

No-One

Famous

By

Phil Morgan

Contents.

Prologue

  1. 70s & 80s

  2. Dads Adoption, London & Ireland

  3. The Morgan's

  4. Birthdays, Haircuts & The A.T.C

  5. School, Parties & Zeeta

  6. Miriam

  7. Friends

  8. Bikes, Cars & Anna

  9. College & Work

  10. R.A.F

  11. Cosford Drinking Weekend & Martin

  12. Devon & Jets

  13. Sharon

Acknowledgments
Prologue

May 1972. My mother is lying in the bed in agonising pain; my father is across the road pacing the front room of their friend's house. Not quite sure where my sister was thou....

'Push a little bit more.... A bit more....' The midwifes voice isn't exactly soothing, I was putting up a bit of a fight and she wasn't happy about the delay, it looked a bit scary out there I can tell you.

'Almost there, one more big push now....Congratulations Mary it's a boy!!!'

'I couldn't give a dam if it was a duck!!!' and with those immortal words I was brought forth into the world....a duck.

Chapter 1.

70s & 80s

My childhood was a good one. I had a Welsh father and an Irish mother, what more could a child ask for? I had a sister, Claire, who was four years older than me and that was it. My parents had moved to Wales a few years before I was born onto a new estate in the little village of Ton-Teg. A cul-de-sac with 21 houses which overlooked playing fields at one end. Some of my first memories were of going to nursery in a small village hall in Llantwit Fardre. A bunch of kids in one place being allowed to do pretty much what we wanted as long as we all sat down half way through the morning and drank warm milk. We had a fancy dress there once, for some unknown reason. I believe I was dressed up in a cowboy outfit. There was another kid there dressed in a martial arts outfit and thought himself as the new Bruce Lee. He just went around the other kids shouting at them, kicking, punching and yelling a bit more. This came to a drastic end when one kid had enough of this and went over and kicked him in the nuts. Just for that one memory nursery was good.

Growing up in the 70s and the 80s was great. The 70s were still a time where people still left their doors open, everyone said hello to each other, the next door neighbours turned into uncle so-and-so and auntie so-and-so and depending on your religion the local holy man would pop around for tea whenever he liked. Now I don't have a huge recollection of my early year's just brief memories now and again. Seventy seven was a big year. It was the queen's golden jubilee and everyone had huge street parties. Now street parties back then were great, everyone, not just in my street but all over the place got as many tables as they could out in the street, cover them in cheap paper covers and supply as much food as possible. All the kids would sit around the tables and stuff their faces full of crap and fizzy drink with so many additives and colourings that it would probably kill an elephant. It was great.

It was also a time that saw major changes around the neighbourhood I lived. Shopping centres were being built new housing estates where popping up everywhere and we even had our own sports centre being built. Unfortunately they left the council estate, or as us kids used to call it 'The Bronx' as it was. Building sites were great places to play as a kid. Unlike today's health and safety, back then there was none. Every weekend or around five o'clock each school day after the workers had gone home us kids would descend onto the sites and have a whale of a time. Climbing scaffolding was the main order of the day along with seeing how many tools we could find. When the sports centre was completed they started holding, amongst other things, world famous roller discos. These were a phenomenon that swept the country, well I think they did. You would go in to the sports centre, rummage through cardboard boxes trying to find two matching roller boots and then try to skate around and around in circles while some bloke plays cheesy chart music. Our sports centre also intruded a bouncy castle into the centre as well. Roller skates and bouncy castles at the same time don't really work, but hell we were kids what did we care. It was at one of these great events that I claimed my first black eye, whilst on the bouncy castle, with roller skates on.

Need I say anymore?

Now for many kids school is a nightmare, I was no exception. I was also mortified to find out that the tradition of drinking warm milk was still firmly in place On my first day I got told off for trying to run over the sinks in the toilets, it was a tradition that stayed with me for many a year, it was also the day I met someone who would be one of my best friends. I met him sitting in the classroom all by himself. His name was Jason. I sat with him and we had a chat and I introduced him to sink running. He loved it as much as me but never seemed to get into trouble like I did. Maybe I just had a knack for it. Jason and I remained firm friends for the duration of our school and college days.

I was brought up Roman Catholic so I went to a Roman Catholic school. God was big on the agenda I can tell you, with all the year being frog marched down to the local church every couple of weeks to sit in a dark room and tell some bloke what sins you had committed. Now this was all well and good, for a while but, we soon run out of sins to say so the next step was to lie about stuff you had done just for something to say to the bloke on the other side of the grating. We used to have running competitions on who lied the most and who had been given the most Hail Marys and Our Fathers. I remember this one thing in junior school, it was around Good Friday, a religious celebration about the death and resurrection of Jesus, it was called Corpus Christi. Now, if I remember rightly, and please forgive me if I'm wrong, this consisted of having a load of young girls dress in white march around the church with some boy carrying a pillow with a crown thing on it. Te way our school chose this poor boy was to get all the boys to try on the costume which had to be worn on the day. This outfit consisted on shorts, shirt and waist coat. The lucky boy was the one which the clothes fitted, and guess what, that lucky boy was me. My, how happy I was, no really I was...... There are some photos lurking somewhere showing me wearing shorts that were far too tight and far too short with nicely combed hair and a cheesy grin. Exploitation of the young I call it, but at the time it seemed to make sense, sort off.

Another thing about Catholic School was having try outs for the school choir. Now I can't sing a note, nor can most kids at the age of seven or eight. Let's face it you just normally shout or screech at that age. But that didn't put the headmaster, Big Mac we used to call him on account he was bloody huge and had great hair to boot, from lining us up in the main hall and getting us to sing some random hymn. The way he used to choose who sang in the choir was to bend over almost double so that his ear was next to your mouth whilst you sang. He used to stay there and listen to you belting out hymns in good old fashioned kid style while you had the lovely view of his rather overgrown hairy ears. If Big Mac thought you were good enough he used to stand upright look down at you in a most discerning manner and then belt you across the back of your head. This was your signal to leave ranks and go and join the rest of the 'lucky ones' off to one side who, then would go along to the church on the Sunday and sing to the gathered hoards of happy bible bashers and your very proud parents.

Discipline was great in those days, what with the cane, the dap, this was a huge plimsoll which we called 'Di the dap' and of course, my favourite, the ruler over the palms of your hand. Being beaten around your head only seemed natural. I was a regular visitor in the head masters office in junior school for getting into trouble. Usually from saying something I shouldn't have, or being caught sink running. I think my parents were always informed of my misdemeanours but being the time it was they let the school system deal with it and nothing more was said. You were always being watched no matter what you did or where you were. Evan at dinner times if you messed up you had to stand on your chair while everyone looked at you. If you messed up in class you had to either stand on your chair or stand in the corner. The thing is these days teachers can't do anything to pupils but back then when you messed up you were shown to the entire school and the insult was enough to make sure you didn't do it again. Discipline even spread to everyday life. You had the local police man who lived in his own little house down on Church Road. If you upset someone and they said they were going to call the police you were genuinely frightened. Police were respected for the most and whenever you seen him he always said hello and you always said hello back. I was brought up with the ethos of 'If you got nothing to hide you got nothing to fear'.

Junior school flew by at an alarming rate. Days turned into weeks and weeks into years. They cram so much into your heads it's hard to believe that you stay sane. I had a whale of a time, me and Jason always messing about and getting into trouble; well, mostly me getting into trouble. It was also when I started getting blurred vision which finally ended with me blacking out on a regular basis. It scared the crap out of me and must have done the same to my parents. I went to several doctors, who didn't know what was wrong. And then I went to a specialist. How the hell my parents could afford it I will never know. I was taken to the hospital in Cardiff where they attached a wire net thing to my head and injected me with some sort of dye. Now, for a kid this is pretty scary crap. But the doc reckoned that it would sort itself out I would be OK in the end. It took another six-seven years for the blackouts and blurred vision to finally stop but by the time I hit secondary school it didn't happen much. It wasn't a fun time. I seem to be Ok now thou....

At the end of each term we used to have a non-uniform fun day. This entailed wearing what you wanted and bringing in a board game of your choice. Someone always brought in Monopoly or a skill game called crazy maze, which entailed getting a small ball bearing through a strange obstacle course by means of a couple of joy sticks at the base of the platform while against an annoying sounding timer. I always brought in my electronic games which where my pride and joy. Pac-man, Frogger and Caveman were the best ones my mum and dad got me over the years and I could play them with my eyes shut and still get the highest scores. We also sat in the main hall and watched cartoons. For several years we were entertained by some old guy with his projector showing the same Tom and Jerry cartoon. After a few years you got to know them scene by scene. Another fun thing was Valentine's Day. The teachers set up a post box in one of the corridors and if you wanted to send a card to some unsuspecting girl you posted them in there and they would get handed out at registration. I only ever sent cards to same one girl but never got annoyed when I never received one. The same thing was done at Christmas but I got more cards then because I think everyone sent cards to everyone.

Toward the end of junior school and at the beginning of secondary school we started to have Discos in the local church hall. All the kids used to get down there being dropped off around the corner because no-one wanted to be seen with their parents. Everyone wore their best clothes, which, let's face it were pretty awful. It was the early eighties after all. It was an excuse to get together for about two hours as and watch all the girls dance to some corny chart trash. We done this because it's a well-known fact that boys can't dance, and I was no exception. You just had all the girls doing the two step handbag dance as all us boys stood in the shadows leering at them. Teachers didn't make it easy thou. They used to be there in force, patrolling the perimeter like prison guards seeing if we youngsters were up to no good. There was always someone who turned up with a packet of ten Embassy or a can of beer. These guys were almost seen as gods for they were the bad boys and therefore were cool. The boys used to try to sneak out of the disco, go behind the church hall and try to get fags out of the others guys. Evan if you had never smoked before in your life you still gave it a go. On one of these discos I was a bit daring and borrowed my dad's black hip flask. My mum and dad had a drinks cabinet in their house, in fact they still do, but anyway, I stealthily opened up the cabinet and had a look inside. The only open bottle was Martini extra dry. Not knowing what it was but knowing if it was in the drinks cabinet it must be good, I filled up the hip flask, hid it in my pocket and went off to the disco.

When I was in the disco I quietly announced that I had alcohol. This was done by waving the hip flask above my head and shouting it out rather loud. The next step was to get outside and have a drink. Once outside and around the back with the other guys I opened up the flask and took a drink. It was disgusting stuff and I couldn't understand why my parents would drink such awful stuff. But this didn't stop me, after all it was alcohol, and therefore got you drunk. At that age you have no real concept of how much drink you need before you are actually drunk. So about six mouthfuls later I was plastered and so were half the other guys who had a drink from me as well. Acting drunk is great fun as a kid. You just slur your words and stagger around bumping into thing while giggling a lot. And surprisingly you never got a hangover either. Surprising that.

I also started to see girls in a different light. Beforehand they were smelly things that needed to be avoided at all costs, but like most kids the time comes where you start to pay attention. This caused a few problems with your friends as well. Because your mates are always around your house or going to your birthday parties, the prospect of a girl interfering was paramount to world war. One girl caught my eye and did so for many years. Little did I know that this one girl would end up being the blueprint of most of my girlfriends in the future. Her name was Maria. She was smaller than me but she had fantastic long black hair and a killer smile. But you know how it goes, as a kid you just seen to look from a distance and pray she looks at you when your mates are looking in the opposite direction. My little infatuation with Maria lasted rather a few years, but by the time I got the courage to ask her out, some many years later, I was too late. But it was the start of something which boys can't control. If only if I knew then what a hassle girls would become. So, in between staring ogle eyes at Maria any chance I could, school life had started pretty well. I had a good collection of friends and life was good.

