Read the first pages of three lives

There I was, making my way through the final year of primary school. I was eleven years old and in class 4A at Elston Hall Primary School in North Wolverhampton. As mentioned earlier, I was the Head Boy. God knows why they had chosen me, but it was so!

Without any pre-warning and apparent lead-up to it, the first of two defining moments occurred.

“Hey, you lot, come here quick! This new group are on the radio now!” cried out my classmate Geoffrey, a boy who was too spoiled for his own good and just happened to possess the first portable transistor radio that anyone in my community had ever seen.

What an amazing little device it was! Small, square, red and cream in colour. It blared out music from the palm of the owner’s hand.

It was not the radio that was the defining moment, however! It was the group that we were being urged to listen to. “Who are they?” I enquired.

“They’m called The Beatles, they’m from Liverpool,” replied Geoffrey in his best Wolverhampton accent. We listened, and we listened. We were dumbstruck!

· · ·

“It’s great, aye it!” shouted out Geoffrey.

“Arrr it is!” we all retorted.

And that was it. From that defining moment on, the world as we knew it had changed. Everything that had gone before was about to be forgotten (with the exception maybe of Elvis!). Suddenly, a whole new swathe of British bands hit the airwaves. At the forefront were The Beatles, but closely followed by The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Animals, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Hollies, The Searchers, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield and so many more, one after the other.

It was Merseybeat, London beat and before long, everywhere in the UK beat. Suddenly, boys were growing their hair long like the Beatles and The Stones. Girls were starting to wear shorter skirts, much shorter skirts! No wonder boys were smiling everywhere!

The Beatles were the defining moment, and it was the Liverpool explosion heralding the ‘swinging sixties’. The world would be forever changed.

For me, in 1963, I was totally carried along by this tidal wave of new music, fashion and attitude. Yes, it was the attitude above all. Young people were rebelling against the old ways, the order, the strict expectations of parents. We had our voice, and we would never lose it!

It was only a couple of months or even less before the second defining moment occurred. This time, the defining moment would be more personal.

Of course, it had to be Geoffrey again, the chief catalyst of defining moments!

“What you got in that strange-shaped case, Geoffrey… a big violin?” someone in the classroom asked. All our eyes turned on this case in curiosity, but I correctly sensed what was in there.

“It’s a guitar, aye it!!” I shouted out.

· · ·

I gawped at the guitar. Here was the very instrument I had worshipped (albeit it was a much cheaper acoustic version) in the hands of Hank Marvin for the last two years, and recently, by my new guitar hero, George Harrison.

“Can I ‘ave a go, Geoffrey?” I asked hopefully.

Maybe because I was head boy, Geoffrey put the guitar in my hands. It seemed to want to shape itself to my body. It hung there around my neck from its cord and invited me to strum it.

I hadn’t got a clue, of course, but somehow the sound that came out of it was pure magic to my ears. This was me actually playing the real thing instead of the ‘guitar hero’ playing the bloody tennis racket in front of the bedroom mirror! I was struck!

That was it, I must have a guitar. I would make it my ultimate goal in life… I would be a guitarist……And I was!

Thank you, Geoffrey, for bringing about the two defining moments of my young life… perhaps my whole life!

I begged and begged at home for a guitar.

This was my dad: “A guitar, you’re asking me for a blinkin’ guitar! You can get your mind off that lad… if I buy you a guitar, it’ll be stuck in a corner gathering dust after a month!”

Christmas came and went, and of course no guitar from my misery of a dad.

“Mom, you know I really want a guitar and Dad is never going to buy me one! My birthday is coming up,” I said hopefully and with my big cheeky grin and eyebrows almost coming off the top of my head. Mum could never resist my smile and cheeky face, so she said,

“Well, if you promise to come in off t’ field for tea as soon as I call you, don’t go anywhere near t’ canal when you’re playing outside and come straight home from school every day, we might see about a guitar,” she beamed.

Then she let out a “whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo” and doubled up in laughter, which she did at least five times a day, and we all loved her for it. Except dad, who normally said something extremely complimentary to her, such as ‘get back to that twopenny ha’penny village in Yorkshire where yow come from!’ Charming!

And so, on that fateful day in 1964 on my birthday, I got my first guitar. I have never put it or its dozens of subsequent guitars down since. None have ever gained a single coating of dust, neglected in a corner!

