babies in streetcrawling prams devouring admiring grannies on sight is a great favourite of mine. I mean who hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been scratched in the face by those tiny little unpared finger nails, worse than a cat!!

On trying to sell a rather beautiful coach built classic Silver Cross model at auction once I was told that it along with

certain old electrical goods could not be sold there for legal liability and health and Safety reasons. Didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to be a problem when it was first bought, thought I. Silver Cross is I think the only surviving manufacturer from that golden era.

From the stately perambulator we progressed through the rather less prosaic buggy - more callously calling it a push-chair - making sense to the puffing pop â&#x20AC;&#x201C; we have marvelled at the simplicity of the carrycot and its collapsible, stowaway undercarriage, strollers, baby walkers, the little bicycle seat, to arrive at the mammoth foldaway 8 wheeler convertible car seat/swing/ stroller/ bed/ shopping cart with everything bar the kitchen sink a drive shaft and computer guidance system,

but yes, with the bar and plenty of space for an extra kid, pet, concealed firearms or drugs for those so requiring. Unless your mother took you In-Uteri roller skating as part of her preparations for your birth then these surely are our first set of wheels, bought especially for us and for our exclusive use unless you factor in the value of exercise to the human propellant.

Hey Mum let’s play that Ben Hur game again As much as both gender are exposed in the same early way to wheeled mobility we also come to grips as it were at the earliest of ages with woman breasts. Though man breasts usually lingered nearby they held no attraction as those lucky enough to make the connection hungrily fixed de rote on those aptly parsed ‘jugs’ for our milky feasts. It seems only the boys keep the fascination not only for those wheeled sub frames but also these engorged super frames going in the guise

of enthusiast, fashion photographer or life art painter or for the strange few, gynaecologist or plastic surgeon for most of our lives. There is little let up throughout life of the hope of acquiring the next set of wheels and securing regular access to those treasured chests. Often the two go hand in hand for there were few options for furtive fondling prior to passing the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Testâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (as in driving) that little pink pass slip opened the door to a perfect union. For who can deny the lure and purity of in-car fumblings combining obsession number one with obsession number two (which is which varying from individual to individual and not including normal sporting activities). Perhaps sex on a blanket by the car or that Holy Grail of car sex , the hard to get I-spy-book-of sex-box-ticker a blow job on the move, or the great achievement of sex in a Mini (car not skirt), Fiat 500 or better still Bubble car â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sit fondly in your memories. From depressed clutch and neutral knob to brakes off and loosening belts, buckles and buttons, peeling away civilizations unfastened trappings in a dash to the finish. Of course in the mini it was better to get in the back first, in the Fiat get out altogether and as for the Bubble car well it could have served as a condom I suppose. Nevertheless despite being more appropriate for some contortionists night off than a couple of young conservatives post ball antics, it is indeed a fine thing and, prodding away in

the dark both emotionally, actually and sexually, a fine way at some stage to shed your virginity at whatever specific moment that should occur. But maybe I am wrong here, those so endowed also like driving (the lure of future unfettered shopping trips?) and from what I have seen there is little doubt that breast size, shape and firmness are shared preoccupations and it isn’t just cos we like em large, the girls do too! And bras no longer hold them in, they actually cross the heart and shove up and out which, though I suppose is for our benefit has to have been asked for by women. Should we then admire, reach out for or comment on the teetering mounds more often than not the riposte is at least awkward if not cheekily stinging. But why I wonder does the explosive flagrante of an exposed nipple in our western culture end up as newsworthy, somewhat shameful to the exposer and fit only for over 18’s when we have been sucking and squeezing these things since cutting the cord?? While some primitive tribes still emphasise their sexuality and clearly not so far back in history the Romans, Greeks, Indians and pacific islanders revelled in it, societies based on one of the world’s newest religions have all this goodness cloaked in black, making women invisible participants in a scary charade, mostly left without rights or opinion. However scandalous, outrageous or even illegal it may be when so revealed, the

accessible teat and titillation is fundamental to life literally from before day one however you look a tit. We are a funny lot and I doubt any biologist or anthropologist could explain convincingly why modern humans are the only animal to be shy when it comes to many basic functions, why the embarrassment? I guess such a driver as sexual arousal so easily provoked is too powerful and distracting to have it ‘out there’. But such denial or concealing tendencies have given birth to the psychology of Freud and writing of Kafka as well as the man made concepts obscenity, decency and morality which all just emerge as frustration, ignorance, or at worse violence. Legalize soft drugs and let ribald lacivity ensue if you ask me while of course not forgetting to find some time to save the planet if needs must as they do! Another thing, when first born we pudgy sludgy grey baby monsters are held up for all to see and compare – oh he has his mother’s eyes, your nose, Dumbo’s ears, that dimple there, all that hair, but nobody says look he has his dad’s dick although in advanced years, the similarity sadly does eventually become more apparent! Much younger I felt that girls were a bit mean – well they were - and that unlike today’s Wonder and Triumph cantilever structures, bras were contraptions made to hide away, sort of cancel out the swelling so that girls could keep

doing unnoticed all the things that we boys did. At 13 years old I remember asking the girl in the neighbouring caravan at Leysdown Caravan Site on the Isle of Sheppey near Sheerness while on summer holidays with my maternal grandparents Edgar and Flo (yes we knew how to have fun in those days in this kind of favela on wheels) if she had oranges down her shirt, Was I so stupid, did I really believe that, I mean melons maybe but oranges!?! I think she said they weren’t but with ‘It’s All Over Now’ by the Rolling Stones blasting out rather too insistently from the beachfront fairground I should have understood something. Clearly the stirrings were there but full shakings and understanding were not. Coincidently by then I had mastered a technique of after lights out self-pleasuring whereby everyone else in our tiny caravan was not shaken out of their slumbers but I must have been kidding myself. I was convinced after scratching away at the first strange itchings in my loins led to a rather surprise outburst of goo, that what came out was fat and this was my secret diet – nuff said I was keen to keep my weight down and if this meant aligning with the pleasurable sensation of keeping my pecker up so much the better. Had I been on to something, lip-osuction would have acquired a whole different meaning - more treat than treatment.

This girl didn’t become my first sexual adventure, just another to lose weight over, but we had some fine days careering round the go kart track and pacing the mile out to the sea’s edge to float and paddle amongst the jellyfish, turds and other such that swept out from London or in from the sea, we would look for and net tiddlers in the outgoing streams and explore the variety of flotsam and jetsam that cuddled up to other detritus abandoned by the outgoing tide.

I always had the idea that ‘oranges’ was right behind me trying to catch up. Guess not!

From age of 9 to 12, My closest cousins Michael and Shelagh Reynolds together with their parents Ray and Pat usually accompanied us on these annual holidays. Here we are a mile out in the Thames Estuary!

In the evenings, with the adults inside, we kids would hang around outside the caravan siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social club. Meat pies and chips were brought out to us with the slightly guilty bearer asking if everything was alright! Those inside bingoed the night away with their two little ducks on all fours or doubledin at the dartboard going for their 501â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s while others mindlessly swigged beer and pulled on roll-ups, maybe shuffling cards or the domino bone yard, waiting for the pool

table to free up as they swilled their Watneys’ Red Barrel to the sound of Harvey Sing-along at the Organ and the nights dubious ‘act’. Abandoned to the terrace, swigging regular supplies of fizzy favourite Vimto, we collected and swapped modern aeroplane and other cards from the automatic A&BC gum vending machines, or did whatever took our fancy among the small grass topped dunes, until sooner or later Harvey would have em all singing about Bulls and Bushes, and not dillying or dallying on the way, once the Hokey Cokey hit in we knew that, so primed, such late night cavorting would soon see everyone, except those after late night Hanky Panky, spewing out knackered to lead us beerily back to our little shacks on wheels.

It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t so bad, but the enduring memory I am stuck with is of a child walking around one night outside the club with a pencil stabbed in his eye and looking for his uncle, I also managed to impale myself on a nail and was rushed off for tetanus jabs. Were those really the days? Course they were! My maternal granddad was a World War I veteran and although others would tell us how awful it had been for him signing up for glory and to do his bit as a 14 year old lad, he seemed content having survived the mincing and once retired from his job as a local trades Union convener lived out his days in Sittingbourne, Kent tending an allotment and getting around in a variety of interesting three-wheelers including a motorbike and sidecar and then the closet motorbike that was a Bond Minicar, both of which arrived to great ado the few times they made it the 100 miles or so up to the farm near Royston where I lived with my parents Pat and Joyce and younger brother Liam

Road tax and self preservation evasion. One of the Bond cars (Edgarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not Jamesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s) Flo followed Edgar to the grave within a few months when I was about 18 and it was sad to see some of the family squabbling over their meagre possessions before Steptoe and Son arrived to cart off what was left and the house was returned to council house rental stock.

AUSTIN SPECIAL ROADSTER

Like many a boy of our time, despite the 60’s terror at the looming doom of nuclear war with the unknown but anyway ‘horrid’ Russians - who were surely targeting our local Bassingbourn Royal Air force base in a first strike, I was forever putting myself into dangerous situations, whether

climbing high into trees to where the branches were thinner than my as yet uncrushed thumb, or scrambling over the fragile yet to collapse corrugated asbestos barn roofs, or up through stacks of bales into the warm eaves of Flint Hall Farmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s old yet to catch fire tithe barn with its plethora of enormous spiders and their webs, bats, rat trails and birds nests.

One my

earliest joys was this tricycle, the start to a lifelong fascination with three-wheelers. One of the realities with the type I am riding here is that instead of just falling off sideways as on a bicycle you always seemed to end up with the tricycle on top of you in a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;badâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; accident and some signs of blood spilled. Looked good though and guaranteed a treat! I cut my teeth (and probably my lip and a few other things too) on that fabulous tricycle which I adored but later on I especially liked propelling myself on bikes or slender wooden platforms with pram wheels and no brakes other than dug in heels, or any thought for the breaking bones, distraught parent or disfiguration that could result.

At the end of the day a graze or two was nothing compared to the thrill of hairing full tilt between trees and bushes down narrow footpaths or hopping over rock and rut or up precarious ramps to fly a few yards again and again and again. My particular favourite was to see how fast I could pile into our wooden garage door without falling off, usually after a measured jump, without damage to me or the bike and no thought at all for the door or the creepy crawlies who called it home or the extra dents that would cause problems when the door became my summer tennis opponent! No name for it then either - BMX, Cross biking, no tricks, fancy T-shirts or famous riders to seek out, - in fact no T-shirts, only white undergarments in those days, more likely to be string vests and always white (to start with). Skate boards? What were they? No springs, carbon fibre or light alloys- no magazines talking about revolutionary titanium frames (no titanium for mere mortals either for that matter) just me and the bikeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heavy old frame with its sewn leather saddle, big rubber tyres and round heavy metal, quick to rust tubes lofting a gut that needed shaking up by things that begged jumping, thumping or crumpling, bumping into or skidding over. The motor biking equivalent was called scrambling!

Of course living on a farm made these challenges easy to pursue, Muddy puddles in the tractor wheel ruts, paths through the woods with exposed and slippery roots (whether from rain or from moss), The bikes Sturmey Archer gears were forever failing to mesh as if squabbling in their small cylinder home of the rear wheel hub, no Shimano derailleur for us, in fact I think no gears at all at times either and often even no chain, broken during some clumsy foray or other! The wheels and frame were willing allies and extensions of self ready to bend and twist and ‘derail’ along the way. Bigger boys needed bigger toys and of course my dad had the ultimate fascination – a car, a real car breathing oil, coils, leather seats sparking plugs, a gear knob and a hand crank - oh my!

But he wasn’t alone how about this for a potential death trap! Built for Nick Horton by his dad Farmer Anthony. Perhaps

they wanted to kill us! There with Nick, Liam and I is late arrival to the farm, Willy Palin

He also had a particular knack for fixing things, old radios, kitchen appliances, photo enlargers, cameras, cars, plumbing, and making toys, shelves, music a mess and so on. With my birth he had gone about extending our little three room home, adding three more rooms by building along into the, by then, conveniently abandoned cowsheds. It seemed he could lend his hand to anything, always countersinking his screws, and putting plastic wood on his pin tacks. His at times manic search for a missing bit, bob, button, bolt, brace or bracket would frequently see him vanishing off to his mates Cyril and Harold Cooperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s garage and machine shop in the quaintly baptised and nearby village of Fowlmere where under their bemused watch he would don overalls and let loose on the power tools, turning out hinge, flange, threaded rod or other stuff as part of some continuing work in Progress, Either that or he had a bird nearby, who knows!

Dad’s grass roots hair styling, a Head of his time!

Cyril the Squirrel and Harold Hare of Fowlmere Engineering Dad’s riveting fascination for milling machines, welders, drills, bits, lathes, ties, taps and dyes and the rest tried to rub off on me as you would expect, and I did study Engineering at University. Here is a photo of me doing some precision drilling in a dirty white overall a few years later during my Course’s obligatory Industrial Experience requirement with Mr John

Whitehead’s Herts and Cambs Engineering (As in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire but – in my mind always parodied to Hearts and Minds). In truth my mechanical, constructional and electrical abilities stopped somewhere short of Meccano, Bayko, Airfix and my Hornby train set though, so it’s likely my grommets, dyes, keys and shafts never quite made spec. I could readily blame the cranky old machinery that whirred and danced erratically in my care, but it was fun watching the metal peeling off and forming spirals washed away by the milky cooling fluid. More of John later Alongside Richard King at his superdooper precsion rig!

Busy drilling a hole through my foot I suppose many of Dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s endeavours were in order to complete the new bodywork for his Austin Seven Special and accompanying trailer tent that were coming clearly into focus in an old farm shed.

The Austin 7 Before it became â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;specialâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

In the emptying halls of my memory I have him vanishing off in the 7 at least once with his mate Tony Pearce - the more mysterious of his friends and a Bondesque Reuter

correspondent who had set foot in mystical Budapest and used a cigarette holder to smoke his Dunhills. A later jaunt with tent in tow had Dad hauling me my brother and mum into a distant field for family recreational purposes. With manically pumped Primus Stoves hissing magically away and the fiery light from the delicate gas mantles glowing warmly, I just remember this as a great trip, I think we went to Wells on Sea. This once formative and multi-dimensional but now diminished memory seems to have distilled down to the smell of the kerosene and butane and some tinted black and white postcards images now lost with little or no recall of the portrayed Cathedral, Sea or even the road trip and ingenious tent.

In sooner rather than later years the Special was sold on and the trailer tent kind of faded away into the back of the barn and beyond, but lived on as if by magic as a rather splendid small scale replica which was a treasured object for many years. Unfolded, its green felt lined storage box provided the grass base where it could be fully rigged, pegs, canvas, guys, corner supports, outrigger beds and all. It was simple but sublime and represented something perfect about my father whether it all came out of Popular Mechanics or Amateur Model Maker or some other personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s head I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know but for me it was him and a marvel. You could picture him as a kind of Geppetto figure, awkward with children but always

building wooden toys for his boys and grandchildren. A fort for me and later on a fully equipped carpenterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tool box, wheelbarrow, post office van, crane and more for the kids.

I felt if I could unravel such things maybe I could understand him. I wanted so much for him to be successful. This along with a ceremonial silver canon cigar cutter is one of the few objects that I would always check on during much later infrequent visits home along with a whole bandsworth of musical instruments, to be precise a violin, a miniature violin, a guitar, clarinet, trumpet, alto and soprano saxophones, ukulele and for a while two small pianos and drums too. All kinds of books filled yards of shelves and nooks including a long run of Argosy magazines and Dylan Thomas first editions; a large collection of jazz 78â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s including Leadbelly, Les Paul, Django and other favourite including Susannahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a Funnical Man and Abdul Abulbul Amir! Paintings and drawings by friends, pewter ware, clocks, homemade pots and plates, a spit, Arabian daggers and a couple of bayonets all lined our shelves, walls and the open fireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mantelpiece

in the Hovel, a lowly place we called home for many years at Flint Hall Farm, Royston and was actually proudly so-named on all correspondence. They had moved there at the invitation of the farmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s owners Jenny and Anthony Horton, The Hovel representing a move up from the old bus they had inhabited just prior to my birth.

Mum and Dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first home Next stop The Hovel, Let the parenting begin Yes that would be me

This would have been Dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s idea for sure

Lego still to come but there is always something to push up your nose.

Getting to grips with Stocks and Chairs, still don’t understand them! On the sitting room windowsill a black phone and large box which looked like a pencil sharpener but when cranked summoned a similar apparatus in a cupboard over at the Horton’s who would then connect us to the local Royston telephone operator’s voice ready to route you to anywhere in the world. Our number had just 4 digits to start with, Royston 2254 – no direct dialling in those days. The phone, most radios, and an electric mantel clock had casings of the world’s first plastic Bakelite (or polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride in case you wondered or wanted to make some)! But the trivial detail of my birth seems to have got in the way: Back to that Austin 7 Special a little gem that I childishly concluded would be a first step on the way to further Triumphs, Morgans, Jaguars, Bugattis maybe an MG, my card collections coming alive one by one. We had the sheds and tools and it seemed the expertise on hand but other than dabble with a later Austin 8 soft top and my brother’s similarly coloured Morris Minor convertible, the horrid truth was that our car pets were to be neither solid nor flashy, nor fast, usually well past their third owner and worst of all ‘a bargain’. One that comes to mind was the Hillman Husky as

Dad turned his attentions, probably with full justification, to becoming an unemployed, manic depressive with as I began to

understand six other kids and something of a back story!

Nice to see the back of this one or actually two if I remember correctly!

Prior to the 7’s departure, I am told part of my formative years included falling off my tree-slung swing and clonking my conk on the Austin 7’s front parts thus doomed to forever lugging rather deformed and very inefficient breathing tackle until at the age of seventeen some polyps and bone were painfully removed with hammer and chisel under eye-yanking local anaesthetic and while the breathing got no better, the great inhaler shrunk to a squishy boxer’s snout and I swore that anything to do with hospitals or exams (medical or otherwise) were of no particular benefit and such scrutiny or surgery was to be avoided at all costs. So other than faking it at University, I have staunchly avoided getting a pilot’s licence, prescription eyewear, the prostate finger and so on because tests and torments are not for me! An odd post-op memory I have is sitting in front of a pretty well-oranged nurse while she delved around in my nostrils with some tweezers pulling out the nasal scabs. Whole thing gives me the creeps to this day!

The poor old Hillman bless it or its soul(s) was clearly well meaning and cosy looking with its 0-50 in 24 seconds and top speed of 65 mph. After all it had come from some designerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heart and I imagine it will resurface as a cartoon character some day. This road hog (and it was slow and a pig!) was to be the chosen chariot for what would be one of our nicer and oft repeated, family trips down to the Mumbles and the Gower Peninsula, Dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birthplace.

OUR ISLAND HOME!

My father was a private person when it came to the things that had affected and shaped him personally but it is clear that Wales was where he felt most at home and had a root or two. The way he progressively slipped back into a Welsh accent as we closed the distance between home counties Hertfordshire and his beloved Gower peninsula seemed kind of silly to us as if he was putting it on but I only realise now as I write this, that that was his natural lilt and he was just falling back into

it as part of the whole nostalgia and joy of these once a year regressions. Having been the travelling salesman for the Cambridge Battery Service – a company he set up with a friend called Jim Truelove and his wife Frances - he was knowledgeable about much of the country and would regale us with stories of places we passed along the way. But in those pre-motorway days he had one great fear and that was Birdlip Hill and whether we would actually make it to Wales in our Husky at all. Birdlip is a long steep gradient climb in Gloucester which tops out at the Air Balloon Roundabout and I seem to remember some steam and a queue of traffic on our tail but we always made it up there and it was downhill all the way from there. Still before us we had the intimidating Forest of Dean, Offa’s Dyke, and fortifications of Monmouth`s Castle before we could feel we had arrived safely in Welsh Wales and got out of England. Sometimes we took the route through Hereford but always passed through Abergavenny, Merthyr Tydfil and Neath. We never passed through Cardiff – probably because Shirley Bassey lived there with her Bay full of Tigers and Dad wasn’t a fan of such strident powerful women! The journey down through the coalmining Valleys and past still impressive steel works ferociously consuming the coal was way beyond anything I had ever seen back in rural Hertfordshire.

On the first day on one of these holidays in Pembrokeshire my brother and I slewed two pedal boats into each other in Singleton Park which screwed off the top of my right thumb as I put flesh bone and nail between the gunwales in the hopeless hope of warding of what would have been only a minor collision. It also screwed up my holidays, no swimming in the sea for two weeks while the sinews, nail, flesh and bone knitted back together. Exactly the length of our stay. Another memory from one of those trips was being introduced to a thick cut, whiter than white loaf of Motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pride bread on the trip down, absolute novelty that and so soft and tasty and seemingly fresh. Nowadays we are all back to far healthier Wholewheat Stoneground, Buttermilk, seed covered stuff but I occasionally regress and buy a nice medium cut white loaf to see if I can recall that first squidgy try (it has to be squidgy!).

A key person and motivation for these trips was my father’s lifelong buddy, local Swansea bandleader and tenor saxophonist John Lovely who I was sure looked after Gower and its Mumbles (so named after a Celtic word for ‘Breast shaped Hill’) during our absences and was one of the nicest people you could ever meet!! He and dad together looked like Laurel and Hardy. There is a recording of him and I having a chat when I was about five which I still have somewhere. But on our first trips down to see John and Dad’s beautiful Gower coast and those Mumbles we met John’s clinically mad wife and it was hard to understand how he kept it all together. I remember her as someone who would have perfectly filled out the typical and rather inappropriately named Bedgown and top hat of traditional welsh dress that

looks terrifying even now, just lacking the broomstick and cauldron or in Bettyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s case maybe not, she had enough cats!!

Once Betty floated off across her own polivested river Styx, John met and married a blowsy bigsexy woman called Rose. Dad absolutely loathed her in his prejudgement!!! John of course absolutely adored her. Oh dear!

John and Rose Lovely They would visit Royston in their little Bubble Car at least once a year and we were perennial visitors to the Mumbles and Gower coast passing some really great holidays there even after Dad followed Betty down the muddy slipway paddling away into his own dark waters, I imagine him aboard one of those quaint little Welsh fishing coracles muttering away confidently while spinning slowly out of control into the blackness pleased not to be paying the Ferryman, saving on the passage but no inkling where he was going!

Lovely Bubbly In between rock climbing, exploring the pools and trying to surf on flimsy boards in two foot high waves, we would visit places like Laugharne and Dylan Thomas’s House with its nearby dilapidated and un-cared for writing shed. Peeping through cracks in the shed door I am still convinced that there were quires of paper still unsung in there – surely impossible years after Thomas’s death though. Dad had been his contemporary and one of his little unsung glories while working together as journalists was beating Thomas in a writing competition. Because my father was an

honest man I believe him in the same way he claimed a song he had written and sent to London’s Denmark Street, better known as Tin Pan Alley, to publishers Campbell and Connelly was stolen from him, well at least the tune. Every time I hear Try a Little Tenderness (credited to the publishing house) I think how different his and our lives would have been had he gained the recognition and income from just half that one song. Bastards! Despite the roots, Wales was not home to me any more than Ireland never having set foot there. With a name like Sean Garratt Byrne you would think that I would have at least gone to a wedding or a funeral to the Emerald Isle at some time but it wasn’t until may years later that I tripped the streets of Dublin for a couple of weeks travelling with a hot air balloon. I can claim to be a true Brit, with each one of my grandparents hailing from a different quarter of the former Kingdom. Strangely perhaps the place I most identify with is Ireland. I just feel Irish. Many have tried to dig into our family tree but it all fizzles out very early on and although we seem to have come from the County Wexford area little is known prior to my great grandfather’s arrival in Wales.

Thomas Byrne my Welsh born grandfather was something of a Thespian and managed the Grand Theatre in Swansea for many years also appearing in a number of Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas and as a minor player with travelling companies. Keeping a strict Victorian house, I think my father must have been greatly shocked when, by then a widower, he ran off with a servant girl and left his modest wealth to her on his death in 1947. The only way he figured in my life was as a kind of ghastly and ghostly emotional shadow over the rather

sad man that my father seemed to be. Even so, beforehand this is where the young Patrick learned many circus and theatre tricks, he could for example dance on roller skates, juggle and was conversant in Shakespeare. Prior to the war he followed in his father’s footsteps and became the youngest theatre manager in Britain on taking over the Reperetory Theatre in Bournemouth. All this was to change of course during and after the war when cinema eventually caused the demise of most grand theatres and touring companies in the UK. The realization that my father was shared with an earlier family, still living in Bournemouth, became apparent when his eldest son Patrick began to visit us while on leave from the air force stationed at RAF Bampton one of the many small aerodromes that dotted post war Britain. He was so like Dad but more an uncle to me until somewhere along the line he took an overdose of barbies and wasn’t there anymore. You just can’t trust life or people can you? I was too young to fully understand why the Maltesers stopped coming but it seemed too easy to me that someone could take their own life like that. If you believe in patterns, when my second half-brother arrived to stay during his Service leaves I hoped he wouldn’t take leave of his senses and chop off his own head too! Fortunately Michael and siblings Patricia, Gillian, and Thomas live on

though I understand there was another daughter who died young. Coincidentally this makes me a seventh son which should have meant special powers but these have yet to rear within! My pop-sharers are as bemused and disenchanted with Dad as they have every right to be even though to his credit he didn’t run away from his responsibilities and sent regular money to this family which basically meant they stayed poor and so did we!!!. The only time I recall meeting Tommy was when he knocked on our door one afternoon on a surprise visit and Dad sent him packing just because, in keeping with those times, he had a DA, drainpipe trousers and a string tie. I guess that wasn’t the surprise he was expecting. The next time I met him was at Dad’s funeral where he was the official emissary to make sure our father was indeed art in heaven whether dearly departed in a coracle or not, and probably not interested much in how he was hung, drawn or even quartered!!!! Michael’s visits were a joy, he could play the guitar and yodel a bit and knew tunes like Peggy Sue, Not Fade Away, That`ll Be The Day by Buddy Holly and Dream, Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Litte Suzy by the Everleys and so on. Much as I had enjoyed sitting round bonfires with school camps that would come to the farm, drinking cocoa and singing Michael Row the Bloody Boat Ashore, Harry Lewis; Foggy Foggy Jew

and Swannee River with its old folks at home, I was happier with my brother Michael’s Bo Diddly and Rave On, less righteous stuff strumming and singing away in the cowsheds that adjoined the Hovel where he could get a good echo out of Dad’s old six string. When Dad was at peace with himself which in fairness to him was much of the time, it seemed we were fortunate to live something of a Darling Buds of May existence on the farm with summer lunches often in the garden under the trees, the sounds, smells and colours of a farm in all its phases. While much of our daily diet still had echoes of wartime shortages and the ration book, Sunday lunch always seemed something of a celebration and never went by without much activity in the kitchen and the finality of The Roast, most popularly tender, sumptuous Welsh Leg of Lamb, brussel sprouts, carrots parsnips, roast potatoes, lashings of delicious gravy, onion or bread sauce, if it was beef then perfect Yorkshire puddings and all the trimmings. In fact many people made a pilgrimage to the farm to share these meals. To follow, Rhubarb crumble, Blackberry and apple pie, Baked Apples, Birds Eye Custard standing by, or sometimes a gooseberry fool, trifle or Spotted Dick. Occasionally Dad would prepare fantastic lemon and sugar pancakes and go on about how good the ‘wet Nelly’ was, which for him had been

the soggy one in the edge of the tilted tray when he was a youngster. For particularly special occasions Rump Steak would appear and Coffee Cake from Day’s Bakery, but every day we enjoyed lovingly prepared simple hearty food, bangers and mash, stews, shepherd’s pie, Cauliflower cheese. . Dad’s favourites steamed yellow haddock with poached eggs, kippers or tripes prepared in milk - were solitary pleasures, whereas newspaper wrapped, Fish and Chips from Kenzie`s takeaway in Kneesworth Street, the last chips and batter clinging to the paper like limpets, was a gluttonous and shared treat. Our immediate neighbours were pigs and bantams and cows as well as farmer Ant and Jenny Horton and their family who owned the 180 acres that made up this former market garden from the war years, faithful old Snowy on his Fordson Major tractor and the two sheepdogs Lucy and Lassy completed the scene, although from their point of view they must have wondered at the sheeplessness of the fields – baaaa-rren so to speak. No sheep but plenty of piglets which in their early months would escape their runs and often as not seek refuge in my bedroom chased and chided by the farmer as they scampered around, little porky feet skidding around on the tiled floor in their freedom until inevitably they were rounded up, put back to scoff their oats, and use that beautiful little nose to forage

around their little Nissen hut sties or stir up the slops until eventually fattened up they would too willingly trot up the ribbed ramp into a trailer and off to some grisly bloodstreamed house of death. Snuffling and chatting away as they went, I am sure they thought they were going on holiday, always so optimistic! Three little pigs, hogging the camera. The realities of farming sometimes seemed cruel when we would hear the squealing as the piglets had their little balls removed, for reasons I never could understand, but it was an

equilibrium of life that we grew up in and, apart from the few

painful days of noisy castrations and sad departures to slaughter, enjoyed. I have to say looking at the old boar and father of them all Charley Fred in his apartments he seemed to be the most respected being on the whole farm and couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t give a fig about anything as long as he was left to himself and provided with a fresh sow every now and then. On the whole pigs seemed happy creatures always looking on the bright side as opposed to the rather personalityless cows who just chewed the cud all day, came past the front door for milking and then lolled around disinterestedly with their slimy noses and dirty bums releasing methane and them emitting rather pointless and indistinct moos, until they too paid the price of most farm animals. It was a common sight to see the Royal Air forceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Canberra, Vulcan and Lightning bombers over the fields practicing manoeuvres as well as occasionally the Hawker Hunters of the Black Arrows display team refining their displays. I would arm plastic models of them all and hang them from the ceiling of my bedroom. We also had itinerants who would slip in and out of our lives when they came to stay in the BUS or its close neighbour the STY to the north of the main farm buildings. The former had been converted from an old 40â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jalopy into a weekend retreat and the latter must have been a home for pigs at some stage

but it had been lovingly converted into a simple home away from home by retired seaman Jim Lawson and his wife Cicely.

The Sty, Both temporary residences were works in progress and had hedges, lawns, flowers, vegetables and chimneys that all came into trim on their occupants frequent visits from London. Whereas our view was over the southern fields to Reed, they had unbroken views north towards Royston and beyond. Elizabeth Berridge and Graham Moore were the owners of the bus, both writers of some acclaim and with whom my parents maintained a great friendship throughout their lives along

with son Lawrence, daughter Karen and eventually their families. Lawrence would roll up on his Vespa scooter and was studying fine arts in London. He too could play guitar and when his visits coincided with Michael’s a great skiffley time was always on the agenda. Karen, better known as Tippy, was the perfect crush-on girl for a lad my age. Between Her and the Horton’s youngest Tessa I could share out my fantasies (for that is all they could ever be with our age differences) and the better summer days occurred when they were both around. Other’s who would appear all through my life on the farm included Godffrey Wicksteed, related to the Wicksteed family down the road who made climbing frames He was a master seaman and had been First Mate on the 1957 Mayflower II’s historic recreation of the trip across to Plymouth, New England. He was also in charge of rigging on the Cutty Sark clipper moored on the Thames until his death at 98 years of age taking with him much knowledge of rigging these ships. Ironically his brother Ivan

who made the climbing frames had a mysterious skin disease that meant he could not go out in the daylight (hmmm Dracula?). Then there was John Aston, who would turn up for many weeks and weekends, staying with the Hortonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. He spent most of his time cutting their lawn always dressed immaculately in suit and tie. Peter Young was a good friend of Dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s who had studied at Cambridge and used to come for a retreat every once in awhile. He had no interest in anyone but Dad and would follow him around talking books, poetry, prose, crosswords, and the issues of the day. They would yacker on contentedly for hours. Later visitors included painter Liam Hanley who had a special fondness for the rolling landscape around the farm and captured it in many of his works. His father James Hanley was a well known author and would visit from time to time. The Hanleys and the Moores were firm friends and when my parents left the Hovel to move into the Big House, they took it

Liam Hanley looking the part. What part I have no idea! on as a shared weekend cottage allowing the BUS to slip into decay. Ivy and Denis Vestey were other welcome visitors all through our lives bringing as they did a daughter of my age called Diane. From sharing an early bath to later snogging in the back of her parents car and going to summer camps together I suppose it would be fair to say she was my first attempt at a girl friend but it never got, shall we say, meaty, beaty, big or bouncy! In truly good spirit though she did introduce me to some of her more carnally inclined girlfriends later on and has

remained a close friend nowadays married to Peter Healy with two kids Rachel and Nicholas. The third family who came to live on the farm when I was about 11 were the Palins, They had a Borgward Isabela car, their son Willy and I were the same age and had no choice but to be mates although he had been raised in London and knew all there was to know about girls and everything whereas I

was still hard put to imagine how if ever I would get my hands wandering other than down my own trouser front! A Borgward Isabela as owned by the Palins

It is hard to believe that living only 40 miles from London I never went there until my early teens and although I have never read any Dickensian novels the idea fitted that London was indeed populated by all things dark and dangerous with only Dixon of Dock Green and Scotland Yard to protect its populous. The counter to him was of course Charles Penrose and his Laughing Policeman although I could never figure out whether he aided or abetted the cause of justice. These were my Dandelion Days I suppose, lots of nature about, fresh picked mushrooms from field and stable, new lain but rather small fresh bantam hen eggs, fresh warm milk, and scratchy old blackberries, raspberries and gooseberries over by the rhubarb patch. For a short season Greengages, plums, apples and wild strawberries even grapes. Home grown potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, peas, aplenty as newspaperwrapped tomatoes ripened in the passage and seemingly endless runner beans lengthened on their creeping vines bringing food and colour to the front garden with their little red flowers. We must have drunk a lot of tea in those days too but I have to say we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t grow that!! Instead it was Brooke, Bond or Lyons teas with their fascinating collections

of cards inside the boxes of which I managed to collect the lot over the years

. T he occasional coffee might be powder from a NAAFI stores tin or the ghastly Camp variety, an old Scottish recipe of coffee, chicory and sugar with an appearance not unlike Bisto, which I have to say never reached my soft spot but I gather still inhabits supermarket shelves for those with a hankering. Evenings usually brought a warming milky Ovaltine, Horlicks, or Cocoa to round off the day.

The evidence was there that what came out the back end of farm animals was excellent fertilizer and at the appropriate time the Muck Spreader was hitched onto â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Fergieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, the little grey Ferguson tractor, filled with manure and dragged slowly around the unploughed fields magnificently flinging its muck everywhere it seemed apart I suppose into the farmers pipe as he guided the little tractor! I am still not convinced about this marriage of convenience, especially when on occasions a municipal sewage truck would arrive and similarly spray its decaying human slurry around the fields.

The cycle of farming is wonderfully predictable and however smelly, soggy and cold the winter months with snow drifting across our access to the outside world at times, the country spirit pulled us through. All of us would dress in front of the small coke fired Rayburn stove in the Hovelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s little kitchen and keeping clean was a matter of evening immersion in a slow filling hot bath helped by a parade of steaming kettles which

meant you curled up at one end of the tub while it mixed in and then eased your toes down to the delicious hotter end. Then running to the sitting room and drying off, shivering for a while in front of the sitting roomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s open log fire, the front half of you tending to toast the back to icicles. Eventually we would tuck in under cotton sheets and heavy wool blankets maybe tossing in a hot water bottle or a cat or two for good measure and bodily warmth (Brandy and Soda, two vicious buggers) my brother Liam and I curling up in our bunk beds. At some stage I found it more comfortable to sleep in the sitting room by the slowly dying fire which was good as it gave me the chance to peep out of the window and occasionally catch Tessa Hortonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shadow as she undressed in her room. Once or twice, close to midsummer, I would sneak out of the house at night and run naked under the moon through the woods like an animal, maybe a mile or two before coming home again incredibly nourished by such a secret and feral experience. With spring sprung and the drudge of ploughing and sowing accomplished, summer brought the carpet of green corn tips teasing the fields surface and thrusting towards the sun, changing the colour of the entire landscape, as far as you could see trees, fields, hedgerows, gardens, everything. Too soon the golden fields signalled the end of waiting and calm, each

slender stem now a few feet high and bearing heavy fronds of wheat or barley waving in the breeze. You could feel the tension as harvest time neared, maintenance on the old Massey Ferguson combine harvester complete it was a time for the magical morning when all hell let loose and the crops were reaped. Some years just one heavier than usual storm might flatten much of the heavy headed crop and, sodden, it would begin to rot before yielding anything for all the hard work and care that had brought it so far, so close.

