summer 1978

The summer between schools. I'd passed the eleven plus and got all that unpleasentness behind me. That summer I spent quite a lot of time around Raymond Grey's house. We'd been friends for a while. His parents seemed to like me - they were older than mine - and he lived up the hill - Salisbury road. He had one of the early games machines so we could play ping pong, tennis and various other games based on variations of knocking a white dot about the screen using a joystick to control a couple of on-screen paddles.

Dad with sister and dog

He came to my house quite a bit too. One day he decided to soak all my football cards in water and then throw them out of my bedroom window. One of them landed on a neighbour, a young woman who was sunbathing - it landed on her belly and we had to say sorry. She wasn't happy.

Raymond came to Wembury with us one evening too - I think my parents were quite keen to encourage any friendship.

The other friend I had that summer was someone called Colin Mitchell. He had applied to go to the same school as me and had got in. This was very good news...but then he told me that he was moving away from Plymouth. I have never seen or heard from him since.

Quite a few friendships ended for me at the end of that summer - I lost touch with anyone not going to my school, even kids I'd played around on the street with since I was 8 or 9.

But new friendships were to begin....

1978 - Chaplin's body stolen - remember all this being reported
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/23/newsid_3055000/3055581.stm