Thanks, Mom… I truly always loved you!

“Oh bloody ‘ell, how much longer can I endure waiting here on this motorway slip road trying to thumb a friggin’ lift?” I had been standing on the slip road onto the M5 motorway at a big roundabout known as Lydiate Ash. This was a long way southwest of Birmingham but the closest junction to the M5 from the Maypole, where I was living. John’s friend Martin had kindly taken me to this spot in his Cortina GT.

It was cold, and I had been standing there for about 30 minutes, my thumb going backwards and forwards at every car or truck that passed. This was the standard procedure for hitchhiking or ‘thumbing a lift’ as we called it.

“Sod this,” I thought, wondering if I should give up and get the bus home. Just then, a beautiful green sports car came tearing off the roundabout onto the slip road. “Wow, what an amazing car,” I said out loud. I instantly recognised it as an E-Type Jaguar, one of the most iconic British sports cars ever! “Oh well, here goes… " You never know!” I said to myself again. Then I stuck my thumb out cheekily and gave an exaggerated smile at the driver.

“Haha, no chance,” I thought.

My jaw dropped as the magnificent car shot past me, screeched its brakes, and pulled over about 50 yards ahead. The passenger door opened. “Holy shit, it’s my lucky day!”

“Well, I say, my boy, you do look rather cold and bedraggled standing there; where are you off to?” The driver was an old guy, balding, with a large hooked nose and the biggest handlebar moustache I had ever seen! He looked and spoke like a wing commander straight out of a WWII Battle of Britain movie!

“Bristol,” I replied.

“Well, I am headed that way too… hop in, my boy,” his moustache extended upwards as he beamed at me. I eased myself into the leather bucket seat, staring in awe at the instrument panel and the gear stick that looked like the joystick of a fighter aircraft.

“Well, my boy, is this your first time in an E-Type?”

“It’s my first time in a Jag, let alone an E-Type!”

We cruised along; the car purred mostly in the outside lane. Glancing at the speedo, I was shocked to see we were doing 80 mph!

“Har har, my boy, have you ever done the ton?” I chuckled to myself, thinking about how I rarely exceeded 25 mph in my Uncle Bill’s car! Martin had thrilled us in his Cortina GT a few times, but you could hardly get above 40 mph heading into Birmingham centre.

“No,” I replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever been above 50!”

“Well, my boy, I’d better let you have your first taste of real speed. Don’t worry, I used to race sports cars at Brands Hatch, har har.” I believed him too! This old gentleman was definitely the real thing—amazing!

Ahead of us, the motorway was reasonably clear. It was a Saturday morning in late March. Back then, motorways were much less congested than they would become years later, and no holiday traffic was heading south.

He hit the accelerator, and the E-Type responded immediately. Like a thoroughbred horse, we galloped along. The 4.2-litre engine emitted a beautiful throaty roar. My eyes stared wildly as trees and cars blurred past. The speedo nudged 110 mph, then on to 130!

“Oh my God, I’m gonna die!”

“Well, my boy, we had better ease off now. We don’t want to arouse those boys in blue, what! Ha har.”

My heart was racing, my hands numb as I clung to the seat sides. It was unbelievably exhilarating. We slowed to a seemingly sedate 80 mph.

“How fast will this E-Type actually go?” I asked.

“Well, top speed is rated at 153 mph, but I’ve never had her over 140! Ha har.”

“Bloody hell, I’m dreaming all this!”

But it was no dream. This really happened, and this old guy was fantastic. For the rest of the journey, I asked him about his life. It turned out he was a retired high-ranking army officer who had recently lost his wife and must have been lonely. I figured he cruised in this E-Type to escape his solitude. What a nice and kind man he was, taking me almost all the way to my destination near the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol.

As I climbed out, he said, “Well, my boy, you’re a nice lad, and I wish you all the best in life, but you need a haircut! Har har har.” Then he was off.

I stared at the British Racing Green E-Type as it disappeared. I felt like I’d just been in a completely different world. For that one hour, he and I had been best friends, sharing an unforgettable time. I turned and walked to the apartment where my lovely friend from Bristol was waiting.