Home life was good as well. My dad always made time for me and my mum was always a mum. Dad would always take me fishing or down the field to throw a rugby ball around and my mum was always there to supply hugs when things went bad and much needed food when you were hungry. One such hug came shortly after I had my first bike. It was a 'Budgie' which in essence was a junior Chopper. I used to ride it around the street like a loony. There were always loads of kids where I lived and some of these kids where apt at riding no hands. After watching these older kids for a while I came to the conclusion that riding without your hands on the handle bars was down to the equation of going as fast as you can and letting go. So with this idea firmly in my head I started peddling like mad down the street. When I thought I couldn't go any faster I let go of the handle bars and with a big grin on my face gave a big thumbs up to my mates who were looking on intently. The next thing I knew was my bike disappearing from under me and doing the greatest superman impersonation anyone can do, just shortly before my face made contact with the road.

I screamed like a man possessed and with blood pouring out of my face went running into my mum. She kept her calm placed a tea-towel over my cheek and took me up her friend's house, who just so happened to be a nurse. Her name was Marge. An Irish lady with rather bazaar bodily habits. She sat me on her work top, had a look at my face and decided to place an ice pack on my heavily grazed cheek. This resulted in me jumping three foot in the air with pain and smashing my head on the cabinet above me. It confused the pain but didn't make things any better. It was the last time I rode none handed on a bike for a very long time. I didn't have that bike for long, but my parents did buy me a new bike one year. It was a gold drop handled bike with an amazing six gears and a saddle you could shave with. It was fantastic. That bike went everywhere with me and I owned it for quite a few years.

There was a good selection of kids in the street as well. There was Andrew, Trish and her sister Heather, Simon and Nicola, Tim, two girls across the road which for the life of me I can't remember their names, another two nameless girls a few houses up, can't remember them much but we used to call their dad Pie face. There were other kids as well, some moved away and some even came back or for some reason moved literary around the corner into a house exactly the same as the one they moved out of. Some were the same age as me the others a little bit older. We never let the age gap get in-between having fun thou. Playing tag or hide and seek around the street was great fun. As long as my parents knew we were safe I had a great time.

As I got a little bit older I was allowed down the 'Tump'. Now, the Tump was an old Norman fort mound right in the middle of the estate. It had loads of trees and even still had the remains of the moat. Me, Chris, Mike, Angela, Mena and a whole other bunch of guys us to spend hours climbing trees, falling out of trees and then climbing them again. We had some real dodgy swings set up on the trees as well. We also set up what we called a Death Slide, which today people call a Zip wire down the side of the Tump. This consisted of one end of a long tow rope tied to a tree at the top and the other end tied to a tree at the bottom. We used a stern stick rested on top of this rope, grip it both sides and slide down the rope. Great fun until you reached the bottom where you had to let go and crash to the ground before you crashed into a tree. On one of these slides the stick slipped to one side while I was going down the rope. So instead on the stick on the rope it was my thumb. Now in a normal world you would let go, but no, not I. I held on to that stick for dear life as the rope burned into my skin. I did let go about three quarters down the rope and crashed to the ground with all my mates laughing their heads off at the top of the mound. I gripped one hand in the other not daring to look at my thumb. I did finally have a peek. What I saw was not pleasant. The rope had burned down to the bone. There wasn't much blood thou, due to the friction the rope had cauterised the skin. I ran home and showed my mum who promptly took me up the hospital. They patched me up and I still have the scar on my left thumb. It was a great place to grow up.

We used to go to an annual event as well. Each year in Cardiff castle there used to be a horse show and military tattoo thing. We used to go along and watch these people riding horses and jumping over fences, which I think my sister enjoyed the most. That was followed by lots of military guys firing guns, taking apart cannons running around in a circle and putting it back together again and abseiling down the castle walls. I used to love it. Plus it was an excuse to stay up late and brag to your mates the next week about what you had seen.

Christmas was great growing up. I believed all the stories about Father Christmas up until the point I knew where my mum and dad hid me and my sisters present's. This was in the cunning place of on top of their wardrobe. We had handmade decorations, courtesy of my sister and me, intermingled with a few shop bought ones and a tree. Our trees weren't huge and sometimes a real one was thrown in. Much to the horror of my mother, who had to deal with all the pine needles all over the house. A week before Christmas day these decorations went up. My sister and I used to help my dad get the stuff out of the attic, and then fight over who would get to do the tree. It's funny now but we used to fight over one tree decoration. I don't know if my mum and dad have still got it but it was a bawdy red, green and gold hanging thing. Thou the gold slowly turned to silver as time wore on.

Every year the presents would be brought down on Christmas Eve just before we were hauled off to midnight mass. Off we would go and sit there for about an hour and a half listening to the priest go on and on about the values of Christmas and what it all should mean. When, in reality all my sister and me wanted to do was to get home to the presents. When mass finished it was a mad rush to get back to the car and head for home on account it was now Christmas day. On getting home we were allowed to open one of our presents, but never the biggest one. Cause as every kid knows whether it be true or not, the biggest present is always the best. We would scuttle off to bed and hardly sleep a wink. In the morning Claire and I would be the first ones downstairs to start drooling over the presents. We would make short work of opening them then after smiling at the not so good ones and paying more attention to the good ones our day was our own. Christmas dinner was great as well. The traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings, crackers, hats and a little drink. Alcohol was never hidden in our house and we were, most of the time allowed a little drink with our parent's approval. At Christmas the two drinks of the day were Baby sham, a sparkling drink resembling that of sour lemonade and the snowball. This was a drink made up in three parts. Advocaat, lemonade and a dash of lime cordial. Evan thou I believe the real Snowball cocktail should have champagne in it. As a kid it was great to have one of these drinks no matter what went into it. Of course with Christmas day came the inevitable Christmas clothes. Normally a nice jumper, a pair of trousers and if you lucky, a new pair of shoes. These you would have to wear all day. Another ritual we had been to go around to everyone's house in the street and sit there as the adults talked and had a few drinks and occasionally in a few houses we would play games like charades. As kids all we wanted to do was to get home and play with our new toys.

Snow was another factor of a good Christmas and thankfully we seemed to have loads of it back then. One year, it was after Christmas, I was awoken by my father; this was unusual on account he had normally gone to work by the time I got up for school. He told me that I wasn't going to school that day and for me not to look out the window but meet him downstairs. I threw my dressing gown on over my pyjamas and went down stairs meeting Claire down there as well, almost as confused as I was. My dad stood there by the front door with a big grin on his face. He opened the door and we were greeted by a wall of snow. Our house in Wales had an awning over the front half of the house. Now it had been snowing for all the day before and had obviously got a lot heavier during the night. I ran upstairs and looked out my bedroom window. To my amazement I couldn't even see the cars in the street it had snowed that much. My dad had to dig a tunnel out of the house to find that most of the street had to do the same thing. We kids were in heaven. No school, no work, just fun and games. Some of the kids made an igloo at one end of the street and there were snow ball fights galore. Of course because the snow had fallen so deep all the roads were cut off and none of the shops could get supplies through. So food was in short supply unless you wanted to walk to Pontypridd, which we did several times. Another thing we did was to build a huge blockade across the end of the street. Most of the streets done this as well, it helped with the snowball fights to have something to hide behind. Of course in time the snow began to melt, apart from the blockades. These turned into solid ice and refused to budge. We carved steps into both sides so you could climb over them if you wanted to, but they were there for a few weeks after the snow had gone. As I got older another Christmas tradition was introduced. This was that my Dad and I went to the pub on Christmas day. Wearing our new clothes we would hit the local pub, The Holly Bush, and play in a darts competition, get drunk and stagger home. When home we would promptly fall asleep through the consumption of alcohol then be woken up by my Mum when dinner was ready. One year I actually got through to the finals in the darts and managed somehow to bring home a small trophy. A trophy I still have on my shelf today.

Another good time of year was Halloween. Back then it wasn't as commercialised as it is now. It was more fun. Getting dressed up in some really bad costume and going around asking people for sweats or having to dunk for apples. Of course you still had the grumpy old couple who hated kids and therefore hated anything that allowed kids to knock on their door. This gave us permission in our minds to pay a heavy retribution on them. Thou we didn't use that word because we didn't know what it meant. This retribution came mostly in the form of a paper bag. Inside the bag was contained a collection of dog poo collected earlier in the day. The bag was placed on grumpy mans door step, doused in lighter fluid, normally stolen from your parents, and then set alight, again with matches stolen from your parents. With the bag set alight we used to ring the door bell and run for cover behind the nearest parked car and wait. If it all went well grumpy would open his door see a small fire burning his door step and then try to stamp it out with his nice tartan style slippers. The end result was grumpy man having dog poo all over his foot and a group of kids wetting themselves with laughter behind the cars. Mum and dad changed a bit in that time as well. Well my dad did anyway. Not being a big chap in the height department, my dad made up for this by making himself look menacing in a Rasputin type of way by growing a huge beard. And I do mean huge, you could hide nations in the bloody thing. Once the art of looking like a mad Russian died off he turned to the television for inspiration. I would put money on it that where he drew his next idea from was a program called Starsky and Hutch. This was an American cop show which was pretty cool for its day. Anyway, what my dad conceived was a huge afro. Made him look about ten inches taller, and for my dad that was huge. Thankfully my mum didn't follow suit. That would have just been weird.

My father also started an obsession with me that would stay with me for the rest of my life and eventually lead me to my future job. In-between taking me down to Roath park in Cardiff or to Porthcawl to go fishing. He introduced me to airplanes. We used to go off to Cardiff airport, which at the time was no more than a big shed in a field, and collect the numbers off the planes. Right next door to the air strip was a junk yard full of old planes and stuff. They called it a museum but all it was, was a junk yard. Without fail my dad used to let me go in this junk yard at the end of our outings, and let me run riot. I had great fun. I got a radio one year for my birthday. This radio could pick up all transmissions from the air traffic controller and the planes. It was fantastic to listen to them talking. I loved it. Also they started air shows at Cardiff. Now this was a big thing for us. All of us used to go down to the airport sit about two feet away from the runway eat jam sandwiches, drink tea out of a flask and watch all these amazing planes doing stunts and low level passes in front of our very eyes. The highlight of all these shows was the chance to see the Red Arrows; the Royal Air Force display team, come and do their stuff. Man I fell in love with those guys and all I wanted to do was fly like them. My mind was made up, that was the job for me. I used to plague my dad to take me any air show I could get to just to watch these guys and as sad as it sounds, they are still fantastic today. Go watch them you'll be impressed.

Me and my dad used to go and play snooker at the local club, named Mr. Snookers, original name that don't you think? I even went to snooker classes as well. I wasn't any good at it but I'm pretty sure my dad let me win a few games to make me feel better. He used to take me swimming in Caerphilly a couple of times a month. My dad can swim like a fish. I on the other hand was more of a two strokes and a bubble type of person. I'm not afraid of the water but I certainly couldn't swim to save my life. This showed on one occasion when I was attempting to swim, in the deep end, discovered I still couldn't and sank. My dad was in the pool faster than the life guard could draw a breath and dragged me to one side. We went to see Pontypridd play rugby as well. I remember my sister going to see the games with us too. We used to go to the grounds with huge black and white rosettes on our coats and screaming our heads off. It was a time when all the big international teams used to come over and play all the local teams. I'm happy to say I saw New Zealand play in Ponty along with some other big names. Getting autographs was a big thing as well. I've got a few books tucked away somewhere, full of rugby players names.