During holidays I was allowed to help and later even got paid for that. I would position the tractor and trailer up alongside the enormous pulsating harvester as it cut and threshed its way across field after field, in a scene repeated all over our little part of the world and beyond as farmers rushed to complete the task as quickly as possible. Dust and fleeing

rabbits, partridges, pheasants and all kind of birds, animals and insects followed or fled this enormous shaver that laid bare acre after acre leaving a dusty trail of straw and stubble behind it and delivering its pearls into my trailer. Once full, back to the farm buildings where the haul was tipped into a huge inverted pyramid shaped hole in the Little Barn and from there it was sifted again, until with the chaff blown away it was lifted into large wooden storage silos by a combination of conveyor belts and elevators. With all its machinery coming to life this otherwise quiet little barn became the noisiest and most dangerous place on earth where you could ‘drown’ if you fell into a grain bin or easily lose an arm in the enormous belt driven mechanisms. The next stage and one of my favourites was baling. Another rather elegant machine was required for this task feeding in the dried straw at one end and chucking out large bricks held together with binder twine, a coarse string actually produced from the Mexico’s Yucatan sisal crops although I didn’t know that then. These were collected and stored in the barns and fields for animal bedding but also provided a tremendous natural climbing frame. One day while travelling back from the fields sat atop a trailer full of bales I was horrified to see the other side of the trailer load toppling away from me. On tumbling to the ground with my side of the load I realised that

my perception of movement had tricked my body. Rather like at a stop light when you feel you are going forwards if the vehicle besides you moves slowly and unexpectedly backwards. It seems that to be a farmer you have to be prepared to be covered in dust, grease, shit, piss, blood, rain, mud, cement, creosote, more shit and more dust all year round. No wonder they like a cool pint!

Farmer Anthony Horton also enjoyed his snuff. When he himself snuffed it he returned to be buried on the farm at the edge of Seven Rides Woods at his request.

In fact pubs played a vital part in our lives. The most popular was a mile’s walk away down the Belt called the Eagle Tavern until it closed its doors in the 60’s. Then the Cabinet four miles away in Reed became the place if it wasn’t the Green Man, The Old Bull Inn or Boars head in closer Royston. Left at home I would usually be rewarded with a Britvic Pineapple Juice on the boarding parties return.

The long closed Eagle Tavern Just how a pub should look!

Royston is a chartered market town where people would bring their animals for auction and their produce for sale along with other odds and sods which would go for pennies as the hammer came down making one man’s junk another’s treasure. It was magical to stroll around on a Wednesday even after the livestock side closed. One of the benefits was that on market day the pubs could stay open all day. Although not a big drinker, there was a time when Dad decided that home-brewing wine would be a good idea and taking advantage of the readily available dandelions, elder flowers and a variety of berries not to mention the productive vines that covered the back wall of our half of Flint Hall, we soon had carboys and demijohns full of mawkish liquids bubbling away through fermentation traps which in the end belied themselves, becoming intoxicating brews far more interesting than the Bulmer’s Woodpecker Cider that had been my alcoholic awakening at kid’s parties. It seemed you could make wine out of almost anything so, bottled, dated and custom-labelled, these questionable concoctions stood in ranks on the passage shelf. The one that finally got me under the table was the wild strawberry variety.

Almost ready to be drunk Apart from the home brew, I was lucky to have the first 17 years of my life breathing farm air, walking or biking almost everywhere, eating food mostly of local provenance sawing logs and collecting firewood and all with the absence of TV until I was about 14. It was radio’s Navy Lark, Beyond Our Ken, Round the Horne, The Goons, The Archers, Uncle Mac’s Children’s Favourites, Jimmy ‘the Kid’ Clitheroe, Hancock’s Half Hour, Down Your Way, Letter From America with Alistair Cooke, Desert Island Discs and even gardeners question time that coloured and informed our lives. Life outside your own was what came through the old valve Radio or the miracle of the crystal set with Radio Luxemburg 208’s

music shows from 10 pm - that was our window on the world along with the BBCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 6 clock news.

Marvellous little Crystal radio receiving signals from as far away as Luxembourg!

The nostalgic image of a family crowded round a Bakelite or marquetry cabinet encased radio warmed by its assortment of humming bulbs somehow filtering through those tremendous declarations of war or peace could be no more real, and endured long after the wars finished, the BBC announcers making English their own never mind the Queenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s claim, purring in a way that made even the barely decipherable but hypnotic Shipping Forecast something to look forward to. I would wonder at the reality of all those veering and backing winds sweeping over vast areas with names like Dogger, Crommerty, German Bight, Fisher, Finisterre Bay of Biscay and Trafalgar, picturing brave seamen battening down the hatches in their sowesters and smocks retiring to a shot and a snout thankful for the heads up. Then the pips brought the BBC`s transmissions to an end for the day and you were left

wondering for those hardy seafarers, the trawlermen and even pirates and smugglers who might have tuned in to that calm voice to help better steer a path between monster waves, whirlpools, giant squid, a rampaging Moby Dick or icebergs. Certainly no thoughts then of Capn Pugwash Rogering the Cabin Boy or Master Bates and Seaman Staines up to no good in the bulwarks. You could only imagine what life was like too for the courageous and mindlessly bored souls manning crucial lighthouses and lightships or weather vessels surely enjoying some calm periods to hang out the washing and a quick Sailor’s Hornpipe to pass the time, but mostly lashed by the unforgiving forces of the sea in all its fury. It’s a mystery to me how they built those lighthouses in the first place under such conditions! The radio represented contact with the outside world far ahead of Newspapers and letter post. Telly was in its infancy at least in our house where it seemed to be a very unwelcome birth all together. Even after Dad started working in Sydney Rumbelow’s local music shop which also supplied televisions locally on a rental basis, he wouldn’t permit such a thing in the house until one day he brought one home to ‘test’ it. This test seemed to take rather a long time until one day he put a huge H shaped aerial up on the chimney and it seemed that

testing, at least of the set and the BBC’s black and white programming would continue. No ITV though with its horrid adverts, which anyway needed an aerial in the shape of an X. We only caught commercial television on infrequent trips to Mum’s brother Ray’s family in Maidstone, Kent where I seem to remember Sgt Bilko and Top Cat were amongst the viewing diet as well as some adopted or adapted game shows, mostly bought in from the distant land of those strange Americans. Programmes like Champion the Wonder Horse, Roy Rogers, Bonanza, The Lone Ranger and his Red Indian sidekick Tonto as well as Wagon Train and many others gave the impression of the US as a truly wild and unsettled country with justice dealt by the best gunslinger and ‘the law’ a rather flawed affair altogether if you were a Red Indian or Negro. Fairly accurate I think! There was certainly plenty of subliminal racism and use of archetypes in many of these programmes for example, if you are Hispanic it is clear that Kimosabe as Tonto calls The Lone Ranger means ‘Quien mas sabe’ or ‘who knows more’ Whereas Tonto is the Spanish for fool. If ever a Mexican appears on the scene he has his crossed bullet belts, is a bandit and inevitably drunk. Dad had also been proud to bring home one of the very first very expensive battery powered BUSH transistor radios which

enjoyed a charmed, portable life until it slipped into the bath in the middle of the Navy Lark without of course electrocuting anyone or even exhibiting any fizzing death throws.

There wasn’t the urgency or immediacy of today which meant things could be taken rather more calmly, with time to chew over the manicured and considered opinions as expressed in the dailies as well as Sunday’s Times and Observer rather than today’s quickshot scoop driven reporting with the issue deadline usually more important than the issues themselves. Serious considerations of the news and general state of world affairs could usually wait until the weekends when in balance a ‘trashy’ like the News of The World or Sunday People would also be lying around exposing naked truths and pandering to common beliefs. Best of all the 60’s brought the introduction of the welcome and fought over Observer and Sunday Times

colour supplements. I later collected old Picture Post and Life magazines and these colour supplements seemed to take over the role of such respected pillars of information which had documented the world for earlier generations but were losing out to electronic media and became relatively unsustainable on a standalone basis. As a youngster there was also The Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Newspaper, Look and Learn and The Boyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Own Paper all of which fascinated while The Eagle, Valiant, Tiger, Dandy, and Beano were comics that were pure and glorious fantasy worthy of every minute spent immersed in them. Dan Dare and Desperate Dan, Biffo the Bear, Korky the Cat, Dennis the Menace, Roy of The Rovers, wonderful stuff and perhaps the greatest pay off was at Christmas when you were assured of

the

wonderful yearbooks plus of course Rupert the Bear`s new annual in your carefully hung pillow case. Rupert was especially brilliant because you could enjoy it on different levels. It had the story unfold in pictures, headings, short captions and finally full prose. I confess I was a captionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reader myself which seemed to run more at the pace of the illustrations. Thank you Mr Bestall! Thank you too Enid Blyton, Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne and Ernest Sheppard; Rev Wilbert Awdry; Michael Bond; Lewis Carroll Rudyard Kipling and of course Edward Lear who all fed from and then helped define English culture! How perfectly special you all still are. Add your favourites here!!!

I always rather liked Geography and early on in my teens insisted on a subscription to the Royal Geographical Societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Geographical Magazine which, Like Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s similarly based National Geographic still provides an eye-opener to our world with amazing adventures, discoveries and insights. In both, most months, there is a supplement of a map or wall chart which held enormous fascination for me then and instilled a strong wish to travel, live a big life and wear the mantle of adventurer or pioneer somehow. Even so, unlike today, the world seemed so huge and inaccessible from the reality of a small chair in front of a log fire on a farm near Royston in the middle of nowhere even though sitting on the 0 degrees Longitudinal Meridian Line it was in some way the beginning of everywhere! A lasting memory of the farm was the annual Vintage motorcycle hill climb event that was staged in the Pony Field. On a muddy weekend for many years enthusiasts would roll up with their lovingly maintained historic relics and undoubted skills to not only disgrace themselves with the hill climb trials but also scramble enthusiastically if also ungracefully in and out of the wooded slopes that graced the side of this ponyless Pony field. I could only have been 8 or 9 but the rich Castrol oil smell and the camaraderie around this beautiful obsession were immaculate and entirely magical. The star of the show was always the Morgan three wheeler which shone like no

other car I had ever seen and blupped its way to victory in its category in which it was the only participant. This and the skills of the scramblers as they coaxed their vintage machines through an impossible course amongst the trees and almost vertical muddy climbs was pure poetry in muddy motion. The farm had served London’s King Alfred’s School as an evacuation address from Golders’ Green during the war and boasted a bomb shelter still complete with bunks as well as rubbish tips (by the time of my appearance on the scene), both of which yielded toys and curiosities during my early explorations of the farm. Most years carrying on this tradition the Pony Field - which was in the National camping guide - would host a group of deprived children from London whose bonfires and sing-a-longs were so much part of my sense of being in those days, In exchange they would set about recreosoting the barns, in exchange for a short time away from their bombed out London in those still uncertain and deprived days. I mentioned earlier a recording where I recount an evening spent in their company. My mum had served in the WAAF Women’s Auxiliary Air force and my Dad had risen to Sergeant in the Army being put in charge of an Italian POW camp near Royston. Apart from gathering that they met in London where they lived for a while during the War my parents never talked of those heady

immoral times so that covers their meeting, courtship and war service. I do know that their union was frowned on by both grandads and they were ostracised for many years prior to my birth when it seems all was forgiven. Glad to have helped! The most important part of their lives in just a bit of one paragraph then. Maybe I should look through that suitcase full of letters that passed between them and know more! I remember sneaking my first 45 RPM EP record (Twist and Shout by the Beatles) into the house. This purchase was made difficult by the fact that My father managed Rumbelowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, the only record and music retail shop in Royston at that time and I had to persuade June of the upstairs record department not to leak the purchase to him as he didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like the Beatles, my Beatle Cuban Heel Boots, mop top or any of the new voices and styles that were springing up during the swinging sixties (which by the way completely passed Royston by).

What treasures there were in that shop, Dad let me bring home the guitars and amps sometimes, I remember a beautiful white hollow body electric that must have been a Framus, a Hoffner Violin Beatle bass, a little red Rosetti guitar (similar to George Harrisons first guitar – his now worth 800,000 dollars but costing just a couple of quid!) and a plastic Grafton saxophone that was interesting. In those days there were no American Fenders, Gibson or Gretsch instruments to be found, only major recording artists had those, purchased in The Great United States of America or in the Beatles case in Hamburg. Although I didn’t buy my first guitar there I did eventually get my first amplifier which was an amazing split VOX AC30 as used by the Fab Four. My 14 th birthday present of a 50 quid Swedish made Levin Goliath acoustic bought from Ivor Mairantz’s music shop in Soho sounded nice through its clip on DE Armond pick-up (I have just discovered that this was also Pete Townsend of the Who’s first stage guitar) but when I finally got a Guild Starfire IV (Like Dave Davis’s in the Kinks) I lost myself in the smell of the guitar in its custom case and sound of the combination, it lived by my bed and is still one of the most beautiful things I have ever owned. I stupidly sold both much later in life because the AC30 truly had the best sound I ever got from any amp and the guitar

was an absolute gem. I still have my Levin, which was drastically improved when it was rebuilt after an unexpected shower in a motor home toilet while we travelled ballooning in Europe. Thereby hangs a tale, one day in the sixties my father got in a crimson rage over something or other and grabbed my Levin by the neck and raised it above his head but before bringing it down to smash it to pieces something got the better of him and he picked up his own lovely little guitar, on which I had learned, and smashed that to bits instead. I suppose I should have thanked him but I loved both instruments and was sad that his temperamental instability in the end only brought misery to himself and anxiety to his family. Such violent outbursts were not uncommon for a while and though it was never vented on us directly it made me angry that he couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t control his inner angst and consequent wrath, something that also caused him to grind his teeth a lot. My Mum was a patient soul and definitely a calming influence but for a long time his dependence on Barbiturates and even a short time away in a mental home

distanced me from him and any hope of understanding his inner torments. An artist friend introduced him to Subud, a kind of free-Buddhism which may have helped calm him down, but there were times I wanted to kill him for the times he darkened the atmosphere of our usually happy little home and had even singled out the poker I would use without perhaps being that sure about how and where I would poke it. Most days he would hammer out some old jazz favourites on the upright piano, Margie, Georgia, or something of the sort, which usually indicated he was at peace with himself for a while. A piano which Harry Saunders, another regular visitor and artist with his wife Pat, had decorated with New Orleans images and which I still possess and treasure, a resonant reminder of the strange inaccessible man who was my father, with so many under-developed talents.

I am sorry to say I loathed school from the age of 11. Caps and ties, shorts and satchels played no part in my early

education or idea of the world. Self-discipline and conforming had no place in my aspirations or upbringing until Hitchin Grammar School. Roystonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Market Hill Infant School where teachers Mrs Feast and Miss Giffen did their best to control us all from the tender age of 5 until 7 was OK and I learnt the art of pissing contests if nothing else before having the opportunity to enter Hollowayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s junior school in Barley which was a small but amazing establishment run by Benjie Rae and her assistant Judy together with a couple of old English Sheepdogs. Benjie especially encouraged us to read, cook, play and understand, explore, perform, question and create, 4 years of foundation and fascination with life, nature and how to inter-react between the 30 of us who were fortunate enough to attend this garden of enlightenment. I am sure the value of this schooling in my life is immeasurable but once again the memories are too misty and disparate to retell, 50 years later at a once only school reunion we had all grounded ourselves in that teaching/learning experience and taken on what followed feeling prepared and enlightened. I have to say it also left us all a bit confused I think on experiencing the subsequent impact of a harsher, less friendly education and ironically perhaps we were a little less well equipped for the unforgiving tussle that is survival in the real, uncompromising, hardnosed world as it gradually envelopes and dissolves you like a Venus Fly Trap Plant if you let it.

Good time to mention these two too fast cars There is a particular road that passes the back entrance to Flint Hall Farm and makes its way past the now decommissioned Eagle Tavern and Wicksteeds climbing frame manufacturers to Barley. It is a narrow B road which was the route the school bus took us to Holloways School but it is also where I first did 100 mph in a Riley as passenger of John Mustill a Michael Bolton look alike crooner who fronted the Evergreens band with whom I strummed my stuff from the age of 14 tender years. The little humpback bridge halfway along its ‘straight’ made it all the more fun. One of the cars we were sometimes driven to Holloways school in by Mrs Richmond of Richmond’s Coaches was a Jaguar MkVII and I am sure we almost reached that mystical ton in the Jag

Moving on to grown-up school in Hitchin ‘Sean’ became ‘Byrne’ and you had to put your hand up to speak, a 20 mile train journey from Royston, it was the only suitable day school for me. The line still operated steam trains to start with which was great adventure until towards the end of my school years they changed to diesel locomotives and for some of the schedule little two car railbuses.

The rail transport it was always good to miss These changes took away a lot of the magic that journey provided. The route took us through dark smoky tunnels, much whistling and churning of wheels as the engine and six or more carriages, some with isolated compartments and some with a corridor all the way down to the guards van, clatterd

through Ashwell, Baldock and Morden and Letchworth Garden City screeching to halt in most of them until slowly sidling into Hitchin and then usually pressing on to London’s King’s Cross . A good opportunity then, to get to know the girls who were on the same journey to Hitchin Girls Grammar, Letchworth’s’ mixed grammar or St Christophers school whose students were notable for not having to wear a uniform. Nick and Tessa Horton had gone there and I was lined up for it being in the mould of Holloways, but, as a private school, my parents just couldn’t afford it so on with the cap, down with the self esteem off to Hitchin Grammar it was to be! There was a rowdy upper school mob on the train too but I was lucky that their leader Brian Taylor was son of my Mum’s best friend Marjory in Royston and he conveniently kept his gang from hounding me. My parents decided I should learn to Ballroom dance around this time so I could begin to have more local friends. Living in a farm and going to school 20 miles away meant I had few mates in Royston, Michael Swann, Mick Varney and Gary Williamson were contemporaries at Hitchin but mostly in different classrooms and we rarely saw each other out of school. The lack of available girls whether at home or at school was beginning to matter, I needed to start somewhere and I

couldn’t see too much wrong with the idea of an hour or two spent clasping a girl to my chest and sashaying her round a dance floor, whatever the context. So I learnt the Waltz, Foxtrot, Chachacha, Quick Step and I think we had a bash at the Rhumba and Tango too. Off we went to competitions, usually coming last but who cared. I had a girl in my arms! Needless to say, I mostly loathed senior schooling other than for a few highlights and a few special people. Emlyn Williams was an inspirational Maths teacher and charmed some incredible results from my calculating little brain to enable me to attend Cambridge University later on. He and the Physics master (Mr Hunt who bristled to the nickname of Carey of course) were the only aspirational teachers. The Music, Geography and History classes were usually fun too but The rest fell into the usual pompous, knuckle rapping, sadistic, uninspiring, gown-sweeping practitioners of their art, relishing in the farce of detention but always supporting the team – ‘Come UnHitched’ or whatever it was they shouted during our Rugby games which were more unruly scuffles than matches. My sporting highlights at this school were limited to unofficially beating the school tennis champion once and setting a record for the Hammer Throw. A good burst of speed at the hurdles and 100 yards put me in third places or so but my performances in the cross country and swimming can only

be described as ‘incomplete’ my gallant efforts putting me close to last the times I was couldn’t avoid competing. The sticky, batty worlds of Hockey and Cricket passed me by, not requiring any gifts that might pertain to me. The climax to my scholastic disenchantment was getting caned, along with buddy Woody Woodshill , by the Headmaster MG Dolden for bunking off our last years` time-filler Biology classes to jam in the local music shop. Something much more important and closer to our hearts. What annoys me still and most of all is that I let him do it. What was I thinking? I have the feeling that he didn’t enjoy it any more than me but in those days the system put us both in those positions, me bent over a chair without the foresight of an exercise book in place and him arm raised with birch rod in hand directing his institutional wrath unflinchingly towards my poor bum. Boy did it sting, six of the worst, humiliating, alienating and therefore stupid! By the time I left Hitchin I had been playing guitar with a band called the Evergreens for a number of years and once we were booked for the end of year school dance, when the girls and Boys grammar schools linked arms and danced to the same drum so to speak. I watched the headmaster dancing away to some waltz or other and wished we could have changed the rhythm to a calypso or something to catch him wrong footed!

Would have been difficult anyway as we had no such numbers in our repertoire which consisted mainly of songs about getting smoke in your eyes, a lady being good, A train and Rain in September! I did however enjoy Rugby Union which I took to like a toad to a swamp playing as Prop Forward for the school`s XV for my last 2 1/2 years there. When I tried later to get involved in the sport at the beginning of being ‘up’ at Emmanuel College Cambridge things weren’t so promising. Charging around during trials on a completely soggy, foggy day when you could see no further than half the pitch, and where a high punt would disappear for a while, I was sent off by my own captain, a rather pathetic history major called Evans from my own college staircase, for laughing and joking with the opposite team (all from our college anyway). My only contact with Rugby from then on was to share the same staircase with Gerald Davies, the already established Welsh International player. My sporting interests turned more towards hurdling closed college gates with my girlfriend! I did manage a spot of tennis, croquet and pinged a pong or too along the way when the fancy took me.

GETTING CAR BORN AND HORNY

Learning to drive was an easy business living on a farm. Put the car in the middle of a field give a lad the keys and run for dear life. It was a good idea and apart from some guidance from Dad on double de clutching and toe heel coordination even at this early stage as well as how to get out of a slide

and drifting I was on my own, an old Austin A40 proving my best friend for careering down lanes and across the fields. In those old cars you could lift the bonnet and all the tubes, wires, levers and lumps kind of made sense like my little book on cars for kids kind of played out in reality. The spark plugs pointing to what they were doing alongside the straight four engine, cables trooping off obediently to the distributor cap and so on. Anything at all complicated and there was always a Haynes guide to see you through. No computers, turbos, hardly any fuses and hardly any reliable engine information on the dash. When it got hot - steam, when it was running out of oil - noise and smoke, the intermittent windscreen washer was ahead of its time, but entirely due to faulty wiring, the headlamps dimly implying what mixomatosis stricken rabbit might be ahead rather than beaming into the next county. This robust little car was the off-road forerunner to my first on road experiences. By then we had a Ford Consul – a fine car with huge bench seats, registration TLC 3 and a steering wheel gear shift that could shoulder its way effectively through the protesting cogs. The police drama Z Cars was a favourite, The TV cops Jock and Fancy especially in their Ford Zephyr solving the nation’s crimes, a realm on from good old Jack Warner’s Dixon and his lamp post. The Consul was a step

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down from a Zephyr but had some of the airs if not graces of its more expensive brother and was a good vehicle to learn on once you dominated the dustbin of gears and rather lackadaisical directional control. I took driving lessons in a Ford Anglia which was a Waynesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; World apart from the Consul, teeny by comparison with a stick shift and perky. Automatic gearboxes were not an option, hardly found on any car in England (except perhaps the DAF 600 which was fully automatic having no gears at all) and anyway where was the fun in that! Wot, no gears! Daf if you ask me! When I took my test on this I failed first time round which was a surprise, but I put it down to the difference between familiarity with the motorised houseboat that was the Consul and lack of practise on the little speedboat that was the Anglia. Second time, after a few lessons on the Consul, I took it along and passed with flying colours - well pink (curiously not actually a flying colour any national or ships flags!! ) It is a strange affair the driving test, hamming up on the Highway Code and understanding the way it worked were

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important. The instruction from the examiner was to carry on straight unless he gave directions to the contrary. On my second attempt we set off from the Hitchin test centre and he said nothing at all for ages. I would arrive at a junction, look left, right, left again, sail across, then the next then the next and so we went on, I wondered if he had fallen asleep. Emergency stop, backing into a space (those little matchsticks stuck in view in the seat leather helping a bit) three point turn, quite a crunchy affair in the bulky swamp rider Consul, hill start and then the question and answer bit. Finally back in the test centre and the wonderful words – congratulations you’ve passed – with the imagined but unsaid, ‘look you little wanker just cause you’ve past your test doesn’t mean you’re Stirling Bloody Moss so keep your speed down lay off the scrumpy and watch your step.’ Poor guy and his clip board on to the next wet behind the ears Mike Hawthorn or four-eyed head-to-the wheel spotty simpering wannabee or someone’s granny on her fiftieth attempt. Most training cars had double brakes, clutch and steering wheel but he just had a clip board and thoughts of lunch! As the job description says ‘Driving Instructors and Examiners spend most of their time sitting in cars’ Free then, roadworthy and authorised I embarked on my driving life! There are those, like my Mum, who never got to

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drive, but for me it is one of the most liberating and enjoyable opportunities on offer. I bought the old Consul from Dad for 20 pounds I think and one of my first ever departures and arrivals was to the Plumpton Blues and Jazz Festival with school friends Gary Williamson and Mick Varney where we camped out and I shared my sleeping bag with a rather spotty girl. I was sure that spending the night together a la Rolling Stones was meant to be bit more than it was but our exchanges hardly passed sharing body warmth as, fully dressed, we shivered and clumsily cuddled our way through to the next day. But in the I-Spy book of life it was a great box to tick and the Festival was great too. Peter Green with John Mayallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bluesbreakers being the standout for me. I learnt the value of petrol and the fact that of all the fluids involved to keep a car running this fossil fuel derivative was the most important and that many people can become mean when sat at the helm of these machines. One afternoon the Consul began to sputter and fail as I was terminating a rather long overtaking manoeuvre on the way to nearby Baldock. Seeing that completing the task was impossible I began to brake and look hopefully for a gap to pull back into. The rather unfriendly people in the line of traffic didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to want me back with them preferring to see me die, but I like to

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think the heavily breaking oncoming truck was rooting for me, we were in this together! I only just managed to squeeze in as the oncoming traffic accelerated past. Then of course without gas, I proceeded to slow to a halt which pissed off the people behind me even more.

The British Consul

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It must have been in the Consul that first Royston girlfriendSue Humphris and I, both late starters, unburdened ourselves of our virginities in a

consensual and bungling affair, asking each other if that was it, somehow expecting nature to put all the pieces together, answer all the questions and propel us into extacy. Even so it was nice to share that unique

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The hippy hippy shaking couple moment with someone I really liked and once achieved we used every opportunity to clamber into the back seat to enjoy and better understand our delvings. You feel that parents must know it is all happening but fortunately everyone continues in denial. If the Consul was an honourable car, my next was nothing less than a rogue. The Ford Consul Capri was a short lived affair rather in line with the Edsel costing more to produce than its sale price. What I bought was a souped-up version with twin Webbers and wide wheels- It had been repainted in and over its original colours and sported wide wheels and non-original rectangular headlights.

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It made a great noise and went like the clappers. I decided to get rid of it when it decided to show off with a 360 spin before coming to a halt at a traffic light in Cambridge one day. My girlfriend Sue was standing waiting for me. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember if she was impressed or not but I felt stupid. No one hurt and amazingly nothing hit but it was all too unpredictable for me and I decided to move on to wiser wheels. Around this time my Dad had acquired a Wolseley 16/60

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Now this was a rather fine car with beautiful rich plum leather upholstery, a fine paint job and lots of chrome. It was a roller. Well it rolled about a lot letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say. The road up to our house on the farm would have served well as a test bed for car suspension as well as driving skills. I still seem to speed up when off road and enjoy the rally like sensation of missing the bigger ruts and stones while using a car to its full capacity. The Wolseley didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand this in the way the Austin, Capri and even the Consul had done. It demanded time and respect for its paintwork and puny shockers, so I began to discover another of the pleasures of driving which is window down, gentle cruising and none of that braking into and accelerating out of corners. Treated that way there was time to enjoy the walnut facia and scenery as well as the neutered

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purr of a rather under-powered engine however many tigers were put in its tank! My days at school were fast drawing to a close and even though I felt committed to music as an interest and future, I could offer no real plan or guarantee of success so I followed my parents wishes and tried for Cambridge University after obtaining extraordinarily good grades at A and S level in Maths and Physics and an offer of place at Sussex University. But it was a curse in a way and I felt someone must have pulled a fast one and tricked me by sending someone else’s results. Sue and I clung on a bit longer as a long distance lovers once she went to Teacher training in Brighton & Hove and I ‘hoved’ of to brighten in Cambridge. For a month or two I hopped on the train down to Sussex for the weekend and enjoyed greatly British Rail’s tea and apricot jam on toast as the English countryside rushed by and then we had fun at this campus near the sea able at last to sleep together with all that that implies. We were both dealing with the incredible liberation but intense challenge of living away from home in Royston so when one day her parents brought her on a surprise visit to see me and I was arm in arm with Claire, it rather spelled the end.

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MUSIC IN THE BLOOD

Joana and P Forte bashing out Lady Be Good for sure , or the Honeypot Stomp or perhaps Tea for Two.

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Just let me get this thing under my chin!

I’m feelin’ you bro’ let’s honk

Blowin, jammin’, groovin’ call it what you like. The Byrne Bros on Dad’s little guitar and soprano sax

From 9 years old and learning a few cords on the Ukulele before graduating to the guitar and playing along to Dad’s stride piano as he pumped his old jazz

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numbers like Ain't Misbehavin and My Very Good Friend The Milkman Said and other Fats Waller classics. I had quickly found beauty and a connection with those six strings and frets. All these old tunes included rich chords like diminished sevenths, sixths, augmented fifths, minor 4ths, 9ths, 11ths, and I soon became adept at passing between them strumming along to a rather rigid foot tapping beat to songs that didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t in themselves inspire me then. When Lawrence and Michael got going there seemed to be more sharps and less flats more open strings and as I played along, my little first finger hardly ever had to bar a chord. So different. But then came the joy of the Beatles. I loved them and their music. One of the things they did so well was to combine this happy, jangly strumming with all those lovely rich chords and a lot of mischievousness! Incorporating rhythms and progressions of jazz along with adventurous melodies and bass lines coupled with complex harmonies into a new kind of music which never really got or needed a name. Add in a little theatrical comedy, George Formsbyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ukelele, and The Navy Lark and their you have it. Thus they became universally loved across age and language barriers, unwittingly breaking and redefining musical boundaries and possibilities as they went. It paid homage to all that was good but was still performed by four guys who had no idea what they were doing. As Ringo says: â&#x20AC;&#x153;I've never really done anything to create what has happened. It creates itself. I'm here because it

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happened. But I didn't do anything to make it happen apart from saying 'Yes.” The age of innocence indeed. Of course their background was first and foremost skiffle before discovering the blues, jazz and US R&B. The old 78’s we had on our shelves had also been knocking around in Liverpool I imagine as well as, so they say, what the sailors brought ashore which clearly wasn’t limited to the clap and the Hornpipe! Apart from sporting a Mop top and Cuban heeled boots, there was a time when I think I could play every Beatles’ lick and song, knew most of the words and harmonies and was as much of a fan as it is possible to be. I bought the Beatles Monthly, went to a couple of totally satisfying screamy concerts and followed their every move on TV, radio, news print and documentary. Saw the films Hard Day’s Night and Help, Understood Magical Mystery Tour and marvelled at the incredible artwork and photography that grew with them, even enjoying Derek Taylor’s dreadful sleeve notes about the ‘Boys’, where it seemed he was on another page or in another age, but he wasn’t! Of course he was thirty when the Beatles hit which in those days was considered ancient! The beauty for me although some years younger than them was following the way it all unfolded until in the end it could unfold no more and unravelled. From pure innocence to un-fettered

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experimentation and finally to the heady heights of international stardom and the danger of becoming a parody of themselves their split was in many ways inevitable. In a few years going from a backing band in a Hamburg strip joint to the most famous group in the world and still not aware of their achievement, still not truly reaping the rewards of their incredible and continuing journey. Those who live in Mexico as I do now â&#x20AC;&#x201C; can enjoy two hours of Beatle related music every weekday on Universal Radioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Club de Los Beatles, running for 40 years it is the only programme in the world to dedicate such time to the Fab Four and beyond and has over 1 million accredited members.

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Surely it was only a matter of time and finding the format!

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In 1965 John Whitehead asked me to join the dance band he managed called the Evergreens. They would do working men’s clubs, weddings, firms does, dances, mainly jazz dance standards but they also included a ‘beat’ section where we would include Midnight Hour, Elvis songs and eventually a few more contemporary songs which I would sing like Chris Montez ‘The More I see You’, Bobby Hebb’s Sunny and Trinee Lopez ‘If I had a Hammer’. A bit of pocket money, a chance to play music to people, that was good enough for me. At 14 years old the youngest by ten years in the band I went off to rehearsals with Barry Mansfield, George Howe, Rodney Griggs, Jeff Bray Eddy Collard on drums and greasy but loveable old Elvis sound-alike Bill Jacklin on Vocals – later replaced by Schmoozy John Mustill.

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So there we were with two Vox columns a mixer and a manager. All our kit and ourselves would travel in a Ford Thames van passing by the bands houses in Letchworth, Baldock Royston and Hitchin and heading off to venues such as Stotfold Working Mens Club with its massive theatre organ dominating the stage, The Wilbury Hotel, Baldock Working Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Club and Alconbury Air Base my first real contact with Americans and hamburgers better than our Wimpy produced late night favourite in Letchworth.

So hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the idea motherfuckers: we play , you dance It would be fair to say that the Evergreens had no impact whatsoever on the British Music Scene or even the local one, but it provided a few Spinal Tap moments nevertheless when

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at a firm’s dance in Letchworth one time the drummer fell out with the pianist who walked off, whereupon the sax player followed suit with the bassist and finally Geoff the trombonist the drummer and I were the only three left on stage with the people still dancing to our raggedy waltz. Eddie Collard on drums was a jazzer and often smoked his pipe as he played but found it difficult to adapt his style to R&B which limited the ‘beat’ section rather. I would write out all the parts for songs like Knock on Wood and The Midnight Hour then hope that Eddie would latch on to the drum pattern but it just wasn’t in him! I thought to myself if declared jazzer Stones drummer Charley Watts could do it surely he could! This band morphed into a kind of lounge band called The Barry Mann Five which was Barry, me a bass player, singer and drummer but this fizzled out eventually as we went our separate ways, me off to University for one.

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C.U. LATER THEN PFTR PFTR GOES TO THE MOVIES

Interview togs. Up for anything!

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After an extra terms study to take the Oxbridge Entrance exam my interview was with David Williams, Senior tutor of Emmanuel College in Cambridge (an extremely nice man who later became Vice Chancellor of the University). I declared that my main interest at Cambridge would be to form a band. I was granted a place. Whereas most people I got to know at Cambridge came from abroad or from many miles away I could have got to Cambridge on a skateboard as it was only 12 miles from home and one of the few English Cities I had ever been to with Dad working there for a number of years. (Of course there were no skateboards then so four wheel roller skates would have had to do). Hardly breaking the bonds then! The means of getting about at Cambridge is the bicycle. Around those times Cambridge Engineering graduate Dr Richard Moultonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famous collapsible bike with its teeny wheels had hit the street (he also designed the suspension for the Mini) and I was determined to have something interesting to peddle around on. So I got a Moulton inspired Raleigh RSW 16 with its fat wheels and rear basket.

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I ditched the basket painted it orange and seem to remember going to lectures in a purple woollen turban and yellow boots with a variety of red plastic bags instead of a satchel. Studying (hmm) Engineering, or reading it as they say there, it soon became obvious that us engineers were on the lower rungs of student ranking despite all the important work that had already come out of the department such as part of Concorde’s development for example. Natural Sciences, Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Anglo Saxon, now these were the schools full of brainy people – tomorrows Newtons and Wittgensteins, who surrounded us latter day sappers. I had wanted to read Maths but coming from a Grammar School was advised that I wouldn’t have a dog’s chance so to enter

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under the Engineering banner and change once ‘up’. Easy said and ultimately not done. Two weeks in I felt that the doddle of ‘Arq and Anth’ might be suitable but also realised that I might as well stick with Engineering even though it had more of the trappings of secondary school than further education. I was already well into realising my plan of forming that group.