The first thing that hits you when approaching the Maldives is how the colour of the ocean starts to change from a continuous expanse of monotone green-blue to more distinctive areas of pure green, turquoise and blue, due to the great variation in seabed depth. This is essentially an underwater mountain range, with peaks that are not far from the surface.

Gradually, we could make out shining rings of land lying on the surface looking like jewels on the sea.

These are formed by the growth of coral from the mountain peaks which, over thousands, even millions, of years, break the surface of the sea to form a coral atoll. An atoll is normally a distinctive circle of islands surrounding beautiful lagoons, each containing beds of coral in every colour of the rainbow.

As we flew lower on our landing approach, we realised that these were the shining jewels we could see from higher in the air.

Lower still, we began to make out small huts on stilts stretching out into the lagoons from pure white sand beaches. These huts looked to have palm-leaf roofs. Each island was ringed with white sand, with a mass of coconut trees standing tall and erect across the whole space.

We gazed out from the aircraft windows, mesmerized.

Lower still, the landing wheels came down.

“I don’t see any sign of any friggin’ airport!” a slightly nervous-sounding Steve uttered.

Lower still, the shadow of the aircraft was clearly beneath us, bouncing along the top of the rippling waves.

“Shouldn’t we be seeing some kind of airport perimeter, roads or something resembling the edge of an airport!?” I, too, was now getting alarmed.

Lower still, the main wheels seemed about to touch down in the water, when suddenly tarmac appeared under the wheels and, with a gentle bump, the big Douglas DC-10 hit the runway.

There was a huge outcry of ‘Holy sheeet!’, ‘Oh my God!’, ‘Mein Gott!’, ‘Mon Dieu!’, ‘Phew!’, ‘Uwaaa!’, ‘Eeeee!’, ‘Friggin’ ’ell!’ and various other swear words in various languages as 250 people released the air that they had been holding in for over a minute.

It was just then that Alain, the French chef, who had flown with us all the way from Paris and had slept the entire way, woke up and enquired:

“Nous sommes arrivés?”

The tension was broken.

Of all the many hundreds of flight landings I have made around the world since that day, none have ever come close to being so scary and nerve-wracking.

The main airport in the Maldives is built directly on a long and straight piece of coral and supported by thousands of tons of concrete. It literally looks like a runway floating on the water, with a wider space at the far end to house the terminal and the various aircraft servicing units.

Near the ‘airport’, we could see Malé (pronounced Malay), the capital of the Maldives, which was an island two kilometres long and less than one kilometre wide.

The Maldives consists of a long chain of over 1,800 tiny islands, many of which are uninhabited (by humans).

Our Club Mediterranée resort occupied the whole of the island called Farukolufushi (we called it Faru for short) and was part of the ring of islands forming Malé Atoll.

Faru was a twenty-minute boat ride across the lagoon from the airport.

In addition to the scary landing at Malé Airport, the other thing that surprised me on the plane was the large number of Japanese couples flying with us.

We found out that most of them were on honeymoon and that the Maldives was fast becoming a popular destination for Japanese honeymoons.

I was fascinated by their quiet and polite manner, but also by their obvious friendliness.

Now, here I was on the boat with a large group of them.

Steve and I tried to get to know them and introduce ourselves, but only a few spoke English. However, the word soon got around that we were a couple of English musicians, which seemed to fascinate them no end.

As we made our way across to Faru, we were stunned by the beauty of this place.

We could see other islands all around us, each rising no more than a few metres from the sea, all fringed with white sand and covered in coconut trees.

Suddenly, there was a delighted squeal from one of the Japanese ladies:

“Uwaaa! Mitte, mitte!” (Look, look!)

She pointed at a beautiful dolphin that had suddenly appeared at the bow of the boat and was diving under the bow, then reappearing on the other side, obviously having a great time.

Fifty Japanese cameras immediately started to click.

“Friggin’ ’ell, Bob, how did we land a job like this!?” Steve remarked.

“Don’t pinch me, mate, I don’t wanna wake up in Wolverhampton!” was all I could reply.

The boat pulled into the stunning blue-green lagoon of Faru, where we could see a long, narrow jetty leading out to a building with a strange, scalloped roof.

There, in front of it, was a very familiar sight.

About twenty G.Os, dressed in pareos, were already dancing, clapping their hands and singing the welcome song.

“Aww, Steve, I feel like I’m coming home.”