My mum is pretty cool. She was always busy around the house or working down the garage but always seemed to make a bit of time for us. One summer holiday she made a thing of taking Claire and I to Caerphilly castle on a few occasions. One time we were going there we had just gone over Nantgarw Hill, with was the main road to Caerphilly when a police car came up behind us with his lights on. Claire and I pointed the policeman out to our mum, all she said was, 'that's nice kids, wave at the nice policeman'. What she didn't know was that the police wanted my mum to pull over. It must have a bit funny on his behalf, there he is trying to pull over a car for a check and all he's greeted with is a car that won't stop and two kids in the back window smiling and waving like idiots. One year during the summer I think my sister was either working or out with her mates, but my mum made time to take me out every week somewhere new. She took me to all the castles in the area and to all the big parks as well. I really used to look forward to those days. I miss those days....

When I got a bit older I started going to the pub with my dad. It started by going down there after a weekends work and having a few drinks, in my case a few cokes. Dad introduced me to a card game call Cribbage. It as a simple game but you had to use a bit of tactics to win. Once I was proficient at the game we started playing for money which made it far more interesting. Then m dad asked me if I was interested in coming down the pub on a Sunday night for a game of darts, how could I refuse. Before I knew it I was on the darts team and playing regular games every Sunday night. I was doing a bit of underage drinking from about the age of sixteen but no-one asked my age. They just always seen me with my dad or the rest of the team and probably just thought I was of age. Andrew, the owner of the pub almost had a heart attack when I went in on my eighteenth birthday and told him he'd been serving me illegally for the last few years. We used to go to the sports club, fondly known as 'The Spit', as well. This was mostly on a Saturday afternoon. We used to play pool, have a few goes on the gambling machine and drink a few pints. It must have been a bit weird for my dad seeing his kid growing up and start buying him the drinks. It was a great time thou.

Chapter 2.

Dads Adoption,

London & Ireland.

There was one big surprise that crept up on me when I was young. We spent a long time going around to relative's houses at certain times of the year. This wasn't a problem, they were family. Then things got a little bit weird. We started going to different people's houses. People I didn't know and in all honestly didn't care. My mum and especially my dad spent ages talking to these people, I didn't know what about until one day my Dad told Claire and me he was adopted and he was trying to find his real mum. That was a major blow to our child hood I can tell you. He had known all the time he was adopted but for us it was a bit weird to think that the people you knew as Grandad and Grandma were, well, they weren't. Don't get me wrong, we adapted rather well to the situation, as kids you do. Grandad and Grandma was still the same people and we didn't treat them any different and in all honesty it didn't make a blind bit of difference to me or my sister. My dad searched for a long time and one day we got in the car. We asked where we were going. He told us we were going to see his mum.

He, which is my Dad, had found out that his real mum was living just up the road in a place called Abergavenny. We drove up there and found the road she lived in. My dad got out of the car and went to the door. We stayed in the car for a while when my dad went in. Shortly afterwards my dad came out and asked us to come in. We went into the house and were greeted by a very small woman, slightly hunched over due to age and her hands which were curled up with arthritis, she had such small hands. Her house was frankly a mess and didn't smell all that good but the fascination with meeting my dad's real mum overshadowed everything else. I looked at her and looked at my dad, the resemblance was clear. It was also clear in my sister as well. I was fascinated. She greeted us and we talked, well I say we talked my mum, dad and his mum talked. As far as I can remember we went there a few times as a family but I'm sure my mum and dad went there a lot more than I knew off. We were making the trip one day but didn't go to the usual house. We ended up going to a care home in the same area where my grandmother had been moved to at some time during our last visit.

This was my first experience of a care home and it did not impress me at all. All I can remember is grey walls, grey floor not very friendly staff and a not too pleasant smell. The room they had put my grandmother into was small and pokey, but she did look better for being there. She was more talkative and always greeted us with a smile. There was a rugby pitch right next door to the home and I used it while I was there to train for a six mile fun run the school was doing. While I was doing my training my mum and dad spent all their time with my grandmother, after all my dad had a lot of catching up and a lot of questions. I decided it was best to leave them too it. Time passed and we continued our visits. I didn't think anything of it really, it was just another trip to see another relative and my dad seemed a lot happier. Then came the day that my mum and dad sat Claire and myself down and informed us that my grandmother, my dad's real mum had passed away. We went and seen her before the funeral in a small chapel. I think this was the first time I had seen a dead person. I remember standing there and looking at this small lady lying in a coffin. It didn't look real at all. Someone had dressed her in a white gown with a frilly lace neck. It looked like her legs disappeared into the bottom of the coffin. It freaked me out. I started crying when I seen her and left the room. It wasn't a nice day for me, seeing everyone upset, especially my dad. He was always a strong man in my eyes but now he cried like I had never seen him do before. After all he had just lost his mum, the person he had spent so long looking for and such a short time getting to know. In the weeks following her funeral my dad smoked like a chimney. He went from about twenty a day up to sixty plus. It wasn't nice to see. But thankfully as time went on he reverted back to the dad I knew and loved, but I knew the scars of his loss would never leave him.

We, that's me, mum, dad and my sister, used to travel quite a bit as well. My mum's family still lived in Ireland and my dad's family lived in London. So every now and again which, in reality was about every two to three months we used to make the long trip to either London or Ireland. The London trips were the worse, not for the fact for who we were going to see but the trip. You would think that just going to London wouldn't be that bad, but back then cars weren't as fast or as comfy as they are now and service stations where nothing more than a couple of sheds and a greasy burger wagon. So if you wanted to relieve yourself, you pulled over to the side of the motorway, or under a bridge if it was raining and stood there and done your bit. Classy eh? Thou I will admit as time went on the service stations improved to the point where they had actual working toilets, a café of sorts that used to sell something they passed off as food, amusements (which we never played for some reason) and also a burger bar. The burgers from this one service station were lovely. We always used to stop off and Claire and I were allowed a burger with cheese and relish. Yum. But as with so many other things as we got older the burgers got more rubbery and so ended that cholesterol fuelled, processed meat, heart attack inducing ritual.

My grandparents in London were a weird pair. My grandfather worked what seemed to me all the hours god gave him while my grandmother was a perfect house keeper. Every time we got there the place was spotless apart from two things. She was practically a chain smoker, so when you walked into the house you were greeted by a wall of smoke with a shadowy figure emerging like something out of a horror movie. And she also owned a dog. I can't recall what type it was, one of those ones that sniff a lot, yap like a Looney and crap all over the place. But apart from the yapping, crapping and also the excessive malting the one thing that used to drive me up the wall was, the biscuits. My grandmother used to give the dog ginger biscuits. Now the dog never used to eat these things, just suck on it for a couple of minutes then spit it back out on the carpet. Then when you least expected it you would be running down the stairs, bare footed and WALLOP!!! You step in a soggy ginger biscuit. I couldn't face those things for ages. They also had a cat. It was a tortoise shell cat called Juno; well I think that was its name. She was a great cat, thou she was extremely cross eyed which made for great amusement watching her trying to chase things. She reminded me a lot of Grandad with those eyes as well. Always made me smile.

As I said my grandmother used to smoke like a trooper. I never saw her without a ciggie in her hand. And she had a great moustache. Thou she did cover it up well, a bit like Cesar Romeo in the 1960-70s Bat man series when he played the Joker. But when it came to that dreaded goodbye kiss you knew you would get a face full of facial hair. My granddad, when he wasn't working always used to sit in the kitchen reading the sports page of the local paper or checking the pools results. I used to love his hair as well. Reminded me of Einstein, it was always all over the place. Me and my sister used to poke fun of him now and again on account he was rather deaf and also short sighted. But you could talk to him about everything because he seemed to know about everything. We shouldn't have made fun of him really but when you're a kid you think anything is funny. He used to give us gifts every time we went up there. He gave me an air fix model of the space shuttle once. It was huge. I believe I made a complete bodge job of it when I made it, but hell, it kept me happy. This leads me to my Uncle John, my dad's brother.

Now John was, and still is, well, eccentric. He loved trains. If it sat on a track of any type he knew about it. And to match the family he had some really bazaar habits. Watching him eat was amazing. He would sit there and slice up his roast dinner, take a really small piece onto his fork and insert it into mouth. Once this was achieved he would set down his knife and fork perfectly on the plate, place his hands under the table and chew. All the time he would rock back and forth while making 'mmmmmmm' sounds. With one mouth full complete he would start the routine all over again. Again Claire and I found it fantastic and I would wind her up by trying to make her laugh at the table by doing impersonations of John eating. We just thought he was mad as a bag of ferrets but in reality he turned out to be rather intelligent and very, very eccentric. On one occasion I remember my sister Claire and myself outside their house trying to knock conkers out of the tree when John came running out like a cat on speed begging us to let him have a go. We obliged, gave him the stick we were using and left him to it. We didn't see him for the rest of the day. He also used to give us gifts as well, mostly books on planes and trains but once he gave me a 6 foot long bow complete with arrows. I had great fun with that.

They moved around a bit as well, one minute they were in Basingstoke then they were in Woking. Here there and everywhere. I didn't mind thou it was always somewhere new to explore. We went up once to see them around Christmas; it was just a day visit I think. But on the way back we were hit by real heavy snow, and I mean heavy. My dad's little blue Ford Cortina mark one just couldn't deal with it, nor could the roads. So, we were forced to turn around and head back to my grandparents' house. I believe we had to stay there for a couple of nights, much to the disdain of my grandmother and her dogs soggy ginger biscuits. Now I'm not a bad sleeper but one thing that drives me up the wall and still does to this day and that one thing is snoring. I know it's a natural thing and I do it myself, but, when other people do it when I'm trying to get to sleep it, well, drives me nuts. I was sleeping top to tail with my sister in one bed while in the other bed my Grandfather slept soundly. No problems there, but then he started snoring. My sister was out cold but I couldn't settle down. I spent about three hours with my fingers in my ears and pillows over my head, all to no avail. Snoring has the ability to penetrate any barrier. I'm sure if I encased my head in lead lined concrete the sound of snoring would still get through. I resorted to banging my head against the wall in the hope I could knock myself out, didn't work. So I decided to move into the front room of their house where my parents were sleeping. I settled down in the arm chair feeling rather smug that all was quiet and sleep was about to come to me. Oh how wrong was I, not a moment after settling down then my father sparks up his midnight chorus of snoring. That was one hell of a night and everyone was wondering why I was so knackered the next day. My Nan, even with her excessive concealing make up and fantastic tash, could cook a mean roast dinner. Every time we went up there we had roast beef. She must have had shares with the butcher or something, because it was always roast beef. We treated them once to a fish and chip dinner. It was in 1982 because I remember my dad buying a song called Our House by a group called Madness at the same time. My Nan insisted on having hers on a plate at the table complete with knife and fork while my Grandad and the rest of us settled down anywhere we could and ate from the soggy greased up paper while listening to Madness. I think that was the happiest I ever seen my Grandad. He absolutely loved it. He was a very down to earth man my Grandad.

We also travelled to the London area now and again to see one of my mum's relatives. She was a nun. Sister conception was here name. That was a bit of a made up name that Claire and me used to call her, thou we did get this name by over hearing our mum calling her it. Now I've got nothing against nuns but these guys used to live the good life. Their convent was fantastic. It had huge gardens; huge rooms and they always seem to eat more in one day than I did in one year. We actually stayed there one night; I think it was something to do with Sister Conceptions anniversary of being a nun for twenty five years or something like that. I was given my own room to sleep in and being the age I was I searched that room top to bottom. The only thing I found was sterilising tablets for dentures and several coat hangers. The sterilising tablets were in a tube. I didn't know what the hell they were at the time so I decided to pop one in a glass by the sink and add a bit of water. I watched in fascination as it bubbled and hissed then downed the lot. Christ knows what I was thinking of but they don't taste that good I can tell you. I almost threw up there and then on the spot. So after getting my stomach back where it should be I settled down for the night. Lying there in the dark didn't freak me out, but what did was that on top of the wardrobe in the room was a statuette of the Virgin Mary. Nothing weird there I here you say. Except this statue was bloody fluorescent and glowed in the dark. I'm lying there looking at this statue glowing and looking like its hovering in mid-air in the middle of the room. The more I looked at it the more it seemed to move. I had never heard of stuff that could glow in the dark, it freaked me out I can tell you. After a great night's sleep, the day of the celebrations arrived.

