Teenage years onwards

Here I am , on the right, with two of my schoolfriends in 1970 or 1971. Living in a rural area made it more difficult to spend time with mates at the weekend but we'd travel on the bus (where there was one) on our bikes, on foot or preferably by persuading people to give us lifts! Unlike those who lived in urban areas, you tended to know lots of people for quite a distance around and if, for example, I was walking to meet up with either of these two, it was quite likely that someone would stop and give me a lift.

Here are my Mum and Dad at a wedding, I think about 1970 (certainly between 1969 and 1971). Mum died in 1994 but even aged 90 my Dad still has a better head of hair than I do!

It was more difficult for me to get to evening events as these tended to take place in Whitehaven, five or six miles from home, and my Dad was never keen on driving me around after his day at work. (Buses were an option but not really frequent enough) My Mum in particular, perhaps because she was older than most teenagers' parents, was awfully worried about me getting into trouble and was, I think, a bit overprotective. Consequently my social life in my early and mid teens was a bit limited. Also, because of my attachment to the farm and my involvement with hound trailing, I was often faced with a choice of friends or farm and dogs and certainly chose the latter more often than I should have! Perhaps because of this I was never that involved in the music scene, school discos and the like and now feel that I missed out on things as a result. I've always felt that there was a downside to having older parents and to spending too much time with adults rather than my contemporaries, and to this day find myself occassionally with some old fashioned attitudes and ideas.

Life did change quite a bit in 1975 when I passed my driving test and acquired a little gold Morris Mini Clubman and suddenly I could go where I wanted, when I wanted. By that time I was being paid for my toil on the farm - £10 per week for a mere ten hours a day, 6 days a week, during the summer holidays - and I had money for petrol and beer! The car also made me quite popular with friends at school and during my last year in the sixth form, and for a couple of years afterwards, a group of us would get together and drive out to different places both in the coastal towns and in the lake district. Occasionally we'd go to some music event - perhaps in a pub or club in Whitehaven or Workington - but usually we'd just go to pubs and hang out together before going back to someone's house where we'd linger until the early hours. I remember one of my friends once going to see Elton John somewhere which makes me think that it was a rarity to go to concerts - certainly I don't ever remember being aware of, or wanting to see, nationally known singers or groups performing anywhere within reach.

Fortunately, others also soon got cars and turns would be taken at driving and staying sober! On that subject, I'm very impressed at how young people today automatically seem to avoid alcohol altogether when driving - that wasn't the case when we were young, and various theories were propounded about how much it was "safe" to drink.

Some of the friends I had during that period, including the two pictured above, have become lifelong friends and others still seem to crop up from time to time. In 1977, just after I'd started work, three of us travelled down to Oxford to spend a weekend with one of our group who was studying at Queens College. We drank a lot of beer, went to some dark and smoke filled places, slept on our friend's floor and pretended to be students the next morning to get a college breakfast. We must have a had a good time because for some reason I remember that trip particularly well. Looking back though, I think it was probably the first time I'd been any further south than Lancashire and a trip to London on the Saturday was certainly the first time I'd been to the capital.

For some reason there are very few pictures taken during the middle 1970's and early 1980's and this one dates from my first trip to the USA in 1984. I had finally finished with studying and exams about 18 months earlier and decided, along with a friend from work, to treat myself to a really good holiday. We certainly managed that and visited Los Angeles, The Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley and San Francisco over a three week period. Above I am standing by a very large tree in Yosemite National Park.
That holiday started a real love of America and I've been back, alone and with others, ten or eleven times over the years. I really enjoy getting out into the more remote areas not regularly visited by european tourists.

I include this picture for no other reason that I think it's a good one. Taken half way down into the Grand Canyon it marks the point where we decided we'd better start walking back out again! A mixture of altitude, dehydration and sore feet made it the most exhausting walk I've ever done. Take a tip from me - hire a mule if you want to descend into the canyon otherwise its like mountaineering in reverse, you do the downhill bit first!

After enjoying a gentle horse ride through the sonora desert in Arizona I got the idea of trying a ranch holiday and learning to ride properly and, in 1996 spent a week doing just that in Wyoming. I've now had five such holidays, made some good friends and seen areas of Wyoming and New Mexico in the US, and Alberta in Canada, that I'd not have seen otherwise. I've always found Americans to be exceptionally nice, friendly people and spending a week in some of the country's finest scenery with them is a great way to get to know them better.

Relaxing afer a day on a horse in the Rocky Mountains of western Wyoming.

Throughout the 1990's I was a member of a pub quiz team and as a result I have a head full of useless information. The capital of Chad, Jimmy Carter's middle name, the length of the M6, the toxic ingredient of a polar bear's liver and Sergeant Bilko's serial number are all things that I, and other members of the team, were familiar with. However, the most bizarre thing to come out of my quiz career is that I once had an argument with Melvyn Bragg's aunt. One wet Thursday night I arrived at the Pub to meet the others before driving to an away fixture only to find that only four of our team of eight or nine had turned up. The Landlady of the pub then announced that she would come along and bring her friend. Her friend would be brilliant - she read lots of books and was Melvyn Bragg's aunt!

Off we went and things went well enough until we were asked which river flowed through Alnwick in Northumberland. None of us knew but the elderly Mrs Bragg was certain it was the Tweed. I knew it wasn't the Tweed because it forms the border with Scotland and Alnwick is miles from the border but could I convince her? No chance. She argued until the correct answer was revealed (The River Aln). We never saw her again after that night, apparently because I wouldn't listen to her answers (I stood in for the absent captain and had to decide which answer we gave) which was true at least when I knew them to be wrong!

Looking a whole lot smarter here I am almost right up to date with my new family in 2005. Pamela and I were blessed with exceptionally warm weather for our big day and pose here with her children, Charlotte and James on the way to the wedding reception.

After a honeymoon which included a few days in Rome we've developed a taste for visiting foreign cities - something which hasn't previously been high on my list of holiday activities. Rome is certainly our favourite so far, but here we are on a short break to Barcelona in February 2006.

And so that brings us to 2007 and the big birthday. The big 50. The half century.

Celebrations took us to New York for four days and then to a party thrown by the BBC! The great and the good were there in some number - John Humphreys, James Naughtie, Ian Hyslop and many others from TV and Radio. Various politicians past and present - Alan Johnston, Geoffrey Howe, Menzies Campbell, Norman Fowler and many others. A strange event - we recognised more than half of the people there but none of them knew us!

So that's it. No more will be added to this blog until 2057 when I expect the BBC to invite us to another party!