It wasn’t long before the four founding members of Public Foot The Roman were jamming. Jamie Lane the drummer in Magdalene (reading History) and the rest of us Engineers: Greg Knowles (Queens) on guitar, Howard Tweddle (Pembroke) on bass and me on guitar, singing and writing some original songs. Like all bands we started off playing stuff we had in common – numbers from Free, Wishbone Ash, Deep

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Purple, Sabbath, the inevitable 12 bar Blues and even a bit of jazz. Were we any good?? Of course we were! The added benefits of having a group were that we could have a van and my college lent us a music room to practice in and cupboard to store our gear. Even though the work load was horrendous (you were never expected to do it all as the course work, lectures, tutorials and private studies amounted to more than 24 hours a day’s worth) we managed to fit in a good amount of practice and started looking for gigs. We had limited equipment but one of the guys on my Staircase, Neil Young head, medic student Steve Wright, had a Citroen 2CV and without much convincing he stepped in and this served as our bandwagon for the first few outings, with the canvas roof rolled back, bass cabinets, columns, amps, guitars, Selmer PA, mikes and stands, a full premier drum kit all stacked on the canvas seats, the 2CV’s rather limited 30 horsepower and 2 cylinders managed to deliver us to the Taboo Club or John’s Cellars or other such venue. When we later got our Thames Van things were easier. I was the elected keeper of its keys.

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Designed for the job! Steve also gave us our band name when he brought back a broken footpath sign.

During the first year, I was asked for help with the Thames to accompany some college bed racers down to London. Colleges would compete in pushing beds the sixty miles or so to raise money for a good cause. Now the Thames was not a particularly new van and it had some emission problems as we found out half way down when the tired runners who jumped on board to take a rest while others took their turn began to suffer carbon monoxide poisoning during their break,

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stumbling out later sapped of energy and even more tired. I of course proceeded to doze off at the wheel on a few occasions (the race was at night) and was lucky to have my current girlfriend Kay along, one of Dianne Vestey’s more eager beaver friends from nearby Saffron Walden’s Teacher Training College. She kept an eye on me and delivered enthusiastic prods on far too many occasions in my view but probably for the best. Our services weren’t required in future years.

It looks kinda guilty dozen tit!!! Towards the end of Cambridge, my grades dropped in line with my disinterest and my wishes to pursue music rose. I thought of quitting but my tutors wouldn’t let me, advising me, rightly

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I guess, to stay on and that I would get through. Having the guy who set the Industrial Sociology exam as a tutor helped. ‘I think it’s quite likely that the things we have been studying will be in the exam’ Such indications together with a promise from the Senior Tutor and also some Structures lecture and crib notes lent from the best engineering student in college, Mark Lewis, once slurped up on coffee and Proplus and propelled through my brain with a little amphetamine tab after all night cramming, got me my best exam result ever even though I hadn’t attended any of classes or practicals. This experience further convinced me that exams were a stupid test of anyone’s true abilities). Amazingly I achieved a Special degree, the lowest accolade the University could muster! This was later converted into an M.A (Master of Arts) on payment of 50 pounds and the simple fact of surviving 10 years!

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So, Now what!? Showing my appreciation for my parents sacrifice in putting me through C.U More importantly for me, we had one of the best bands around. Summer rehearsals on the Farm in the Hovel (my family had moved across the road by then) and great friendship with fairly compatible abilities had us keen to prepare the ground for when we left Cambridge. Both Jamie and Word (as we called Howard) were getting good exam results and in the last year of University we recruited recent Cambridge graduate Dag Small on organ and piano which enabled us to have a much fuller sound and be more versatile in our approach and my writing. We were filling a few gigs outside Cambridge and beginning to make a name for ourselves with mostly original material by now. Regularly appearing at the Tech, Cambridge Union, School of Architecture and Lady Margaretâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hall we were developing a rocky progressive style. I would unashamedly appear in Purple Satin with yellow boots and my long hair, rolling about on the stage during solos and thoroughly losing myself in it all. On one occasion during a rollaround solo I cut my head on a broken beer bottle and surprised to see blood pouring down my shirt and onto my guitar, I nevertheless felt that this was all good and part of the thrill and spill of it all.

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Cambridge May Balls were a challenge as we usually managed to fit in three gigs a night. Sharing Roxy Music’s dressing room on one occasion had us ‘borrow’ some of Brian Eno and Brian Ferry’s makeup, we also took part in a great sing-along with the Average White Band where I couldn’t understand how Hamish Stuarts amazing stage voice was so completely shot in the dressing room environment, probably the prolific consumption of McEwans’ Export had something to do with it. Impressive local band Henry Cow took time out to watch us, probably unimpressed but mates anyway for a while lending us their van and roadie when we needed them. We had our own roadie, an interesting guy called Joe Tash, a postgraduate student from the States who has since become big in sperm I believe! Jeremy Jones A friend of Jamie’s introduced us to Ben Nisbet and his label Sovereign records already having success with Renaissance. He liked our songs and committed to make an album to be produced by Derek Lawrence (Wishbone Ash, Deep Purple) with a gatefold sleeve from Hipgnosis (Pink Floyd). Apart from receiving no advance, the other downside was that this album would be recorded two weeks before we all took our final exams at Cambridge. No wonder it sounds a bit sped up at times!

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By then we had a rather heavy old Commer ex post office diesel van to cart our gear around in. As well as holding the keys for this and doing most of the driving I also attempted to maintain it. With The Thames I had changed suspension, bearings and so on but this rattly old diesel monster was beyond me. Such that after one gig somewhere in Kensington it broke down on the High Street and I felt obliged to spend

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what turned out to be one of the coldest nights I can remember guarding the equipment till we could sort it next day. We stayed in Chelsea where Jeremy had a house (and a Datsun Cherry) and rehearsed in Jubilee Rehearsal Studios in a basement under Covent Garden’s Old Market for a couple of weeks before establishing ourselves in De Lane Lea Studios to strut our stuff and pour our hearts out for just one week. Our music was fairly complex but the rehearsals had done us well and we managed to get everything down on tape mostly in one take with just a few overdubs and embellishments. Ever since selling my AC30 and Guild Starfire, I had struggled for a good tone and although my Levin served me well acoustically my fairly new Gibson SG Custom through a Fender Twin, or Hi Watt or even a rented AC30 never cut the mustard. Too thin. Greg seemed to get a good sound out of anything with his lovely black Les Paul or earlier SG Special. His influences were many perhaps Free`s Paul Kossoff being the main one. I was a muddled mix of Wes Montgomery’s octave playing, Danny Kirwan’s vibrato, Django Reinhardt’s rhythm and staccato soloing, Pete Townsends intelligence, Charlie Birds chords, Bert Jansch’s picking, John Lee Hooker’s beat, Hank Marvin’s simple melodic style, Peter Green’s feel but always a Ritchie Blackmore wannabee and tempered with the heartfulness of George Harrison’s contribution to the

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Beatle’s though he actually got away with quite a lot of fairly duff playing in my view. His later slide playing putting him into another realm though. We blended together well and Dag’s great piano and organ playing along with Word’s hurried bass made for an interesting sound. Jamie on drums didn’t record well on that album but he went on to become a phenomenal player and sort after session drummer. Complex arrangements, good melodies, great energy and harmony singing took us unwittingly into the niche of Progressive Rock but we knew we had to be danceable too. It was a happy time we spent in De Lane Lea with Chopper the engineer and Derek. The record came out in the UK and US and we were all set to travel to the States and start promotion, touring with ex Yes guitarist Peter Banks’ new band Flash, also on Sovereign,. A few months preparatory touring in the UK saw our sound develop incredibly in depth, tone, tightness and confidence... My singing tone and style became much more rounded as did my guitar tone and I could finally remember all the lyrics! We had something. People listened and danced to our music and we played large venues and prestigious clubs like the Marquee along with the whole London pub and club circuit. With flight cases built and ready we were really at a peak when we were informed a few days before our departure to the States

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that an American band called Flash had taken out an injunction and everything was cancelled. Whatever else an Injun Tune was it was also cold steel into the heart of our band that was on quite a roll when it foundered on this rock. So instead of more roll there followed a three month hole. In part this was because of an energy crisis in the UK, three day weeks, uncertain electricity supplies and unavailability of vinyl all meant no records could be pressed, no venues were booking bands and people had no money to spend anyway. In that time of immense disappointment Jamie and Greg along with DAG got involved in other projects and a day before being offered a second album they quit going on to form a moderately successful band called The Movies before the curtain also fell on that a few years later. The band was no more. Word and I were committed to carrying on but the label wanted at least the twin guitar work and Greg felt unwilling to come back so it was all over for PFTR and back to square one.

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LEGOVER LONDON

A rare item indeed!

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By this time I was living in a broom cupboard with Claire my long time girlfriend from Cambridge. Our bed filled the under stair space we rented and as access was through someone else’s bedroom it was all a bit funky. But these were the best digs in Cambridge. A large family house with garden at the end of Conduit Head Road it had a mix of students, friends and musicians and was run by true virtuoso musician mandolin, guitar and bass playing Chris Cox’, whose bands The Junction Band and Duke, Duke and the Dukes with their charismatic singer John Dyer were legend in Cambridge. This was an outlet for a while and I started playing double bass and acoustic with them while I looked for the next thing. I had a beaten up old Transit Van and my first Austin Mini which were useful vehicles but generate few memories of love. Filler jobs included installing a complete intercom system in Sinclair Radionics, St Ives moving around like a rat in the false ceiling for a couple of weeks. It was bit complicated and way beyond me really but at the end of my tenure there was music in the lavvies, private and group calling and I got paid which is always a good sign. I liked the fact that the only speaker with an off switch was in Clive Sinclair’s office. Most of the system was made from ‘off cuts’ as it were from the innovative computers, calculators, radios, TV’s and stereos

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that were being developed way before their time. Visionary inventor Clive Sinclair later turned his hand to developing one of the first commercially available electric cars, the three wheeler Sinclair C5 but it run out of juice with only 17000 sold.

A curious anecdote to this man’s life and strange for one of the pioneers of the computer age, is that he doesn’t have a computer or use email himself. Does he know something we don’t? Everyone was on a trip (especially Sinclair employee, Hendrix loving acid head Leo who had got me that job) and one of Chris Cox’s involvements was with the Save The Children

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Fund for whom he was planning one. I was sitting around at a loss one day when I saw him packing up his old Bedford van and about to leave for Germany. Looked interesting and when he said wannacomealong. Yeah sure! I threw some available unwashed clothing in a duffle bag and signing off from Claire for a while, leapt into the van and set off for the Black Forest to help look after a camp full of deprived, problem children from Manheim. What the Fuck as they say, I recalled the days when similar groups had visited the farm so had some idea what to expect!!! Chris was the camp leader and that was fine with me, no real responsibilities, I just had to help with a bit of cooking, logging, singing and so on to give these hapless unfortunates a good time. Ich bin ein Liebe Dich, sprechenzi spraut as it were. It all got off to great start until one of the large Chefâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knives went missing which was frightening given the background of some of these kids, Along too was a chap from the house called Henry who decided to dress up in Lederhosen for most of the trip, he was a likeable fellow who would regale us with tales of how his Great Dane had recently killed a Poodle in the park and that once when pissed off with an employer in a hotel restaurant he had worked in he had emptied his bladder pissed into the daily special. Not the first time I have heard of

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such occurrences and it certainly makes you think twice about complaining when there is a fly in your soup or hair in your spaghetti, I figured he could be our cutting edge thief and kept my eye on him. On returning to England he and his Great Dane moved on to pastures new. Shame I was beginning to like him! A particular entertainment for these kids was treating my long hair as a carrousel swinging round and round on it which amazed me as much as it amused them. We would cart buckets of shit from the camp latrines and dump them in a proscribed spot upstream from the boisterous noises of kids bathing in the same river downstream. This had me doubt the sanitary consequences of it all especially in a country that has a little shelf in its loos for pre-flush examination of the daily dump, but it was great to share a shower with fellow camp animator Agi Nagi later in the mixed facilities (Vive le Hun) for whose 16 year old body and mind I developed a huge craving but despite employing all my rock world cunning and wit could never convert into anything more than miserable failure. Enjoying the seven course meal at the end of the trip without ever tasting Black Forest Gateaux I felt that there was so much to see in the world and I needed to get my arse into gear!!! Moving on from Conduit Head Road, I formed a threepiece with Billy Grey on Drums and John Mayallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brother on bass.

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Billy was brother of a legend in Cambridge, Andy Grey, founder of Cambridge market’s Andy’s Records where you could buy all the new breaking music at discount prices. He was our Richard Branson and had a Bentley to prove it! It was fun and we rehearsed in a beautiful thatched farm cottage near Saffron Walden where Billy lived. We never did play on stage - Billy’s drum kit was a beautiful yellow Ludwig affair which he played well and maybe we sounded good in those heavy trio days, but I never felt my writing and guitar playing truly suited that format. Claire went off to study teacher training in London and I moved back to the farm where I bumped into the remnants of a group called Baby Whale in a splendid house on the walk home to Flint Hall Farm from Royston where my earlier one eyed dentist’s receptionist had lived. Whale had beaten PFTR at a Melody Maker Rock Contest heat a few years before but by then the singers had gone and what remained was part of a newer line up: sax payer – Raf Ravenscroft, violinist Lindsay Scott, Latin percussionist David Ulm and a few other dazed, abandoned hangers-on from the original band. We started experimenting with this unusual line up, became good friends and realised that there was something special about our combination. Raf could also play Flute (and later Cello) Dave was a great percussionist and played the bass

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flute as well, Lindsay had been a champion Scottish fiddler. My writing had changed a bit and further adapted to this line up, more country, funky, jazzy, Latin than before. I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enjoying living at home much and decided to move down to London where Raf, Lindsay and Dave lived, in the hopes of taking things a stage further.

Raf and I during auditions in the Troubador basement The simple line up of guitar, percussion, sax and violin wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enough for what we had in mind so the first step was to find a rhythm section to complete the line up. After a few tries and advertisements in Melody Maker we met up with keyboards

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player Dave Rose, Billy the bass player and drummer Theodore Thunder all from Allan Price and Leo Sayers Bands and shortly after stand out bass player Mickey Feat. These and other great musician like drummer Stretch, David Cochrane, the amazing Derek Austin, Geoff Zeopardie and many others helped us pull the sound together and we started making demos some with the help of Chris Parry from Polydor who on seeing a few gigs declared us the next Beatles (only to sign the Jam once Punk kicked in, next Beatles no longer relevant or required). We had good gear and rehearsed a lot at the Troubadour in the Kings Road and also at Club 52 in Chinatown run by two ladies who made awesome egg sarnies. We eventually received an offer to record with Pierre Tubbs who was producing and writing for a couple of hit artists Maxine Nightingale and Al Matthews. Raf, who was sessioning on these records, felt he would capture our sound and anyway we were impatient to start recording, perhaps too impatient. Financially things were pretty difficult too and some young dude from the States who collected rock bands T shirts entrusted me with 40 pounds to buy and send on whatever I could find having bought a few shirts off me. I am as honest a bloke as you can find, but those Rich Boy T shirts became Rich T biscuits and despite swearing to myself with every

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dunk that I would reimburse him, I never did. That, a stolen Mars Bar from the school tuck shop and an Instamatic camera I once filched sum up my life of crime for which I should surely be punished, but I wish I could go back and undo those things so as to have an unblemished record! Finally Legover got into the studios and began laying down tracks. We had a manager and publisher but no record deal. We called on all our friends to help out and gradually the album took shape over a few Kebabs and Retsina soaked sessions. I still think there are at least five great tracks on that record but somehow once we finished it, with no outlet, we had thirteen months and a partial remix by Rupert Hine to wait before it came out eventually to little effect on Smack Records, part of the Charly group (geddit!). With a name like Legover, the title Wait Til Nighttime and on a label called Smack people could be forgiven for expecting something raunchy, so when a tinkly piano ballad came out as our first single the few reviews I saw were unsurprising but nevertheless disappointing. We were great live, had landmark songs like Black and White, Blackmail, Money Matters incorporating Latin grooves, blending most musical genres but the Punk movement was girding its loins, the fuse was set and the time for this kind of music was coming to an

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end in the UK. I thought the Sex Pistols were brilliant but such music and culture was not carved into my being. Meanwhile Pierre Tubbs had offered us the opportunity to be Al Matthews backing band (who had a British hit with ‘Tubb’s “Fool’”) to be followed by a tour with Maxine Nightingale as her band - basically us, her and her brother so we took it while waiting for our debut album to come out. Al Matthews was a great guy an ex marine and actor but more of a cabaret performer when it came to music so we set out on a tour of short residencies at places like Baileys Club in Liverpool, staying at the famous Adelphi Hotel. We were forced into mischief and post gig cavorting at the pyjamarama gymnasia of our shared rooms, like most budding musicians away from home we lapped up the totty and dreamed of fame. It was with Al that we supported the Four Tops on a tour of the UK and it was impressive to see these masters at work pirouetting, twirling and generally reaching out and still being there after so many years yet still seeming fresh as sugar pie and funky as a honey bunch Unlike them poor old Al would come on stage leaving his cane behind the arras as he had just had some ghastly operation where half the hole of his anus had been removed and so travelled with a Rubber Ring (see later).

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When someone wants to bare their soul to you it seems ruder not to pay attention than to listen up. What I remember most about our short time together had nothing to do with music. Maybe in an effort to bond with us pre gig, Al insisted we bare testament to his stolen starfish by dropping his sweats, bending over and, spreading his cheeks to bare his ‘sole’ to us, it seemed only correct that we gaze upon his currently unpuckerable, surgically lacerated and extremely pink anus. While the Four Tops sang out Baby I need your Loving, I think Al only needed his baby’s O ring to get him through. Nobody does it like the marines I guess. 1976 and time to cross the Atlantic, my first time on an airliner and it was a Boeing 747 Jumbo bound for LA where we were to start rehearsals with Maxine. Not wanting violin, it meant leaving Lindsay behind for a few months in the process but he would still get the 15 quid a week retainer from backer/managers Hugh Mainprice and Jim Atkinson as we all did. I would miss Lindsay, he was our cynical old timer and the most successful of the group with his previous group the J.S.D. Band, maturity and contacts. Amongst other things he had taken me to jam with legendary Steve Marriott and Ian Wallace in Marriott’s thatched cottage in the Essex countryside, a house that would later

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catch fire and end prematurely the life of one of Englandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest rock singers. Timing is everything and on arriving in the States we encountered a rather paranoid artist seeing her Pierre Tubbsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; penned hit Right Back Where We Started From dropping down the charts in self-fulfilment and with gigs being pulled. We, the jobbing band, made the most of it anyway of course. Perhaps the climactic evening was when at a large hotel in Dallas where we had been hastily booked to cover for the nonappearance of Ike and Tina Turner after they finally imploded just before what was to be the start of their nationwide tour. We set off on the opening number and our lady Maxine decided she was going to implode too and stayed in her hotel room. Raf disappeared from stage and rushed to her room and eventually persuaded her to come down but once she did start, the poor thing had a cold sore the size of a raisin on her lip that must have been extremely uncomfortable emotionally and physically. No wonder she turned out to be a one zit wonder like Al Matthews. The small audience that had used their tickets must have wondered what they had bought into - first Ike and Tina and then this!

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Rock and Rollâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s loss!!!

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We were booked to stay at the famed Tropicana in LA for a while, but it was way beyond its best and despite wanting to soak up all things rock and rub shoulders with guests like Tom Waits we stalled at the idea of soaking up other peoples residues displayed as they were on the unwashed and stained bed linen doubtless concealing every bug a bed could bear and worse a crate full of lusty crabs. We were eventually housed in a more sedate Ramada Inn. A footnote to that hotel is that a few days in the police came by and asked after a regular hippy guy who had been staying in the Hotel. Turned out a dead body had been discovered in his blood spattered room! We literally went to town when not rehearsing or playing the few and far between gigs, the nearby Rainbow, Roxy, Whisky, all those lovely guitar shops, groupies, receptions providing temptation, fulfilment and enough Hollywood for an innocent country boy like me! Despite supporting great artists at concerts with Three Dog Night (Mama Told me not to Come), Santana (Oye Como Va) Boz Scaggs (LowDown) , it somehow felt just a bit meaningless to me despite crossing paths with the greats of that time, I just didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see myself trundling around in a backing band for much longer. Some telly including the Don Kirschner Rock Show and a trip to stifling Vegas and finally our last gig in Miami staying at the Castaways Motel for an outdoor concert where I got the best sound ever from my 1957 Gibson Les Paul TV Special through

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a Sunn Head. Towards the end of the tour our publisher Nigel Haines took me aside and said he only wanted to carry on with me and couldn’t afford to keep on with the group. I probably took the wrong decision and gave up on Legover, losing my friendship with most of the members especially Lindsay and Raf who had been more than prepared to carry on despite some friction that was developing between Raf and me. If any one of us achieved a smattering of greatness though it was Raf who went on to play the famous sax hook on Gerry Rafferty`s great song ‘Baker Street’ and gig with everyone from Marvyn Gaye to Pink Floyd as well as record a couple of albums of his own and write Saxophone tuition books. David Ulm now lives in Brazil with his wife ZeZe and Lindsay is a radio presenter. Maybe luck wasn’t with us but I respect and miss all those guys a lot.

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Marriage to Claire with Michael Latimer, Tony Barton, and Alan Bown along as witnessesNO BIG DEAL

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Coming back to London, a retainer but no group I began to write differently but still within the perspective of a group. Quite a while prior to the tour, Raf had introduced me to actor Michael Latimer, from the popular TV series Van Der Valk, and his partner Tony Barton who had a fantastic project called Wully and The Zany, a stage musical set during the Londonderry Siege. The story was sensitive then with the IRA a powerful and unmerciful force that made anything to do with Ireland an extremely risky area to turn into burlesque. But the theme excited me and over a few years I had written some interesting original pieces of music to Tim Rose Priceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s libretto and Michaels lyrics. Michael and Tony were thrilled with my work but we never would get the musical to the stage, despite Michaelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fame and many contacts. The last demos were produced by Muff Winwood at Island Studios with the promise of an album, but circumstances rallied against us once again and it never happened. Nigel Haines was now managing me together with Trumpet legend Alan Bown and they kept plugging away on my behalf until eventually I was signed to Deke Arlon and Christopher Neilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s publishing company CD Music through Chappel where Mark Rowles took an interest in my development offering me demo time in their little six track facility and my writing

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developed well as long as I was busy and kept my eye on the ball. Our first release was to be on Chris Ewells Acrobat Label and while I took my two advances and bought a house I felt I was in good company with Roger Chapman and Ian Gillan on the label. Maybe I hadn’t been wrong to split from the group after all! Christopher Neil was becoming hugely successful as a producer with Sheena Easton, Dollar, Leo Sayer and Gerry Rafferty amongst others as well as sustaining an acting career in rather suspect films like The Adventures of a Plumbers Mate. While it was clear he was an accomplished producer I wasn’t sure he was for me but he had fallen in love with a track which I had written for a project that Alan Bown and I had developed called ‘The Holiday Album’. The song was called Dancing at the Rubber Ring (Hi Al) and I had demoed it with Chris Thompson of Manfred Mann singing as I didn’t feel it was a song for my voice. Christopher Neil did and off we went. The characteristic sound he put into it was a kind of electronic rototom bounce which I had heard on a recent Donna Summer track. I felt if anything was going to go out of date faster than fresh fish it was that sound but a man with hits under his belt probably knew best.

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I heard Byrne and Bown’s record on radio 1 once much to the amusement of the person with me in the car at the time (balloonist Graham Elson) but never got that sensation of joy because honestly I hated the record and the rubber ring sound was already passé, making me think of the kangaroo boing on Charly Drake’s My Boomerang won’t Come Back rather than the grand entree onto the world's musical stage I needed. The B side was the haunting Because of You which I still love to this day. My next attempt was to be solo and called the Hunter produced by Chris’s engineer Greg Welsh (He had a Red E-Type 2+2) with the benefit of one of the first computer mixing desks in London. What seemed like a good idea and designed to save time actually meant that tweaking and remixing took longer than ever. The result was OK although we got someone else in to play guitar, I just wasn’t inspired but overlaid and improved a copy of Ray Russell’s solo anyway if just for good measure. Once again the song chosen for the B side the hypnotic Come What May is one of my favourites still.After a lot of false promises and wishful thinking maybe on my part I was eventually dropped from the label which was a great blow but understandable, nothing really came together not even the label. Earlier on I had missed out on a chance to be signed by Robert Stigwood’s RSG label and while in the States I had met with Chris Bond who was interested in producing me. He had produced the early

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Darryl Hall and John Oates albums and it felt right to me. Only much, much later did I learn that the reason this didn’t happen was because my manager didn’t have enough money for two air tickets to the States. I am sure I would have had a better time of it there, it seems there is a market for anything in the US whereas in England the pop circus and business in those days was extremely volatile and had certain requirements as far as looks, and style and age were concerned. Chris Niel certainly redeemed himself in my eyes much later when he started collaborating with Mike Rutherford of Genesis in his side project Mike and The Mechanics. Songs he cowrote for their albums rank high in my favourites. So much depends on timing I guess. I was given another stab at it with Phil Wainman’s company Utopia and we laid down a pseudo reggae track I had written called Tomboy which actually turned out pretty well but never saw the light of day. Once again the chosen B-side Hush (Baby Don’t You Cry) is probably one of my better

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compositions. I shared Studio time with Billy Idol’s Generation X. Billy already had the swagger that took him to the top but he was a tiny little bloke and probably still is! Other small musical achievements I need to air here. I wrote the theme song for the BBC series ‘The Rock and Roll Years’ which the production claimed kept them going when they got stuck and featured quotes from hit songs throughout the 20 years they were covering. I sang in front of 300 million people on the Eurovision Song Contest, as well as with Bonnie Tyler on Top of The Pops and somehow or other also Demis Roussos. An album by Jack Lancaster included my vocal but also featured the great Phil Collins and Gary Moore, I auditioned for Manfred Mann and Mike and the Mechanics and Upp. And got to meet so many great people working in studios like Surrey Sound, Eden, Matrix, Trident, De Laine Lea, Abbey Road, Gooseberry. ºCrossed paths more than once with Tina Turner looking for her comeback. Wrote songs with Cathy Shostak, Mike Latimer, John Tarrant and my namesake Simon Byrne all of which took me somewhere interesting if not to the top of the charts! Collaborations with other musicians I respected including a time in Belgium with Two Man Sound and Wallace Collection founder Sylvain VanHolme trying to create a new sound for them with my songs and voice. I made the Belgium charts with a song called ‘I see the Lies in your

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Eyes, with Belgian band The Machines who I voice coached as they recorded their album at Studio I, Abbey Road under Sylvain’s guidance. As my singing improved and I did more session work a few respected singers and composers started calling me ‘The Voice’. But for me it all ended in 1983 when my publisher also dropped me. I have hardly played or sung since.

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BALLOONATICS NOTT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY A BATCHELOR’S JOY AND LAUGHTER COLIN’S BALLOONS START TO SHRINK I GET INTO SHAPES

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In 1978, during a long period waiting for a single to come out I decided I needed a second weapon in my armoury rather than just another string to my bow. Music was my first love but without a group to practice with I was becoming less dedicated and lazy, losing direction and feeling somewhat uninspired, spending less time writing, playing or even listening to music. Whereas once I would never be far from a guitar noodling away, I felt impatient, lost and now, married to Claire and with a young child around, unsure how to react to this extraordinary responsibility for which I didn’t feel ready at all. I began manically adding to my collection of cigarette and trade cards, an obsession which later became the main reason cited in divorce from Claire a few years later. We were living then in Paddington’s Connaught Street Central London just a stone’s throw from Marble Arch, you would hear the IRA’s bombs go off and I witnessed two exciting smash and grab of a furrier’s across from our third floor window. The London Evening Standard was my local paper but our little community of pub, shop, newsagents, clock maker and local characters made it feel like a village even though all the world’s nations populated these streets especially the nearby Edgware Road which runs from Marble Arch and its Speakers Corner out into the northern suburbs of

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London. My world seemed to be held within walking distance of our front door at number 23. One of the places you can be sure to see interesting opportunities is The Times newspaper’s vacancies section and, on almost always failing to complete its extremely demanding Crossword requiring of people far more erudite than I, would glance through that section, hoping to find an opportunity in a motor racing team or opening to some adventure or other which would take me out of England and around the world or at least entertain me for a while. One day I came across a classified that read: ‘High excitement, Low pay, come and work with the world’s leading Balloon Company’ I was interested enough to drop the Hot Air Balloon Company a line and they called me for interview. As part of The Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 there was a great display of balloons in neighbouring Hyde Park so I had seen something of what was involved though it never crossed my mind then that my future would be at the forefront of ballooning’s development into the 21st century in the way it turned out.

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Negotiating the low pay with HABCOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tessa Tennant I was clearly way overqualified and maybe a bit too old at 27 but in the end I and a much more gifted chap called Jo Whiffen were called back and offered work. Neither of us wanted a full time position. He manufactured kites in the East End and I still had my strong commitments to music. My task was to help well known balloonist Julian Nott break a couple of ballooning records â&#x20AC;&#x201C; duration and distance. He had achieved recognition for building a balloon using primitive materials and flying it over the Nazca Lines in Peru, and as a

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ballooning boffin the first to really put ballooning and himself into the UK record books with height and distance records as well as many other firsts. Julian had been co-opted into HABCO and needed an assistant to help develop the equipment, so my apparent engineering background was to be put to good use in building the burner which would in effect be just a larger version of the old Primus Stove or blow torch with its pressurised kerosene that had accompanied me back in my family trailer tenting days, On more lustrous occasions the Primus stove had also been to the summit of Mount Everest back in 1953 and on AndreĂŠâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spectacular balloon expedition in 1896 as well as holding the honour of being the first stove at the South Pole with Amundsen in 1911 so the technology seemed well proven. The big advantage would be the weight saving in the fuel cells which unlike the normal balloon fuel of propane could be carried in unpressurised plastic containers strung round the basket. I say basket but the material that Julian had picked

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for the gondola was a light and strong Kevlar honeycomb sandwich structure that was used for Concorde’s floor panels. Off we went to the workshop. With all the normal balloon flight tanks being kept there, it had been nicknamed the Bomb Factory. Let the alchemy of ballooning begin!!! It was fun and became even more so when one day a jovial fellow rolled up with a loud voice to start clearing the bomb factory of the frippery and chattels of its previous owner. Robin Batchelor had with him one tool - a sledge hammer to demolish the larger machinery of what had been an engineering workshop - hmm. After a few high swings, crashes, bangs, rebounds and a lot of swearing it became clear that this approach would not work; the cast iron was not as brittle as he thought, and we went off for greasy spoon, tea and a natter. Bolstered by Colin’s enthusiasm and marketing awareness, Julian’s project achieved its goal and between sponsors Typhoo Tea and British Gas a lot of money was spent and good times were had, eccentricity, money and survival, a good mix. Along the way Colin had learnt how to manage these events sometimes having to turn failure into media success as they ‘found another way that didn’t work’ but always returning great value to their backers. This was applied successfully when on the first duration attempt Julian and Colin ended up

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almost immediately in a tree. Unfazed the next attempt proved successful. Eventually Julian went his own way, living now in California and pushing his particular envelope further into outer space.

Early days Soon afterwards Robin Batchelor and I took to the road to fly conventional balloons for Fisons, Prize Yoghurt , Home Tune and other brands that the Hot Air Balloon Company managed from an office in Berners street in the West end near Wardour Street. As pilot Robin did all the flying, elected to do most of the driving and PR and also shouted a lot. My principal requirements for the job seemed to be brawn and tolerance but it was great fun. I hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen much of the British Isles but in a couple of years I now visited most of it, county towns,

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major cities, tearing up the tarmac, and sliding down recently gritted country lanes, using the Ordanance Survey maps to theor fullest in chasing the balloons to catch them at the landing, often down roads that would never have figured on my or any life map had it not been for this rather crazy activity, even encountering people in backcountry Wales who didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand English at all. Robin was a man of many interests and friends were spread across the land. Rarely would we simply fly, eat and then rest as most balloonists do. If there were antiquarian book shops or junk shops to be found, in we went and then maybe an 80 mile dash across B roads to visit a chum or chummette always ready with open arms and tea. Well almost always, sometimes they were out. I would compare this attention to friends and interests to plate spinning and admired him for the efforts he goes to keeping all the twirling china aloft on their sticks. Very much in the style of Phileas Fogg and Passepartout I enjoyed every hour of it if not every minute! The second year of hot air ballooning got interesting as HABCO gave us a couple of early special shaped balloons to play with. One was for British Telecomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Buzby (a yellow Bird) and the other for British Gas (a blue flame).

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The technology was not as advanced as it is now and these balloons had few outlets for the hot air on landing plus the Big Bird seemed to have had some negative pressure issues which caused it to inflate only partially if lightly loaded. Nevertheless off we went from the County Show grounds, me down below helplessly watching and usually Robin in the basket doing his best to keep everything the right way up and get down safely. On particularly windy or rainy days we would usually make our excuses and retire but if Robin had the bit between his teeth or someone he really wanted to impress then it seemed nothing would stop him. Tethering in the rain at Blenheim Palace, home of the Churchill’s I could recall Winston once said – “If you are going to go through hell, keep going!” On another occasion at Shuttleworth Aircraft Heritage Museums open day we made what must be the fastest running take off dragging half way along the grass runway before the hot air going up beat the high wind going along and the balloon swung into the sky, to drag across three fields of lettuce on landing. All in a day’s work m’lud.

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George, Hoffmeister’s Hot Bear flat out after a tough flight I have never kept diaries but in those two seasons I would have noted down how ballooning was advancing incredibly fast. I joined around the time that the need for crash helmets was replaced by solid and then flexi-rigid upright supports for the burners, and powerful fans made obsolete the tedious business of flapping in the cold air pre-inflation. Also the crew category of Cremation Charlie whose job it was to hold the balloon’s mouth open while the pilot hot inflated his sagging envelope without inadvertently grilling a Chuck Steak had been deemed passé. So no more Cremation Charlies, who

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like the Lancaster bombers similarly ill fated Tailend Charlies are consigned to history now leaving a lot of Proper Charlies these days looking around for other forms of self-emolation. Pilots usually had other occupations for the down times which if confined to the UK meant almost 8 months. Antiquarian Book sellers, Journalists, Designers, Lawyers, Accountants, Doctors, National Hunt Jockeys, Farmers, Pub Landlords, all kinds of folk did this. Even so I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see myself doing another year of the show circuit crewing, but then once again it started to get really interesting. Colin Prescot advertising copywriter turned balloonist and chief executive of the Hot Air Balloon Company is one of the most interesting people I have ever had the pleasure to meet and an inspiration. He stepped out of advertising on meeting Robin one day having seen him on a TV programme (Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s my Line) and realised the commercial potential of hot air ballooning. Way back in history balloons had always had sponsors and attracted huge crowds when displayed but in recent years the idea was lost with TV entering everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s homes and a greater concentration on mass-marketing and statistically verifiable campaigns.

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Colin on the phone with his business advisor Fison’s Fertilizers followed Prize Yoghurt, Terry’s Chocolates, Osram Lightbulbs, 555’s tobacco, Lambert and Butler, British Telecom, British Gas, Budweiser, Carmakers such as Audi, Ford, Jaguar, and Aston Marin. The risk resistant banks took a leap of faith as did, Alka Seltzer, Guinness, and Esso. BP. Shell, Ricard Hoffmeister , Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Xerox, IBM, Samsung, Rupert Bear, Coca Cola and even the company’s own accountants succumbing to the idea that ballooning ‘worked’ commissioning a balloon in the shape of a

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bowler hat. Well they should know! This was mainly so because through hard work on generating interesting programmes and valuable PR hits with the media, Colin and his principal business partner Tessa Tennant had hit on a formula creating millions of pounds worth of advertising benefit for their clients, mainly through TV and other media which could then be measured. Cleverly designed campaigns and stunts usually created lots of coverage relatively cheaply. As a consequence tons of fun for us out in the field coupled of course with the responsibility of delivering the promises and living up to the expectations caused by enthusiastic salesmanship.

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This was truly the heyday of commercial ballooning as we trundled hither and thither and further to whither the Birdman Robin`s fancy took him. His fancy often coincided with mine such as when we met up with some great girls who Robin had picked up hitchhiking and nicknamed Joy and Laughter. Finding ourselves in Carlisle at the City’s annual Show we ended up sharing two rooms in a B&B. The two girls fitted perfectly their Joy and Laughter epithets. A few joints were rolled but for me they had the effect of disjointed collapse rather than the required giggling stupidity and although before too long we were all four of us standing up naked in the bath/shower where Robin seemed to have mastered his girl. I insisted in making sure the others tummy region was the cleanest in Cumberland while my little sausage kept sending messages ‘don’t fuck up, you can do this, I am counting on you, we need this’, and so on. Later when I retired to my room with the most beautiful girl I had ever seen since Julie Christie appeared in A for Andromeda it became clear that the night was yet old and despite offering a back rub and a country version of bangers and mash, our room would be a silent haven while Robin played conkers in his. The next day Joy or Laughter (I can’t remember which was which) confessed she wished she had known me better. Damn, Damn, Damn, I couldn’t have agreed more!