My mother had bought me a nice pure white shirt and a pair of rather gross burgundy coloured trousers. While everyone was getting ready I decided to go for a walk and inspect the local area. Just down the road was a golf driving range. There was a path alongside the fence line and on inspection I noticed several golf balls lying within reach. Lying down on the floor I slipped my hand under the fence time and time again and retrieved several golf balls to fill my pockets. Feeling rather smug about myself I headed back to the convent. My mother greeted me and before she could ask where I had been, she went absolutely crazy. She started waving her arms around and calling me names I can't recall. The reason for her sudden outburst and the following disapproving looks from my father was that the lovely, brand new white shirt they had bought me was now covered in oil and rust stains all up and down of the sleeves from where I retrieved the golf balls. They weren't happy I can tell you. I had to spend the rest of the day within arm's reach of my parents while they sat there and talked adult stuff. But, hey, I managed to get shed loads of golf balls.

We, as a family used to go to Ireland rather a lot. This due to mum being Irish. I had been going there ever since I was born but for obvious reasons I can't remember that far back. Getting to Ireland was a bit of a chore I can tell you. My mum and dad normally picked the earliest sailing possible, so this meant we had to leave early in the morning. Being too young to drive I normally fell asleep in the car pretty much after the door had closed. Just before we got to the harbour we used to make a pit stop at this greasy Joes cafe. In reality it was truck stop. We used to stop off and always get the same thing. A round of toast and a drink. For some reason this toast was probably the best toast in the world. It was a sad day when they built a dual carriageway around the cafe. We use to get on the ferry, find our space and settle down for the three and a half hour crossing. My mum was never one for ferries. Basically as she heard someone say, 'yay were moving' she would start throwing up. I started doing something on the ship that started a bit of a ritual for me. I started putting messages into bottles and throwing then over board. This entailed me going around the ship and finding empty miniature bottles on tables and unused sick bags. When both were found I used to write a message on part of the sick bag along with my name and address, shove it into the bottle put the lid on the bottle and throw it overboard. To my surprise I hardly got any replies but I did get some. I think the furthest one was from a girl in Amsterdam. She found one of my bottles and wrote back. We became pen pals for many years and I even got to meet her once when on holiday in Belgium. I think that she still writes to my mum even now.

Once off the ferry in Roeselare we made our way up the steep hill from the harbour and immediately stop at the cafe at the top to have some more toast which tasted completely different to the toast in Wales, even if it was just toast. It was about two and a half hour till we got to my Nan's and I always got the same feeling of happiness when we arrived. My mum or dad, depending on who was driving at the time, turned the car off the main road and onto a side road leading down a slight hill. This was Moneenroe. It wasn't much of a place but beautiful never the less, like most small towns in Ireland. As you went down the road you passed some playing fields on the left and a few houses on the right. You then came to a cross roads. Sitting on this crossroads was a few houses on the left and a big sod off church on the right. We went straight over the cross roads and carried on down a very narrow lane, this was Chapel Lane. At the time there was I think only three houses in the lane. You had a little cottage owned by some old lady. Another house right at the end and smack in the middle was my Nan's house. It was a small bungalow with only two bedrooms a front room and a kitchen. At some point during our visits an extension was built onto the house allowing for another bedroom and a bigger kitchen. I still can't believe that my mum, her three sisters and two brothers, mum and dad all stayed in such a small place. It had electricity but the main feature was the big open fire in the main room. Each morning when we were over there Claire and myself used to have a race to see who could get up early and rush to clean out the fire. God knows why because it's a bloody messy job. My Nan was pretty cool as well. Every time we went over there she always made this fantastic bread for us. And she also went out and bought Rice crispies and Cornflakes for us. She, like my other Nan in London had a great tash. My sister and I were pretty much allowed to do what we wanted to do while we were there. We always walked up to the local shop, which was little more than someone's house with the front room converted into a shop. It was run by some old lady who never seemed to age in all the years we went there. She also owned an old white cat which also never seemed to get older. Church was the other big thing over there and we seemed always to go on a weekend. Now the church services other in Ireland last for about six weeks longer than they do over here, but we went along anyway. Sorry to say but they were a little bit boring.

Now my mum was the oldest of six and at the time the only one to be married. As the years progressed and as I got older so did my uncles and aunts and so they started getting married. Again like the church services their wedding days were a lot better than ours. Everyone in the entire country who had the same name as you turned up for it. Now I didn't have a good run with these weddings. Along the lines I always seemed to have something happen to me. On the eve of one of the weddings my sister and I were playing tag in my Nan's hay barn, on top of the stack. Sensible place don't you think? My sister was 'it'. She came bounding towards me and pushed me, making me 'it'. Trouble was I was about two inches away from the edge of the stack. I lost my balance and fell off the edge and fell about fifteen feet onto the concrete floor. Did I mention I fell head first? Thankfully my nut didn't hit the floor first but my shoulder broke my fall. I rolled around a bit crying in pain while my sister just sat at the top of the stack laughing her bits off. Anyway, we went back into the cottage and I told my mum and dad what had happened and they kindly told me to be quiet. Which I did.

A few hours later I started complaining that my shoulder was really hurting and my arm had gone numb. My mum and dad helped me get my shirt off and to my and their surprise we were greeted by my collar bone almost sticking through my skin. My mum went very white and I followed her example. They managed to track down a doctor somewhere in the middle of nowhere. He had a look at my shoulder and proclaimed that I had snapped my collar bone. He asked my dad to stand behind me and support me. He then placed one hand on my back and the other one gently on the broken bone. He told me he was going to count to three and push the bone back in. He only counted to two. The pain that was caused was amazing and it was lucky my dad was there to support me because I would have gone arse over tit if he wasn't there. And so on the day of the wedding I was sitting there with my arm in a sling.

The other occasion was another wedding. Once again the night before the big day I complained to my mum and dad that I wasn't feeling too well. I was running a bit of a temperature so aspirin was given and an early night was recommended. I woke the next day still feeling terrible but was forced to go along to the wedding anyway. I managed to survive the wedding service and most of the reception. After the meal we headed to the hotel for the party. I found a seat to sit on and that was the last I can really remember. I woke up in hospital, sweating my arse off surrounded by a bunch of doctors. I was vaguely aware that they flipped me on to my side and told me to curl up in a tight ball on the bed, which I done. Now the next thing I did was a big mistake. I turned my head. Now you may think that this wasn't too bad but what I seen was that bad. What I saw was one of the doctors approaching my spine with a big sod off needle in his hands. I screamed my tits off and pulled a fit on the bed. It took a few doctors to hold me down while doctor death shoved big sod off needles in my back. Then I kindly blacked out.

### What I didn't find out till later was that they had told my mum and dad that there was a chapel in the hospital and it might be a good idea to go and pray because if I had what they thought I had then I would be dead by the morning. Nice. They thought I had meningitis but what it ended up being was a very drastic case of German measles. I held the record in that hospital for the highest known temperature for rather a long time. For all I know I still hold it. But the next day they released me and I was free to pursue a full and happy life.

### That was the last of the bad things that happened to me but I did have fun at the others. Mostly it was in the presence of copious amounts of drink and a lot of stolen cigarettes. One time I spent most of the reception at the bar talking to this guy who I didn't know from Adam. He insisted on buying my all my drinks and let me have as many cigarettes as I wanted. He kept on disappearing now and again which I didn't mind on account he was buying my beer. As the night progressed he staggered back to the bar, grabbed hold of me and dragged me into the main dance area. He told me he had met someone and she was beautiful and wanted me to see her for myself. He spent about ten minutes looking for this woman and with a big cheesy grin over his face. Finally he spotted her and we approached her. 'Phil, I want you to meet the most amazing woman in the world' I prepared my best smile as the woman turned around. We made eye contact and I said the best line of the night, 'Hello Mum'. The poor guys face was a picture not only had he found the most beautiful woman in the world he also had been plying her son with fags and booze all night. The look on his face was priceless.

### As all these wedding were taking place so were more houses being built in Chapel lane. All but my mum and one of her sisters stayed in the lane. It was always good to go back and forth from Ireland to see the houses being built. It always started the same. First they would move into a caravan and then build the house, then move into the house. So Claire and me had a choice then of sleeping in all these different houses. It was pretty cool to just go to a random front door having a relative answer the door and welcome you in like you lived there yourself. I think I could fill a whole book with my memories of Ireland from going fishing with my dad down at the local river to playing space invaders at the pub whilst my dad and my uncles drank Guinness. Christmas in Ireland, drinking my Nan's hot whiskey, playing hide and seek with the dogs in the fields behind the house, setting up a swing in the barn from tow rope from my uncles truck and then having that uncle try to shot you with his airgun whilst on the swing. All these memories will always stay with me. These are some of the happiest times of my life.

### 
Chapter 3.

The Morgans

One time I thought it would be a great idea to try my hand at a bit of shop lifting. So with my Fagan head on I headed over to the local shop and boldly walked on in. After looking around for a few seconds I spied my target, a multi pack of chewing gum. I stealthily picked up the gum and stuffed it up my t-shirt. Sweating madly I walked out the shop and headed to the alley which led to my street. As I turned the corner I relaxed, right up to the moment I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked around and found myself looking into the face of the shop owner. I had been rumbled. He escorted me back to my house and calmly knocked on the door. Both my mum and dad were out at the time so my sister answered. After the owner had explained what had happened he left me in the charge of my sister giving the promise to be back later to talk to my parents. I was told to go upstairs and wait in my room.

This was the calm before the storm.

Shortly after, my parents arrived home. I heard my sister talking to them and a deathly silence fell on the house. I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and my bedroom door opened. My mother stood there and looked at me the way parents can look at their kids and not say a word but make them feel terrible. She then walked back down the stairs. I didn't know what the hell was going to happen. I quickly went to the toilet as fear gripped my bladder. As I came out of the toilet my dad was standing there, I hadn't heard him come up the stairs. He pushed me gently into my sister's room and made me stand there in front of him as he sat on the edge of the bed. He calmly asked me why I stole. I had no real reply for him so I remained silent. He asked once more, in the same calm fashion. My brain switched on a little bit and my answer was just pure brilliance, 'I didn't know what I was doing'. My dad looked into my eyes and repeated what I said. I nodded. Still thinking I had baffled him with my brilliance I never seen his reply to my great statement coming until it was too late. I found myself pinned up against the wardrobe door by my neck and my feet about a foot of the floor. My father then very kindly beat the hell out of me. Now people go on and on about how you can't hit your kids. Personally I think it's a load of crap. Yes my father beat the hell out of me, and yes he left a few bruises on me, and yes my mum wasn't too happy with the final result. But I tell you now, I never tried shop lifting again. I done the crime I got caught and I got dealt the punishment. It may sound a bit harsh but hell, as I said, I never done it again.

