This is a crude reconstruction of what I reckon to be my very oldest memory.

I'm looking from the top deck of a bus going down Union Street in Ryde, and I realise that my mother and her friends are looking at this figure right out on the edge of the sand, doing something. I'm too young to understand what they're saying about him, but he seems only yards from this huge ship with red funnels. I felt a bit uneasy about his predicament, but the mums on the bus to The Esplanade weren't worried, so I suppose he must have managed a safe return. 

A baby boomer-ish sort of person, born on the Isle of Wight in 1949, I spent my early years being educated by nuns and Christian Brothers before discovering the wondrous Foundation Course at Portsmouth Art School. Then to Canterbury to study Graphics. Didn't really know why until Ian Dury turned up to teach and form a band called Kilburn and the High Roads.

People stopped being cool and sullen. Cockney was the accent du jour and suddenly everybody got very chatty. Which turned out to be quite annoying.

You wanted them to return to their sullen dopishness. Went from like hey man to wotcha geezer...

I met Max Wall once and asked him about Ian,  he'd written him a song, England's Glory -and he replied, ‘Ian, oh he's a lovely boy'.   

Went to a busy bordering on frantic, but fun studio in Camden to work as a record sleeve designer. My first memory was trying to hide a horrible ad I was designing for Millican and Nesbitt (singing miners since you ask) while Bryan Ferry was politely looking over my shoulder. Every Friday was a panicky rush to put hundreds of ads to bed for Roxy music, Free, Traffic and, er, Millican and Nesbitt...   

We drank in The Engineer. It's still there, but it's gone a bit gastro. Always loved music especially American Jazz and The Big American Song. Used to sing in a pre-punk combo called Waiter My Bill, the sort of group that eschews (inadvertently) groupies for lightly-bearded guitar fans to stand in front of the stage and stare, a touch malevolently.

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