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Later that year Robin and I would rush up to Edinburgh to spend New Years with them with high hopes of continuing our dabblings but despite entertainment from the heads of the Legalize Marijuana Campaign in the UK of which the girls were part our only achievement after various cocktails of mushrooms, porridge, whiskey and great dope was to find us nitwits in the kitchen juggling eggs between us in a way we never could have straight and marvelling at the revelations of drug culture. On the 31st We both armed ourselves with a bottle of whisky and lump of coal and set about First Footing as is the custom in Scotland, I lost all my footing first and crashed into a gutter smashing my bottle of Teachers but hanging onto the coal once again getting my priorities wrong. With Robin’s remaining bottle we made it round and it seemed to me the best and only way to spend Hogmanay. We met strangers and stranger strangers, we came upon someone I could identify with who was singing away at the piano. This is a song I wrote he said and launched into ‘Santa Claus’s Beard is Made of Snow’ There’s one thing you kids you ought to know, Santa Claus’s Beard is made of snow. I could just hear Max Bygraves singing that one, the melody of which still sticks in my mind. What a way to get the hell out of the 70’s!!! It also coincided not surprisingly with the end of my marriage!

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Back to more or less serious business. Colin Prescot, HABCO’s CEO invented the Cloudhopper a one man harness balloon which took us off to the Eiger in Switzerland with him and the balloons’ constructor Per Lindstrand together with a bunch of other hang-gliding and parachuting misfits for the filming of the 3 mile High Race, a fictional relay race under the direction of Julian Grant. The film didn’t quite live up to expectation but it was the first of many that would give us great opportunities to live well and do mad stuff at someone else’s expense. We took along a large conventional balloon to drop hang gliders and launch parachutists from and shared the mountain with Husky powered dog sleds, and hot dog skiers all of whom had legs in the simulated relay race. At the end of each day we would career down the slopes back to Kleine Scheidegg, Per and Colin on skis and me on a skibob a fairly lethal affair which made me glad I too had legs the next day and was certainly more coccyx threatening and dangerous than any ski could ever be! My prior training on the farm held me in good stead as I juddered over moguls and was launched free flying into soft and hard snow alike!

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Slip slidin away! One stunt that went not-so-badly-wrong as-it-could-havedone was attempting to drop parachutists from the top of the balloon. At the point of taking off with Per almost boiling the air in his balloon the two parachutists appeared dangling inside the envelope in the process of being broiled. Needless to say we and the parachutists abandoned the idea to more research.

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Netting Nessie

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The hoppers were the forerunners to a whole campaign for Smirnoff Vodka which used one along with a small hot air airship to promote the brand. Colin’s understanding of advertising and willingness, perhaps over willingness . to look silly had him flying into the City of London in full attire of bowler, suit and umbrella pushing the slogan ‘Well They Said Anything Could Happen’. Full media coverage as usual. I accompanied him on another stunt which had him walking on water trailing a bottle of Vodka hoping to catch the Loch Ness’s wee monster which, I can now reveal, he did to the great surprise of all concerned! This was never reported in the press of course as it would have killed local tourism at a glance so please don’t tell anyone. But this was nothing to the stunt for Debenhams sale a few years later when completely enclosed in a Pooh Bear Suit he set off to fly over Pooh Sticks bridge in Sussex held aloft by a tiny helium balloon. I was along as his assistant, but felt my main

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duty would be to report the accident when it happened! Once again Colin sailed into glory rather than power wires hitting only the front pages. Has the man no fear, or limits. In his search for ever hairier stunts would he one day inflate his own scrotum and float away on that, balls to the wind as it were?! (Actually it seems comedian Chris O’Dowd may have beaten him to it conceptually with his announcement in 2013 of the world’s largest flying bollocks, a hot air balloon to raise awareness of testicle cancer in men – fairly rare in women I would suspect) .

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TURNING OVER IN MEXICO MARC WOLFF ARRIVES COLINS BALLOONS GET EVEN SMALLER AND A LOVE THAT LASTS

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I rather liked all this travelling and the filmmaking lark, as well as the feeling that we really were pushing the boundaries. By 1980 I had also been to Brittany in France assisting Colin with a balloon for a Fanta commercial, my main memories being the amazing food that the three person catering team produce from the back of their small Citroen van. There was Lobster for lunch and the local Muscadet wine at the breakfast table (it paid to have in David Fanthorpe a Gourmand as producer) and it was on this job that Marc Wolff appeared in our sights, an ex-Vietnam helicopter pilot from the US who had moved to the UK and was establishing himself as the number one helicopter film pilot in Europe. In 1980 a project to fly the smallest balloons ever in one of the highest cities in the world began to take shape. Colin had proposed to the producers of a new Ryan Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Neal film, Green Ice, that his Cloudhoppers would work much better than the original parachutes in Gerald Browneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book and they had bought it. They wanted smaller and smaller balloons and using new high performance fabric it was thought possible so Per Lindstrand leapt to the challenge and produced 6 pocket size balloon envelopes and back pack fuel systems even though all the calculations said they couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fly at the altitude

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required – Per seemed to use a different slide rule to everyone else it seemed and so it was ‘vive les tolerances’. There were only six of us in the team that went to Mexico: pilots Ian Ashpole, Colin, Robin and Graham Elson, me for crew and logistics and Joe Whiffen for crew and repairs. Per and Tess came out during the early stages too. Three Cloudhoppers were to be flown tethered together as they simulated the robbers’ landing on a central Bogata bank to relieve its vaults of some emeralds. On arrival to Mexico, our first task was to retrieve our equipment from customs and when we were allowed into a huge patio area to do so it was hard to believe the absolutely chaotic heap of all kinds of freight piled up metres high, boxes and bags built into what looked like a huge bonfire ready for torching. ‘Found one’ shouted out Ian, ‘There`s another here’ ‘I think this is ours too’ Little by little we extracted our kit incredulous at the lack of organization that we had found. But it was at least all there so ‘no problema’. Showing great leadership – or maybe he didn’t have any choice - it was quite a thrill when after two weeks of rehearsal Colin lit up the burner, inflated one of the little grey balloons and was floated off Mexico City’s Citibank building over its main street Paseo de la Reforma.

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I think all musicians are groupies at heart and maybe all groupies have a musician in them if you see what I mean. Liberated from a marriage in England and elevated to the heights of movie making in exotic lands brushing shoulders in the Holiday Inn lift with the likes of Ringo Star (just finishing a stint acting as a Cannibal – poor sod can’t act, cant sing and can hardly play the drums but you have to love him - and doing something so off the wall and exciting as filming a robbery sequence with barely tried technology, on top of a skyscraper (the sky must have been lower then) at night in the largest city in the world – S.B. embarked on much merrymaking. 29 years old, not at all wise, fairly fuzzy round the edges and definitely feeling an emerging free spirit having just separated from Claire my companion of 10 years from Cambridge Days and sadly losing close contact rather with our two year old son Robin, I enjoyed Mexico to the hilt. My silly desire to visit countries with Z, X or Y in their name (thinking more Mexico, Brazil and Egypt than Zaire, Luxembourg and Libya) was off to good start as we headed off to the town of eternal spring Horny Cow (well that’s what I thought Cuernavaca meant). I had great hopes. Mexican Motorways were more of a concept than a reality in those days and though now the country is criss-crossed with

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perhaps one of the best, if not the most expensive, systems in the world then - let’s just say - it wasn’t.

The ubiquitous crew transport was the Combi, these small VW vans were everywhere and playing chicken with oncoming overtaking DINA buses that roared along on the continuous gradient from ‘Three Marys’ down to The Ex Hacienda near Lake Tequisquitengo was alarming and perhaps the most dangerous part of the whole trip. Somehow our elderly driver in his powder blue Combi managed to take things in his stride and during the two hour long trip the balloon team began to get to know each other more closely.

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Normally British ballooning means one pilot in charge, one willing crew pulling on ropes and getting shouted at and landings in potentially angry farmer’s fields. But this job required a curbing of egos, more reliance on crew and even one pilot who was ‘spare’ and functioned as third crew most of the time a hedge against Montezuma’s revenge or worse, and all in an unknown environment. On the journey down to Tequisquitengo, I felt it would be good to get our personalities out so to speak and began to provoke the pilots especially into revealing a little of what made them tick. Eventually, after much soul searching and consumption of Modelo Extra Special, when the Combi door slid open at the Hacienda out tumbled a bevy of already rosy skinned Englishmen onto the cobbled drive closely followed by the clattering of many dozens of empty cans that had contained the testimonial bevvy as we established an esprit de corps that would be important in helping us through what would be a challenging adventure for all concerned. Our boot camp was to be the rather tumbledown ex-Hacienda Vista Hermosa , built for Hernan Cortes after his successful raids into Mexico and celebrated conquest. Run down but enchanting all the rooms were different. Equipped with its own dungeon and bull ring, only one telephone served the whole dimly lit complex which had no air conditioning or TV

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but enough birds to fill any tropical aviary, in full toot, tweet and chatter the whole time it seemed. We had about two weeks to practice, and I suggested that we recreate conditions on the Citibank roof with obstacles and all so we marked out the dimensions and found that laying the three balloons on top of each other and using the same crown rope on first one then the next two we could inflate the balloons in no time. Autonomy of flight was important obviously and these sleek little flying machines had about 30 minutes maximum before needing refuelling. We actually perfected a version of in flight refuelling which required some discipline but we were a tight team Robin, Ian, Colin, Graham, Joe and I and showed surprising maturity even given our natural boyish disposition! These practice sessions were brief and only for a few hours each morning before the thermals put paid to further flying. For the rest of the day we were relegated to pool side limonadas, siestas and the occasional beer or margarita. My room was at the top of a small staircase and the friendly permanent resident, a lizard that cackled away most nights on my ceiling, failed miserably to catch any of the flying beetles that entered my open window, it seemed to be laughing at me as I wilted and the candle by my bed keeled over in sympathy

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under the oppressive heat. Unheated showers and light clothing soon helped us all adapt to the temperatures and as we met to eat in the evenings we also marvelled at the Doodlebug proportions of the insects that would propel themselves to slaughter in the large, ultraviolet contraptions above our heads in the Al Fresco restaurant, sizzling in celebration of every success.

My upstairs corner sweat box in Ex Hacienda Vista Hermosa, Morelos

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It was a magical week or so where we established how this was all going to work, and also that Marc Wolff in the helicopter was much more use to us as a water skiing tow craft on Lake Tequisuitengo than as a fan for blowing the balloons along. It was also a place where things that went bump in the night included me and Tessa Tennant, HABCO’s firm-handed balloon coordinator for many years. We were to return to the Ex-Hacienda to complete some balloon take off shots for the movie, but before all that it was back to Mexico City and the Holiday Inn to start principal photography. The first morning in the hotel at breakfast I was struck by the most enchanting smile I had ever seen as my coffee splashed into its cup and into the saucer. Dianna had been around serving as a cocktail waitress in the hotel lobby bar during the first few days we arrived but it was only on our return that I felt her true warmth in that beautiful innocent smile. With hardly any English then, when she asked for ‘my number room’ I scribbled it down and spent the next 10 hours upstairs waiting for her to call or come up. She didn’t. First call to the Citibank building with our balloons was at 7 that evening and off we went, a gentleman with the nickname Chespirito (after a famous Mexican TV personality) brought our truck of gear and half his family along and we lugged all the gas bottles, Cloudhoppers, fans, ropes, winches

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groundsheets and other paraphernalia up the 18 floors of the building only partly served by a lift. Then it was a still unfinished new landmark and one of the tallest buildings on Mexico’s beautiful Avenida Paseo de La Reforma. Nowadays it is way, way down that list. Settling in for the night we lolled and lulled, Colin reassured the producers that our time would come (they agreed) and we accustomed ourselves to ‘hurry up and wait’ entertained by the seemingly endless stream of jokes from the FX crew – they would have been laughing anyway as for them and many others the night shoot over the weekend and insufficient rest periods meant double bubble, quadruple time or something (by contrast the high excitement low pay philosophy of HABCO promised was fulfilled in buckets but no one was complaining, this is what Jo and I at least had signed up for). some light drizzle also filled the buckets and rather stiffer breeze than we could work in meant that it wasn’t until 4 in the morning when conditions calmed and we could put into effect our meticulously devised plan popping up the balloons in no time and ready for action as we roped Colin, Ian and Robin together at the hip and started to winch them out over the 100 metre drop so that they could then simulate pulling themselves in on the attached cord, as we had practiced many times, in order to relieve the bank of its Emeralds.

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Mexico Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s altitude is almost double that of the ExHacienda, poorer quality gas and lower pressure meant that we had to change some burner jets and on one outing a badly adjusted set on the farthest out balloon started to burn through the Kevlar strings that connected Mr Graham Elson to the little grey bag above his head. I imagine the little grey bag that was his bladder also started to react when Robin Batchelor put out a mayday call to be winched back, he had felt the twangs as one by one the thin suspension lines were slowly burning through and threatening to bring Grahamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hopping and other more ordinary days as a graphic designer to an end, this plus the fact that the gas was beginning to run out had us all paddling madly (vis a vis ducks) as we calmly winched him and the rest back onto the roof. All this accompanied by the noise of Mark hovering by in the helicopter as the scene was caught on film. Despite the rising pucker factor we managed to pull Graham to safety as he used his last gasps of hot air. Thinking about it now the guys were connected together and he was never in real danger but it would have been horribly unprofessional had the little grey balloon disappeared down below the level of the roof with Graham swinging into the building releasing his own little grey bag and all us lot saying how we had really pushed the envelope too far with this one.

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When he finally crossed the edge of the roof we all breathed a great sigh of relief. Of course this didn’t happen again and apart from some drama when a hose full of propane leaked onto the roof and bathed part of it in gentle flames for a moment like a crepe suzette, over-exciting the more tremulous into a silent Munchen scream, as well as prompting the firemen to look for their extinguishers (which would have been useless anyway), we got the job done rather magnificently even if I say so myself. Every morning at around seven with the sun up and the night of crime concluded we were escorted the few blocks back to our hotel in Mexico City’s Zona Rosa by the ever present fireengine parked symbolically but uselessly 18 floors down and a couple of police patrol bikes clanging and whining away respectively to good effect.

On these days we usually headed round to Denny’s all night diner for breakfast. Three eggs, hamburger patties bacon and

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hash browns, slice of orange and a bit of lettuce. A delicious kind of cholesterol Scream!!! But nobody cared or knew much about such things in the early 80s.

The rest of the day was once again ours to do with as we pleased and mostly we grabbed some shut eye or basked by the roof top pool to the sounds of mad Mexico`s police whistles, sirens, horns, bus engines, occasional gunshot (or was it a backfire) and general bustle, the unorchestrated symphony of sounds, smells, sights and other sensations that makes this city great. Then there were the evenings but as our call had been put back now to 2.am we needed to keep our wits about us. Not easy. One strange occasion had me and Jo Whiffen return from an early dinner and wishing each other goodnight until our 2 clock rendezvous, I told him I had to make a call and would

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see him later. Back in the lobby I saw a group of girls sipping their cocktails and asked one of them if she would help me make a long distance call as I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t familiar with the system, crossing the lobby she made straight for the elevator and suggested we do it from my room. Virilis Puerum ad Caelum! Imagine Joâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surprise when he knocked on my door to borrow some toothpaste a little later and I answered the door bollock naked with soft music, dimmed lights and a long dark haired beauty inspiring the shadows. Rock and Roll! In spite of all this rampant opportunism, I began to realise that Dianna Alejandra Marin Reyes was someone special for me and so when she suggested we spend my day off at a Balneario in Oaxtepec ,Morelos not far from Mexico City, I thought it would be fun and we set off by bus. It was a magic trip and although we never swam we rented a small villa and became intimate for the first time. It could have been the last time too if the local police had had their way. I was joking around pretending to be a marijuano and on boarding the bus home a couple of them came on board to arrest me. Not good. Dianna told me to just stay put and shut up which I did with great finesse. Amazingly the bus driver sent them packing and the passengers all shouted abuse. Fortunately such is the respect Mexicans had and still have for their law enforcement services!

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My memories of Mexico at that time go from the contrast of tremendous willingness, humour and warmth of most people I met to a general frenetic hustle and bustle that would perhaps better be described as impenetrable chaos. Almost all the vehicles were rusty old heaps, mostly gas guzzling American cast-offs and many roads lacked asphalt and even to this day road signing clearly isn’t anyone’s obvious speciality. I never felt in danger although Dianna would always be warning me of it. Some things you didn’t do. These were the times of President Lopez Portillo and corruption and ineptitude in government and almost all walks of public life were rife. In two years the country would plunge into a crisis that still haunts it. Lopez Portillo as well as failing to ‘defend the peso like a dog’ as he promised went on to marry soft porn actress Sasha Montenegro and defended his own rather large quantity of pesos rather better, barking out his days on the huge full presidential pension while the roller coaster ride of the Mexican economy plummeted into instability for many years. Only now, after what they call political alternation, does stability and progress seem a real possibility even if still a few generations away. One of the enduring problems is Mexican bureaucracy which seems to have more to do with donkeys than desks and certainly many a carrot has had to be dangled to induce action.

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After a few nights more on the perpetually wet Citibank roof, hosed down to simulate the first night, we managed to get sufficient material in the can and with a short jaunt down to the Ex-Hacienda for the take off sequence, ‘OK Muchachos let’s Fly’, says Ryan O’Neil we just had one more sequence to film of the balloons free night-flying over a city landscape. Clearly this was to be early morning and a place on the outskirts was chosen that seemed feasible. Armed with buns and milk for an impromptu breakfast we set off in the Combi once more towards the location. The pilots were comfortable with the limitations of the balloons and as they rose into the pre dawn sky for the brief flight we trundled after them in a sort of business as usual style. Soon the balloons were down and as we scuttled around putting them into their little duffle bags a rather menacing crowd began to surround us. In the usual balloonist’s way we tried to win them over but it was hard to explain what the hell we were doing and some of the Mezcal and glue sniffing drop outs were convinced we were extraterrestrials or some such and certainly up to nothing that would benefit them. Once we were able to hop back into the relative safety of our transports the crowd got closer and the idea of appeasing them with our pan dulce turned into a near riot as we ended up tossing the food out part offering and part missile as our drivers accelerated away from the scene in their own VW air-cooled fashion.

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So it seemed we were done, a few technical shots in Churubusco studios and thanks to the boss’s keen negotiating we were off to join the main crew at Las Hadas on Mexico’s Pacific coast to ‘await rushes’ and be cleared to leave for home. This modern resort had been the location for Dudley Moore and Bo Derek’s landmark film, 10. A lot of meeting and greeting was done in our week there especially between us resting and cocky balloonists and the local girls before we were finally shipped off home and away from trouble. The Movie? Well during filming we hardly saw anything of Ryan O’Neil, Omar Sharif or Ann Archer as most of our work involved their stunt doubles or stand-ins as is usually the case with second or aerial unit filming where everyone up to the director is different. When it did come out, I was surprised to hear Maria Muldaur singing the Bill Wyman composed Cloudhopper theme as our amazing adventure all cut together into an unusually long and magical sequence in an enjoyable, but underrated movie. Green Ice. Dianna and I had a fond farewell with the hope to see each other again soon and on our last night smooching to KC and the Sunshine Band’s, Please Don’t Go, Chicago’s If you Leave Me Now and bopping away to Lipps Inc.’s enduring

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Funky Town I knew I would be back. They do say that if you visit Mexico you will always return.

Worry, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be back!

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LOST AND FOUND

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Back on home turf I was keen for more of this movie making shenanigans and I felt that given the chance I had something to offer at a higher level, with some talent for organizing tours, productions and events putting the right people together to do the right job and seeing it through harmoniously. But for now it was not to be and I was given the keys to a posh new Citroen Van and asked to drive it down to Portugal to work on a series of flights and exhibitions for Ricard a new HABCO contract employing an enormous bottle replica and small go anywhere 31. Complete with my Yellow Red and Blue Ricard togs, I was soon meeting up with pilot Ian Jacobs and his wife Amanda in I guess Lisbon and we got to work. Something new on this trip was the accompanying support promotion team consisting of Jean Francois the French coordinator and his selection of PR girls who would join us for the two week tour. Despite my fresh love interest in Mexico I found myself seated at dinner by the side of one of the most gorgeous girls I had ever met. Ana Maria Peixoto, I was convinced she was Miss Portugal or something â&#x20AC;&#x201C; well why not, they have to work too! She had big eyes and was always laughing and crazy and we had a great time as I tried to get her into my bed or me into hers. Not to be till much later, but it was fun trying and a

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bond developed between us that still lasts to this day. Being introduced to Fado and the many varieties of Port wine as well as travelling in this country stuck on the end of Europe made me feel more like a gypsy or pirate every day.

It all ended too soon as we trundled off for a visit to the strange non-country that is Andorra and, without offence, best described as a huge off-duty supermarket between Spain

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and France surrounded by ski resorts when it snows. This was late summer so no skiing or even flying but we got started and put the huge Ricard bottle up on Supermarket roofs, in car parks and on one memorable occasion next to an open sewer where we were accompanied by a jovial French family who laid out their smelly picnic just along from us. Strange people the French. I was getting along great with a lovely Mexican girl Leo who worked for Ricard so that end was covered so to speak but a few days in we had to change pilots and I was totally unprepared for what happened next. Ian and his wife Amanda were going back to England and legendary balloonist, HABCO director and quintessential English gentleman Jo Philp and his young girlfriend Heather, or little Purple Flower as he called her, were coming out to take over for the remaining few days.Before leaving for the airport Ian checked into the London office and I sensed

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something was up when he came back with a solemn look on his face. Of course I can’t recall his exact words but in essence he said he had bad news and that Liam, my younger and only full brother, had been killed in a car accident. I knew he had been in the Canaries where he was on assignment as a catalogue photographer for London’s Carlton studios. His wife Joy had survived what appeared to be a fairly light crash but Liam had received a knock to the head and passed away unexpectedly during the night. So there I was left alone in Andorra not wanting to believe what I had heard could be true and only the Citroen van, Leo Gonzalez and a newly installed AIWA stereo radio cassette player to cling onto. I had just bought Gino Vanelli's Brother to Brother album and also more poignantly had Art Garfunkel's beautiful theme to Watership Down ‘Bright Eyes’ on another tape. We drove quietly up into the Andorran hillside, me in shock and Leo a great comfort by my side taking in the meaning these songs had suddenly been given.

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Joe was a comforting spirit to have around as was Rum even Ricard!

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Liam Byrne, no more birthdays for him then!

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Bright eyes, Burning like fire. Bright eyes, How can you close and fail How can the light that burned so brightly Suddenly burn so pale? Bright eyes. Is it a kind of shadow, Reaching into the night, Wandering over the hills unseen, Or is it a dream? There's a high wind in the trees, A cold sound in the air, And nobody ever knows when you go, And where do you start, Oh, into the dark. Bright eyes, burning like fire. Bright eyes, how can you close and fail How can the light that burned so brightly Suddenly burn so pale? Bright eyes.

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The company offered to fly me home immediately but I preferred to see out my stint and drive back, maybe still in denial. It would be a while before the body was repatriated and the funeral took place anyway. It was a longer than usual journey home about which I can only recall stopping off to light a candle for Liam in Chartres. The townâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s magnificent Cathedral stands clear, as if floating on the landscape many miles before reaching the town. The peace and majesty of this overwhelming 8th century building and its powerful sense of impartial spirituality and real survival over so many years having come through both the French Revolution and the World Wars unscathed when it was certainly targeted at one point or another, helped me come to terms with my own loss. In the next few years I was able to pass through a few times and light more candles to Liam rekindling his memory and connecting again with his kindly spirit. R.I.P. Liam Garratt Byrne. If only it could have been different. Although convinced in my atheism it is quite clear why the human race has come to create and follow religious ideals and practices and in more ancient times sacrifice their own to much feared idols and gods . Such inventions as Chartres own Sancta Camisa, The Turin Shroud, The image and myth of the

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Virgin de Guadalupe and the uncanny timing and similarities in the stories of other many convenient manifestations only strengthen my certainly that organised religion is entirely man made and all its grandiose artefacts so obviously as false as the despised ancient idols so held in disdain. How you explain the Creation, procreation, the miracles of evolution and our silly little planet? God only knows!!! Giving thanks to God for the good times and asking Him for strength during the bad or forgiveness when you err, makes sense. It is comforting to have faith in a greater will and force and somehow keeps society on the rails, but in every practical way I have seen the most profound believers suffer cruelly, however much they pray and thank the Lord while those who prefer to ignore it all or, so to speak, sell their souls to the devil, rise and shine with it seems a clear conscience and as often as not achieve great success in life. The idea that they will pay in the afterlife or be reincarnated as snakes or worse is in itself a conveniently encompassed belief that only further convinces me of the whole falsehood. Modern day leaders and successful people do pay lip service to a God and religion it is true but I suppose it is simply acknowledging their luck which, while grit and determination are the mainstays of success, is always a player and whether good or bad, pertains to no one. Whenever I hear â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Praise the Lordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; I have to ask myself

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â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Why? For what? But seeing the joy such expression brings it is hard not to recognise the panacea that faith provides, like a reset button! I just wish people would realise that an awful lot of what appears to be bad or good luck is only part of the miserable manifestations and orchestrations of weak government without humanitarian values who lean on these belief systems perhaps better named â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;reliefâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; systems. And by the way if there is anyone home and you are up there, protect us from Islam which is a strange and extreme phenomenon, certainly no friend of Jesus or humanity, much barbarity practised in its name a reminder of the medieval times of inquisitions and burnings at the stake!!!! Surely it is time for this religion in particular to enlighten and catch up to the more sophisticated, socially accepted game most other religions play! From then on life had new meaning for me. I felt I was blessed to be alive, breathing and experiencing everything good or bad in a way that my brother never would now. My parents of course were devastated and lines etched into their faces that were never there before, their smiles ever dimmed and their lives damaged beyond repair. This kind of loss is the hardest to bear. My brother was a special and calm guy very sociable and loving with only friends, no enemies. He had talent and a great future ahead of him and we had only

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just reached the ages where the 4 year difference between us meant nothing. I shall always miss him. His widow and I became quite close for a while, sharing the loss from different points of view but finding solace in each other’s company. On one desperate occasion with a few too many bottles of wine uncorked we even made love. It didn’t feel in any way wrong for us to do this. In reality there is no more satisfying act than spending time naked and close with people you care for, love or simply desire. The search for this kind of intimacy has never really got me into too much trouble but it probably should have and maybe still will!!! It was eerie when going through all my and my dad’s old cassette tapes a few years back to find a rare recording of Liam’s voice. He uttered just these few words ‘he was killed in a car crash’. Who he was referring to I have no idea but it was chilling to hear it. I was back home by the time the body was returned for burial and decided to go shoeless to the funeral service out of respect for him. I am thankful I have no religion to guide me and his memory is tucked into a simple resting place in my soul though like the simple wooden cross over his grave it fades too fast.

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He got on much better with my Dad than I ever did, unchallenging and sharing the interest of photography, they had been in the process of re-roofing his Morris Minor convertible back at the farm but, in the wake of his passing, it stood many years abandoned in a shed before my parents could bring themselves to sell it with the newly delivered roof still un-installed. The light brown leather jacket he had been wearing when he crashed stayed hanging in a wardrobe for ages too as the bloody stains also gradually turned to brown and faded to a light blemish almost lost in the colour and character of the garment.

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I still had my old Volvo B22 inherited from Dad when he bought the Wolseley and which thrummed nicely and would see me through a good few years. I had a great sounding AIWA stereo bought in Andorra and just like one I put into the RicardVan which I finally decided to install before it became obsolete, I had hesitated not wanting it to get stolen. Once installed it got stolen the next day!!!

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This lovely giant amongst cars didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t perhaps receive the nurturing respect from me it should have and gradually the clutch began to show signs of submission beyond simple adjustment, finally leaving Dianna and I at the bottom of a small valley with apparently no way out. I would reverse up one side and then give it all the welly I could to propel it up the other, rolling backwards again in a second and third attempt. Eventually we found a way out on a small bi-road but I think in the end, with no money to fix it, I sold it to Robinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sister for spares for her similar car. Soon after returning to England and the house at 27 Eastbourne Road, Brentford which I had been able to buy with my Acrobat Records advance I felt it would be good to have some sharers now that I was on my own. I was put in touch with a young design graduate from Newcastle and his pretty wife who were coming down to London to try their luck and soon Vaughan and Angela Oliver were settled into the big front bedroom.

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27 Eastbourne Road, Brentford - House of fun Vaughan and Ken – someone’s cut off our feet!!!! They decided to live apart fairly soon in and Ken Corsey another designer moved into the tiny back bedroom, with me keeping the ‘middle’ bedroom. The three bears! They were crazy times with us three virile and forward looking guys living out a kind of graduate student experience. They introduced me to new music, a steady stream of new girls and new ideas. We were coming through.

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With little persuading to give up his job at Michael Peters Design, Vaughan took a job with Ivo Watts-Russell at budding independent record company 4AD, part of Beggars Banquet. Over the years he created his own design ethic as 23 Envelope or now V12 for bands like The Pixies, Cocteau Twins, Colourbox and Dead Can Dance giving the label visual identity perfectly enhancing the musical one. His style and technique have become legendary and an inspiration for many of today’s young designers. It was fun to be in at an early stage of his journey and share doubts and certainties. Apparently Orkneyman Ken has gone on to run a very successful Interior design firm. These 80’s were on emotional override but the music side of things was beginning to pick up again which I liked. I bid for and won the opportunity to write the theme music for a new BBC series The Rock and Roll Years, I also set up a commissioned music company called Soundbox – for which Vaughan designed the logo – and provided music for the FA Cup Videos and a number of other programmes. People would call me for voice sessions which paid well and I was asked to sing on the Eurovision song Contest and a number of other TV shows. It was satisfying rolling up with nothing but the air you breath and earn a living with that. A high point out of many was doing a session for Top of the Pops with Bonny

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Tyler as she promoted her new single ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ I only appeared once as I was standing in for regular guitarist Peter Glennister an old mate from Cambridge who then could hardly nudge licks out of his old Hofner Verithin but was now a sought after session guitarist for people like Bonny and Terence Trent D’Arby to name the only two I can think of right now! My friends and family have lived off that one appearance ever since and it got me mobbed in the Tate Gallery a few days later when on a lovers’ tryst. As the voice accompanying Bonnie on the record is so like mine, people were convinced it was me on the record anyway - but sadly it’s not, it belongs to long time Jim Steinman collaborator Canadian, Rory Dodd. To complete the Seanymania BBC producer Denise Richards from the Rock and Roll Years proposed following me around in a fly on the wall documentary. Unfortunately for her, me and the fly, after an intense week of amazingness my music workload suddenly dwindled to nothing so once again I turned to ballooning and accepted a trip to Brazil to film another Fanta commercial.

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BRAZIL

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Research is a very important part of any success and went about contacting some Brazilians in London. Tony Barton (who was part of the Wully and The Zany project) hooked me up with Vera Martuceli and her band of friends and it wasn’t long before my research took a more romantic turn. I wrote a song for her called ‘November’ because that is when we first met up on Hampton Heath when she was in crutches recovering from a fall, with her beautiful autumnal coloured hair flowing over her shoulders.

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Me and research assistant Vera pleased with the results I had been given the task of organizing the logistics for the trip to Brazil, we had a new balloon being built once again by Per Lindstrandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s company and Robin and I were earmarked to set off to Sao Paulo for a six week stint of rehearsals and filming of a global campaign for this drink A week or so before we were to ship the balloon we had a test inflation and it was obvious that the all orange balloon was more like an Orang-utan and all kinds of oranges, satsumas mandarins and tangerines using from different batches of fabric. It looked like a patchwork quilt through Eagle Eyes Sunglasses. but Per sorted it out just in time for shipping to Brazil only to see it arrive in Uruguayan capital Montevideo days before filming was scheduled to start in Brazil. It seems the balloonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s basket was a bit bigger than the available planeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s doors would permit but eventually Cargolux solved the problem and Robin and I plus the balloon were settling into the prestigious Maksud Plaza Hotel in Sao Paolo keen to get started on this new escapade. While Robin set off scouting my task was to accompany our equipment down to the first port of call, a fishing village and

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small resort called Parati sitting on the coast between Sao Paolo and Rio. Despite my short visit to Portugal and my applied research, my Portuguese was scummy and actually the way they speak it in Brazil was so different than the original. The driver had his own version and dialect and not long after we set off in a huge removal van with its smallish cargo of the Fanta balloon he turned off the main highway and up into the dirt roads of the mountains. My not so limited knowledge of South American geography and my research plainly indicated that going up a mountain was not the obvious choice to get me to the coastal town proscribed in my call sheet. The dirt road got steadily twistier and narrower with precipices to one side while we still seemed to communicate very ineffectively. We had tried to teach each other a few words but when the driver started calling me a fucker and describing a knife with his gestures I felt that feigning sleep and less talk might be a more comfortable tactic. Four agonizing hours later we rolled down the mountainside (right way up, alive and on the road at least) and up to a junction which indicated right â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Sao Paolo, left Rio de Janeiro. Now it was my turn to call this guy a fucker and mimic his knife gestures, to save a few pennies on tolls he had taken the scenic route instead of the motorway. I found out later that the Portuguese for a knife is Faja.

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There we were in Parati and joining the rest of the crew. It was a massive undertaking, the whole thing was to be shot around beaches, waterfalls and Islands, Your holidays couldn’t have had better storyboards! Some of the most beautiful scenery Brazil could offer and once again its multiracial casting directors dream, meant we had the whitest, reddest, blackest and occasionally greenest people on earth to get this important message out to Fantalize the world. There were film crews from the States, Brazil and Australia shooting parallel commercials with the same balloon but different product - the drink and logos the same, the bottle snot. The American director Spotty Windbag called us to a meeting where we were informed that Robin was perfect and I was all fucked up so couldn’t be on camera and the next few days we spent on the most fantastic locations doing Spotty’s thing.

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Robin played Mr Fanta family and was called upon to ‘act’ which he interpreted to mean being himself but just a bit more manic, I was charged with flying the balloon over a waterfall on tethers in the background. After so many years in the game although not a licensed pilot, fucked up or not, I was flattered to be trusted with this in place of the local balloonist another Englishman and Cameron Dealer John Thornton who had tumbled into town. On one day I was sent off to inflate for a stills shoot, while ‘Robin robbed camera elsewhere. We were a little late getting started and the client wanted to go up on tether with me. Inflating the balloon was no problem and keeping it up in the air was a doddle, but I was aware that the sun was getting up, a few birds were beginning to soar and the first bubblings of afternoon clouds were appearing over the mountains, so we wouldn’t be doing this for long. The client asked me about my experiences flying and I had to confess to him that this was the first time I had ever done it, which was actually true. He went quiet just as a less than friendly thermal popped on us, pushed out some hot air sending us to the ground and into a goalpost. No one hurt, all briefings done correctly and in my view a fine job but it brought the old joke to life for real which was a hoot.

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In the tropics and free of commitments I was still researching and a curious situation arose when the main model - beautiful Angela, me, Robin her screen husband and her real boy friend the art director were travelling in a taxi, the other two guys unaware that they had a third contester for her charms on board as we had had a rumble in the jungle only a few hours earlier during a shared day off. He he! The producer ended up having a heart attack. Every day en route to our location we would pass a military checkpoint and they would ask him for his film permission, transit authorization or some paper or other, always finding a way to get another 1000 bucks into their mitts. It could be for not wearing a shirt or shoes while driving, having an open bottle in his car, lacking an interstate vehicle pass but always something unexpected. He quietly disappeared off the scene to suffer silently back in New York. As the days went by the heat, hours and general workload got to us too and nearing the last day when we were to film the balloon taking off from an island and then if possible flying across to the mainland shore. Robin and I, in the face of fatigue, both decided to try and keep it simple and avoid this particular finale which was in any case a bonus shot after everything had gone so amazingly. Come the day, come the man and good old Birdman took to the skies and on reaching

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the mainland brushed through a tree to slow down prior to landing, dislodging a hornetsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; nest in the process. A large number of easily pissed off hornets joined him and his passenger in the basket for the last part of their ride and despite being told to stay on board the passenger, one of the producers, jumped out and was hit by the descending basket which was to send her for three months into hospital with a broken back. I in the meantime, my job done, had finally succumbed to sharing a celebratory joint with Flavio the location manager as we watched the balloon floating across to the mainland seemingly secure in reaching its destination without issues. We were unaware of any crisis until on our way back from the island to the mainland pier in a small boat we heard calls on the radio for ambulances. Nothing I could do puttering across the sea and another hour or so at least before we would hit landfall and get to the balloon so we had another spliff. When I finally caught up with Robin at the hotel he had the most enormous blisters I have ever seen on his arms and legs and was not a happy chappy. Not the moment to remind him of our non-flight decision (but I did anyway). Shame to see him fucked up too especially after everything had been perfect up until then, but it taught me to be very wary of slipping guard on the last day of any shoot or project from then on.