I wasn't a big kid growing up. In fact I was a bit scrawny. This didn't stop me from taking up certain sports. The main one was rugby, I love the sport. Apart from playing in junior school I also played for my local team, Llantwit Fardre. Every Sunday morning was training day and come hail rain or shine we were there playing. My mum and dad never forced me to play, they didn't have to, and they used to come to as many games as they could. We went down to Moseley once for a festival. There were different age groups there and we played well. One match was funny because they got the age groups mixed up and we ended playing a team about 2 years younger than us. Evan as young as we were the other team didn't come up to our shoulders. Needless to say we won that match. On certain days after training I used to stay behind with a few others and have a bit of a mess around, kicking a lot and tackling even more. One of the guys who used to stay behind was Neil Jenkins. He went on to become the international star, me, I discovered drink girls and motorbikes. But I still played rugby. I played all the way through secondary school and kept playing for Llantwit. My rugby career was winding down a bit by the age of sixteen but came to a crashing halt the day I came off my motorbike and left my kneecaps on the roundabout at the end of Llantirsant trading estate.

The long bow that my Uncle gave me had a lot of use as well. Me and my dad used to use it in the back garden. We used to set up several empty cans at the bottom of the garden and take it in turns to shoot them. This practice came to an end. One day my father had just set up the cans and was walking back up the garden. I decided to take a shot. |I loosed the arrow and it kicked off to the left hand side, straight into my father's leg. Now, don't get me wrong it didn't burrow into flesh and end up sticking out the other side. It hit my father in the shin and promptly bounced off. It was still enough to make my dad fall onto the floor screaming in a bit of pain. That was the end of shooting in the back garden. But what we did then was to beat the garden shoot out hands down.

After the leg incident my dad thought that going down the playing fields would be a lot safer. So with empty cans for targets and bow and arrows in hand we strolled down the field set up the targets on one of the banks and carried on shooting. This got a bit boring after a while so we decided to set the cans up in the middle of the field and loose the arrows into the air and try to hit them that way. We didn't have much luck with that and we decided that a bigger target was needed. So I run along and lay down on the grass, spread eagled some thirty meters away and my dad loosed arrows into the air hoping to see if he could get close to me. I was under strict instructions thou to get the hell out the way if I thought the arrows were going to hit me. Thankfully none of them did. Then it was my dad's turn as the sitting target. I didn't hit him once, I was most disappointed. Evan thou a lot of fun I wouldn't recommend this as a father/son bonding session.

My sister came down with the field with me once, just to shoot the cans on the bank. Now my sister was never one for sports and archery was no exception. She lined up the cans as I instructed her and then she let loose. Snapping the bow upwards and sending the arrow clean over the top of the bank. As the arrow sailed out of sight we were welcomed with a shout of distress. Looking at each other in fright my sister and myself climbed the bank to be greeted with a lady standing there with her little dog on a lead and the arrow stuck into the grass no more than two foot from the dog. Well my sister and me apologised a lot while this poor woman and her dog stood there shaking. I don't know actually who was worse. We gathered up our stuff and legged it for home. Laughing all the way. Poor woman, poor dog. We never tried that again.

My sister, Claire, is four years older than me. That's a big(ish) gap for siblings. Her interests were different to mine but we still had a close relationship for brother and sister. Remember we didn't have computer software we do now, no mobile phones we just had us and friends. We used to play board games together like back gammon and chess, even thou she wasn't very good at chess. Card games were big on the agenda as well. We used to spend whole evenings together playing cards in her bedroom with snacks and drinks. As we got older thou we found our own life styles and board games and cards disappeared. While she was still in secondary school she got herself a job on Pontypridd market at the weekends. She worked on a leather stall selling belts, bags, coats, and all that sort of stuff. She started making stuff as well while she was there. I used to and visit her some weekends just to say hello and have a chat with her. She presented me with a leather belt which she had made herself. It's a plain simple black leather belt with a solid steal buckle. A belt I still have today and wear every day. It's the longest piece of clothing I've ever owned and it's still going strong.

As she got a bit older she passed her diving test and got her hands on a mark one Ford Cortina in canary yellow. She also got herself a new job waitressing in a local small restaurant. I actually went there to eat one night with a mate of mine just to see my sister work. She gave me free drinks all night. She used to work a lot of evenings but with the car the weather never stopped her. Apart from the ice during winter that is. She didn't come home on time one night on time and very shortly afterwards her due home date we had a call from the police informing us she had an accident. Luckily she was OK but the after effects of the crash made mi giggle a lot afterwards. She had finished her shift and was on her way home as usual but the weather was cold and a little bit iced up. She had hit a patch of ice and lost control of the car which deciding that the road wasn't a good place to be veered off to one side straight into a telephone junction box. This in turn knocked out an entire estate's phone lines. I think it took a couple of days to sort that mess out.

She seemed to work a lot back then but I never seen her buy anything. It wasn't till a few years later that I realised what she had planned for herself. She had been saving her money up to buy a computer for herself. Computers back then were nothing more than high tech typewriters. And they were rather expensive to boot. So, at the age if seventeen, Claire set up her own business as a private typist and done work for anyone who wanted work done. She started off doing work for students and by all accounts was doing really well at it as well. She also was went into the Princess trust. This was a system that supported small businesses and helped them get their feet off the ground. It was like a running competition with a nice cash bonus for those who won. Claire went on to win in her first year and the prestigious award of young business of the year and received a nice cash bonus and in turn had an influx of new work from people a lot higher up the students. She had Doctors and lawyers knocking at her door. She didn't stop helping out the students thou and her work load went through the roof. She ended up buying another computer and Dictaphone machines and loads of other stuff to get her work done. At such an early age my sister had her head screwed on very tightly.

When my sister turned eighteen she had a big party in the house. My mum and dad hired a big tent in the back garden, mum cooked up a load of food and dad managed to get hold of a few barrels of Brains beer. The entire street was invited to come along and they all turned up. The weather was lovely and the music was playing all day. Even thou I was only fourteen my parents let me have a few drinks throughout the day. Well I say a few, I had loads. I had more than I could handle and in the end crashed on the settee and promptly fell asleep. What I found out later was that my parents couldn't find me in the evening and went searching for me. They panicked a bit when they couldn't find me and they searched everywhere for me, except the front room of their own house. I reckon they felt a bit sheepish when they finally found me asleep in tier own house.

Her little business went from strength to strength and so did her customer base. She had a nice little earner with a surgeon, typing up all his notes and medical stuff. Now this guy eventually moves to London to work and told my sister that if she ever wanted a job then she had one waiting for her. I'm not quite sure how it went but when she was eighteen or nineteen, doesn't matter much anyway she moved to London to work. Well, it was Hammersmith actually but either way she moved away. After a bit of time she invited me up to stay with her for the weekend. I travelled up there by train and she met me at the station. She was living in the nursing accommodation right next to the hospital and her room overlooked Hammersmith prison, which was a bit weird. If you stuck your hand out the window and waved you were greeted by half a dozen inmates' hands waving back a t you.

I had a great time up in London with Claire. She showed me around the place taking me to Camden Lock, Covent Garden where I bought myself a great hat and a host of other places. In the evening we went to the cinema to watch a Tom Cruise movie called 'The Colour of Money' and in the evening just went back to her room to drink beer and eat humus. I went home a few days later as happy as a pig and seeing my sister doing really well made it even better. I can't remember how long she was in London for but at one point she came home and told all of us she was going off around the world travelling for the next year. And off she went again.

She travelled to Singapore for a couple of weeks and then off to Australia for a while. While she as over there she got herself a job working for the surgeon she worked for in London, well I think it was anyway. She then went to America and travelled from coast to coast taking in all the sights. She must have loved it. She came back after a year and we all went to great her back into the country. She looked great when she arrived back home and had loads of stories to tell us. She also had a shed load of pressies for us as well. For me I got a load of souvenir stuff from Australia on account it was their centenary celebrations while she was there, a huge poster of a sports car with a scantily clad lady lying on top and the best of all was a stereo system. Yep she bought me a portable stereo with twin tape deck, graphic equalizer and radio. It was bloody huge and my god did it pump out some volume.

After she came back and settled back down she started her business back up and with her contacts she had made while working in London and on her travels the work rolled in at a massive rate. She also got back with an old boyfriend, Stuart, who was in Air Force at the time and after a bit of time they got a house together and settled down. My sister is her own success story. Everything she done, she done it all off her own back. I was and still am very proud to have a sister like her.

Chapter 4.

Birthdays, Haircuts & The A.T.C

Birthday parties were always a big thing when I was growing up. When I got old enough to appreciate them they were great things. My mum always made a big cake; normally in the shape of the number your age was that particular year. And I could always have a few mates around for a bit of a party. These mates were the same year in year out. Jason from school, and a guy who lived at the end of the road, Andrew. Andrews mum used to cut my hair every now and again. It was a case of get your best cooking pot out, place upside down on my head and then cut off any hair poking out. And TA-DA, the perfect basin cut. They were almost as bad as your father spitting onto a hanky chief and using it to wipe dirt off your face. They used to come around after school get changed and well, that was about it. We used to go down the field play a bit of rugby or football go back to the house stuff our faces with enough sweets to feed a small country, and pose for photos which were normally of my mates and me with mouths full and pockets stuffed full of sweets. I loved my birthdays.

At the age of twelve and with my love of all things that flew. I asked my parents if I could join this club I had heard about. It was the Air Training Corpse and the nearest squadron was based in Pontypridd a mere two miles down the road. My parents agreed and took me along one night. To my devastation the commanding officer there told me that I had to be thirteen to join. My heart and head sunk, I so wanted to join. Then the commanding Officer said if I really was interested in joining, then I was allowed to come along the two nights the club was open and lurk about in the background and see if I like it. So, every Wednesday and Friday night my mum or dad drove me down to the club and I joined in where ever I could. I was told that I wasn't allowed to go flying or shoot guns until I was thirteen, but I didn't mind. About three months later I was called into the office to see the commanding officer. I was bricking it. All that was going through my mind was 'what have I done wrong?' To my surprise he sat there asked me how I was getting on and did I enjoy it. I replied that I loved it and if it was OK with him could I keep on coming to the squadron. He just smiled and said he'll do one better. He signed me up there and then and I was issued with my uniform. They had bent the rules somewhat and allowed me to join about six months before I was allowed. I was on cloud nine, and as a signing up pressie they allowed me to go shooting up on the range in the Territorial Army place which was next door to the A.T.C hut.

I made a lot of good friends in the Squadron. One being a guy who went by the name of Jon. He started when he was thirteen and we automatically hit it off as friends. We both had the same sort of humour and were quite happy taking the micky out of everyone who came through the door. There were exams to take in the Corpse, something they failed to mention when I joined. Thankfully they were all multi choice questions with the main answer standing out a mile. Passing these tests gave you badges to go onto your uniform, and the higher the tests the more chance you had of being promoted. The time came for annual camp which was going to be in RAF Brawdy, over on the west coast of Wales. My mum and dad had already said I could go and I was very happy about the prospect of spending a week away from my parents on a RAF camp. With the money paid it was only a waiting game, watching the calendar as the time came closer and closer. About a week before we were meant to depart for camp I was once again called into the office. Now I was only a first class cadet, which meant that I had only passed my first exam. So it was a huge surprise when the C/O told me that they were making me acting NCO for the duration of the camp. I was made a Corporal and I was happier than a cat in a mouse farm. The camp went well with all of us having a great time. I managed to get my RAF marksman badge while I was there, work on the gun bay for the planes there and the highlight of the camp was having a flight in the search and rescue Seaking helicopter. That flight only just reinforced my ambition to join the Air Force. We also won the orienteering competition which brought back a prized certificate back to the squadron. We had a great time. On our return back to the squadron things returned to normal. We had our parade in the night and the C/O came out and congratulated us on a good camp and how we done the squadron proud, all the usual stuff. Then he called my name out to come to the front. I had already handed in my stripes earlier on that evening, which wasn't nice as I rather liked being corporal. I marched to the front of the parade and listened to the C/O praise me up, I was going to get some ribbing for that later on. Then he handed me back the corporal stripes. He said that all the reports that came back about me mentioned I should be made a full time NCO. I was on the verge of tears. Sad really isn't it but that's the way I felt at the time. I went to other camps during my time there, RAF Rudloe Manor and an overseas camp to RAF Laarbruch. We went on training exercises with the RAF Regiment, played rugby, abseiling and entered the annual shooting competition at Bisley. I also experienced flying in a little plane called a Chipmunk. We went down to RAF Filton and flew around the place doing aerobatics and actually flying it myself. I was having the time of my life.