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Like Mexico Brazil is a wondrous, blundrous mix of magic and misery. While out walking along the quay in another location, Ubutuba, marvelling at the mirror blackness of the sea and starlit night accompanied by Edna one of my recently appointed researchers and production assistant, a young mother came up to us with her baby and begged with us to buy her child. We kept walking, clearly not candidates for such an investment and she slipped back into the cloak of darkness. On the walk back we saw her abandoned push chair tipped over in the sand and I have always wondered how that story ended. Another sorry end in this tale is that because of Carnival in Rio I had to stay on for four days paid holidays until the shippers opened again for business and could receive the balloon for shipment. I was able to witness the sound of the amazing batacadas approaching down the street and see the incredible transvestite dancers literally stopping the traffic. Time too to sip a cafezinho in the Ipanema Cafe where Jobim and Moraes supposedly wrote the famous song The Girl From Ipanema, and enjoy Caipirinhas in Copacabana Hotel where I stayed, Life couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get better than this! I was happy in this crazy Carioca heaven especially once I had been guided round pharmacists by Edna, the young redheaded production assistant I had befriended, looking for jabs and

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ridden myself of the clap which had chuckled its way into my goolies and plagued my nutcase! The great thing about Gonorrhoea is that while one prick gets it another one quickly takes it away. Wouldn’t it be great if other sexual diseases were more user friendly and all life’s problems could be so easily solved by a little prick? The balloon tanks had to be purged of propane and I figured as good a way as any was to fill them with water rather than expensive Nitrogen, once emptied I would apply the Irish gas test and throw in a match, I mean hey you either know what you are doing or you don’t!

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MEXICAN HONEY

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After shipping off the balloon equipment from Brazil, I bade farewell to the fantasy island that is Brazil and made a hop to Manaus, skip to Bogota and finally a jump into Mexico City

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to visit Dianna and have a well earned holiday. All that exercise and heat left me knackered as I settled into the Reforma’s Hotel Montejo and confidently anticipated Dianna’s arrival having passed her my number room. This Hotel was one of the many buildings that would lose its battle with gravity during the big 1985 earthquake but a few hours later our tossing and tumblings gave no hint of any structural weaknesses! I forget how long I stayed in Mexico but it gave us time to take an old Pullman train down to Oaxaca and explore this lovely state of Mexico. We left from the Buena Vista station (now a shopping Mall). The 17 hour trip was magical if slow and we were treated to the pull down couchettes and personal service traditionally associated with Pullman class. The engine puffed its way along rails that had played a huge part in Mexican history during the Revolution. Sitting President Venustiano Carranza’s government took the treasury and ran his government from a train. How they managed to escape from pursuit by even mules is hard to imagine given the pace we were making but finally arriving in Oaxaca we went about exploring a place Dianna hadn’t seen either. We were determined to get to Puerto Angel and the Zipolite love beach so were soon off to The Bays of Huatulco, then in the throes of being converted into one of Mexico new

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Megaresorts but still more a group of tropical villages than anything and I bought right into to the Vazques Tropical Showâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s music which set the tone as it played on the airport taxis barely tuned in radio on the trip to our hotel. Gradually working our way down to the Love beach we spent a couple of nights sleeping in hammocks on the beach and enjoying fresh cooked fish and beautiful weather. The military camp set up right in the middle of the Love beach with soldiers who patrolled with guns at their side and apparently not much time for love or beach, lost the plot a bit and just went about hassling the tourists who took off their clothes though they had come across the world to do so in keeping with the places guide book references and reputation. A plague of stupid non-stinging black bees also bugged us but I imagine their kind were soon to be eradicated to the altar of International Tourism along with the uncool soldiers. These stark contrasts are part of the fascination that Mexico has, not to mention the incredible bio-diversity, climates and terrain that lead Cortes when asked to describe Mexico`s topography to crumple up a piece of paper and as it unravelled on the table point to it. Certainly his journey up from Veracruz to Mexico City would have been incredibly hard on horseback even with the roads that paved the way in the eighties.

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The return flight to England was also a bit of a hop, piss and a dump, Stopping off in the Bahamas for a pee and Bermuda for a pooh. Felt like I was marking out my territory and contributing to globification I remember Freddy Truman was on the trip too - hobbling around on a stick as old sportsmen tend to and scratching his googlies.

SUPERMAN CALLS

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COLINS BALLOONS NOW FAR TOO SMALL FOR COMFORT AND HE DRESSES AS A WOMAN DODGING A DART ROUND MEXICO

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Eventually back to England where Colin had sold another stunt to the movies. This time it would be Superman III and the balloons wouldn’t even be flyable, they would be two metres in diameter and slung under a helicopter which would then lower them into Glen Canyon. Closer than ever in size to Colin’s bollocks I felt my earlier premonition coming nearer to fruition and was concerned at where the line would ultimately be drawn. Clearly this had about as much to do with ballooning as bee-keeping but we were all up for it and once again Colin, Robin, Ian and I were thrown into the deep end, and shipped off to Page, Arizona to get started. I stayed behind a few days to pick up Per Lindstrand’s spreader system that would carry the balloons under the chopper . On seeing it disassembled, it all looked a bit Heathcliff’to my intuitive eye but no time for changes and it and I were shipped out anyway. First trials with oil drummies proved that this pudding was inedible as it all collapsed under the combined weight within moments. My engineering background still getting me into trouble I was dispatched to help construct something better and we were put in touch with a Mormon aluminium river rafting boat-builder in the middle of the Utah desert. It was decided that instead of a flimsy triangular affair we would make a kind of three spoke rimless wheel with reinforcing gussets at the joints for

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added strength and to prevent distortion. This and 6 inch aluminium tubing was the basis of a really solid looking piece of engineering. It looked right and things that look right have a habit of working. Next job was to measure out the thin suspension cables and swage in the connecting eyes. I had flown down to specialists in Phoenix, bought the gear, tested the swages and line strength and felt comfortable that none of my balloonist turned stuntmen friends would be free-falling to the deck. Each line was a different length so the balloons looked as if they were flying and after successful tests with the drummies we were set for our first live trial

The rig was suspended below the helicopter and lines went down to the top of the balloons where Perâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s construction took over with a cable inside the 2 metre diameter balloon. Seeing how the rest of the Lindstrand rig hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t lived up to expectations we were especially careful that the internal rigging was also free of twists and the three air-filled balloons

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gently rose into the air under the A Star piloted by Mark, their little back pack motors whirring fancifully away – all suspended by one ¼ inch aircraft spec. bolt which I had also bought in Phoenix and now lives on Robin’s mantelpiece. Knowing how in our close-to-the-edge business, magical calm can suddenly turn into tragedy it was nail-biting watching from below as four of my best friends swung away into the air with equipment signed off by me the only thing between them and certain death. Then it was for real and off to Glen Canyon to shoot the sequence where the balloons take off from the side of the Canyon and drop down into the river bed some 800 feet below. We did this in two stages first basing ourselves at the lip of the Canyon for the take off and then locating into the Canyon for the landing sequence so we were always at the take-offs and landings. Something that became apparent immediately is that when we caught the first balloon down, the static shock to the handler was really strong. So we used a piece of wire attached to a prong to discharge the energy straight to ground before grabbing hold of the balloons. That’s great in theory but on a few occasions the dangling wire decided to discharge through my foot instead. The sequence called for doubling the actors and apart from performing the stunt our great HABCO thespians were dressed

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up as blond bombshell Pamela Stevenson (Colin) , Correctrix Annie Ross (Ian) and villain Robert Vaughan (Robin).

Quite happy to leave the high excitement to Robin, Colin and Ian and accept the low pay on this occasion. Did they really realize what they were about to do????

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On landing the medical crew offered to take these hangers on and Marc’s blood pressure. It was perhaps not surprising that Marc’s numbers were absolutely normal and stable although he had the task of leading all this to a safe conclusion in perhaps one of the most stressful stunts of his flying career. He depended on Colin and Colin depended on me while I depended on a ¼ inch bolt, and our superstar pilot. A true team at work. We had a few more cameo roles on the Movie and a job that came my way was to connect a container under a huge SiKorski helicopter. On the second run the lightly loaded container fell off about a mile from where I had hooked it on. All eyes were on me as it tumbled down the River Colorado but I was later exonerated from blame as the hook had been badly adjusted by the helicopter’s mechanic to start with so that the wildly swinging underweight container had un-hooked itself going outside the tolerances of the release mechanism. Once again I took advantage of this trip to visit Mexico and further my relationship with Dianna. In those days of high telephone charges and slow letter post there was no Skype, Viber or email so there was a lot to talk about and catch up on. Back in the Montejo Hotel, still standing but a bit more run down as if someone knew its days were numbered Dianna and

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I met up and started planning our trip to Acapulco and beyond. She had been on the lookout for an old banger which we could buy and then sell on return. The Dodge Dart Volare she found seemed ideal and within a few days we headed off to the seaside and then north to Ixtapa-Zihuatenejo which was so much nicer than smelly old Acapulco. We returned through Morelia which was and still is a very special town in Mexico as is the whole of the State of Michoacรกn. In those days the roads were predictably unpredictable but towns like Patzcuaro, Janitzio Island were captivatingly captivating as was the whole area with each town devoted to a particular strand of handicrafts from guitar building to the making of copper pots.

Dodge Dart. Great car first time round. We bought it back from the next owner when we moved to Mexico in 1993 and it blew up after 200 kilometres.

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Anyway, Time to go home and see what was up next. As far as I was concerned I was now in the movie business.

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FIXXING IT FOR THE FIXX AND SOME PENGUINS

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As well as HABCO I had also dabbled in a bit of music video production with friends Rupert Hine and Jeanette Obstoj handling all the production work for a couple of the videos they made for the FIXX a UK band that eventually found its fortune in the US with virtually no recognition in Britain. Getting a white horse that would fall on command, a Sherman tank, and simulating the D-day Landing on a beach near Worthing all for a few pennies as well as coordinating country houses, catering and street locations for their video ‘Stand Or Fall’ had given me a taste for that kind of problem solving. A second video at the enormous Radio Telescope of the Jodrell Bank Observatory with helicopter filming at night as we coordinated the gigantic telescope to move to our command and some special effects make-up required a different approach and good negotiation most of all after the shoot when I was required to make the local Indian vegetarian restaurant a closed set so Jeanette could roll up some spliffs and get those so disposed completely stoned! For those night aerials I employed Graham Berry, a friend who won a BAFTA chasing Anneka Rice’s bum in the making of the early TV reality show ‘Treasure Hunt’ where in studio competitors would guide her in a helicopter to solve clues and find treasure at the locations proposed, all this against that ever ticking clock.

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The third outing was ‘Less Cities More Moving People’ and even more difficult with 13 London and home counties locations to cover in three days including a maternity hospital intensive care unit, old people exercising in a geriatric home, Leicester Square, Speakers’ Corner, Edgware Road, the City and China Town. But picture this. In 1982 The Horseguards had suffered a horrendous attack by the IRA and tensions were still high. Jeannette’s request for the key shot was for the band to be performing the song on a trailer ‘leading’ the Horseguards round their exercise route in Kensington. The problem being that the route is secret and varies from day to day. First step then follow them round a route to see basically where they might go.. So Sean Garratt Byrne proud owner of his Saab 99 does just that and the next day his house is surrounded, helicopter searchlights beaming down onto the roof and special branch ordering me to ‘come out with your hands up and no harm will be done to you’ - I wish, but actually they just came and knocked the door. Convincing them I was just an innocent production manager eased the way for full cooperation and we managed to get the day’s route and jump in front of it to get our shots. Although I was sure the driver would somehow take a left instead of a right at some stage and have band exit mid song stage right while the mounted troop slipped grinning

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militarily out of camera right. Didn’t happen – all good and all for a small donation and a few tubes of Polo mints which the horses liked or was it Rollos! All these videos are available on You Tube. In the early eighties Dianna was by now living with me in Brentford and I got more involved with Rupert and Jeanette’s life and went to work for Jeff Jukes management company ‘Jukes Productions’ who managed Rupert, his band Quantum Jump, Jeannette, The Fixx and The Penguin Cafe Orchestra. First task, get some new offices and once in 330 Harrow Road above a Video store with Brian and Roger Eno’s management installed upstairs,it looked like it could be interesting and it was for a while.

Me and the gals Vera, Joy and Diana.

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I was instrumental in pulling together the Fixx’s Phantoms and The Penguins Broadcasting from Home albums meeting artist George Underwood responsible for the Phantoms cover and an early collaborator of David Bowie, he also designed Gentle Giants first album a great influence for PFTR’s music. Somewhere I have a photo of some blue penguins he had manipulated which perhaps was more relevant to Simon’s project but Jeffe’s wife Emily did those covers. Simon’s eclectic sound mix of folk, classical and new age still holds great appeal and tracks like Music for a Found Harmonium have been used many times for commercials. Geoff himself is an interesting guy, an extremely important supporter and follower of Tibetan Buddhism and creator of a foundation active in recording and filming talks given in the UK from visiting Tibetan Bhuddist Monks and teachers. That faith, like all others, doesn’t touch me at all but the ethics are beautiful and worthy of attention with curative and accepting tendencies. Perhaps its great inadequacy is the inability to deal with evil in this rapidly developing world, leaving their belief in the process of reincarnation to deal with wrongdoers, quite out of pace with reality and the need for co-existence. I was dispatched to the States to coordinate the Fixx’s next video ‘Sunshine in the Shade’ which saw American Director Julia Haywood (Talking Heads: 'Burning Down The House)

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working with a shoddy American pick up crew who spent most of their time shouting about what they were about to do rather than getting on with it! Most annoyingly as it got dark when we were to shoot most of the video there was still no stage and no illumination. I asked the gaffer to take care of it and the shouting began â&#x20AC;&#x2DC; we are gonna put up some working lights nowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; bravo boys! I realised I had been spoiled having worked with the best in the business on other jobs in which I now felt more privileged than ever to have played my part. I left the FIXX to get back to England, they were and still are nice guys and a great group but I was getting itchy feet and a couple of opportunities were coming up which suited my temperament rather than the music management business.

Dianna before she lost her tail!

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MORROCO BY TONKA AND WOBBLING ACROSS THE CHANNEL My first job on getting back into the ballooning saddle was to coordinate a balloon race from England to France for HABCO in memory of Bleriotâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first crossing. There would be 12 participants and once launch site, sponsors in the form of Leukaemia Research and basic criteria had been established it was my job to call the flight and manage the aftermath. Taking into account the maximum flight autonomy of the balloons, there was a very narrow angle between the directions that would get them safely across to France and ergo a lot of degrees that meant shit creek should the gas or wind run out. So we were looking for fairly specific weather windows and predictable wind conditions to get this done. In the end we waited three months for them and it required a good call system to make sure no one arrived on the two occasions when the event had to be stood down but more importantly that everything came into place once it was green lit. It was an important event for ballooning and everyone made it across, not much racing involved, some got lost in French cafes and bars, but eventually we all got back on the ferry and claimed another first for HABCO who were now the preeminent balloon operating company in the UK if not the World and by far the most adventurous.

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HABCO now stood alongside a new sister company The Helicopter Partnership for the aerial filming work which with Mark Wolff as a partner was a growing and important part of our activities at HABCO’s new offices in Imperial Road, Chelsea. For a while I managed the day to day business of The Helicopter Partnership setting up stunts with Bristow Helicopters for the film The Fourth Protocol and a number of commercials one of which for Polycel made me aware of the very real risks our pilots took in fulfilling the wishes of directors. Standing by a tree as Mark and a following helicopter whisked by us clipping the grass with their blades and then rappelling the SAS onto a country house was really exciting and niggled away at me to get out of office activities and into the fray full time. I would still rumble off on a balloon job or two and couldn’t resist the opportunity to go with Robin to my old Cambridge College’s May Ball. He had his crew and my job was to take an inflatable clown and put it up at the end of the Duck pond right in front of my old rooms. An unlikely way to return to college for a Cambridge graduate but absolutely perfect! We tethered the balloon in the evening and then had to wait until morning when some lucky raffle winner or other was whisked away in it. It was only later I realised what the clown was for. Amazingly during the night I met up with a Scottish

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lass who had come down from Edinburgh, climbed over the gate in traditional manner and was looking for a good time. We spent part of the night animating the inflatable clown before sneaking into Shakatak’s abandoned dressing room for further caber tossing and bagpiping in better comfort! The next big job on the horizon was a Warren Beattie, Dustin Hoffman movie set in Morocco and part of my job was to source or build a fuel bowser and drive it down to Layunne deep in the Sahara. Yeah! I soon picked up a nice red Bedford 4.5 ton truck being sold off by Marley Tiles helicopter operation and before I knew it I was on my way to start the 7 day solo trip through France, Spain, and on to Morocco’s Deep South. In order to work this truck I had to take a course in transportation of dangerous cargo and although it wasn’t classed as HGV as long as it wasn’t full it was subject to tachograph rules and had a governed speed of 50 mph. I think it would be fair to refer to this speed as ‘tootling’. So it was to be a long journey and this virtually new Tonka Toy Tanker truck was as ready for its new life as I, we kind of bonded in our adventure and swore to each other we would make it. From Cherbourg until Spain the journey was fortunately uneventful and with my daily driving hours limited I was able to sample the food and wine as I crossed

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Continental Europe. On arrival in Morocco it began to get more exacting. If you judge a country by its beaurocracy then you must have two criteria. How dense is it, and how easy is the by-road when you have the right contacts and a few dollars. In this case the King of Morocco had authorized the filming and one of his aides a bustling little besuited fellow met me on arrival after crossing the Straits of Gibraltar. I don’t recall if we went from Algeciras to Ceuta or direct to Tangiers but now it was time for the paperchase to begin. I followed obediently from office to office, officials poked around the truck with sticks and mirrors. The small two man tent caused some eyebrows to be raised and was clearly a concern so was registered in my passport. It was made clear to me that I would be in serious trouble if I didn’t come out with it. The fact it later blew away in a sand storm never became an issue. After running between just about every office at the terminal collecting official stamps and seals, the business of border control over, I was on my way down through Rabat and on to Casablanca where I would stay the night. The next day Agadir and on down to the Dessert City of Layoune where Ishtar was unveiling it’s Pandora’s box of tricks to start principal photography in only a few days.

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The last phase of the journey was the most dramatic with no visible towns despite some visible people and on one long stretch only visible fish held out for sale on sticks silhouetted by the setting sun. I had no desire to stop and find out – apart from the fact that neither the fish nor the stick would have served me any purpose they could have been bait to catch little old me. Much of the journey was across a plateau high above but close to the sea, one of those places where you simply borrow it and intrude for a while. Rich red, orange and dark brown sands and low mountains with low dunes plus the little strip of greyish blacktop with the red Tonka truck coasting along as ever. Then the fog came in and I was glad to come up behind a Club Med articulated refrigerated truck no doubt hauling provisions down to the company’s crew hotel in Laayoune. We would stop at numerous check points where papers were presented and lengthy essays were written about us and our mothers by men in uniform seated behind school desks on school chairs. I wondered if my mother would ever hear from them, ‘Madame Byrne nee Reynolds, ET’s about your son’ which of course it isn’t. Finally the Tonka and I rolled into Laayoune and docked with the production rather like reaching Star base 1. Travelling alone in this way you hardly speak really, and when required

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the voice that emerges is sometimes unfamiliar making the need to string words together instead of mull over parallel and mainly visual thoughts in your head demanding, Throw in a foreign language that depends on raking up schoolboy French and it becomes even stranger, so it was good to sit at the hotel bar with some of the crew and talk turkey while downing a Stork First job was to supervise the building of a heliport on the open desert location ready for the arrival of Mark in his A Star and an accompanying Bell 222 which were flying down from England, plus the later arrival of a couple of army Gazelles which would land there. Once again my engineering degree and the lack of anyone else in the company to do it meant I was trusted with this task. Never having done anything remotely similar before I began to ponder how small a stone had to be before it would blown away by the rotor wash. Either way I was basically given a few truck loads of gravel, a roller and a water bowser and without a word from me the helipad came into being. Of course anything was better than sand which even with the filters fitted to the army helicopters plays havoc with turbines and also the main and tail rotor blades when close to the ground. As if writer/director Elaine May knew this she had a lot of helicopter scenes set close to

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the ground causing yet another unexpected bill to be sent in to this famous fracas of a production. Movie making has many levels of operation which, it seems to me, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily interact much. There is the business part of executive production in which mill the suits and bankers, backers and insurance companies, studios and accountants who sign off on the cheques. Then you have the top floor so to speak of highly paid actors, directors, DP, associate and line producers and in a nut shell the ones that carry no personal cash, have personal assistants and hide in trailers! Next are the main specialists, special effects, camera, lighting, art department, Makeup and wardrobe and the property masters and armoury guy. All these departments have large trucks or trailers. The video assist and sound departments manage with smaller vans, Catering, honeywagons, greenmen, transportation, doctor and others have their quarters in the gunwales of this ship and, then comes the highly expensive flying department, the aerial unit usually gets no caravan, nothing except the cockpits of the machines they fly in and in this case a fuel truck â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sort of modern day Tail End Charlies! Also when it comes to the credits how often are

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we the last in the cinema just to catch a glimpse of the aerial Unit credits which usually come someone below the honeywagon driver and closing title writers credit or not at all as the cinema cuts the ending, cleans up and rewinds for the next ingress of popcorn bucket and Coke bearers! But this time we also had my little tent a few chairs and a sun shade so our time out in the desert would turn out to be just as hellish anyway! Every day we would file out from the airport, Mark in the AStar, David Paris on his first Movie in the Bell 222 both of which had been flown down from the UK, a couple of army Gazelles together with me in my Tonka tanker now brimming with Jet A1. Most days we were called into action but on a few we just sweated it out on location while nothing at all seemed to happen. There perhaps lay a sign that all was not well with this show. But this was top tier stuff and didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really involve us. When it came to crew talents we were working with the best out of England with FX Associates especially close as they had been in Mexico on Green Ice and Superman III too. One knew them well. Something that struck me as odd was that at the end of the day and back in the extreme comfort of the Club Med nobody would venture out into the town. Maybe it was because of the alcohol free status outside the hotel walls, or fear or just

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disinterest in anything outside their comfort zone or just a break from the locals over a Moroccan brewed Heineken and some rest. Whatever the reason, this barrack mentality isn’t for me and I would take a stool in one of the coffee houses across the street or just stroll round infusing the Arabic culture as much as I could. This wasn’t difficult as many locals worked with us and offered to show us around plus I had special contact with the guy who ran the fuelling depot and topped up my Tonka Tanker every once in a while Also the brothers who had built the helipad were from one of the few well-heeled local families. They asked me over to their place, for an evening. More ‘palace’ than ‘place’ it had a huge entertaining area low sofas, rugs, cushions and pouffes arranged in groups As the dancing girls got into the swing of things, tucking a little scarf into the hip of their clothes and then gyrating in the fusion belly dancing style now made famous by Shakira, my resistance began to weaken. Dianna was coming in, in a few days and I had kept it together well since leaving England, but this exotic concoction got the better of me and the night ended with much kerfuffle and hubbub as I practiced my French on Habibi's sister and caroused her to bed. Perhaps I should have stayed in too; You don’t do that sort of thing in Morocco!

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Only days later a familiar burning sensation hit home so to speak and Dianna arrived. She was great about it all and just told everyone that I had been a naughty boy, I didn’t argue. Once again floating gingerly like a butterfly, and stinging when I peed, We sort out a Jabberwocky and one good prick deserved another until death us do part. Another evening we were invited to dine with a nomadic family who wanted to prepare a special meal for us. Although Laayounne is a well established town, the mainly nomadic population continue their tradition in the home and there is no furniture to speak of just rush mats and few luxuries. Well no luxuries, nothing that you couldn’t carry on a camel. Most could pack up their things and be off within a few minutes. We all sat round something which in modern theatre would be a circle and have the word table written in it. Only men partook of the main feast, which when brought in was white ricey stuff and lumps of camel meat, sweet potatoes, goat and other seasoning and ingredients that must defy labelling. I had been shown how to eat the food with my right hand (preferably the one you didn’t wipe your bum with – personally I like to alternate and do use a tissue interface, but here you would see people disappearing behind a dune to relieve themselves with none of that just, maybe, a little bottle of water) . The real reason supposedly is that Mohammed

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instructed his followers to eat with the right hand as all things sinister (left) pertained to the devil and therefore unclean. Then I suppose one thing lead to another I had no idea what the etiquette was here, surely there was more than the right/left hand thing so after a quick B’il hana wa ashifa’ (Bon appétit in Arabic) I followed suit behind my new djelaba clad friends and dug into the couscous squidged and compacted it as much as I could and brought it to my mouth. Well that was the idea anyway. After squidging away and keeping my left hand well away from the job in hand half at least of the intended food had become a mess on the back of my fist, trying then to feed it into my face another half of the remaining half ended up on my face and then half of the other half decorated my lap and feet. It was like a baby attempting to unfangle spaghetti. At this point one of the Muhammad’s across from me picked up a tasty camel toe and threw it in my direction. This had not been a custom in my house in fact it would have meant an early bath or worse. Should I smile and throw it back or laugh or drop my face in shame. Remember this is a culture where they chop off your hands for petty crime so people make the most of their appendages while they have them. I had nowhere to look in my cultural references so when in doubt do nothing and it was explained to me that I was the honoured guest and our host

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had selected this particular tasty morsel for me. I think he just didn’t want to see me attempting any more hand to mouth so down with the toe or whatever it was and on with the feast. All washed down afterwards with a kind of milky drink which was what I now know to be Lban, dare I say a beverage I have not since felt the need to promote or seek out (off with his toe!). Evening meals were usually in the hotel but once in while we would go off to one of Layounnes’ better eating places, bumping into other members of crew and cast. On one memorable occasion Paul Williams the films composer was at the restaurants piano playing some of the music he had written. Dustin Hoffman was also present as Paul swung into the Simon and Garfunkelesque compositions he was preparing. These songs were for Hoffman and Beatty to perform in the film as a second rate duo. If that was the brief he did a good job because like the food it was good enough but not extraordinary another ,ilestone on the short road to failure! Between takes as it were there was also the chance for Dianna and me to take a Turkish bath at the invitation of Jamal the fuel supervisor and his wife. I had no idea what to expect as we were ushered into a dark steamy building and into our respective hammmammm’s. Clad only in underpants and no towel, I was led into a steamy kind of dungeon and before I

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could do much a couple of grinning Arabs were throwing buckets of warm water at me and instructing me to lie down. Was this to be my comeuppance for being a naughty boy, had Jamal's wife and Dianna schemed something? They then proceeded to have me lie on my tummy and one of them strolled up and down my backbone pushing the inner sole of his foot slowly along my arm and leg muscles which was excruciating. A light thrashing and then more buckets of warm water and that was it. Never having taken naturally to massage, saunas or even water, I was left pleased to have taken part but exhausted and pink or bruised where I wasn’t brown from the sun. Jamal and his wife then invited us to their comfortably house for dinner. During the meal I complimented his wife on her beautiful Kaftan dress and mentioned how much I liked the Djalaba’s. Whereupon Jamal’s wife brought out a delicate Kaftan for Dianna and our host promised the next day he would give me the finest Djalaba. True to his word I still have the beautiful powder blue tunic which arrived at my hotel room a few days later, Dianna’s robe was so fine we had it on display in the house in London for a while. Once you get into this ‘give and you will receive’ philosophy of the Arabic culture it is hard to resist, and though I had little to bestow on anyone I proceeded to part company along the

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way with a green guitar I had bought in Ubutuba Brazil, the tent (see it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really blow away) and any other things which were dispensable. The concept was an extended one in that the act of giving to one person didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t require that person to respond directly. As a cultural practice you would receive from some while giving to others a kind of nudging cyclical philanthropy. Filming progresses like painting by numbers in order to use the locations efficiently rather than film sequential scenes, with the idea in practice that someone should know how it will all knit together. In fact there is a continual process of rough edit going on all the time to make sure in the end nothing is missed. The reasons for retakes, reshoots, standing by, or endless lighting and camera changes is normally a secret shared between director, script/continuity and DP so they are rarely questioned or explained. But there were hints that all may not be well when New arrivals in suits could be seen rushing around anxiously between the production accountants room and set looking for Mr Beatty while David kept firing his make-believe armament, FX set off lines of bullet hits in the sand, launched missiles and blew things up expensively while Mark slid round the sky catching the action from the air - all whizzing around in apparent combat status doing what we

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did best. Spend lots of other people's money in the name of entertainment. The omen’s had been bad to start with, the story being that when in the early days of in country preparations one of the requirements – a blue eyed camel - had been located and negotiated, thinking the price a tad high, the scout had turned down the deal never to find another. On returning to see if the trader would still be willing to sell it turned out this particular beast had been eaten! Eventually an articulated model was made at great expense to be abandoned in the desert on filming's end. Finally it was a wrap in Layounne and time for most of the aerial unit to head home. A few last drops were drained from the Tonka and then it was back to the hotel to close the shop down. It was another sweltering day of dry heat and as I walked through reception and up to the pool area where girlfriends, wives and family were basking, my feet took over and I just walked straight into the Pool citing that ‘That’ll be that then’ A bit more desert madness ensued, wrap party included and the next day it was time to set off on the seven day drive home. This time I would have Dianna as company which was great as I could show her some of what I had seen and also cover a

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different route striking out from Agadir through Fez and Marrakesh on our long tootle home. Dianna is a cautious (as in careful) type whereas I am something of a fatalist (i.e. careless). I had learned that when travelling in Morocco the surest protection was to choose a hand of friendship from the many offered when our speed slowed below 10 miles per hour on entering town in the confidence that the hands owner would make sure we weren’t hassled by anyone else, while he surreptitiously guided us through his extended family’s businesses of course. I guess that could go wrong but really meeting up with cousins, uncles and friends in the souk seemed a better way to go than being endlessly hassled and pissing a whole stream of people off. The chosen one would ensure the safety of our vehicle, steer us towards a bargain, watch our backs and generally act as a free tour guide for his well deserved tip and commissions. One such person in Tangiers was particularly helpful and as he had only one eye I decided to help him get another one. He wasn`t as sure as I as the eye had been gone for a while but I dragged him off to an ophthalmologist, who fitted him with a matching eye for which I handed over 75 pounds. It occurs to me now that he must have quite a lot of eyes or maybe he is in cahoots with the ophthalmologist and it’s the same one that

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goes back and forth on a never ending round of ocular fraud. What the heck I felt good about it!! Otherwise we treated ourselves to many road side feasts on the trip through Northern Morocco. You would buy the meat from a butcher and have it cooked at a nearby stall, never has lamb tasted so good, or dog or penguin or goat or god knows what it was. Tagine cooked meals are a great favourite of mine and once in Fez we decided to splash out and checked into one of the top hotels to try a tagine fit for royalty. I think it was called the Fez Palace. This dish epitomises Moroccan cuisine even more than Couscous for me and usually combines meats (usually lamb), sweet potatoes or fruits and distinctive spices. The tagine is typically a wide low brimmed dish with a conical lid.

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Unfortunately the splashing out didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop there as that night, despite a great tasting meal, I was stricken with food poisoning, ironically the only time on the trip, no wonder then that kings generally look miserable, but then having your mug on all those stamps and getting your backside licked all the time, must be demeaning to say the least.

A picnic in France on the way home with the Tonka Tanker

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BETWEEN TIMES

Marriage is a solemn thing and here we are outside the Registry office in Hounslow: Dianna and I accompanied by Manuela Zwingmann, Vaughan Oliver, Ken Corsey, Cathy Shostak, Tristan Tarrant, John Tarrant and Neil Cavanagh. Robin Byrne now more visible than in the previous affair.

On returning to England there were a few chugalug jobs which gave me the opportunity to confuse Brands Hatch with

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Silverstone amonst other things for the Grand Prix race were I managed to arrive with the helicopter fuel bowser to the wrong race track. plus there were some run-ins with a couple of rather uppity directors earning their bread and butter making commercials. Where aerials are concerned it helps if there is respect and a lot of cooperation as everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s safety is somehow linked to the team performance of any flying unit. I brought the fuel bowser up to an aerial shoot in Yorkshire where David Mallet was directing and as we were only, as ever, a small unit everyone was sitting at the same table for dinner discussing the next dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shoot. His resume includes making David Bowie and Queen Videos. Although for this job I was just driving a van my position in the company was more than that indicated but when I started to chip in with comments and suggestions he looked me in the face and told me that I was just a driver and my opinions were unimportant so he wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t interested in what I thought. I think I should have got up from the table and tipped him of his big chair or something which is what I wanted to do. Smug burk. He certainly got no cooperation from me the next day. Maybe he was not so wrong in keeping me out of the planning, too many voices just confuse, but production logistics was becoming my speciality. It certainly made me aware that you should never judge people

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by appearances as he did in my case. Going back to Green Ice I am reminded of the films initial director Anthony Simmons who was a quiet mannered writer and award winning TV documentary producer until someone stencilled his name on the back of a director’s chair. Once on set he began shouting and complaining about everyone publicly and to their face for one thing or another. It came to the point where he became isolated in his tyranny and absolutely no one, not even Colin, was in the mood to support him or cooperate beyond the absolute minimum. In the end his position became untenable and he was replaced by Lighting Cameraman Ernie Day. A cine veteran who knew the importance of cooperation at all levels in a production to achieve a directors’ goal. On another occasion working with an aerial shoot for British Rail I was sent off to a country house in the West Country to provide a fuel dump. The helicopter got a bit lost and couldn’t find my position (before the days of sophisticated GPS) and there was a lot of hoo haa on the radio as the helicopter came in and out of view in the distance finally arriving. Tumbling out of the back of the chopper in a bit of a fit the director started in on me but I was in no mind to be blamed for what had been someone else’s logistical cock, up, It was only by luck that I had a radio at all. I told him in no uncertain manner that although I was sorry for my part in any

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confusion it was not my fault that they hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t located the fuelling location and I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care who he was so he could stop directing his ire at me. Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire, Greystoke) calmed down and we got on quite well after that before they took off again, tea having been served! It was a fun time and both the aerial filming and ballooning side of things were going well for The Hot Air Balloon Company and her new sister The Helicopter Partnership. But as always there were down times and I used to fill these in by attending weekend markets and car boot sales initially trying to sell off loads of junk I had accumulated but eventually buying in and beginning to trade. The bulk of what I had were books, records, toys, cigarette cards, magazines and ephemera. My first Saab, a 99, became the beast of burden for these trips and I would fill its gaping hatchback to the brim with as much as I could. A hatchback, the boot lived up to its description of ample and the suspension never complained.

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Saab 99 with Chocolate Turbo Flake These markets are brilliant, especially at the one off PTA affairs where people off load treasures from their attic at give away prices. Many a story there, I also began in the same way, realising later that some of the records, and other Beatles stuff I had sold must have put a smile on the purchasers face. And I hope it did. It soon became apparent that I needed something bigger if I was to make any impact with the books so imagine Diannaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s horror when one day I came home with an ex Oxfordshire County Mobile Library. Ideal I thought and I had traded the SAAB for it plus a bit of cash leaving us with just her

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Hillman Imp to go shopping in! Ironic that my father had also run a mobile library just after the war!

In keeping with a corollary of Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s rather splendid Law that ‘Storage requirements will increase to meet storage capacity’ the library filled up to the brim with more bric-a-brac which we then set out on tables in front. Careful with that axe Eugene! What was he up to?

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Marketeer? Romany? Pirate? Filmmaker? Balloonist? Buffoon? Musician? Casanova? Halfwit? Hard to say what is my nature really but I have a creative spirit and do like an adventure and variety. However green my grass I am always ready to crossover to anotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s turf to seek out new challenges, experiences and change!

And there on the horizon was the perfect project

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HELLER

Florence and the Machines

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It is still hard to take in the importance to my life of this project. It had everything. Next up from HABCO was to be one of my biggest challenges yet and truly life-changing for most involved. Austrian conceptual artist Andre Heller is famous in his own country and the German language but hardly known outside. First emerging as a musician he went on to gain greater fame for his massive firework creations and other well organised but highly eccentric works combining theatre, art, music, circus, dance and even garden design way before the Cirque Soleil franchise took hold. This next evolution was to be a project called Himmelszeichen or in English - The Flying Sculptures. A trio of strange looking balloons that would fly as a sculpture across the major cities of the world, at night spitting fireworks creating ‘The Bliss of Amazement’ in all who saw them. Somehow this had fallen into our lap on the recommendation of Per Lindstrand who was already building the balloons in his Thunder and Colt factory in Oswestry. Do we or don’t we?? It was clearly unlikely that the original concept could flourish due to night flying restrictions plus the fact that propane, big flames and gunpowder do not make for good bedfellows. Quite clearly it would be next to impossible to completely fulfil this dream and something we couldn’t fix just by hanging a strobelight under the baskets!

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So of course Colin took it on and passed this hot Kartoffel on to me to manage the whole shebang including hiring all crew, permissions, logistics, and dream fulfilment. IN a process of trial and elimination, we went about getting firework rigs built, borrowing embryonic night vision glasses from manufacturers Pilkington and specifying what was left to specify on the balloon equipment. The job required skilled pilots who still had little fear as well as manageable egos and crew prepared to be away from home for a few months while we first toured Europe. Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Cologne, Venice, Naples, Rome, Turin, Bologna, Leon, Madrid, Barcelona, London, Zurich, Geneva, Amsterdam, Brussels, Lyons, Munich â&#x20AC;&#x201C; these were just some of the places the balloons were to fly on the 22 city tour to promote the City of Vienna as European City of Culture. Early in the game, once we had got the balloons and had tried the night flight, goggles and fireworks blazing away it became clear that the balloons, which fly with the wind, simply got enveloped by a cloud of noxious fumes as the fireworks were let off and peoples bliss had more to do with their own dreams in the wee small hours when we might have any hope of flying. The whole idea of flying at night also presented insurmountable problems despite the goggles and obligatory

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transponders and strobelights. While we felt we could do these night flights early in the morning flying into the daylight, the original idea of flying in the evening is simply unsafe as the balloons would have to land in the dark and even with the night vision apparatus, seeing cables and measuring distance with what was then just a monocular affair would have been once again impossible. Of course we knew all this beforehand but finally convinced Heller and his team with this experimental process. It was delicate stepping down from the original big idea but Andre Heller’s manager the great Stefan ‘Ziggy’ Seigner was a pragmatist and accepted the situation. However one catch remained. The brief was to fly once only over each city as a group of three balloons comprising a single Sculpture. If one didn’t take off the flight didn’t count. This meant finding highly experienced pilots of a particular ilk who could work in a team and also rise to the tremendous challenge anyway of flying over some of the world’s largest cities in these technical monstrosities. It meant skill, attitude, intelligence, an insatiable taste for adventure and a compelling desire for success. This would be like no balloon project ever and it got even more up close and personal when I decided to do the whole thing using the sophisticated campgrounds of Europe instead of

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hotels, which meant buying all the gear necessary for that. In part this was a budgetary decision but it was surprising to find how few suitable and available hotels there really were in many of the cities we were to visit. Most places were overbooked already without waiting for our unpredictable date of arrival. I figured if we had to have the balloons flying together we could probably get away with just two rescue vehicles and by combining a caravan, mobile home and tents could

accommodate ourselves well enough on the trip and more easily share the driving load. I purchased a Winnebago, Iveco 3.5 ton van and a rather unusual combination of a Volvo 240 Estate with a Rollerrack trailer on its roof which we would

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tow all the way round Europe other than when used during our city stays and fights. Our crew chief, Giles Camplin, had seen this invention on TV and when the guy came to show it to us I decided to buy not only the trailer system but the car on which it was installed. Top it all off with a handy little moped that was strapped on the back of the Winnebago and we began to take on the air of a travelling show. I put myself into contact with the relevant national aviation authorities and local balloonists and it wasn’t long before things began to fall into place though it was likely that in some places we would have no choice but to ‘cowboy’ the flight, that is do it without any authorizations –particularly in Spain and France. The fact that this would be a very high profile media spectacle went against the idea a bit but it was what local balloonists advised and finally we all agreed it was probably the only way and had little option anyway.

Camping should be fun after all

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So who would ‘rise’ to such a challenge and pilot these weird craft. You would think that competition pilots would be the best bet for the precision required but they are a funny old bunch and rarely step onto any stage other than the occasional small podium at the end of a championship and then it’s back to the office as usual. My first thought and hiring was a beady eyed, slightly nervous ex-doctor and very ambitious balloonist from Bristol whom I had bantered with on occasions and felt would bring if not leadership at least drive and determination to the situation. After a brief interview David Partridge became our chief pilot and would take on the challenge of flying the Kindermond or ‘Children’s Moon’ a balloon shaped like the crescent moon with six eyes a long, out of control tubular tongue and a 5 metre long chin dipping below the basket. The fact his face reminisced the balloon further convinced me he was the right choice. Next was a stalwart of the commercial circuit who I knew well, a name at Lloyds and young country gent with a magnificent red beard, fun disposition and mild stutter. Thomas Holt Wilson would fly the Traumstation or Dream Lab translated into English but I rather liked the idea of some Trauma being involved. The fact he too had a resemblance to the balloon once again satisfied something in my quirky soul! Finally someone to fly the multi-tentacled Drachenfisch or Dragon Fish. I opted here for a formerly well-respected pilot who had fallen from

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grace rather for reasons I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to mention (and canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t actually remember anyway). He had a balloon rides business near Birmingham and the fact he was almost bald so resembling the fish as well as being apparently a bit of a slippery character sealed his fate and Paul Frewer accepted my offer to go fly-fishing with us.

Andre Heller didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like this one and changed it for the US. A crew chief is an important person on any job but here I would need someone whose knowledge, passion and diligence would help me keep the ball rolling. He also needed to be a pilot in case we had a man down. Giles Camplin was a bit balding in front, had a bright eyes and bushy beard and was sufficiently daft so he was the man for me and his experience

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was legendary having worked on most projects I had ever heard of in ballooning. His ‘normal’ job nowadays was assisting a sculptor with casting so that gave him an art pedigree too I suppose although in discussions throughout the tour we never could agree what art was if indeed it was anything at all! The rest of the crew were made up of my wife Dianna who would look after the money side of things, Maria Roche a pretty young nurse besotted with ballooning and plenty of crewing experience plus Steve Kavanagh one of HABCO’s most experienced crewhands. To make the camping more bearable I decided to hire a cook whose brief it was, whenever possible, to prepare lunches and evening meals from local produce which we could enjoy under the awning of our Winnebago. ºEnter Viv Salu, an Australian Cordon Bleu trained cook. We might be camping but would spare little on good food and wine. For Hellerism read Hedonism! Giles had come on board first in fact and had made the fireworks rigs as well as help me source vehicles and so on. Once Dave was involved he got well fired up and bagged a deal with fledgling clothing company ROHAN for some nifty togs. It was all coming into shape nicely, each armed with an Andre Heller engraved Swiss Army Champion knife, cool looking ROHAN clothing and a lot of nerve we were ready to

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play Robins to Heller's Batman on this extraordinary and ambitious caper.

Dream Team, Motley Crew or Pantomime Cast?

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For Heller of course the fact his sculpture consisted of registered aircraft G-BMUJ, G-BMUK and G-BMUL held little interest and the fact they were so was more of a nuisance than anything so we were asked not to refer to them as such or even be seen with other balloons if possible. It would be mundane in this context to account for every city, campsite and road trip as having flown over London up to Romney Marshes we then worked our way successfully through Scandinavia and then down to Venice for the grand official launching. Needless to say the experience of flying over increasing amounts of water in Scandinavia helped but didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really prepare anyone for Venice which is more water than city and the wind is out to sea. We were a foolhardy lot though and after inflating at the Venice Aero club checking radios and lifejackets the three balloons took to the skies, one with the help of Ziggyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Swiss army knife as its quick release system had got jammed. This was just another of the many uncompromising and demanding flights that were required of these intrepid pilots. On the occasion of the Venice crossing the sculptures successfully navigated down the Grand Canal, the Fish and The Moon landed on an insect infested island and Tom managed rather incredibly to plonk his UFO down somehow inside the city. The Italian fire brigade responded to our call

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for help and brought the two islanders and their kit back to land at our campsite - a spectacle in itself.

We whistled through Italy. The crew and pilots urged on by the profit sharing scheme I had put in place as much as anything, five cities in 7 days including fantastic flights in Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice of course and Naples which was another one off amongst one offs! I was Armed with a general waiver for all the flights from Italyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ente Nazionale per l'Aviazione Civile , something so easy to obtain it has to have been inspired by the fact that their official and I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand each other very well

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and it was probably the best way to get rid of me. Either that or he just knew everything else would be so hard I would probably give up! I enlisted the help of the British Consulates in effectuating the local coordination. Good of them to help really since the whole thing was a promotion for Vienna. It seemed there were no permits applicable for our sort of venture and it all came down to speaking with the most influential politician of the moment who would hark and then hopefully cause the herald angels to sing. In Naples, once we had understood that red lights mean go, green lights mean watch out because there is traffic crossing the red light and one way meant keep going forward which in one case lead to us entering a wide road which just got narrower and narrower until we could go no further with the Winnie. That was fun!! Not! In Naples the local minister for education was the man and he smoothed the way but wanted to fly. We identified two possible landing and take-off sites in Naples, The Soccer Stadium and the Naples International Airport. So up went the Meisterverk and conveniently floated gently on its way towards the Airport. Dave was in touch by radio with the control tower who despite ordering the balloons to turn 180 and depart to the north, began to realise that the three balloons really were going to interrupt traffic and land there.

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When asked for his finals position David’s reply was ’above your head’ as having just traversed the fuel dump he was on his way over the control tower and into the military compound. Willing crew including me rushed through checkpoints and gates and into the holding area as the balloons plopped one by one into this secure zone. We could have been shot!!! We weren’t. The minister flashed his credentials but was escorted away anyway and his camera confiscated. Another day with these extraordinary luftballons and good reason to send the next invoice! Naples? Nailed!

We were coping well with life under canvas. The allotted bedding arrangements had all gone to pot early on with Giles

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snoring away in the Winebago which he shared with Paul’s six foot frame overshooting all the beds we had, I seem to remember he always slept in his boots. Dianna and I shared one of the small spring up tents, Thomas accommodated himself in the four bed caravan which was now doubling as an impromptu storeroom, Dave and Maria had found it came naturally to play doctor and nurse in the small yellow tent he had brought along, while Steve had impressed Viv sufficiently that he and she also spent their nights now tucked away in one of the other small pop up tents making Toad in the hole. It is extraordinary how good the European campgrounds really are and I would recommend them to anyone but on at least two occasions we did resort to the comforts of a hotel to get some washing done and feel a little less like gypsies. I think it was in Essen where we saw a notice which seemed to say the basement swimming pool was for both sexes and we could swim naked this being Germany ‘n all. ‘Nuff said as Dave Maria, Dianna and I all plunged in au natural. Noone else was around but we did understand later that it was actually strictly forbidden to do so. The next time we were more careful in choosing the hour. With Zurich and Geneva under our belt it was off to Spain. The vehicles were holding up well but it was alarming at times

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in the steep descents to see the Winnieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brakes glowing red or its extended tail scraping along the tarmac on tight bends. Trekking back towards home after two great off the radar flights in Spainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Madrid and Barcelona where we all gave up tents and took refuge in the more solid vehicles to watch the most terrifying electric storm come in over the sea and flood the camp site. Next Stop Lyons, France Here they employed teams of motorcycle cleaners to vacuum up doggie doos . They wore near-luminous green overalls, and their motorbikes contained vacuum cleaners that sucked up the offending mess, and also a water tank and soapy shampoo, which they immediately applied to the area where the offending item had been. This was a good sign as we laid our balloons out in a pristine and deserted city square, nipping artistically across the city and then packing our ballooons into the Iveco in record time we sloped off, police car sirens blaring in the distance, we supposed tracking us down with their menacing pooper scoopers and art detectors.

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Another cowboy flight as the mayor had refused us permission to take off!!! Here too was the home of balloonist Dany Cleyet-Marrel whose help or lack of it maybe had set the city up for us. His crowning and recent achievement had been to suspend a raft under a balloon and lower it onto rainforest canopies to facilitate research in an otherwise inaccessible place. He was developing an airship with Per Lindstrand to make the job more effective.

So I guess that means there’s no money for propane again! Only Brussels and Amsterdam to go now and we felt we had done our patrons proud. In Brussels we weren’t allowed to fly but tethered to good effect in front of the Atonium and in Amsterdam we took off in front of the Rijksmuseum to land in fields full of cows and their pancake poohs with access strictly by boat. At our survivors’ supper in Brussels we were proud of our achievement and tucked into the Moules and Stroopwafels

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Paul wanted his crĂ¨me caramel which our restaurant didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have. Easy go and buy one next door. Everyone happy! Back in the UK The money worked out OK so we all got our bonuses and totting up the coverage realised that the project really had hit the mark or shilling or whatever it was in Austria in those good old days. In fact in recognition of our good work the Heller Organization gave us each a silver shilling in a box so it must be worth something then!

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HEY STEVEN OVER HERE! So how do you follow that?! Music, films, ballooning? No, the dole, hey I am not proud, that wonderful institution had financed quite a few years of my life accepting it as an artistic grant so as not to deprive a better soul of any job I would have unwillingly have taken. I did odd jobs like deliver fish for a while and also ran a charcuterie warehouse both of which made me realize that ‘fresh’ and ‘sell by dates’ were in the eye of the beholder and gift of the provider rather than things cast in stone. Trundling around in little Vauxhall van emblazoned with Bannister’s Fishmongers logos between top restaurants and hotels with my recently defrosted fresh fish and the twitchings of condemned lobsters and crabs for company was enjoyable and writing-off a consignment of Fois Gras and tubs of pate provided rich pickings for the home at times. Soon enough it was back in the saddle for another movie. Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade would be filmed in Almeria and the aerial unit, consisting of a filming chopper and a few old biplanes, would base out of a nearby yet to be opened airport. I would be safety officer and Mark Wolff’s assistant on the shoot.

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Once again the Tonka was called into service and I drove this down to the location, where armed with an array of radios, an anemometer, a couple of flags, I was sent to the tower! As usual Flying Pictures under Mark’s expert guidance had put together a great team including Tony Bianci and some of his friend’s with their old planes, two Pilatus P2 and a Stampe V4 biplane Many of the crew were known to us from Green Ice, Superman and Ishtar. In reality at the top level, movie making is a rarified world with few inhabitants and I was proud to be considered part of this elite band. So there I was up in my tower controlling the traffic with the unusual feature that the alongside my runway was part of the set where Indie gets straffed by one of the Pilatus, so the actual runway was constantly crossed by Tom, his brother Dick and the occasional Harry not to mention Big Steve. It rather reminded me of a school holiday job where I had been given three traffic cones and a flag and told to divert the fast lane of London’s North Circular while the central reservation had its hair cut by a tractor wielding an enormous cutting wheel! ‘May the Lord bless these cones and all whose life depends on them!

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Anyway back to the movies. We had different rules obviously for when aircraft were operating but whether the green flag or red flag was flying didn’t always get noticed as catering rushed across with tapas or a standby painter hurried over wielding his dirty little bristles to muck up Indiana’s car, or one of Gibbs’s boys went about laying more gun hits while the plane came in for fuel. The great thing is at the level I was having the privilege to work at almost all the crew were complete professionals and usually anticipated or solved problems before they arose so it was rarely necessary to holler from the tower. A moment I treasure was when Mr Spielberg called me on the radio. On replying it became clear that he was actually after the other Sean who was knocking around with the more familiar epithet ‘Connery’ – but at least we shared a few words and it somehow connects me, if rather lamely, with my most famous namesake! It was a great movie to work on and of course we got up to some hi-jinks when no one was looking, doing time trials up and down the runway with the units Peugeot 205 GTI and having a go at driving the articulated lorries that had brought the planes down from England. I was on set when they filmed the scenes where an old First World War Mark VII tank ended up going over a cliff. It

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was interesting to see how three different sized mock-ups from a giant 35 foot long realistic steel model weighing over twenty tons was edited together with a two metre long radio controlled version and a process version for filming the scenes with the actors safely. One Brian Lince sweltered in the interior and drove this monster had also been the chosen one of George Gibbs and Effects Associates who built the tank, to manipulate the head of the mechanical camel used in Ishtar if my memory serves me correctly. Clearly a specialist when it comes to an inside job where the heat is on. To celebrate the wrap on the aerial unit, we headed off for Paella at a highly recommended restaurant a few miles from Almeria. After managing to get Tony Bianci’s tooth ache sorted at a local dentist, people believed in my apparent Spanish language advantage and trusted me to arrange this over the phone. Sadly on arrival the restaurant hadn’t taken my call seriously and enormous but empty Paelleras hung on the wall instead of bubbling expectantly over the hob. I wasn’t crucified but you can’t hurry Paella. Fortunately for me we had ‘party’ inscribed on our evening so everyone’s patience and my insistence together with eventually a few too many complementary liquors meant we enjoyed a finale feast fit for kings.

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HELLER II

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Back in England our next big ballooning project was cooking away too with Andre Heller getting the funding to parade his Flying Sculptures around North America and as part of the process replace the Dragonfisch with a new balloon ‘Kiku’. The job of leading this was mine if I wanted it and of course I leapt at the opportunity to travel all over the US and part of Canada visiting 32 cities as ambassadors for Vienna, once again delivering this perennial ‘gift from Vienna’ this time ‘to the Skies of America’. Ziggy called me to a breakfast meeting in London’s Dorchester hotel around this time. I have to say my respect and admiration for the man was considerable, more so than for Heller, and I liked his way with us English. I had come across a priceless little book called “Doing business with the Viennese” so I was kind of ready. Anyway after introducing me to Eggs Benedict for the first time, we chatted and then he said that my trouble was I thought I was too important. Well to me I am extremely important besides there is no way we could have pulled off all the European stunts without my leadership, but I did understand my subservient role. So I told him so and tried to explain again the complicated nature of what we were trying to do, the egos involved, the risks both legal and physical of flying his artists creation most of the time without his presence. In the end I think me being important or

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not wasn’t a continuing issue as I hope he realised how devoted and enthusiastic a crew he had at his disposal and the need for me to have his support in ‘directing’ the whole thing to its wished for conclusion both artistically and aeronautically. If it ain't broke don’t fix it so I asked the European team if they would be interested and everyone but Paul and Steve accepted. There was no place for a cook on this occasion. Paul was having success with his rides business and felt he couldn’t give up the time and Steve was having some mental difficulties of his own so I was pleased in a way that he declined as we had learned something of his volatile temperament during the European jaunt. However he introduced me to the idea that ‘Assumption is The Mother of All Fuck Ups’ for which I am ever grateful! So who would fly the new balloon? After some consultation I ignored everyone’s advice and called up Tom Donnelly, a very well known balloonist who had been a founder of Thunder Balloons with Dick Wirth and was regarded as ‘difficult’. Not long before, He had suffered a fairly serious accident flying a balloon into a mountain and sustained some serious head injuries but he was still a larger than life character though fading a bit from view. He was delighted to accept my offer and what’s more he also echoed the appearance of the

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balloon he would fly which had initially convinced me of his absolute suitability anyway. A local American completed the crew. Greg Hammond had worked with us on Superman and was a great guy with some ballooning experience and would help us translate and negotiate our way around the US and some of Canada. Even though we spoke the same tongue his local knowledge would prove invaluable. The idea of the profit share was continued for all crew but the campground approach was not. In the States hotel and motel accommodation was an easy option with plenty of availability and deals to be done, whereas few campgrounds were innercity or even convenient for the places we would be visiting. Despite this we decided a motorhome or crewbus would be a fine way to travel the 15,000 miles in front of us and once again opted on two retrieve vehicles, one of them towing the other. As it had functioned so well we sent the Volvo 240 and its mate the Roller Rack roof trailer on holiday to the States. Colin and I schlepped off to New York staying in the disgustingly over opulent Helmsley Palace where a tie and jacket were required for the dining room. The owner Leona Helmsley later and famously went to prison for tax fraud. Colin introduced me to a New York literary agent friend of his, Robert Ducas, who rented us a room in his office off 5 th

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Avenue. I soon found a small apartment and was dispatched to the US for a couple of months to set up the 32 city tour. Where to begin? Well I had a kind of plan. We would invite the City mayors to accept a flight of the Flying Sculptures as a gift from the City of Vienna to the skies of America. I would also contact prominent balloonists in each city and invite them on board as local consultants for general advice and in particular to identify take-off locations and point out the methodology for the obtention of any local permissions. Then there was the general aviation permit. We would need a waiver to fly at low altitude in the controlled airspace of some of the busiest airports in the world. Two months didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem quite enough time but I hung up my board and alongside each city put a red drawing pin with all the orange and green ones still in their boxes. My office consisted of a little Kodak Diconix ink jet printer and a rather beautiful Zenith Z-180 laptop running wonderfully simple office software called Ability where I could build up a database, write letters and process budgets as well as manage my schedule to some extent and send and receive Telexes Everything was DOS based and so easy. These days I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to do any of those things!

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The day my little printer spat out its first mail merge letter and I franked 35 envelopes and sent them off to the mayors’ offices was a good day. I also had my appointment with FAA down in Washington and took the train down to the capital very early on in the proceeds to gauge their attitude and level of cooperation I could expect. Luckily the bods in the FAA couldn’t have been more helpful, pre homeland security and serious terrorism and totally up for it, so within a few days I had the general waiver we needed. I took advantage of the trip to stop off in Philadelphia and Baltimore and recce some take off sites, returning to New York convinced we could do everything. Permission to taking off from behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art with its ‘Rocky Steps’ was an early coup and would prove to be the main launch for the Sculptures tour with coverage worldwide, thanks not to me but to the hard working Fontaine Group PR company tasked from Vienna with the rather simplistically titled role of “media”. Gradually the red pins turned orange and then green as I located launch sites, got the go ahead from FSDOs (Flight Safety District Office), received mayoral approval and won over the local balloonists who seemed excited, never having seen anything like this as special shapes were still few and far between in the US.

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New York was a minefield but I pressed on and got meetings with prominent parks people and city officials. Sid Cutter had flown over the city some years back and although he ended up in gaol for a while, if we could do Venice, New York should be a possible. Shame about the three airports, but at a memorable meeting with air traffic controllers I did get permission to take off from Teterborough airport as long as the drift was down the Hudson. Pleased with myself I also tackled the parks authorities with the hope of doing something in Central Park. Turned out the parks authority run by a Mr Henry Rice was in turmoil and even Prospect Park in Brooklyn was out of the question due to some scandal or other. Fed up with this path to nowhere, I turned towards New Jersey State Park and got permission eventually to mount a tether just across from the New York Skyline which would eventually see Heller and his creation go live nationwide on Good Morning America for 5 minutes. The only other City where I had a problem was in San Francisco. The then mayor Diana Feinstein got her office to call me and say that they would be unable to accept the gift at this time. After considerable to-ing and fro-ing of phone calls I got to understand the reason. She was under the misapprehension that the City would have to build an enormous museum to house the art gift and hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understood

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that we were just offering a one off wobble (as balloon flights are sometimes called). Eventually we would fly three hours over the bay on Navy Day, one of the most memorable flights of the whole tour. Dianna joined me for the last two weeks or so of prep and boy was I glad to see her. I had been working flat out day and night with only short breaks for sleep and food. With her help I got organised and we even found time for a trip to the movies where we saw Benji the Hunted – actually a great film! “Benji, a dog, is stranded in the wilderness trying to figure out how to get out of the bind he's in” says one review, yeah! I could relate to that! So with my board full of enough green pins and a route decided it was time to begin the daunting adventure that would be the Flying Sculptures Tour of the USA and Canada. I picked up The Volvo Car from New York docks and Greg began his drive down from Michigan in the brand new Pace Arrow mobile home picking up some spare tanks from Thunder and Colt US on the way. On arrival in Washington, Dave and Maria collected the Ryder truck rental van and installed themselves there while Dianna and I motored down and Greg finally showed up in the motorhome Tom, Giles and Thomas sidled in and we were ready to begin this great adventure.

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Andre Heller would join us for the first leg of the tour up to Niagara Falls through Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York and Boston. An extra paid date had also been added in Springfield at some localâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s initiative and insistence. After that we would be in the hands of one of his lovely assistants, Sushma, who would accompany us for the remainder of the tour. At first, a little unfairly, we regarded her as a spy in the camp but of course it was important from both sides to have someone around representing the artist to make sure we fulfilled our mandate. She would also transmit to Heller the times we were frustrated by permits or climate for example and seemed to be in one place too long. She did complain rather a lot about our living and travelling conditions but in the end we became accustomed to her and as the tour progressed so did her relationship with Tom Donnelly to the extent that soon afterwards they had a child and lived together in Austria for a number of years. Despite every attempt Washington was a place we wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be allowed to fly. I learned too late that the local balloonist I had contacted was no favourite of the authorities there and along with the usual paranoia we had to settle for a tether in Chevy Chase Park for the media. No great shakes but from then on it became amazing. The flight from the Philadelphia

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Museum of Art was a perfect setting and enormous media success with coverage worldwide as well as all over America. The large all black and evil looking KIKU landing in a nunnery caused a sensation of course, some thinking it was the devil coming to announce the end of the world, and needless to say the Director of the lunatic asylum in whose garden Dave descended was understandably disbelieving when one of the inmates rushed in to announce that a crescent moon with six eyes and a tongue had landed in the back yard. All was forgiven as we took tea with the nuns before scuttling back to New York and the major media event of the tour, our appearance on Good Morning America live from New Jersey State Park. Next stop we were to visit Boston, and although it seems nothing now, I remember calling up the local balloonist there from my enormous hardly-mobile phone while we sped along the highway and he answered me on his cordless handset up in a balloon he was tethering in his garden. Such miracles of communication are nothing nowadays but both communications and banking were at a very different level of effectiveness back in 1987 when we were doing this, almost nobody had a mobile phone other than in their car cos they were just so bloody huge!

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From there we had been tasked with flying over Niagara Falls. One look at the map shows that depending on wind directions take off and landing sites could be either in the States or in Canada and that delicate situation had had to be addressed well in advance with the aviation and the customs and immigration authorities of both countries. In the end we had a kind of mishmash of permits and papers which seemed to allow us to do something, so we did! Dianna has been a great companion on these trips and looking after the money and payments relieved me of a great burden enabling me to focus on the more complex matter of logistics and leadership of the team. Her English and my Spanish were meeting somewhere in the middle but when customs asked us if we had any animals on board and I introduced her as my pet it turned out there was a serious untapped hole in our lingua franca. As far as she was concerned I had called her a dog and that was it. The subtlety of double entendre and fact that calling someone ‘pet’ is a term of affection in certain parts of England didn’t wash. Of course explaining made it worse and to this day she hasn’t forgiven me. Sorry pet!

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We stayed in Canada with the hope of flying over Toronto but instead spent three frustrating days at the Island Airport watching our little met balloons hurtle towards Toronto’s CN Tower, then the tallest tower in the world, . Images of KIKU dangle from the spire or the Jellyfish wrapping its tentacles around the tower left the pilots uninspired as it were. While I strummed away on a nice Steinberger six string through my Tom Stoltz designed Rockman headset amp both acquired in New York, all three pilots played their Jokers. I had instituted the ‘ºJoker’ on the European trip as a form of cop out so that if a pilot felt for whatever reason he would prefer not to fly a particular day then he just had to say so. No questioning or reasons needed to be given. We were all keen to go ahead and obviously the peer pressure as well as ego and personal finances were strong influences but in ballooning there is a well known saying that it is better to be down on the ground wishing you were up in the air than up in the air wishing you were on the ground. Actually the first time a joker was employed was by a flu-ridden David Partridge in Copenhagen at the start of the European tour and we didn’t even complain when it turned out he had his map upside down! So off to Newmarket to the North of Toronto and a rather bland cross country flight which got us paid but we were never

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satisfied unless we hit the goalposts which meant flying over the landmark area that defined most cities, usually that meant the centre. Sometimes by taking off in between these imaginary goalposts this was easily achieved but usually it meant a long flight with good navigation by our pilots and a committed landing in the first open space that presented itself. Out of Canada and our travels really began. Ahead of us Chicago, Minneapolis St Paul, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Columbus, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Atlanta, Montgomery, Birmingham, St Louis, Memphis, Louisville, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Denver, Tampa, Miami, San Jose, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Nashville. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Every flight was a traffic stopping, eye-popping event, news helicopters would divert, the whole concept was brilliant and ahead of its time, nothing has ever been done since which even comes near to the purity of it. Nowadays it would almost certainly be impossible to get permissions to do such a tour with Homeland Security and the Patriot Act smothering most large expressions of this kind. Our adventure continued with a strange vocabulary building up between us balloonists. The tale of the moonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chin getting caught in a post, The deflation of the donuts, emptying the rabbits ears, the tail on the moon exploding, The moonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

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tongue, the UFO has landed in the glass factory, KIKU is in a tree. The rabbit is over the moon and the strawberry is down San Francisco provided perhaps the most epic flight with its bay and Alcatraz giving us the opportunity to make the longest ever flight in these balloons. Local balloonists had hardly ever managed this crossing always being plagued with SFâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famous fog. But on an an unusually clear day we set off from Crissy Field at the feet of the Golden Gate bridge and the flight concluded with Thomas being towed ashore by boat, Tom landing in an industrial compound protected by Rotweillers and The Moon drifting to shore in Oakland to impale itself on the only lamppost for miles. An amazing flight but, despite being Navy Day, less than usual coverage. We were working with the Fontaine Group out of New York and they did a great job getting millions of dollars of coverage overall but had the habit of changing their personnel just when their travelling rep had got the hang of things which was always a hiccup and this was one of those days. Shame as it is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular balloon flights ever made. It was while in San Francisco that we coincided with the date for honouring a commitment made to the USAF Top Gun School in Montgomery Alabama and attend one of their annual events. They had agreed to fly us from where ever we

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were in the country and then return us using a National Guard Hercules for the purpose. Little did they or we realise that we would be as far away from them as we would ever be on the date in question. Our brief was to fly a city once and move on, so the projected schedule widened accordingly, but military might prevailed and we were summoned to a nearby air base and, leaving our vehicles and most of our frippery behind us, flown down to Montgomery, Alabama passing through some of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most amazing scenery and at low level, just us our balloons and a jolly National Guard aircrew. On arrival we were treated like royalty and shown to our quarters. A later briefing indicated that this day had been chosen using all the statistics and wizardry available and we were assured low winds, so when the next day it blew a hoolie even 5 star generals and the folks in charge of the Black Hawk development program had to accept the sad reality. We were invited to play golf to kill some time and I am convinced I also managed to kill a basking terrapin in one of the courseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s little lakes (well it bounced off something into the bank) and had a lot of fun making an absolute fool of myself having no experience or talent for this game. I have a feeling the Montgolfieros live on to this day in the 19 th hole where of course we were able to show more prowess!!

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We did manage to inflate the UFO behind the Baseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Orchestra in the evening for the hanger ball and the next day all was forgiven when we took to the air in a splendid flight. In a hurry to get back on the road, we were told that the National Guard had sent the Hercules off to rescue a baby which made me think whale or elephant but no it was human and our return would be delayed for a day or two. Our deal called for some financial penalties in this case but in the end high level negotiations between me and the generals got an agreement to drop us off in Albuquerque for a day to realise our flight there and then haul us back to San Francisco. Guess what? We had coincided with the world famous Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, no way this could have been planned logically but Tom had an open door there from the organizers who would never forget the horrific accident only five years earlier when Dick Wirth his business partner from Thunder Balloons and much loved ballooning character had plunged to his death from an exploding balloon. We were greeted in Albuquerque with three pickups, extra crew and the news that the next day had been named Vienna Day in honour of the project, even turning up out of the blue as it did. Given that we only had twenty four hours to play with I was keen to try and fly that evening but unfortunately the winds

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said no. So it was off to one of the many social events laid on for all the participants and public. There I am watching a band playing, gin and tonic in hand and suddenly I get a warm, gush of liquid spreading all over my back. Turning round I see Sitting Bullâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Great Grandson, Puking Pig, clasping two pint mugs of beer, vomit dripping down his face and a rather hopeless look somewhere between apology and who the fuck are you white man. Kimosabe Tonto, I say!

Albuquerque on Vienna Day As part of the deal to come to Albuquerque I had rather rashly promised all the flight crew a balloon flight and though it hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t happened yet I think they were impressed with my boldfaced confidence. One of them immediately took me off to my room where I changed and he went about the business of

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laundering my clothes and ironing them in time for the morning. True to my word I somehow got them all a flight just after our Extraordinary Flying Sculpture balloons took to the air alone drifting over the laid out multitude of regular balloons (thus complying in grand style with our artists request to not fly with ordinary balloons) inaugurating Vienna Day in spectacular fashion. Later that same day we were rising into the air once again in the Hercules on our journey back to San Francisco, passing through amazing scenery at low level most of the way. The National Guard pilots looking suitably silly in their colourful inflatable balloon hats bobbing about above their green uniforms! On with the tour, next stop a rather shoddy flight near Disney land and then on to Phoenix and into Texas where we made two amazing flights in Dallas and Houston. The balloonists and people we met were great all the way through but it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t till we got to New Orleans that we found another part of America that is truly magical. This flight was going to be incredible if we could pull it off. Just look at the place: dykes; sea; River; swamps; that enormous lake. On arrival we were entertained by a great New Orleans family, a relation of whose we had met in Montgomery. They laid on a true New Orleansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; welcome for us and went on to provide all hotel accommodation free during

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our stay... Standing in the cosy kitchen of their relatively modest St Charles Avenue house that backed onto Audubon Park, tucking onto delicious soft shell crabs piled onto newspaper in traditional fashion. With the iconic streetcar clattering past just outside the front porch wih its swing seat, it was indeed as Louis Armstrong rightly sang ' A Wonderful World’. The Colemans owned banks and hotels so weren’t short of a bob but they weren’t ostentatious at all and some of the kindest and most fun people I have ever met. Later after finishing the tour Dianna and I were offered their house to go and wrap things up, while they were away on holiday.

Dream Team, Motley Crew or Pantomime Cast? And Greg?

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The morning after the flight, which had Thomas in Kiku landing in a tree and David and Tom landing in the same park just short of a certain ditching in the enormous Lake Pontchatrain, I had an urge to call home. My main communication medium to England was via Telex with one of two short message, successfully flew such and such a city, send invoice to Ziggy!, or ÂĄplease put more money on my AMEX! We had no call in number as the cell phone required a change of provider most times we crossed state lines which made us hard to reach and beyond that we hardly communicated with base outside the Telex via my computer It had been a few weeks since I had called my mum and dad which I did just after the terrible hurricanes of 1987 bashed and bruised much of the forests, uprooting trees that had stood for centuries, The seven trees that gave Sevenoaks its name being reduced to one, for example! Dad was the most helpful person you could imagine and put his collection of chain saws into action for himself and many others. At seventy two he was fit as a fiddle it seemed. So it was a shock to hear my mumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s weak voice at the end of the phone telling me he had gone upstairs for a rest and died the day before I called. Apparently it had something to do with a mix up in his medicines but once again I was far from home and in the middle of this enormous project which I would

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clearly have to abandon for a while to be with Mum and help with the arrangements. I briefed the team and saw them on their way to our next stop Birmingham and then I was on a plane back to England. When we were diverted to Manchester instead of landing in London, my much travelled body had no trouble hiring a car and popping the 200 miles home to Royston. My father and I never enjoyed a xlose relationship but we had come to a late reckoning of souls after he retired and I enjoyed seeing him find happiness in retirement, never bored, mostly jolly in his way and deeply in love with my Mum who it turned out he secretly married only a while before, making an â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;honest woman of her after together.