There was a big change in the ATC when I was there with the introduction of girls being allowed to join. We had an influx of girls come to join which made us boys go a little weird. The C/Os daughter also joined, her name was Judith. Now most of the boys shunned her because of who her father was but I rather liked her. We started to go out with each other shortly after wards much to the amusement of my friends. It wasn't a really heavy relationship but it was fun. I was promoted to Sergeant a while later and Judith was promoted to corporal along with Jon. I started seeing another girl from school at the same time as I was seeing Judith and it was sods law that the other girl, Vicky was her name, also joined the corpse. Needless to say I was found out and both relationships went for a burden. Judith stopped talking to me and Vicky just ignored me. So I started going out with another girl in the Squadron who I rather liked. Teresa was very outgoing and I'm pretty sure had a bit more experience than me. The both of us, her sister and another guy from the squadron used to go out together, mostly ice skating in Cardiff or to the cinema. This relationship didn't last that long either. She was interested in other boys and to be honest I was interested in other girls. So our relationship was off and on more than a pair of socks. Judith got promoted to sergeant within time, much to the distress of most of the guys there, especially me and Jon. I believed Jon should have got it first as he had been there the longest. I was the senior NCO in the squadron and was waiting for my promotion to flight sergeant. This was made a bit awkward due to the fact that Judith and I had a running hatred to each other; she still hadn't forgiven me for two timing her. This all came to a head one time after we had gone down to the Severn firing range. We were on our way back and as you expect from a bus full of kids, there was a lot of banter and insults flying around the bus. None of this was meant to distress or upset anybody but to some it must have. The following week I was called into the C/Os office and was told that one of the female cadets had made a complaint about our behaviour on the bus. Because I was senior NCO at the time the blame was placed on my shoulders and therefore an example had to be made. He busted me down to corporal and after I swore at him he busted me to Cadet. I was livid. I took my stripes of, flung them on his desk and told him where to stick his squadron. Not bothering to salute, I walked out of the office, said goodbye to everyone and left the squadron for good. Wasn't a good way to go but I never looked back. It was a shame really because I loved the cadets and it's a shame it ended that way. I stayed in contact with a lot of the guys there and even a few of the officers (but not the C/O). One of the officers went on to be the commanding officer of Barry squadron. I went along there later on and was going to join back up there but never got around to it. Maybe I had grown out of it or maybe that time had gone and I no longer had the same commitment as I did before. Either way I just moved on.

Chapter 5.

School, Parties & Zeeta

The transition from junior school to senior school wasn't too bad. I was still very good friends with Jason and a few other guys and was happy to find out they were all going to the same school with me. When we got there we were all separated up into different tutor groups. Thankfully I was in the same group as Jason. At least I had someone I knew. There were loads of different kids from all over the place there; it was weird seeing all these new faces. Our class tutor was a lady by the name of Mrs Hadley. She came across as a complete battle axe of a woman. She spent half the class telling us how her name should be spelt and woe betide anyone who got it wrong. She actually turned out to be one of the best teachers I ever had and once you got past the battle axe exterior she was a lovely person to know. Jason and I headed for the back of the class room, because as any boy will tell you, you can get away with anything at the back. Mrs Hadley told us to pair up with someone we knew so we could help each other out. The class had an odd amount of kids in it so we were paired up with another kid who didn't know anybody else. This guy was to become the best friend I would ever have in the sense that no matter how long you don't see each other when you do meet up it's like, 'alright mate, you OK..... Tidy'. It's like you just seen him yesterday and in fact you haven't seen him in fifteen years. His name was Dave.

With the advent of secondary school also came a small case of what today would be called bullying. The three of us that is Jason, Dave and I weren't part of any gang or didn't hang around in any particular group. We just kept our self's to our self's. Now I never had a good dress sense. In fact you could say it was a bit weird. Big denim coat with half a million badges on it, haircuts that ranged from skin head to flat tops and somewhere in-between. It was who I was. It started on the school bus going home. I would be sitting there minding my own business when the guys behind me started ear rubbing me. This consisted of placing their hands over my ears, applying pressure and rubbing my ears back and forth with increasing pressure. The pain doesn't start straight away but it does get unpleasant. This went on for rather a long time over the course of a few weeks. There was also a guy, John, in school who took much amusement in taunting me and tripping me up or pushing me around whenever he could till in the end I was getting upset by it and I told my dad what was going on.

'Well, what do you want me to do about it' he said, much to my amazement. 'I can't fight your battles for you. What do you want me to do? Get on the bus with you?' I was amazed here was my dad, the one person I always looked up to telling me he couldn't help me. I was gutted. He told me to, 'sort it out myself otherwise they will always do it'. The next week the same thing happened again, sitting there waiting for them to rub my ears till they were red raw. It started as usual and I sat there and took it. The words of my dad echoed in my head, 'they will always do it' so I reached up and grabbed the hand that was doing the damage. Taking a firm hold I grabbed hold of his fingers with my other hand and bent them back as far as they would go. There was a cracking sound followed by a yelp behind me. This in turn was followed by certain words regarding my parentage. The next day the boy whose hand I had violated, Chris, got on to the bus with his hand wrapped up in a splint and a bandage. It turned out that I had broken two of his fingers. I was rather surprised that parents weren't involved with the after math. I presume they all knew what they were doing and decided not to tell their parents about the consequences. The other guy who was bothering me, John, had to wait for about another week. His time came at the start of English class. I was told by the teacher to hand out the books for the day while he went and got something from the stock room.

I was getting around the room and failed to notice the foot sticking out in front of me. I tripped but did not fall. I turned and gave John a look and he just laughed it off, stood up and pushed me from behind sending the books all over the floor. Without any hesitation I turned around and planted a fist onto John's nose. Blood sprayed out in all directions and he landed heavily on his oversized bum. After the initial shock he stood up holding his nose. He took his hand away and looked at the blood. Flicking excess blood in my general direction he came at me. I thought that this was it, he's going to kill me, and he's five times bigger than me. There was a shout from the door way which belayed his advance. Upon looking there was our teacher in the door way looking not too pleased with either of us. We were ordered outside for a good talking too. I think John got the worse of it as well. After those incidents I never had much of a problem with being picked on. I never got around to thanking my dad for giving me the courage to stand up for myself. Cheers dad.

As I got older the birthday parties got more extreme. House parties were the order of the day. This entailed parents going out and the person whose party it was inviting around most of Wales to party in their house. I went to rather a few of these parties and with the help of my dad who always bought me four cans of cheap lager, ended up always rather happily drunk. Unfortunately most of these parties ended with a fight or something getting smashed up and the police getting called. When the word was out that the police were on their way you were greeted by all these underage kids trying to run away as fast as their drunken legs could carry them. Those with any sense remaining would run and hide from the police, but you always got one or two who were just too far past it to care and sat there, normally surrounded by a pool of their own vomit while the police try to pry information out of them to where they live. I never had a house party in my mum and dad's house; I had seen the devastation the others had done. I wasn't that stupid. House parties were another good way of getting off with random girls who normally wouldn't look at you side wards. On rather a few occasions I would turn up home with bloody horrible love bites on my neck, but for some reason thought it was cool to show them off. Or with a huge grin on my face because I too had managed to plant a few love bites of my own to some half-drunk girl who I didn't even like. School over the next week was always good after parties. Everyone didn't talk about the seedy side of the party only about how great it was to run away from the police, or how they got caught but managed to get away. It was like Chinese whispers, by the end of the week somebody had not only got drunk at the party but also got someone pregnant taken more drugs that Columbia produce in a year, run away from the police and started up a new dictatorship in some Southern American country. I used to laugh my head off.

Now, I never had much luck with girls. Apart from messing around with the girl over the road, which didn't amount to much more than getting to second base and lying awkwardly on top of each other and wondering what we did next which entailed keeping your clothes on. Sure I had asked a few girls out on dates all of which said no or just hung up on me. So I decided to give up on them and concentrate on just hanging around with my mates. This was going well, until one day in school I'm walking around just talking with Jason and Dave when out of the blue two girls come up to me and ask me if I know a girl named Zeeta. I think everyone in my year had heard of Zeeta on account of her, shall we say, two rather big assets that most boys of my age find fascinating to look at. I replied that I knew her, then, out of the blue they asked me if I would like to go out with her as she fancied me. I thought straight away that it was a wind up. What on earth would a very attractive young lady like her want with a dorky looking bloke like me who, let's face it had about the same fashion sense as a polar bear in the desert. The two girls, Tracey and Donna I think their names were but I could be wrong, assured me that it wasn't a wind up and, if I wanted to go out with her meet her outside the sixth form block at lunch time.

So, at lunch I plodded along to the block and low and behold there was Zeeta waiting with a few of her friends. I approached her and said 'hello' she smiled a huge big smile that made me go a little bit funny inside; her friends all giggled and walked off. There I was standing there like a lemon in front of her just smiling at her. I must have looked like a complete dork. She smiled back, grabbed my hand and we went off for a walk. After lunch we walked back across the playing field hand in hand, we kissed and made arrangements to meet again at the end of the day. Zeeta asking me out opened the doors to a whole new world for me. Our relationship didn't last long, two or three months, but we had fun, well I did anyway. Our days consisted of meeting up at break times, walking down the playing fields, laying down on the bank, which was an embankment on the edge of the school playing fields, and doing all the things you do when your boyfriend and girlfriend. I had a great time! It ended as suddenly as it began. I was sitting in the art room feeling smug that I had just given a nice necklace to Zeeta (looking back now I think it was a rather tacky necklace) as a welcome back from holiday pressie. I hadn't seen her for a week and was feeling a bit down; I missed our little sessions down the bank. When in the door walk Tracey and Donna and in their hands was the box containing said tacky necklace. They told me that while on holiday in Porthcawl Zeeta had 'met someone else and was now going out with him'

'Terribly sorry Phil but she's moved on'

As a fourteen old kid I think I took it rather well. I said thanks for telling me and as soon as they walked out the door I threw the necklace out the window. And so ended my first relationship. Thou I do have to thank Zeeta for opening my eyes to the wonders of going out with the opposite sex... I started getting through girlfriends like you would not believe. Most of the time I went mad and tried seeing two or three at the same time, and being stupid always got found out.

This went on for around a year. I don't think I had a relationship that lasted more than a few months. They started well then either they dumped me or I got itchy feet looked elsewhere and then they dumped me. It all changed when I was about fifteen and a half. I was taking art in school and I was approached by the teacher asking me if I would be interested in going on an art trip. I asked my parents about it and they agreed for me to go. So the school in all their wisdom decided to send a bunch of fifteen and sixteen year old kids to.... AMSTERDAMM!

Chapter 6.

Miriam.