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Does that mean I am no longer a bastard then! Although not practicing any religion, I think he finally freed himself from the tag of lapsed Catholic having had a strict monastery education at Belmont Abbey Boarding School under the headmastership of one Dom Absolum Lightbound and laboured with guilt it seemed most of his life. In the small town that was Royston he had become a popular figure reconciling to simpler persuasions even building the local parish church’s crib and lending a hand wherever he could. My mum, for many years a lab assistant at the local middle school, was an able watercolour painter and also a pillar of the school and part of the Royston community even though they lived on the farm a few miles out town. The funeral was well attended and I realised how much my father had meant to many people. The fact the first three letters of the word funeral are totally out of context still doesn’t take away the reality that funerals are important social events in your life and serve to renew the spirit and catch up with old friends, sometimes learning things about the dearly departed that you didn’t know and now could never ask. The younger of my half-brothers Tom dropped in on behalf of Dad’s former family just ‘to make sure he was dead’ but said with a smile although he really couldn’t have felt any real love

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for a man who deserted him at a young age and then turned him away from his door when he came to visit. I feel you Tommy!!! So it was back to the States after a few days by which time the team had flown Atlanta and everything was unravelling as Tom and Dave especially were rivalling to steer the crew their way with the idea that I would not be back â&#x20AC;&#x201C; who were they kidding. Soon put a stop to that idea I can tell you! I had always maintained that it would be the pilot's decision whether they flew or not, whatever stage of the proceedings we were at. I would set it all up and they had their jokers to play whenever they wished to, no questions asked, but in Indianapolis they were faffing about and being indecisive, the balloons were all laid out, there were some threatening clouds but the forecast was promising. I told them I had called the press but if they decided I would call it off. NO jokers in site but they still had the option of pulling the red deflation cord. I took them up to the line perhaps closer than I should have and maybe overstepped it. Ultimately the flight was without incident but dramatic pictures in the press the next day showed them taking off into a darkening sky. The resulting mood was awkward to say the least and when we got back to the hotel I had a bottle of Dom Perignon sent up to each room. Later at dinner Dave and Tom Donnelly came down with

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wicked smiles on their faces but Thomas Wilson didn’t appear for quite a while. He was still pissed off at me and I asked him if he enjoyed his Champagne. What Champagne? Turns out there was another Thomas Wilson in the hotel who must have felt pleasantly surprised at such an unexpected gift. So I bought another bottle, negotiated corkage with the waiter and we consumed it over dinner. Expensive flight that but it showed my error and served to reinforce the correctness of the practice to leave that sacred space of decision to fly in the hands of those who were putting themselves at risk and not force the issue. So many accidents are brought about by pressure to fly of one kind or another. I had been wrong to test their willingness in this way although as I said and they knew they could still pull the red line and deflate at any time but they were proud and it would have meant loss of face. Memphis found us presented with the keys to the City and before we knew it we were rolling into our last city: St Louis. Should we or shouldn’t we fly the balloons under the famous arch became the dilemma which we then spent our time pondering. The FSDO said we wouldn’t, the pilots said we should and I knew we could. I wasn’t sure. We had come so far by being obedient and following the rules so to speak it would be a shame to get into trouble now but what a spectacular finish.

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Truly in the ‘spirit’ of St Louis perhaps we should, there really was no risk. We tried to get permission to take off at the base but it was being returfed so no luck there. In the end the winds decided for us and the Arch remained an unpenetrated balloon virgin, but we did take the rather weird ride up its escalators to take in the view! Now it was time for home. We had triumphed over the odds in many ways and it just left me to write all the thank yous and return vehicles and equipment, In St Louis we made our farewells and most of the crew went their separate ways. Just one last exhibition of the Dragon Fish, brought along as back up but yet to be flown. Hearing of this back up element the New Orleans Museum of Modern Art put a special request to exhibit it outside the Museum so I had Giles take care of that and we were done. We had brought all our equipment there too to be shipped home together, Volvo and all. As recognition of my apparent celebrity I had a horse race named after me at the New Orleans race course. Leaving the Zenith computer,Diconix,Ability triumvirate printing all my thankyous, We were driven down to the racecourse where I had to borrow an undersized jacket for the presentation and looked just dreadful, exhaustion finally clicking in. The stay at the Coleman’s was magical. We stayed in the guest apartment over the garage and the house staff kept an eye on

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us and I felt just fine. Life’s a Pleasure and Love’s a Dream/Way down South in New Orleans which along with Chicago and San Francisco are places I would love to revisit. The Sculptures never toured again, but this wasn’t the last we would see of them. There were plans to take them to Japan and Asia which never came to fruition but we did finally exhibit them in Vienna as well as Barcelona and Holland again. Much later we took them to Moscow where they were inflated in Red Square as part of a film for the Paris EuroDisney opening. They also had a role in the science fiction movie Slipstream and the Jellyfish image was used to promote an enzyme. The last I know they were rotting away in a leaky container in Bristol. Maybe they will appear at Christies one day!

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HOT SNOWFLAKE AND A ROAD TRIP

A further adventure with Andre Heller was taking a huge Snowflake balloon to Berlinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wittenbergplatz as part of some cultural event. We never understood what it signified but it was freezing there and Giles, David, and I spent hours in the platz with this monstrous flake wobbling about. No amounts of Gluewein or hot chocolate could keep toes from freezing in our Moon Boots. Eventually the populous started running protests around the balloon protesting the ridiculous extravagance (it was government funded) and after a week, job done we sloped off back to England. This was still in times of the recent aperture of the border and although people were not being shot anymore for crossing from East to West there was tension and uncertainty with the inhuman wall still

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standing. As this social dyke held back enormous political change there was so much to see and so little time but I did take the subway and cross Checkpoint Charly to sneak a peek at Eastern Germany surprised to see all the bullet holes and completely different social climate in the East still restrained by the as yet un-toppled but almost redundant Wall now transformed into an enormous artwork. It was also where Giles and David and I got to see a live sex act - good old gasping Gretel and well hung Hansel gave it their all but it was quite a weird spectacle really hovering above the ground in a large net while we sipped Pilsen and got approached by hefty Gretchens. Otherwise it was all Kartoffel, Schnitzel, Sauerkraut and Wurst Ever prepared to make a fool of myself one day coming in from the extreme cold we ordered hot chocolate and I did something I had always wanted to do, just started stirring away at the cup until all the contents were out of the cup and spread over the table. I think we were asked to ausfart or something of the sort. Flying Pictures was getting considerable work with the Stabilization camera system developed by Ron Goodman I was asked to go along to help with a series of advertisements for Freixnet. This required filming in Barcelona, Paris and Venice and I proffered myself to drive the equipment down to Spain and then across to Venice finishing up in Paris for the final

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shots. That is a long way! We were given Ronâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dodge 3500 Ram van to do this and Dianna accompanied me on the trip. The Dodge is not the most stable of vehicles but it is fast so it was an intense journey as ever against the clock. We had a great time in Spain soaking up Barcelonaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s incredible Gaudi architecture especially La Sagrada Familia Cathedral before striking out to Venice.

A brief photographic pause between trying not to not kill ourselves! I just remember the road as a series of tunnels and bridges with tremendous cross winds that required a rather brave approach at whatever speed so that when leaving the tunnels you had to steer into the crosswind and then back off entering the tunnels. We simply belted along taking badly signed roadworks and mountain switchbacks in our stride and one

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time when finally we did slip into a car park for something to eat I eased into an available space, stopped, leant back in my seat as you do and, forgetting to take the van out of drive, rolled forward straight into the car in front of me. Twat, Sorry guv! But all went well and we made it round in the same number of pieces we set off as. The Dodge dodging rather than ramming most of the way! Somewhere along the way back in Tuscany I had a sip of Averno and was besotted with its treacly bitter taste.

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When you travel and pause, there are some drinks that just complete the ‘picture’ if you consider the picture the complete combination of smells, colours, tastes, shapes, proportions attitudes and sights that are battling to modify your own cultural default settings. Averna was perfect in Northern Italy and I bought into it bringing a case home. But this like Vinho Verde in Portugal, Ouzo in Greece, Heidelberg Wine in the Black Forest, Rioja in Spain or Sotol in Chihuahua is just brilliant en situ but somehow without the accompanying pongs, pips and whistles of origin don’t travel so well losing something of their magic in any other environment, some are quickly pardoned like Sotol for example. In those days I took each and any Farn Farn The me (well they at the balloon themselves to call the mythical Scottish cannibal)

really loved driving and opportunity to do so. AutoByrne they called didn’t actually someone company got it into me Sawney Bean after

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ALL SHIT SHAPED AND BRISTOL FASHION

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Hot and heavy! My favourite picture of the NP Balloon Things were going well but I wanted more control over when I worked more than anything. There were long times of quiet which didn’t suit me at all as I would turn up the control on my collecting dial, drink a bit too much and get bored and skint. Meanwhile Dianna was learning English properly, and we tried a sandwich round which could have been a great success if we had kept at it. She was also attending a makeup course for cine and generally kept being a great companion. I had inherited my dad’s minivan and Dianna still had his friend’ Charlie Farrell’s old Hillman Imp. Two heaps of shit if ever you like. But it meant we were mobile. I was trying to keep up with my son Robin but it was difficult to be the devoted parent he needed, neither absentee nor in-situ parenting being in my blood at that time it seemed. We spent time together when I was around but it was clear he was slipping away from my ways and inevitably finding his own solutions. He was a latchkey kid growing up in Kingston and playing second fiddle to his mum`s career and love life so soon found himself enmeshed in the local street culture, poor sod, but it has made him the man he is today, determined and brave!

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That relationship was about to become more distant still as, in the absence of work from Flying Pictures (as the fusion of HABCO and The Helicopter Partnership was now called), the idea of setting up my own company was beginning to find form. The Sculptures had been such a success that I felt continuing the working partnership with David Partridge would be fruitful and as he was now shacked up with Maria Roche in Bristol and we had all worked together a lot of the cutting of teeth had been done and we had the basis of a team. Dianna wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t so sure but we started looking for a place to live and I commuted weekly to Bristol where we put together the company, brochure and strategy we would follow, with the idea of building on all our experience and continuing the sort of work we had been doing with emphasis to start with anyway on commercial ballooning which seemed to be full of opportunity. Air 2 Air Ltd started life working from Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kitchen table, then an attic room in his house and when we got our first contract we took over his basement. At this time the Electricity companies were privatizing and the generating conglomerate that had been formed decided to use a balloon as part of their privatization campaign. It was a well fought battle to secure this contract and as a fresh, talented company we had all they needed so won the day.

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They were great to work with, seemed to have unlimited budgets and invested in good equipment. The National Power Cooling Tower and its two other conventional balloons built by Cameron Balloons in Bristol became a familiar sight at events, in the media and the skies of Great Britain as we played our part in Maggie Thatcher’s transformation of Britain. As a result the company began to achieve objectives, paying us a salary and enabling the move into larger and excellent premises in Coronation Road. Early on Dianna and I took the decision to buy a property in Bristol and re-mortgaged my house in Brentford’s Eastbourne Road moving to 72 Cotswold Road in Bedminster’s Windmill Hill Bristol. Once we were ensconced in the ways of Bristol I wondered if perhaps once again I had blundered. Property prices kept tumbling and our houses were eventually worth less than the two mortgages which was uncomfortable. Early on I was referred to as the weak partner in Air 2 Air even though I had given up a lot and committed all I had to the venture. It was a slippery slope of falling self-esteem even though I developed relationships with people who I still feel love and respect for to this day: Toby Strauss, Jo Foster, Annie Eveson, Nick

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Sargeant, Clare Hell yeah, Tony Doubtful, Andy Francis and Blethyn Richards to name just a few. In balance, it is difficult for me to look back on that time as anything but five years wasted. I had rather burned my bridges, with Flying Pictures and, even though we maintained a good relationship, nobody being indispensable, other people took on the roles that would formerly have been mine. Fully committed, I needed to give Air 2 Air its time. We cooperated on a few projects with Flying Pictures including taking the Flying Sculptures â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which Stephan Seigner had assigned to us by then - to Moscowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Red Square; we also established the first Italian National Ballooning Championships, worked with Dudley Moore in a Tesco Commercial and put together a rather beautiful photo shoot for Martell Brandy in Italy. The National Power contract was brilliant and after a while South West Electricity also signed up for a Balloon, so on the surface it looked rosy... I was allowed to shine occasionally, particularly proud of the first exclusively special shaped balloon festival ever at Cardiff castle for HTV. It was fantastic including a bold collaboration with Blethyn Richards that produced one of the best balloon glows I have ever witnessed. For me the event was perfection but it never repeated with looming changes in how TV companies like HTV were to operate.

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When given the chance I was able to invoke some of the old magic and get some satisfaction making me want to continue. We were lucky to be invited to one of Malcolm Forbes bashes at his French Chateau in Balleroy. Every year he would invite luminaries from the media as house guests and put on a spectacular display of the many special shape balloon envoys he had built for his travels to foreign countries as unofficial ambassador for the USA touring with his Harley Davidsons. A parrot for Brazil, Minaret for Pakistan, Suleiman for Persia, Sphynx for Egypt and so on. Mixing this collective display with other ballooning luminaries gave us the chance to rub shoulders with the likes of Joan Rivers, Walter Cronkite and the rest of the Forbes family. Malcolm Forbes had just died but his son Steve had taken on the mantle of family affairs and would later run for US president. We also sold a specially adapted balloon to IMAX for a project to film Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda. For which Dave would be pilot. Off went the balloon and off went David but no sooner had they arrived than off went the country in a frenzied genocidal conflict. Abandoning the balloon, the whole crew was back within days. It took two years for things to settle down and for the balloon to be returned after surviving in a barn during the ghastly massacres.

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An airship contract for Kraft in Germany was something of a coup as we had no airship, relying on The Virgin Airship and Balloon Company to provide the service, well enough to have the contract renewed for a further six months. At times the business looked very promising and I was optimistic it would soon be up there with the big two: Virgin ABC and Flying Pictures but in reality I wasn’t sure how this was all going to end up. Very early on Maria Roche had made it clear that she had no interest in working with Dianna, surprising as they had discussed it on the tours and was part of our decision to commit to life in Bristol. Instead she teamed up with an old friend of Davd’s and went ahead with the same balloon decoration business idea leaving Dianna to think again. This made the working relationships a little awkward at times and the power-base in the company became rather lopsided as Maria also did the accounts! Dave and I always got on well and he was a high performance partner flying the National Power Balloon. I was generally in the office. I developed a system called Balloon Base which was a database of balloons for hire in the UK whether for projects or rides. We didn’t offer rides ourselves to any degree but began selling tickets Nationwide quite successfully on an agency basis, the first company to do this successfully. The rest of the time I would be looking for more business and

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chasing up the leads that came in. We competed for Rupert Bear, Radio One, The Converse Boot and a few other important ballooning contracts but I realised we needed some slicker sales techniques to close the deals and decided to look for a consultant, finding him in the form of Ray Wilson who had proved his worth in business and had his own balloon so knew something of the activity. With full encouragement from me he analyzed our business and identified a weakness which he said was me â&#x20AC;&#x201C; so they were right! He regarded me as too negative in failing to believe it was possible to achieve five new contracts in a year. My experience and observations told me that year by year perhaps five valuable contracts entered the scene divided between individuals and the other big companies as well as a few up and comers. I am an optimist but also a realist so I found it hard to live a lie so to speak. If this was the basis of my weakness or negativeness then I have no argument as securing balloon advertising contracts is a slow and indeterminate business especially in the English climate as Air 2 Airâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own future history would show. By now Dianna had given birth to an unexpected arrival who we named Pablo. Still a joy of a kid. During this time we were burgled twice, had all our vehicles stolen and were watching our properties devalue almost daily. My recently

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acquired Saab 900 Turbo which I enjoyed greatly was taken for a joy-ride and although recovered, it was clear the engine had been thrashed, smoking badly it finally gave up the ghost at a motorway services to be sold for 20 quid scrap.

Dianna made the most of our time in Bristol making her own friends and finding occasional work sometimes with Bristol Knitwear a company run by a local Pakistani millionaire. He eventually contracted us to provide a grand opening and logo for his new premises and we did a great job with the Raj of Jaipurâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s former Rolls Royce, fireworks, a London Bus and jazz band, and a famous Pakistani BBC announcer to cut the ribbon and more. So much so that for his next corporate endeavour we were planning another event where I planned to

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stage an East meets West cowboy style shoot out under the M42 flyover near where Easton meets Weston and had pencilled the Milky Bar Kid and a stagecoach as well as writing a song for the commercial, The idea being to simulate blowing up the guys new venture The Company Store for which I had also lined up our friends from FX associates from the movie days. Didn’t happen but it was a fantastic idea and lives on in my head as if we had done it! But Dianna and I were struggling with our relationship so when Dianna became pregnant with our second child it seemed better she spend time in Mexico with her family than hang around in Bristol where she had no support system and the company would be very busy at the critical time when the child was due. We separated for what was to be almost a year. Almost immediately I began losing weight and seeing the girls I knew in Bristol in a different light. Or maybe I just felt different, I don’t really know. The allure of beautiful Jo Foster and intriguing Annie Eveson as well as our bubbly neighbour Clare had me looking for their companionship to help me find myself again. Whether this was to help me serve Dianna better or just serve myself didn’t seem to matter then I was acting out my alter ego of pirate! Reading poetry with Jo or talking NLP and discovering Wittgenstein’s complicated philosophy and the significance of

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language with Annie or just chatting with Clare would pull me in and out of focus. Jo’s natural companionship and fun, intelligent lifestyle helped invigorate my thoughts, Annies insights and mastery of NLP showing me I was someone who lived totally in the present and Clare’s simple friendship and unabashed consultations about sex – as if age made me an expert - made me feel that I could recover from all this Bristol bullshit. But how and with whom, God knows. Good constants at this time were friends Toby Strauss and especially Nick Sargeant, floating in his own kind of disequilibrium. At the end of 91 everything was getting confusing. I had become besotted with Annie for whom I was off her list not meeting the criteria for someone she would fall in love with. We still spent a lot of time together even whizzing off to Agadir in Morocco for an end of year holiday together. It was here that she convinced me to stop hiding behind my beard and I was strapped into a back street barbers chair and hacked to bits. Anyway soon it was time for me to scarper over to Mexico and meet my new child Ana Christina Byrne Marin and reunite with Pablo and Dianna.

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Neighbours Tony and Clare decided they would come too and off we went. Luckily I had managed to sell the Brentford house to the incumbent lodgers but at 30% less than the value it had only three years before. So we had a little bit of money after levelling off the Bristol mortgage. The holiday was strangely perfect even though Dianna and I came to the conclusion that we should throw in the towel and go our separate ways afterwards. It seemed Tony and Claire also decided to split â&#x20AC;&#x201C; must have been the always rather rank Acapulco air that did it.

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Leaving Dianna in Mexico and on my return to England everything just went bonkers. It turned out David and Ray had taken some decisions and I was to be bought out â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in the end for a reasonable sum at least. I well remember my last job with Air 2 Air manning a stand at a trade show in London. Professional as ever I represented the company enthusiastically but on the last day I swore to myself I was going to get laid as catharsis to all that muted hipocracy and unbelievably at a party in the house Tony was now living in I managed to do just that. Just shows what real determination can achieve!

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Dianna came back to England to sign the divorce papers and it turned out Tony, who had stayed on a while in Mexico, had proposed living with her in Mexico so off she went to London to stay with him and get things ready for the move. Arrggh!!! What the fuck was going on! Yes. Every step was a consequence of another but was I really so sure about the way this was going? The worst news of all was that my Mum had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She had previously had part of her colon removed but that was quite a few years back so when on a routine six monthly check up her specialist - Dr Smelly - had found the cancer invading her liver and declared her beyond repair, her predicted life expectancy of 3 to 6 months was a great shock. She had been so active since Dad passed away travelling abroad, buying a time share in Malta, painting a lot with trips to Bruges and elsewhere, enjoying life accomplishing many of the things she never could while Dad was around in their safe but happy haven since retirement. Now it was time to point her optimism towards this cancer and she went at it with a vengeance consuming all kinds of juices, in particular beetroot, and seeking out alternative medicine and treatments, in the end adding a year to her life and holding back the progress and pains of this particularly grim reaper with reasonable success. Only in the last few weeks did she

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require morphine before succumbing to the swish of the scythe early in 1993. In her last years before needing help herself, she had taken on young Robin in all his turmoil. Maybe she loved him to death as he was a difficult lodger at 13, almost uncontainable and certainly unable to understand the opportunity she was giving him other than to challenge and milk her emotions and finances, testing her tolerance to extremes. He inevitably gravitated towards people he could relate to in Royston which in the end outdid anything Mum could do. He was inextricably locked into his peer group and only time, and a lot of it, was going to pull him through to a life with any semblance of civility and prosperity. It wasn’t long before he toppled further into the dark recesses of London life’s drug culture and was it not for his own mother’s firm shoulders as support he probably would have become just another casualty of late twentieth century London’s moral decline. Some of the things he witnessed and took part in were terrible and as an adolescent fixed him for good. He realised just in time I think that he had to get out of this but even to this day many of his associates and friends are only a step away from prison, either inside it or out, and the temptation when things go bad to fall back into a life of petty crime is evident. I hope for him and his two lovely children’s sake he gets lucky and can make the most of his life.

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Back in Bristol I pleaded with Dianna to give us another chance. I felt such guilt about how Robin had developed without the family he deserved that I couldn’t bear the thought of failing my new bright young beautiful children in the same way even though Tony was a lovely devoted guy and would probably have made a better substitute in my place. I also saw in myself a need for these precious little beings and the love and respect that Dianna had for me and I for her despite everything. She agreed to give it a go and for some of the same reasons. She had been brought up by a single mother struggling alone to make ends meet and had no knowledge of her father whom she only found out about at the age of twenty one. He had been a truck driver and married Dianna’s mother Elvira while being married to someone else. With Dianna yet to be born, her parents separated and her mum decided to tell her that he was dead. In fact Major Jorge Marin had been one of Mexican President Lopez Mateos’ security chiefs and could have helped a lot with Dianna’s education and upbringing but proud strong woman that Elvira Reyes is, she preferred to raise Dianna and her older brother Marco Antonio o her own. At a very young age Dianna left school, got a number of jobs and helped her mother finance the building of the family home in Tlalnepantla, a large town to the North of Mexico City but

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soon to be swallowed up by exponential urban expansion during the last 50 or so years. Dianna returned to Mexico from Bristol, where she had come alone, with the idea of bringing the kids back to Bristol fairly soon while I decided how to proceed with my lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mess. My buy out from Air 2 Air was for a fair sum and at least gave us some capital, but even so I could not bring it upon myself to shake Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand at the end, I felt totally worthless, cheated and confused. The company went on to finalize contracts with Radio One and Converse in large part as a result of my work as these were already in the pipeline. I and others predicted they would go under in two years and they did, selling out to Virgin Airship and Balloon Company, claiming only one further contract with Pringle jumpers after our split as far as I know. David eventually returned to doctoring after a short period tending some interesting Airship and Balloon projects.

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After all this I decided to invest in myself and went off to Bristol’s Welsh Back Gym to begin getting myself into shape. Also buying a SAAB 9000 with some of my spoils to take me there.

This was now my third in a line of SAAB’s from the 99 through the 900 to this magnificent understated but powerful and sophisticated car. I absolutely loved it. Despite having ship’s captains only a couple of generations back in Capn Jim Byrne and Capn Brynley Byrne, I have never been drawn to the water, perhaps as a Sagittarian I am more about fire and earth, but I welcomed the opportunity to accompany Toby Strauss and his dad in his lovingly restored yacht when all the varnish had dried and it was time for a test. We set off down the Avon and into the Bristol Channel with the intention of visiting the Isle of Lundy and some other coastal towns. My Dad had often talked about Lundy and it was a place I wanted to know. We arrived in the evening

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and Toby cast anchor in its lee deciding to stay the night there. I don’t recall him tuning into the Shipping Forecast but it was quite frightening when in the middle of the night we had slipped anchor and were drifting slowly onto the rocks. The warning scraping sounds of the centreboard alerted us and we were able to put things right. We did step ashore on Lundy the next day and it is the first and only time I have ever been on an island so small. With its locked in special community it reminded me curiously of the farm life of my youth where a few families interact with little interference from outside. Then we went on to Lynmouth which had been scene for one of the worst floods in England’s memory but was actually a rather lovely little village with a good pub. Just what we seafaring folk needed. During the trip Toby had me, him and his Dad take 4 hour watches at the wheel and apply ourselves to all the sheets and sails and it was almost magical to be slipping through the waves at night while they rested. Argh Jim lad where was that pirate when I needed him! It wasn’t my only such outing, a little later I was invited to go on a yawl – a two masted sail boat – for a weekend down near Dartmouth. Fascinating stuff working as a team of 8 people catching the wind and sailing along to nowhere in particular. My only previous experience had been with Toby

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and an earlier short trip on Mark Wolff’s boat. I can’t claim to have developed any sea legs or yearnings for more but have great admiration for friends cameraman Graham Berry and his wife Belinda who actually sold their house, bought a boat and spent about four years roaming the oceans cruising the Caribbean and crossing the Atlantic a number of times. Mike Batt - who composed Bright Eyes - did the same, probably to get as far away from his bigger success - the Wombles’ of Wimbledon - as he could. But what about me, what would I do next?

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JORDAN

Fitter, I began to find myself again. With the influence of daily exercise the washing up and hoovering got done without pause, plus I was more alert and primed. I was approached by Richard Branson’s, Virgin Airship and Balloon Company to manage a fantastic project which was right up my street. A Champion of Champions Balloon Rally in Jordan as part of King Hussein’s birthday celebrations. Duty, certain death at the stake and complete loss of reputation if I screwed up. Perfect. I was in shape, I was hungry and I needed just such a project to strut my stuff and get back on track emotionally. Mike Kendrick and Mark Lockwood virtually gave me carte blanche (actually it was carte crème - lovely thick cream bonded paper

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embossed with a golden crown most of which I still have as all communications were by fax and phone!) to invite the Champions, sort out the locals and set up the logistics while they would executive produce the show, lock in a few key participants and concentrate on media. It would bring ballooning to Jordan, the first ever such event in this country and less than two years after Desert Storm devastated Jordanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s neighbour Iraq. Jordan cleverly remaining militarily neutral. Perfect, felt like life was getting back to normal without the shackling effect of kowtowing to or accommodating a debilitating business partner. David was probably thinking the same way about me! I took an office in Jo Fosters and Pat Danielâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Outright PR building in Whiteladies Road Bristol. They had become firm friends when they bought a balloon for Outright through Air 2 Air which I helped design. Dave taught Jo and Toby, her boyfriend, how to fly.

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This was all before the days of email when faxes ruled if you were lucky. I would stay up all hours send thousands of pages and spend time on the phone coaxing ballooningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best into acceptance and finally completing my quota of 50 champions. Apart from traditional country champions we had the pilot who had flown most countries, another who had flown the most wheelchair passengers, Joe Kittinger, Per Lindstrand and Don Cameron came along. Even future

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celebrities like Bertrand Piccard was there with his hang glider -yet to complete the historic round the world flight. Once we had a few ‘names’ on the list my task got easier as I included them in the info packs and others began to feel this was something not to be missed. In particular David Levin decided ‘not to let politics get in the way of a good party’ Three visits to Amman and we were ready to roll. Rather than try and recall everything I shall rely here on an article I wrote for the British ballooning magazine Aerostat which sums it all up rather well: Over to me then!

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The dead waters of the world’s lowest sea were skimming just twenty feet below the belly of the Super Puma ferrying us back to Amman through ‘theme park’ Jordan. We had been on a final scout to Wadi Rum ... scene of the forthcoming Royal Jordanian Balloon Rally. I just hope our highly decorated pilot didn’t sneeze and leave us all decorating the headlines! The cabin bristled with dignitaries: the Minister and the secretary General of Tourism and Antiquities who were ultimately responsible for the event; Royal Jordanian Airlines’ president and Marketing director, the principal sponsors; the General Manager of the Intercontinental Hotel responsible for food and other hotel services in Wadi Rum; the head of International Traders ABC’s business partners in this caper, even our pilot was Head of the Air Force who was along with other senior military security and protocol officers who would be providing infrastructure, transport and communication. “Rumm the magnificent... vast echoing and Godlike... a procession way greater than imagination...the crimson sunset burned on its stupendous cliffs and slanted ladders of hazy fire down its walled avenue”. Well that’s how T.E. Lawrence saw it in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the basis for the film Lawrence of Arabia, much of which was shot in this region three and a half hours from Amman.

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â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Seven Pillars of Wisdomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Rock formation in Wadi Rum named in honour of T.E. Lawrenceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book Nine kilometres long and tapering from five to one kilometre in width, this amazing desert valley is rimmed by towering cliffs and has a paved road running its length arriving at a small Bedouin village. The government rest House there usually caters for a handful of rock climbers and hikers, but this event would see it temporarily elevated to five star serviced accommodation for over 300 people during a week. The Jordan Intercontinental sent thirty staff and four trailer loads of bedding, food, tables, chairs, volley balls, computers, cutlery, a PA system, signing, fridges, a complete kitchen, and two polystyrene camels. International Traders people pitched a field of marigold coloured tents the size of windsocks for us to sleep in and plumbed in a couple of new shower and toilet blocks. At my first meeting with Nasris Atalla, The Secretary General of Tourism) back in July, I was asked for a shopping list of requirements that would ensure the events success. As this amounted to almost everything, the resulting 39 steps ranged

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from fifty 4x4 chase vehicles, 30,000 litres of fuel and emergency helicopters to spare photocopier toner, sewage disposal and free entry visas. I also insisted that the event be about five miles before the village where the valley was wider and allowed taking off from the road, more freedom of flying within the valley, better retrieving logistics and more opportunities for the press. Not a popular recommendation as it would mean setting up a whole reception and viewing infrastructure at the location. Had I known then the eternal problems I would have with buses, which we would now depend on to unite crews from the village with balloons from the army camp at the Wadi’s entrance 25 kilometres away, I might have kept to the original idea. Much was supplied by the army , Under the personal supervision of their extremely charming commander –in-chief (rather alarmingly referred to as the Basher though I now realise he was the ‘Pasha’) we were provided with Land Rovers in various sizes ad states of repair, rescue trucks, articulated lorries, communications and an army encampment of150 men. At an early stage I insisted on high octane bulk fuel for this formula one Grand Prix of ballooning. After numerous assurances that there was only butane and certainly no road

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tanker to transport it to Jordan, thirty massive tankers materialised at the Jordan Refinery and I was introduced to Hazem ‘Hazchem’ Hamouri their mischievous Scrabble playing, special projects manager. Sanction busting 98% pure propane (as in fact all Jordan’s fuel) was to be collected from Iraq. Persistence had paid off. It seemed never before had propane been imported and certainly not for our purposes. To make sure the gas flowed into our fuel tanks, I asked for the best in the business ‘Travel Gas’ for onsite help and so it was that their Michael Green was welcomed into the Jordanian butane brotherhood, Lawrencised into Michael Agbad and drank a lot of sweet tea without his shoes on gobbling on the proffered pomegranate seeds like a native. Another pillar of this unusual outpost was to be Competitions Director Les Purfield. He boldly went to Jordan with a set of mutilated FAI rules and bubble jetted his way through in impressive style especially when Mark Lockwood and I lost our voices. A fine fellow indeed.

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Purfield the magnaphonificent Balloonists were soon arriving in Amman from all over the globe. First to show up was Jean Marie Hutois and his team. Taking advantage of the free air-freighting and tickets from Royal Jordanian he was to get some unique pictures with his Moet Chandon Cork balloon at Petra before the event.

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By the 12th of November everyone had checked into the Intercon in Amman and the next morning all set off by bus for

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Wadi Rum. Buses were to become the bane of my existence and these three kicked off by stopping at every watering hole between Amman and the Wadi. I had gone ahead with an advance team to Wadi Rum where Graham Dorrell lead a crew of ABCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finest in craning fifty balloons from the four army trucks onto Land Rovers.

Eventually the buses turned up, I leapt enthusiastically on board , opened my mouth to greet everyone and could hardly utter a sound my throat was so dry. Nevermind someone took over and all the tanks were filled, fans prepared and kit checked. We were later to enjoy one of many terrific meals from the desert kitchens of the Intercon.

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So after months of preparation we arrived at the great day. After a test flight in the morning the pace hotted up with the Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imminent arrival. He went amongst the people and then took his place at the front of the Royal tent with his wife Queen Noor and the Queen of Spain.

Look at the hump on that! After an evocative display by the wallaby mounted troops of the Desert Patrol, the wind calmed and despite being midday the balloons fulfilled the wishes of many as they rose into the sky. Smiles all round, the main purpose of our mission achieved.

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F rom then on it was downhill all the way. The suave sophisticated hotel managers of Amman metamorphosed into bewhiskered hubble-bubbling desert rats. Hard boiled eggs and Frankfurters became breakfast; balloonists became Arabs and Arabs became balloonists- kofyrs were donned by the in crowd and, much to the amusement of many, Meanwhile I was to be seen walking round hand in hand with the general in command of the troops. On one occasion one of the balloonist wives complained to me that her retrieve vehicle driver had acted improperly towards her. On mentioning this to the general he said he would bang him on the head and kill him! The issue went no further as even Ms Wronged felt such justice was a little extreme.

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There were competitive flights now in the morning and afternoon but I had programmed one day off for the teams and international press so we could visit Petra and Aqaba, Jordanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Red sea resort town. So we were able to gawp at the Rose Red City on the one hand and the Red Sea Sun on another as well as rent a couple of rooms and grab a refreshing shower. At Aqaba I was fortunate in joining the unlikely snorkelling party of Don Cameron, Phil Dunnington, Tony Pinner, Kevin Meehan, Mark Lockwood, Jackie Underwood and my mate Nick Sargent who was along as one of my assistants. We all hopped aboard a little glass bottomed boat and set off for a good marinating in the famed clear waters of the Red Sea. First stop was for a can of petrol which our helmsman who we shall call Abdulla carefully transferred into the fuel tank, The Red Sea and his eye in more or less equal measure. This clearly upset him as you would expect whether for damaging the ecosystem, causing himself bodily harm or simply his inaccuracy or more probably all three plus looking stupid! Anyway he sailored on until an hour later he pulled in and moored his craft about 50 metres from the main road to South Arabia. A kind of aquatic layby. We could have taken a bus!!! After some had and some hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t taken to the water (I fell asleep on the boat) we headed back to the Aqua Marina Club

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and dinner. At some point along the way I got drenched and the man known as Abdulla chopped the top of his thumb off in the prop. Strangely a good time was had by all â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with the exception perhaps of Abdulla. I am assured the flying was amazing and the competition well fought but I was more caught up with the daily duties of making sure things went as smoothly as they could do in the accommodation of our guests, leaving all that up to Les, Mike and Mark. I think the best part for the assembled and also the disassembled balloonists was in enjoying the broader aspects of not shaving (especially the chaps) eating generally amazing food, no telly, amazing company and sampling the special magic of desert culture that mad Lawrence of Arabia weird. Something must have rubbed off on Dave Bareford and Lindsay Muir who went on to victory in Saga Japan. No longer will the guidebooks be limited to describing Wadi Rum in terms of Lawrence of Arabia. Now they have the legend of charioteers in fire breathing flying machines, battling it out for world supremacy. One with a Flower Pot on his head . Contact Andy Elson. As for the awards, Texan Steve Jones won the first prize of 3000 dollars and the Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trophy. The ever popular Tomas

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Fink came second and the effervescent Ad Haarhuis third. These prizes and a beautiful commemorative plaque to everyone were presented at a grand banquet hosted by Queen Noor in Kan Zaman â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a restored castellated village outside Amman. I had thrown out the original idea of a celebration dinner in the Intercon once we came across this incredible place and my insistence paid off once again. Other curiosities, Joe Kittinger celebrated his wedding anniversary, Per Lindstrand was awarded the Don Cameron Vest for most difficult retrieve, The Jordanian helicopter pilots received the DHL Lawrence award for acting in the true spirit of the event having rescued Per and Peter Vizzard received a complimentary weekend for two at any Intercontinental Hotel for coming furthest to be there. In large measure the event was successful because King Hussein was loved and respected so much by his people and this was all about him. There was an often expressed and very genuine wish to please him which could make the impossible happen. Unfortunately the king was never scheduled to spend a night in one our tents which despite the chocolates on the down pillows didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t quite live up to the description of luxury tented accommodation we had been promised.

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SHUTTING UP SHOP

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True to her word Dianna came back with our two lovely children and we spent our last Christmas in Bristol. I tried to carry on with my business in Whiteladies Road looking to Blethwyn Richards as a staunch ally in developing it. After a few months, I counted the number of times he sat at the desk I was renting for him. Once. This was going nowhere and on top of that Jo went off on holiday to Majorca with Ray Wilson of all people which made things very awkward indeed between us as she started dating him. To say she deserved better would be unfair but it plucked her out of my small circle of available friends. She went on to marry him! Babies were produced!!! Annie Eveson was looking at my mate Nick Sargeant for a date and wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t speak to me; however she was as much off his list as I was hers! She eventually ran off with a tractor driver from Glastonbury. I sincerely hope she found happiness. Nick meanwhile was a good friend moving too to Windmill Hill and continuing his musical career. He was Sir Malcolm Sargentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s grandson and we had originally met when he asked me to sing on some jingles for Shropshire Radio back in the London days. Moving to Bristol, we had got back in touch and he accompanied me to Jordan and also on the trip to Moscow

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with the Sculptures as well as a bit of balloon crewing for Air 2 Air. However it was time to be realistic and declare Bristol yet another failed experiment. Maybe I expected too much of me or of my associates, or perhaps real success was just around too many corners and I am impatient. Whatever way I looked at it big changes were now on the Horizon. Not least of which was caused by Mum’s rapidly failing health., Dianna and I, along with Mum’s sister Peggy and Liza Moore were together with Mum on the farm when she finally slipped away. I had never witnessed anyone actually die. In the last moments as I sat next to her bed listening to the weak breathing of this once reactive, coherent, loving being, I wondered what she was thinking there, hardly with us I don’t think she was in any way conscious or dreaming or wanting to communicate or aware that her battle had been lost. I am sure she never accepted that. She didn’t want to go, but there was no strength there anymore and after a while of gentle but erratic breathes, she inhaled weakly once more with what they rightly refer to as the death rattle in her throat as her lungs began to fill with liquid, and then stopped functioning. After a few seconds another attempt with all that had kept her alive these 70 years, the rhythm in her body, the rhythm in her soul, the last beat of that big heart of hers and the little whisp of

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air that entered and departed her throat without leaving it’s precious cargo of oxygen. Then she just lay still, no twitching, no more, nothing. So easy, it was almost as if nothing had changed, just that she had taken a break from breathing for a while and normal service would be resumed as soon as possible. How I wished that could be the case, but no. There she was the person who had brought me into the world, fought my corners, nurtured me, admired me and shared so much laughter in her life with so many others too. Just still and I suppose at peace if being dead is that. Calamitous, inevitable and sad for those left behind. A moment that awaits us all however it is we take our leave of this world. Liza took Dianna for a walk down the farm’s long back lane called the Belt and we all adjusted to what had happened, popping next door to farmer Tim and his wife Beryl to share the news of her passing and then starting in on those difficult phone calls which we had prepared on a list. With every call a pause and a choked voice thanking me for letting them know, sympathizing over my loss and wanting to be informed of the funeral arrangements. It wasn’t really a surprise to most, Mum’s decline in the last few weeks had been marked and it was clear she would only last a short while but still it was a shock. Switching off that light in my heart left more

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darkness. Now with both my parents and my only close brother gone I was very much cut loose and under my own steam with few if any who related to me in the way close family does.

The Hovel

Flint Hall Farm House We decided to stay on at the farm for a while. Well really it was a decision we had made for us as I had to close down mumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s affairs, sort out the burial and clear the house which

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had been my parents home on a peppercorn rent for so many years, meaning they had never sought to invest in a house paying a year what most people paid a week!!

Tm Darcy long time manger of Flint Hall Farm

When I was fifteen we had moved across the road from the Hovel to the smaller half of Flint Hall. The former owner of

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the farm an elderly lady who we all called Hibby sold up to the Hortons and moved back to Hampstead. Dad maintained a close friendship with her for the rest of her life taking care of some of her business interests and running her around when she needed some general help. In thanks for my Dad’s constant help in her final years, she surprisingly gifted him a five storey house near Royston Railway Station on her death. For him, with no money to invest in much needed repairs, this was just another head ache, so he sold it on at next to nothing preferring an easy last few years himself without the worry of such a commitment. Old Holloways’ school friend Geoffrey Wilkinson, who by now had inherited the farm on the death of his father, allowed me to stay on for as long as I wanted for which I am ever grateful. Mum was laid to rest next to Dad and in the same graveyard as Liam. My parents have matching tiles with their silhouettes on and Liam is just marked by a simple wooden cross. I have never been back to see these graves. What’s the point they mean nothing. A garden bench I had made at school and which had survived many years in our garden, was placed with a plaque John Whitehead kindly made outside The Hovel overlooking the sweeping landscape up to the remote pylons on the hill. Also means nothing but what do you do!!!

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I was left with photographs, memories, a blocked toilet and a cellar full of junk as well as all the chattels of full lives that accumulate shelf by shelf, cupboard by cupboard, drawer by drawer. Almost any item that I picked up held a memory, it could be a spoon or plate or book or towel, one of dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tools anything. An unspoken voice labelling its familiarity. A clock, a painting, an instrument, a shovel the bloody lawn mowers and chain saws, a badly hung door, a tree. The blocked toilet. A thought that had been forming for a while began maturing. With few commitments or sentimental anchors, it was time to leave these shores and try our luck in Mexico. Why not?? No obvious prospects in England, a little money tucked away from my savings and the buyout as well as a small inheritance from my my parents of 14000 pounds. It was now or never. I had a strong feeling that England was becoming too difficult and frustrating for me, much as I savoured its child benefit, free health care and the dole which I had consumed whenever needed. We decided to stay in the place of my birth for the six months of summer and find some peace and structure in our lives, also giving our kids the chance for a bit of country life and air after Bristol and Mexico. It was to be a beautiful and settling time. The kids spent much of their time running around naked,

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learning to ride bikes, picnics in the garden, paddling and running amok with almost complete freedom and safety. We let the richness of country life soak into our bones and enrich us. I kept in touch with the immediate world doing the occasional errand for John Whitehead delivering fans and shafts all over the place, but really wanted to absorb as much as I could from the farm before leaving England forever. A few friends came over, Michael and Sheena, Giles and his wife Mandy, Howard from PFTR and his family arrived during a holiday home from Canada where he now lived. It was a happy, simple time. Dianna used her initiative and went off to study with a company called First Impressions near Cambridge and started giving consultancies on clothing and make-up. I on the other hand took to baking, reading and wondering how to whittle down two houses worth of stuff into an essential exportable package. The Bristol House had stayed empty with the idea of selling it quickly, but the property market still had not finished its tremendous plunge and nobody was buying. Besides it was painful accepting the losses. We eventually sold it at 60% of what we paid for it a year later barely managing to cover the loan we had taken out to buy it. Another 8 years would pass before some kind of recovery took place once again skyrocketing prices into another realm, but we

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could never have waited that long. Anyone who tells me you can’t lose with property gets sharp shrift I can tell you!!! The next six months were idyllic, despite having to ship stuff off to auction or charity shops and sell off a vast collection of books taking mine and Dad’s together along with the innards of my mobile library and probably some of his. Even once we had sold off the better stuff and decided what to keep, it still required a transit van to come and take away what remained to a local charity shop even then leaving sufficient to start a small bookshop in Mexico if fortune took us that way. One sale that stays in my mind is the day a very nice bookdealer friend of Liza’s, came from London to pick out the best in Dad’s collection. While his rather aloof daughter swung in a hammock in the garden this kind gentleman made his selection and we came to the negotiation. I had brought him a cup of tea and at the moment we agreed a price for Dad’s Argosies, Dylan Thomas First Editions and so on the cup fell off its handle spilling the tea all over the floor. Once again as with the guitar moment Dad must have been disgusted at the price but not had the tea fall over the books in question. I believe the price was fair, I had done my research. Sorry Dad! 100’s of then worthless 78’s (that had prompted me at infant school to boast that my Dad had hundreds of records never mind Elvis Presley’s 20) A lot of interesting LP’s of Dylan

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Thomas, The Goons and so on were sold through carefully placed announcements as were a fair number of my Cigarette and trade cards and a couple of guitars. The furniture slowly went to auction and in the end we were down to what we felt we could ship to Mexico. The silver canon lighter fetched little as did a pretty good collection of Beatles memorabilia. A silver christening cup was the star piece at 120 pounds. One historic old painting that had lived above our mantelpiece and was valuable theatre memorabilia according to Dad, a pram (see way above) and a complete extended run of War Illustrated ended up being abandoned at the auction house for either failing to obtain any bids or in the case of the pram being inadmissible on health and safety grounds. Walks in the woods, log fires, long summer days, it was a wonderful way to say goodbye to England. Soon the day came to really leave it all behind. The SAAB 9000 found a good home with John Whitehead and a great friend of ours BBC Childrensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Programme producer Michael Forte offered to ferry us and our luggage, mostly guitars and other valuables, down to London. We left behind a huge collection of furniture, books, kitchenware and clothes packed away in Tea chests in one of the more rat proof barns not knowing when or how we would be reunited with any of it, if ever!

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Later that night in the Heathrow Sheraton we held a cocktail party to say goodbye. Many came and it was a great if bitter sweet reunion and farewell with a good many of the friends we would be leaving behind probably never to see again.

The great Alan Bown, Ready, Set, Gone (well us anyway)! Taking off on BAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new service to Mexico City Dianna was keen to be closer to her family and I had absolutely no regrets, excited from the outset about starting from scratch in a new country with my beautiful, talented and persistently supportive wife and two fabulous young children. We left

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behind good friends who wished us well and I hoped would understand and stay friends. I wondered how son Robin would cope in my absence. Hurtling over the North Atlantic towards an uncertain future, we were not alone with Dianna’s family already getting ready to meet us at the airport. I prayed I wouldn’t let any of these people down. I was reminded that I had flown out from Mexico in 1982 on BA’s last flight for 10 years – ‘we will only be gone for a couple of years’ they had announced to the accompaniment of a mariachi band

Plan? No plan!

HOLD TIGHT KIDS THIS COULD GET BUMPY

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PICTURES

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Hey Rob, you got the blues?

Chelsea!!!!!

(Gibson ES335 and Levin Goliath)

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Pulling the birds from an early age

With half brother over from Borneo

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Peter Young ‘The Writer’ , John Aston ‘The Gardener’ and two innocent young Welsh lads

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Clockwork Orange meets Chucky

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They called her the Firestarter! Just off to the pub mum do you need anything?

Nice picture of Mum and Dad

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Tots and their bots, Nick Horton, and me stuck in the mud, Pablo and Cristy enjoying the freedom of life on a farm

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Easy as falling off a chair, Simplest way to get a laugh ever

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Here I am ready for rugby, ready for a scoot and ready for a hoot but unfortunately not ready for a hiking tour round France cos nobody told me to travel light and I was back within three days, tins of meat balls still un opened. Wimp!

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Two pictures where I am supposed to know what I am doing, poking water with a stick in Cambridge and vandalising the lawn in Royston, all on the same dayit would seem!

Yellow Leb!

Cool! With Marc at The Mill in Cornwall, A rare photo of Blethyn Richards at work, Robin and Claire Byrne being Welsh. And here come John Tarrant and David Ulm to have Christmas Dinner in Brentford, Dave had just bought a house across the road and was well pissed when we moved off to Bristol!!

389 On receiving the electricity bill, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Honest I only used the hairdryer once this monthâ&#x20AC;?

The last day I saw Dad alive was when Dave Partridge kindly took him and Mum for a ride in a balloon over Flint Hall Farm.

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Vaughan Oliver gets the upper hand but Robin Byrneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s skinhead training stands him in good stead

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392 Atypical photos of Marc Wolff, who normally has the rotorblades somewhere above his head, seen here fiddling with the tail rotor on his watermill (rotor off to one side) and also straddling a lawn mower with, of course, its blades below. Meanwhile Pablo, me and Marcâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s daughter Lilly pretend to be grass

Cicely

Hammod. A great family friend who looked after me, and Dad, while Liam was being born. A kind of Godmother I suppose had I ever been baptised which I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t

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At which point the donkey took off down the towpath like a horse.

Tony Pearce Good old John Whitehead

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Long time friend of Dadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, crossword collaborator Charly Farrel,

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The done thing

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BACKGROUND It is early 2008 and at 18 and 16 years our children are by now at an age when it is unlikely we would holiday together again. We decide to make an epic summer trip back to the UK to check in on relatives, as many friends as we could fit in and of course the ‘Old Country’. This would be the first time Dianna or the kids had been back since leaving in 1993. I had been invited to a school reunion, where we would be going back 40 to 50 years and it was a poignant moment too as one of our dearest friends Mike Latimer had recently lost his wife (well he knew where she was but she wasn’t saying much!). These tripled with the fact that I was the grandfather of Robin’s young boys Martell and Harley who probably still wonder who this rather useless figure is, hidden away in a foreign country with their equally inaccessible aunty Christy and uncle Pablo. It was a good moment to break open the piggy bank and go back. I worked hard to make sure we made the most of the trip and in many ways it speaks more about our past than our present or future so I have decided to include it as part of this offering. It also gives a reassuring glow to what has been a great few years in Mexico where we have achieved many things we never imagined as well as adapted to a culture and country that hangs on by its finger nails. Fortunately these are more like predatory talons. We hang on too, living near Mexico City, riding the storms but enjoying most of the ride!! Apart from Christy that is who seems to be making England her home now. What follows, with few amendments, was written in response to such an incredibly enriching trip which I didn’t want to forget in any detail. I circulated it then amongst those mentioned but am glad to include it here too as a reminder that you are what you become and life is what you make it, so enjoy what you have and live each precious, irrepeatable moment

Sean NB: My thanks wouldn’t be complete in this context if I didn’t pass on my gratitude to the Vauxhall Vectra which gave us a trouble-free and safe ride on our journey

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Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been a while since we got back from:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm

Yes you guessed it â&#x20AC;Ś.. Heathrow, Terminal 4!

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Almost immediately I opened this short note and ever since I have woken daily to the reveille call of a neighbour’s chicken with the determination to finish putting pen to paper (as it were or perhaps as it was) and thank everyone for helping make the Byrne tour of England first a strong desire, then a possibility and finally a wonderful reality. But you know how it is – concise became considerable - round and round, up and down, in and out, back and forth, computer glitch and before you know it - ‘poof ‘ - back with the chicken.

First of all an apology - I mean what a horror – chums of old that you thought were confined to the new territories, rear ugly heads and offer to turn back time and crash through your otherwise orderly or acceptably disorderly life. People you have managed to do perfectly well without for many years appear en masse and eat your food, drink your wine, dent your sofa, laugh at your jokes, throw in an insult or two, eat all your Cherry Bakewells and then quickly move on, leaving soiled sheets and pillows, rekindled sentiments, unnecessary revived memories and the stark

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realizations that we have all grown far too old, far too quickly and that some things will never change! Those less domestically challenged, meeting in the anonymity of restaurant, pub, motorway services or street corner were immediately bombarded by a flurry of dull wit with little or no protection from over-punning and the underpinnings of almost forgotten, barely cherished, shared memories with me luxuriating in the mother tonguiness of it all! Stirring happenstance indeed with something for everyone. Well let me say that from our side we had a blast. The whole visit to England was incredible and so much more than we ever hoped for. Almost everyone was home/in/ about/available/conscious/coherent. It was as much a surprise to us as it must have been to you but letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hold the Internet responsible for almost everything. A few probing emails, hire car and plane tickets all obtained in the click of a mouse, and tick of a tock, fate cast to the wind with only windmillsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; whirr or divots of doubt.

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We managed to coincide with Mandela’s Birthday Concert, Wimbledon, Glastonbury, Henley Regatta , the British Grand Prix and even the fantastic Radiohead live in London, The fact we didn’t get to any of these great events shows how busy we were making our own story, but this has only steeled our resolve to do better another year so watch out – we’ll be back if not in dribs then in drabs.

Our trip really starts on the evening of the 19th June at the QBP – Queen’s Birthday Party – in the British Ambassador to Mexico’s residence where British creativity was celebrated. In well-deserved if somewhat smug style (‘hit the world running’ was that year’s UK slogan) we had a fashion show and music bubbling away from Radiohead, Coldplay, Joy Division, Amy Winehouse et al and showings of some new British films – a good primer that left us wanting the real thing.

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Brackets open with BA flight 242 arriving almost on time and us trundling off round the M25 (including first of many stops at South Mimms) for an afternoon rendezvous with old schoolmates from the 50â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in Barley - a consummate English village coddling its angst and pearls behind hedge and thatch in the rolling Hertfordshire hills.

We had all attended the extraordinary and inspiring Holloways school which prepared us well for an idyllic world that I personally am still looking for! So we celebrated this â&#x20AC;&#x201C; apple-bobbing, lots of memorabilia, memories of country walks, shaggy old sheepdogs and then Kenzieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fish and chips appeared for our first English feast. Faces and bodies all fast-forwarded but everyone still somehow the same jolly soul.

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Those responsible please step forward Mike, Maggie, Geoffrey, Michael and Sarah Lou

Me and Bobby McGee alias Michael Richmond

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Enjoying the long hours of daylight we slip over to my birthplace and the last place we lived before coming to Mexico, arriving at Flint Hall Farm in Royston at 10 pm to the surprise of long time farm manager Tim Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Arcy, his wife Beryl and son Kevin. Caught up on all the social thistles and farm news â&#x20AC;&#x201C; stories well told by Beryl.

The B&B in Barkway delivered as full an English breakfast as you could wish for and with great relish. Brilliant weather.

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Off to Kingston and my son Robin his girlfriend Bev and kids Harley and Martel. Uncle Pablo and Auntie Cristy helped Grandpa Sean up the stairs and a good time was had by all! The first time we had all been together

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Good luck Robin!

We went to The Tower and the fantastic new South Bank with its Eye, Globe and Millennium Bridge, flying the Eye and buying typical souvenirs and eating beans and sausages, reacquainting with Branston pickle, gooseberries, rhubarb, Ginger Nut biscuits, cream teas, Maltesers, Munchies, unsmoked bacon, cider, wild strawberries, stinging nettles.

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Took the opportunity to wonder rather than marvel at the generally ghastly over-priced art in Christiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; June 30th Contemporary Art sale 7602 preview with its striking if ludicrously priced pieces.

Balloon Flower (Magenta)

Naked Portrait with Reflection

Lovely Mr. Koons

Thank you Mr. Freud

16,300,000 Euros

14,900,000 Euros

Mark Rothko C

Black, White, Blue ÂŁ2,505,250 (Can somebody please explain!?)

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Damien Hirst ‘Untitled’ £421,250 All a bit fishy if you ask me

Yashimoto Nara ‘Fuck’ £237,250

Gober & Levine Untitled’ sculpture £457,250 (How many

sculptors does it

take to change a

lightbulb)

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Dianna Byrne Little shoes and bags with perfumes (withdrawn)

But beat this for pure unadulterated hype (get out a magnifying glass you have to work for this stuff) Lucio Fontana Concetto spazziale, Attese

ÂŁ1,161,250

For Lucio Fontana, slashing the canvas was an act of creation, not destruction. In that simple gesture, Fontana opened up the redundant surface of the canvas to a realm of new possibilities. This was his Gordian Knot-like solution to the enigma that had faced him for so long: in the modern age, the Space Age, where can art go? What should the pictures of the age of rockets look like? Concetto spaziale, Attese appears to answer that question. The three vertical slashes have a calligraphic simplicity and elegance that borders on the iconic. Yet there is no image. There is not even abstraction. Instead, Fontana has turned the canvas into a portal, for the slashed hole implies that there is some scope for travel to the other side. In this sense, his decision to break through to the other side of the picture surface reflects the change in perspective that space travel introduced to the world. Over a century earlier, Man had seen the Earth from the air, but by the time Concetto spaziale, Attese was executed, Man had broken free of gravity and had seen the planet from the Cosmos. The slashes in this work are the artist's equivalent. By creating these spatial, Fontana has made us aware of the three-dimensional nature of the canvas as an object. It is no longer the flat plane upon which the drama of art plays itself out, but is instead an object, a sculpture-like entity-- Fontana has introduced us to this new perspective. By pointing to the three-dimensionality of the canvas as an object, Fontana betrays his origins as a sculptor, not a painter. Early in his career he had been a monumental sculptor in Argentina, following in his father's footsteps, and he continued this later in Italy. But even in the 1950s, he had begun to interest himself in other media, in works on paper and on canvas. It was perhaps his training as a sculptor that led him to investigate and disrupt the flatness of these media. Initially, he pierced these with holes which appeared like punctures, hinting at a frenetic violence in their creation. But in the so-called Attese, where slashes replaced these holes, he introduced a sense of refinement. The clean edges of these cuts and the implicit rhythm within their gestural sweep down the canvas fill the work with an elegance that hints at the ballet-like act of their creation. As a sculptor, then, Fontana introduced us to the concept that the canvas is itself an object in three-dimensional space; but in fact, it is in another sense that Fontana's Concetto spaziale, Attese is truly spatial or three-dimensional: it is not the canvas, but the holes inside it that are Fontana's true work of art. With his smooth and elegant slash, he has sculpted space itself, creating an area that at the moment is held in place by the canvas. To sculpt with space as a raw material-- what could be more apt in the Space Age? Discussing this new perspective, the Second Spatial Manifesto declared that: 'If the artist, locked in his tower, once represented himself and his astonishment and saw the landscape through his windows and then, having come down from the castles into the cities, he mixed with other men and saw from close-up the trees and the objects, now, today, we spatial artists have escaped from the cities, we have shattered our shell, our physical crust, and we have looked at ourselves from above, photographing the earth from rockets in flight' (signed by G. Dova, L. Fontana, B. Joppolo, G. Kaisserlian, M. Milani, A Tullier, Milan, March 1948, reproduced in E. Crispolti & R. Siligato (ed.), Lucio Fontana, exh.cat., Milan, 1998, p.118). Fontana's desire to create an art that remains relevant to the era of scientific discoveries in which he lived is evident in the gestures with which he created Concetto spaziale, Attese. The slashes, the movements of the arm and the knife, are themselves an artwork that exists not only in Space, but also in Time, a

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tribute to the world of science post-Einstein. The gesture, the opening of that space, is something that is not immortal but which, through its very irrevocability, is nonetheless eternal:

'The work of art is destroyed by time. 'When, in the final blaze of the universe, time and space no longer exist, there will be no memory of the monuments erected by man, although not a single hair on his head will have been lost. 'But we do not intend to abolish the art of the past or to stop life: we want painting to escape from its frame and sculpture from its bell-jar. An expression of aerial art of a minute is as if it lasts a thousand years, an eternity' (ibid., p.118).

Poking our heads up the arse of modern art at a much publicized Christies Auction Rooms’ view, was a good precursor to meeting up with Vaughan Oliver at the V&A where some of his work is on permanent exhibition. We then went round in spirals to find lunch at Spago in South Ken with Vaughan but not Ken (Corsey – a fellow ex-lodger from our Brentford house - was at Wimbledon and couldn’t come). Ate Italian served by late smiling Pole then off to Vaughan’s home in Garrett Lane, Wandsworth for a tea and a pee.

Heads up for Vaughan

Cheese for the camera

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Vaughanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unique and iconic work with 4AD records especially have made him an important and inspirational figure in modern graphic design.

Vaughan kindly inscribing a book dedicated to his oeuvre Up on the top deck through Fleet Street, The Strand, spot Cherry Blair pronouncing in Trafalgar Square, Hamleys, Soho, Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Street; Marble Arch no Jeannette Obstoj but an old face whose name I miraculously remembered (Will) still fixing clocks in Connaught Street! Then best Indian takeaway ever in

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Finchley with clicking children and Bosco, Vera and Chris Barton reliving and reviling as one does on these occasions.

Clickâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;

Fabio, Gabriela, Christy and Jose Guadalupe

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‘Click’ Walter, Mildred, Busker, Veronica and Tim Nostalgic drive-bys of past homes in Royston, Cambridge, Connaught Street nr Marble Arch, Brentford and Bristol and simply traveling between all the places we visited was mostly traffic-free and enjoyable apart from the remortgage inducing fill-ups – UK petrol 4 x the cost of Mexican stuff. Stops at South Mimms services became unavoidable thus supporting the location, location, location maxim of any successful eatery. Buy Coldplay’s new album Viva la Vida supposedly inspired by a Frida Kahlo painting

Kentucky Fried Cousins

Favoured few

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It was also the convenient scene of a long overdue reunion with my closest cousins Michael and Shelagh and their families. Turns out Peter Barrett Shelagh’s husband is now a children’s author! As we left, an opportune sighting in the car park of two Bond Minicar three-wheelers coming back from a rally up north. Our grandparents had one and there are now only 200 or so on the road apparently – so there’s a coincidence if you like. Haven’t seen one of these death traps since my grandad was at the wheel 40 odd years ago!

cherry

vanilla

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Picked up a Morgan Super Sport scale model (just like the one in Rowberrow - see later) for my three-wheeler collection that the Birdman had in wonderful quintessentially English Thame while visiting him at his Old Candle Factory there. Out came the Bullnose for Cristy’s first ever driving lesson and lots of other old gems too! Staying at Robin’s was a well-lived couple who had just driven their Rolls Royce Silver Spirit all the way from South Africa to London. The Van Ginkels flew out the day we arrived but not before sharing a great pub lunch and a few stories. He gave up his bed for us and disappeared into the garage to sleep with the bullnose after a hearty lamb dinner! Next day as we left a film crew was arriving with Anthony Smith to talk to him about crossing some ocean using drainpipes. Can’t see Robin in drainpipes but Anthony went on to complete the journey a few years later.

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First lesson - look left turn right

Robin was in great form and surrounded by all the bicycles, cars, lawnmowers, books, clocks, watches, and other paraphernalia that

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have also come to stay and help make his such a colourful life. Looking forward to his book (A Birdman’s Omnibus, Flights of Fancy, A lofty tome it will be for sure)

Time to meet up with Tom Donnelly and Greg Hamond which took us to York and a budget-busting stay at Middlethope Hall Hotel. This was a rather grand reminder of another type of Englishness – The plus-four, huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ era has gone but much of that spirit lingers on here (Tom pointed out the ha ha – he was always good at things like that). The ubiquitous Polish serving staff, and sandwiches rounded off a brief if reduced get together for some flying sculptors (Tom Donnelly, Gregg Hammond over from the US, Dianna and me)! Amazing how memories of the Flying Sculptures tours vary though.

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Andre Hellerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Kiku & Dreamstation Flying Sculptures where are they now?

Greg HammondÂ´s Indian flutes

A brisk stroll next day along the city walls and tea at Betty's famous tea rooms then Gregg and Monica set off by train to pursue a California dream in Woollacombe scattering native Indian flutes behind them as they went, Tom legged it back to Sprotborough and we slithered down the A1 towards southern comforts.

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Horde unrepelled by York’s City wall

Middlethorpe Hall and ha ha

A warm Cameron Balloons welcome by the late hours skeleton staff of Colin, Julia, Alan, Craig and Andy – left with bags of spares and the gift of a well worn Breitling jacket from project director Alan Noble which I shall of course treasure and not wash.

Thanks

Alan. I actually managed to leave it hanging in the loo at Colin Prescot’s house for a couple of years which must have been a sore reminder that Breitling beat his equally well prepared Cable and Wireless effort to circumnavigate the Globe.

A lover of boot sales, the West Country offered up one of its biggest which found Dianna and me at six am browsing in light drizzle amongst the discards! We found some good bargains small shoes for Dianna’s collection and junk for mine as well as yet

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a few more booooks. Surprisingly these affairs don’t happen in Mexico – probably a good thing!

Fate stepped in and we stepped into a fete- perfick!

The next day mingling with locals and taking tea at the Rowberrow village church fete – which really was so much better than death

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and showed English quirkiness at its very best – even a few real three-wheelers on show and a Bugatti. We loved it (didn’t we?).

Memories from winkledom

A Bugatti turning heads as always

Accompanied for skittles and tea at the Fete by Bristol friend Nick Sargent and his crew joining us for lunch from Clevedon at Rowberrow’s Swan Inn. There too Clare, Lionel, Gabrielle and Jessica who allowed us to share their lovely Draycot home for a couple of nights.

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Mr. and Mrs. Thompson

The pin the tail on the The girls

donkey game at the fete

It seemed that everyone is writing or has written books or had books written about them and every family has a drummer in their midst as we have in Pablo. Some pets bounded – 9+ chocolate labs, a poodle, two Bull terriers, a free-balling hamster, three cats and Gertrude to name a few! I looked forward to reading Jeff Bannister’s book ‘The Alan Bown Set’ recounting the life and times of my old music business mate Alan Bown and his reminiscences on all the brilliant musicians and

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events that he experienced in his long career. Sadly he was in the early stages of Alois Alzheimerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nasty discovery but keeping it together. Good luck dear friend.

The Alan Bown Setting

Alan and Jean were our last port of call before bowling off down to Stockbridge to see Colin, Susie and Polly Prescot in their idyllic cottage tucked away in the Hampshire woodlands and visiting Flying Pics for a chinwag. Great to see Andy Elson again too. Another card of a different pack!

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<= Gertrude

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At the end of our whirlwind trip, we got lazy in Pond House and imposed totally enjoying a couple of nights and a bit of winding down, chatting and sampling the scrumptious SusieQuisine.

Returning knackered on the home flight - which acted as a closing bracket for the incredibly vital and powerfully invigorating experience that this trip meant for our family - we were sorry to be going back to Mexico so soon. I love Mexico but it is a world apart from eccentric/Stately England and although we are well settled here we felt completely at home in the UK whether sipping tea in Betty's, in the local with the Holmer Green amateur dramatic

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society, sitting in an English Garden, ‘riding’ the Routemaster down Oxford street, ‘taking’ the tube, hailing’ a cab, or marveling at the greenery, scenery and machinery of new Britain (sorry – liked the rhyme). I guess good weather and long days flavoured and favoured our impression somewhat.

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What an amazing crowd! It was great to see such an abundance of well-being and happiness putting any longer teeth, graying hair, troubles and losses in perspective. What unites all of us without exception is a proclivity for fun and smiles rather than frowns and rants. We laugh a lot! Failing memory generally hasn’t hit, but I see those little reading glasses ‘pinzed’ on quite a few ‘nez’ these days! Our best times were those spent in the company of all these friends and the memory of people and their places is etched on my mind hopefully forever. We never seemed to stop grinning - I am now! One person greatly missed was Sheena Latimer who passed away suddenly a short time before our trip. She was a wonderful and unique woman and a strong reason for realizing our journey had been a wish to spend some time with our dear friend and her husband, Michael,. He was also fending off serious illness as he dealt gallantly with his profound loss. Their son Rupert joined us for a great meal and we spent a fun and stimulating evening

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together as always.

Sadly no photos though and now no Michael

either. The chance for Dianna, the kids and I to be together for so long gave us a chance to understand each other better too.

Thank you to everyone who put us up or put up with us or who made time for us and made our time so incredible and complete. A special thanks to Peter and Diane in Holmer Green who unwisely offered their house as a ‘base’ together with their Tom Tom SatNav which meant we were always going to find our way ‘HOME’ – how I relied on that little monkey (I don’t mean you Peter!)

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Hey Pete, great the way that Tomtom thingy keeps bringing us back here.

As I suppose the Tomtom might say – ‘cross the ocean and take the first exit’ which we have done. Often when first switched on it would indicate – ‘turn round at the first opportunity’ Who knows when we shall follow that simple direction! Love to absolutely everyone and thanks for all the kindnesses, tolerance, company and friendship.

Los Byrnes Sean, Dianna, Pablo and Cristy

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The soldier

When I die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke (with apologies)

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FOUR POEMS

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* I am about to recount the farewell account that was given by a clown when he left a little town and put his best foot forward. suffice it to say he's not there today but somehow still he remains IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

The Clown's Farewell IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII A feast was laid out on a table of oak

437 For a clown's farewell to the local townsfolk With fruits in abundance and plenty to spare Much merry was made and done as was dared The ale overflowed, the wine never ended Cider was drunk and the girls were up-ended By men doing dances, and flashing their muscles As young ragamuffins just tumbled and tussled Waving his joker, the jester was hearty He never expected so handsome a party And tears found his cheek as he pondered his lot Had he made people happy who were otherwise not? He picked up his voice having silenced the crowd Then choosing words carefully he spoke out aloud Oh Farewell good people So long my fine friends I love you and leave you A piece of my heart Parting's sweet sorrow Well that's just not me But I'm happy Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m off Where I finish, I start The Small twists of fate The journeys we make Crissing and crossing Make each life an art So, thanks for the memories And thanks for the fun

Here I will stay I'm not going away A big part of me Is embedded in thee And aches for the past I'm no iconoclast So my life rearranges Really nothing changes

Things that bind us together with no care for the weather twixt here and there-after full of love but much dafter That's quite enough for me What more can there be

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The Baldock Sporren toss the caber, ink stained sheet, fat love, tough love, own two feet, compass turning, musty groves, find direction, fish and loaves, toppling world, cracking crust, quakes and quandries, what to trust: mates and mums and pop and drums and shiny skies and blue fruit gums, short shorts, old shirts and ipod shuffles, popcorn, flicks, and crisps or ruffles. the nuclear clock, unclear block, the huffington post, wikileaks and beans on toast, a beer or two a match the spokes on yer bike young man for a night with the blokes, or the girls or the game or the stars or alone or whatever yer fancy. the much oiled scottish bard Willy Mcnilly coined a phrase "Och moony trust in the Baldock Sporren, tis a lacky lad who coddles him thus.â&#x20AC;?

I think he was right!

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PULL ME UP AND PUSH ME OVER

PULL ME UP AND PUSH ME OVER ONE HUNDRED TIMES LET ME FALL INTO THE QUAKING MAELSTROM THAT INSECURES ME FIZZING FUSE RUNNING TO EXPLODE IN MY HEAD TO FIND ONLY A HOLLOW EMPTIED SHELL WITHOUT POWDER MY IDENTITY DEFINED BY WHAT GOES ON AROUND ME MY REASONS UNCLEAR AND MY WISHES UNDONE I OPEN MY MOUTH, MY EARS, MY EYES, MY HEART SO THAT THE WINDS OF CHANCE CAN EXPLORE MY EMPTINESS BUT THEY ONLY RATTLE THE SHUTTERS, MOVE ON SEEING NO OPPORTUNITY THERE NO RIVER FLOWS IN THAT DRY CREEK NO ABUNDANCE, NO HOPE SULLEN AND SUNKEN TUNNELING DOWN AND DOWN LIGHT CAN ONLY ELUDE SUCH SEEKING SUBMERGED IN SPIRALS OF USELESSNESS COILED LIKE A DEAD SNAKE, SKIN SHED FOR THE LAST TIME DRIED AND RASPING BREATH WITH SOLICE IN SLEEP RESTING TO CONTNUE THE ESPLORATION OF DEEP UNSATISFACTION I SEE YOU YOU DREAMERS HOPERS, WISHERS, TRAWLERS OF THE MOMENT HOPING FOR UNCLAIMED OPORTUNITY UNCLAIMED CHANCES TO SUCCEED LIKE A GAME SHOW, A MINUTE TO WIN IT A LIFE TIME DEPENDS ON EVERY CHANCE BUT WHEN THE DANCE IS OVER AND THE MUSCLES LOSE THEIR RYTHMN THE DESIRE TO KILL SUBSIDESTHE REASON TO LIVE DIES THEN WHAT? ONCE YOU HAVE SCOOPED UP YOUR CHANCES ONCE YOU HAVE BLOWN YOUR FORTUNE ONCE YOU DWINDLE FROM CONSIDERATION WHEN EXPERIENCE IS ONLY A HAZZARD WHAT THEN?

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REGENESIS The sea so beautiful, The sun so pure The valley so confident. The bay so secure All the buildings like the flowers, that face to the sun If there is a God, Here his work is done And we with our wisdom adornments sublime Dots on the landscape, living our time Believe we possess all this world and its beauty The deeds and the statutes over-riding our duty To respect every morsel and moment we savour Not sully it all with the kind of behaviour That abuses our advantage as the dominant species Laying the law like cats litter faecies And so the regenesis, Rapid decline Time to accept it and time to resign Ourselves to a humbler simpler world design Where sharing is everything, Greed is a crime The gracious reward – a happier time United we stand, Or divided we fall. Do we all pull together. Or cower in the stall When it is all too late saying: ‘I told you so’ Words are cheap, And life’s even cheaper The world’s overheating, And there goes the beeper! I’ve never believed in God bless us all In fact I’ve never believed in God much at all Let evil prevail and all sins wash away? I’m sorry my friends but this God’s had his day And so much the better, No more speak His name No more hanging judges, Or heads hung in shame For we are our saviour, Nothing more nothing less And our World is demanding, A change of address

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THERE YOU GO