We all got on the bus and headed for Amsterdam. It was a night ferry crossing and on the boat I got dragged up onto the dance floor by the girls on the trip. Now I bloody hated dancing because I couldn't dance. Not a step. This one girl grabbed hold of me and forced me to dance. She told me what to do and before I knew it I was dancing a little bit better than I was five minutes before. The night wore on and every moment of it I spent with this girl. The dancing ended and we ended up in one of the isles of seats arms around each other. I couldn't have been happier. We kissed and fell asleep in each other's arms. This girls name was Miriam. She was a short little lady, didn't come above my shoulder line. She was a year above me in school and had long black hair and I mean really long hair. She wore these big ass glasses which actually suited her. She was very slim to the point that if I gave her a hug I was afraid I would break her. I had never seen her in school before and I was starting to wonder why not. And again she had this smile to kill for (I was always a sucker for a nice smile) and a laugh that would knock you dead.

Now Amsterdam in my book was not the best place to send a bunch of pubescent, highly sexually charged kids, but hey, what the hell. After the ferry trip was over we had to endure a rather rigorous bus journey to our hotel. This I didn't mind because Miriam decided to sit next to me all the way. Granted she was asleep most of the way but that was fine for me. I just sat there with a huge grin on my face. When she woke up she gave me a little kiss and kindly told me that I had a very comfortable shoulder to rest on. We booked into the hotel and found our rooms. I was sharing with Ant. He was part of my art class. He had mad hair and was going out with another girl on the trip. Our art teacher told us that the night was our own and we could do what we wanted.

We headed for the pub.

We didn't think that we would get away with getting served but we gave it a go anyway. It worked, we all got served and all got drunk. I was enjoying this trip more and more. The next day we looked at some galleries and around the local area. Doing our bit to look interested in whatever our teacher was going on about. All the time I hardly left Miriam's side but we still did our own thing. On our second night we decided to stay in the hotel and get wasted. So we headed to the shops and bought lager, wine, vodka and, well, anything we could get our hands on. Back in the room we tucked in to the drink while playing drinking games like Fuzzy Duck and Moose. Great games to play when you're out of it. I was drinking like a fish. I remember sitting on the floor with everyone else drinking away some concoction I had poured into a pint glass and feeling rather happy. The time comes, as it does, to go to the toilet. I went to stand up, smacked my head on the dressing room table I had been sitting under, fell over giggling and that was it. I can't remember a thing of what happened after that. Even to this day I can't remember. I just woke up, somehow in my bed still clothed and with a hangover fit enough for an elephant.

We made it down to breakfast to find not many of us were talking to each other. Everyone else had memory loss as well by the looks of it. Apart from one. I can't remember her name but she wasn't drinking and she had a camera. This we didn't find out until he got back home to Wales. Some of those photos where to say the least, very embarrassing. There was some with just Miriam and myself, others with Ant and Anna, his girlfriend and then there were the ones with all of us in. I'm not going into great detail about the contents of them but they made us a little bit weary of looking at each other for a while.

My relationship with Miriam grew and grew. I went up her house and met her parents and the rest of her family. This was a first for me. Most of the other girlfriends I had there was none of that. We went out for walks, went to the pub with her friends and even doing a spot of babysitting for her brother. I loved it. I remember going to the fun fair at Barry Island I think it was with her brother and his better half ( but then again it could have been her sister, can't remember that bit) Anyway, we got there and walked around a bit. I tried impressing her with my supreme shooting skills and made myself look like a complete pratt by missing the target. Then she decided to drag me on the rides. Now I like funfairs but there was one ride at the time that scared the crap out of me. The pirate ship. Bloody hated it because wherever you sat on it at the highest peak of the swinging action you left your seat for a brief moment. So Miriam dragged me on it not knowing of my fear. All through the ride she's screaming her head off and I was sitting there with my arse taking chunks out of the seat (when I was on it) She turned and looked at me, gave me a dig in the ribs and told me to cheer up. So I put on my best smile and gritted my teeth. I bloody hated that ride.

Things were going pretty well for me at that point. I would see Miriam as much as I could and was dying to get to sixteen so I could get that motorbike I wanted. This would allow me to see Miriam as much as I wanted. The smile still hadn't left my face. Now, she was a bit older than me and was taking her A level exams pretty soon. I had finished my GCSE exams and was looking forward to leaving school and getting a job, earning money and all the other stuff that goes with it. I had saved a bit of money up through working with my father and managed to get Miriam a few birthday pressies. She really liked the group The Police but they had disbanded in 1984. But the lead singer, Sting, however had gone solo and brought out an album entitled Dream of the Blue turtles. So with the little money I had I bought the album and a blue scarf thing.

I headed into school happy with my pressie and hoping she would like them also. When we finally got together she seemed very distant to me and insisted we 'had a chat'. Now normally alarm bells would be ringing, but being a kid as I was too stupid to see what was about to happen. We went outside and she started talking. She talked about us and our relationship. She told me that because it was an important time for her, which I couldn't deny, the pressure of exams is intense. Then came the bomb. She said that we shouldn't see each other as she couldn't concentrate on revision and I was a distraction. Or something like that.

This is where my immaturity came into play. Instead of accepting her reasoning and waiting for her to finish her exams and carry on with our relationship, I blubbed like an idiot gave her her pressies, told her to enjoy her birthday and ran off with my tail between my legs. I spent the next hour lurking around school crying all over the place and basically making a fool out of myself. Still in a state of depression I gave Dave a call and asked him if I could go over his place. Thankfully he agreed. I got around his place told him that Miriam had finished with me, broke down crying again and gave Dave a hug. Dave didn't say a word, just slapped me on the back and gave me a controller to his Sega system. We sat there for hours playing a boxing game. All the time he didn't say a word and nor did I. Things seemed to be getting better already. I sometimes think what would have happened if I had listened to her that day. But hindsight is an amazing thing, then again so is maturity and the things that make it happen.

I recovered fast from the blow of loosing Miriam, or so I thought. At some time after we split up we, that is Dave, Jason and I went off to a house party we had heard of and promptly got very drunk. Well, I did anyway. To my horror I saw Miriam there as well. She was with Ant, Anna's ex boyfriend. This just infused me to get even more drunk and burst into tears. Dave and Jason found me sitting in the drive way to the house crying my eyes out and blubbing Miriam's name. They promptly carried me back to Dave's house so I could wallow in my own self pity.

I used to see her every now and again when I popped into school to see the guys on my lunch break in college. That's when I discovered that things weren't right. I used to stop talking when she walked into the common room. I couldn't take my eyes of her. My mouth went dry; sometimes I would literally feel sick. Things weren't right and I couldn't deal with it. It didn't improve with time either. I had feelings I couldn't express or understand. I didn't know what the hell was going on.

It all calmed down, thankfully when I finished collage because I didn't go into school anymore. I finally thought things were getting better. And they did for a while. About a year later, thou it could have been less than that. Dave and I were coming back from Cardiff after a night out. I was driving Dave home. We were passing through Ponty and some bazaar time at night and as we passed what used to be the post office I spotted a load of girls hanging around outside. One of these girls was Miriam. She was sat on the floor absolutely pissed out of her head and her mates were looking a bit worried. I pulled the car over and jumped out to see if everything was OK. Her mates looked a bit wary as they knew of our past history but they explained what was going on anyway. No taxi would take her home because she was so drunk and they couldn't ring anybody. In a moment of madness I told them to get her into my car and I would drive her home. We propped her up in the front seat and Dave jumped in the back. All the way home all she did was apologise to me. God knows what for. We pulled up outside her house and I jumped out and rang the door bell. Her sister answered and looked rather surprised to see me. I explained what happened and what I had done and was told to bring her in. She couldn't walk for toffee so being a slight young lady as she was I picked her up and carried her in. I took her upstairs and put her in her bed and made her comfy. That's when things got weird for me. I couldn't leave. I just sat there and held her hand and smoothed her long black hair away from her face. I just couldn't force myself to leave her alone. I forgot all about poor old Dave sat out in the car waiting for me. Minutes passed and I just sat there saying nothing, just looking at her as she slept. The door opened then and in walked her brother in law. He kindly grabbed hold of me and man handled me out the house. Don't know why he did it, didn't really care. The door closed behind me and I walked to the car. The front door re-opened and her sister walked out. I didn't turn to face her but she did ask me if I was OK. This is where it all went wrong again. I turned around burst into tears, flung my arms around Miriam's sister. That took her by surprise I can tell you. It bloody took me by surprise as well. It took a few minutes to stop blubbing and a few minutes more for me to get to my car with Dave waiting for me. Her sister told me to look after myself and take care going home. I drove home in silence. Dave didn't say anything but I had a feeling he knew what was going on. I dropped him home and then went home myself.

The next day I was feeling much better. I had calmed down and was feeling my old self once more. Then the phone rang, it was Miriam. Talk about throwing a spanner in the works. She called to say thank you and hope that I was OK and all the usual stuff. We actually made a date for me to pop up and see her and go for a drink. It was the next day. I had to catch the train up there as my car had taken a turn for the worse. I walked to the house and she met me on the door step. She said hello and smiled that smile of hers. I went weak at the knees. We went off to the pub which was on the corner of her street and sat down and had a good old chat about everything, life, the universe, all the standard stuff. Time passed and I had to catch my train back home. She walked with me to the station and waited with me. As the train arrived we stood up to say our goodbyes promising to keep in touch. Thou as anyone knows those sorts of things are never true. We hugged and I gave her a kiss and we said goodbye. I sat down in the seat and waved goodbye. As soon as she was out of sight I burst into tears and didn't stop until I was home. And then it took a bit of time for the water to stop flowing. I don't think I seen her again for about another nine years.

Chapter 7.

Friends.

With the advent of age also comes the advent of beer and lots of it. My main drinking partner to begin with anyway, was Dave, and every week we ended up absolutely plastered. We started off as drinking partner's way before it became legal. My mum and dad used to go out for the night. Barn dances were the order of the day so every now and again they used to plod on down to the village hall and dance around the place dressed as weird inbred cowboys. So, with the house to myself and a certain amount of trust given to me I was allowed a friend to come over and sleep the night. My first and then only choice back then was Dave who never said no to the invite. On the eve of the night my dad used to take us over the shops and buy us four cans of lager and rent out a couple of videos. These videos normally consisted of anything with martial arts in them or something that looked really bloody and gory. With beer and videos in hand we waved goodbye to my parents as they went on their merry way to an evening of shouting YEA-HAA or whatever they used to do. Our first port of call was to spark up the fags I had pinched of my dad throughout the week and crack open the lager. Now we found out that one or two cans of lager aren't enough to get you hammered. A little trick we did find out thou was to make our lack of alcohol a little bit better. We found out that if you add a paracetamol to a can of your favourite beverage, apart from making it fizz like buggery, it also increases the potency and therefore gets you wrecked even faster. The sight of two teenage boys absolutely wrecked on two cans of lager whilst trying to smoke and having your best mate drink from the ashtray cause in his eyes 'it's a waste of good beer' was probably something to hide from the neighbours. But as the night wore on the videos were watched. We normally watched the gory one first and no matter how we looked at it we were always laughing our heads off as some poor bugger in the film lost his. The martial arts film was the highlight of the night. By the time we got around to watching it we were no longer of this planet and the sweet taste of beer was taking its full effect on us. After watching the film, some scenes several times depending on how good the good guy kicked the crap out of the bad guy, we both decided that we too were fantastic martial artists and took ourselves out side into my back garden. Staggering out the door we talked about certain moves we had seen in the film, decided they were easy to do and to prove it proceeded to kick the crap out of each other. We never hurt each other badly, which is a surprise because sometimes we didn't hold back on the kicks and punches. With the fighting, beer, smokes and videos finished with we moved into the kitchen. Food always consisted of, well, toast. It's about all we could make in our present states. On one occasion there we were in the kitchen the smell of burnt toast filling our noses without us really caring when we decided to burst into song. There was a certain advert on the television at the time and all we could remember was the end bit. So we grabbed hold of each other and doing some strange tango/ waltz around the kitchen we started singing 'OI!!! SCREAM FOR CREAM!!' as loud as we could. This went on for a while, until I was aware of eyes upon us. I turned around in the kitchen to find my mum and dad looking at us from the doorway. Dave was totally unaware of my parents and my sudden muteness for about another ten seconds. While in mid song he spun around and also met my parents stare, 'OI!!! SCREAM FOR...............hello Mr and Mrs Morgan.......' It was a faultless transition from plastered to almost sober. We might have got away with it as well if it wasn't for Dave and me looking at my parents then at each other and then bursting out laughing. My parents looked at us then at each other, said nothing shook their heads and closed the door on us. They were good like that. But I did have to tidy the house up a bit the next day. Dave and I met up rather a lot. We used to get together at his house and play a game called Blood Bowl. It was a great game, a bit like American football but you could kill each other's players. We set up our own league and everything. We even went to the point of having an old Subbuteo cup as our trophy. Another thing we used to do was play chess. Yep as weird as it sounds we played chess. We bought this great chess set, which I still have, from a second hand store in Cardiff. Every now and again, mostly on a Saturday morning with a huge hangover, we used to head to one of the little arcades opposite the Castle. At the end of the arcade was a cafe. We used to pull up a table and get large mugs of coffee and several rounds of toast and play chess. I used to love those times. We didn't speak much just played chess. Give it a go, it's very therapeutic. Especially with a hangover. I made another friend back then as well, Martin was his name. We met when I used to hang around down the Tump. He lived just down the road from me and went to a different school to me. We just started talking one day and had a great time. As time progressed we decided to go for a drink one night over The Farmers Arms pub. It turned into a standing thing. Every Thursday night we used to go over and have several pints of Guinness and play a racing game they had sitting in the corner. We had set rules for drinking as well. If you went to the toilet you bought the next round, if you got smoke in your eyes whilst smoking, you bought the next round and also after the third or fourth pint we ordered pistachio nuts from the bar. Now try asking for pistachio nuts when you're drunk, we did several times and failed. We just ended up asking for 'Nuts with shells on' We started going to play ten pin bowling in Cardiff as well when I got my car, standard rules applied with drink and smoking and with the car we added the thing that I wasn't allowed to let the car stop at traffic lights. Sounds easy but when you're crawling forward at red lights at about half a mile an hour and not stalling the car it can get a bit tricky. Martin ended up being a big part of my life back then and is still a great friend to this day. He kept me in check several times and always managed to calm me down if I got a bit out of hand. He was one of the only people I knew who could.

But as we got a little bit older we discovered that going out into town and getting drunk was much more fun. We started going to a two pubs. One was called Clwb-y Bont and the other which was our favourite was Fernando's. Fernando's was a great pub, proper spit and sawdust type of place. The tables were made up of barrels cut in half. There was an old juke box playing forty five speed records sitting in one corner. A dart board graced one wall surrounded by hundreds of off target dart holes. And they also had an arcade machine next to the toilets. Its normal game was called Tetris and when you're off your face there was nothing like trying to get theses stupid little blocks to fit together. Whenever a load of us from school went there drinking it was always a guy called Chris and me who ended up playing Tetris. We would spend ages on it, granted we were normally very intoxicated and couldn't play it very well. We normally ended up giggling like school girls and singing the theme tune to the game which was a nice Russian melody. Chris was the type of mate that I didn't hang around with much but when we did we had a great time. Some of the best times we had were at Christmas. We went out drinking a lot on Christmas Eve, got plastered and then headed to the church for midnight mass with our families. One time Chris and I went drinking as usual and as said headed for the church. It was raining on that night and by the time we got to the church we looked like a pair of slightly drowned rats. We found my mum and dad and slid in next to them on the pews. The priest at the time, can't remember his name, was very vocal in his services but did have a habit of stopping mid sentence for some sort of dramatic pause before continuing. We nick named him Max Headroom after the popular eighties television character. So were sitting there dripping wet trying not to laugh at the priest and Chris isn't helping the situation by saying 'Prompt' every time he stopped speaking. If you didn't know you have to kneel now and again during the service. So were all kneeling and I have a bit of a fit and flick my head backwards. At the time I had my long hair and with the flick of my head I managed to whiplash the gent behind me. Chris almost wet himself laughing. We actually had to leave the church for a few minutes to calm down. We got some funny looks I can tell you.

I made some new friends as well. You had this girl named Ceri who used to live in a place called Glyncoch, which is just outside Ponty. She was a short, round lady with a evil sense of humour, a passion for cars especially Beetles and could sing and play any musical instrument put in front of her. She could probably drink most guys I know under the table as well. I used to hang out with her at weekends sometimes just driving around different places or playing pool. Ceri, Dave and I also had a thing of going to this fish and chip shop in Treforest and order fish bites. We would then sit down and see who could eat them in the most seductive way. For some reason I used to win. Dave just couldn't do seductive and Ceri used to end up laughing too much. Greg was another guy I got to know he used to work in Rainbow Records in the arcade in Ponty and was always a good laugh. He was tall with long hair and had a love of music I still haven't found in anyone today. He introduced me to a lot of the music I listen today. He lived around a bit when I knew him but he started seeing, shall we say an 'older woman' and started living in the same house as her and her two kids in Forest Grove in Treforest. He had long hair, much longer than mine and even went to the point of persuading me to let him shave the sides of my head because it seemed the in thing to do at the time with certain bands he liked. There were plenty of more friends I had but it was mostly Dave, Ceri, Greg and Martin I spent my spare time with.

Clwb-y Bont was also a spit and sawdust type of place at the time. There was a main room and in the back there was a pool room that also doubled up as a function room. These were the places Dave and me used to hang out a lot. We were in the pool team along with our other mates. Thou the pool matches are a bit of a blur as I was normally rather drunk by the time we got around to playing. When I got my car Dave and I started going into Cardiff. There was a great little club there called the Square Club. It wasn't a huge place but by God it was good. There were two levels to the place. Down stairs was mostly given to dance music while up stairs was given to my type of music. Trouble was you had to walk through the down stairs area to get up stairs, which sometimes caused a few encounters. Dave and me and sometimes Greg, Kath, Ceri, Anna, hell whoever wanted to come along really used to have great fun there especially at selected song time. One said song was called 'Sit Down' by an artist called 'James'. Don't get me wrong it wasn't a bad song but unfortunately you got all the sad idiots who thought it coon to actually sit down while the song was on, stopping everyone else from just having a dance. Now, one thing about the club was it didn't have a huge dance floor but it was made out of wood and was very polished. So Dave and I used to get up and start kicking these idiots around the dance floor. I suppose you had to be there but it was rather funny. Another place we used to frequent was a pub called The Four Bars Inn. It was a blues bar. We went there almost every Thursday to see a group called Mike Harris and the Root Doctors. They were a heavy playing Rhythm and Blues band and I used to love them. Hell I still do, for some unknown equation their still going. They did nice and dirty blues, music you could get your teeth into.

Dave and I were almost always together doing something or another. We went to martial arts together as well. This was fun as all those times we tried beating the crap out of each other in the back garden we now could do in the safety of a Do-Jo. Now the mix of martial arts and drink was to lead to Dave and me getting involved in some stunning street fights. Mostly it was me who inadvertently started them. This wasn't out of choice thou. At the time I had long hair, used to wear mostly black clothes and cowboy boots and a trilby style hat. This hat seemed to attract fights. Our biggest fight was in the middle of Ponty one night. We were walking down the high street after coming back from martial arts and before I knew it someone had nicked me hat and also my bag. I was not happy. There were six of them in total. Two ran off with my gear and the other four stayed around to beat the crap out of us. I turned on one and started a series of side kicks and punches on him catching him off guard and forcing him into a corner. He managed to crawl out of it and leg it down the road. I turned around to help Dave to be faced with a scene I will never forget. In the time it took me to handle one person Dave had managed to finish off the other three. Two of them were lying on the floor, one was still the other was rolling around moaning and holding either his guts or his balls. Which one I can't remember. The last one had placed his head under Dave's arm and was allowing Dave to punch the crap out of his face with his spare hand. Dave looked up at me just winked and let the guy go. They all picked themselves up and legged it. I got my bag and hat back as well. And then we just went home. We had various other fights as well over the years; all of them I think were to do with my bloody hat. But, hey, it was fun.

Dave also went AWOL now and again. I never asked him where he went or what he done. Hell we weren't married. I did find out that he got involved with a local band. He knew them well and was doing a bit of roadieing for them. The band had been called a few names in the past but at that time they were called Spirit of Ecstasy. I asked Dave if it was OK to tag along to one of their gigs. He asked the band and they were all OK with it. We went to see most of their gigs in Cardiff and in several colleges and universities around the place. I just used to jump in the van with the rest of the guys and when we got to our destination jump out and help unpack the gear. Simple really but it was an excuse to get drunk and have a good time. One of the gigs was great. It was in a place called The Underground in Camden, London. The guys were supporting a band by the name of Crazy Head. Dave loved Crazy Head and was all excited to see them and also have the possibility of meeting them. Thou he kept pretty calm about it all as only Dave could. We arrived in loads of time; set up the gear and let them do their sound check. As they were doing this I was just casually leaning on a railing getting hammered on Jack Daniels and trying now and again to take some photos. This guy came up and stood next to me. He said hello and I responded. We struck up a good conversation and stood there for a good fifteen minutes putting the world to rights. I had never met this guy before and didn't know him from Adam but he seemed pretty cool. Shortly into the chat I was aware of Dave lurking in the background looking a little bit excited. I carried on talking and tried my best to ignore Dave who seemed hell bent on distracting me by waving his arms in a strange manner. Our little chat rounded up and the guy waked off. Dave came up to me and gave me one hell of a look. He asked me why I hadn't called him over. I had no idea what he was on about and asked him why. He then told me the guy I had just been talking to for the last ten minutes was the lead guitarist for Crazy Head. He was a bit pissed off that I didn't know who he was. I apologised and made it up to him by getting a drink for him. I don't think he forgave me for a while. I did have a bloody good time with the band. We travelled a lot with them. Apart from London they did a lot of college gigs and night club gigs. One which sticks out for me was Cheltenham College. The gig was excellent and we all had a bloody good time. On our way home we stopped off at Severn Bridge service station. It was rather late but they were still serving food so we all sat down to have some grub. At the end we were all tired so decided to have a bit of fun before we left. There was a conveyer belt in the restaurant for people to put their dirty dishes on. This we done with our dishes along with a couple of chairs, plants, bins and anything else we could fit on there. We then promptly ran away as shots of anger erupted from the kitchen the over end of the belt. How we didn't get caught I don't know but it a fun end to a great night. As time passed my interests were changing and so where Dave's. After my eighteenth birthday things weren't the same and I dedicated myself to the Air force. Dave and me didn't see much of each other as we used to and slowly but surely we lost contact with each other. Now that is something I always regretted. And as with a lot of things it was going to be a long time until I seen him again.

Chapter 8.

Bikes, Cars & Anna

After Miriam and I split up I reverted back to my old style of dating. This basically meant going out with as many girls as possible. In between the girls at Air cadets there was a few at school and another that lived in Blaenau. Her name was Paula. I believe we met at an Air cadets Christmas party. We met up a few times and it got to the point that she actually made a mix tape for me. This was a first for me and found it rather amusing. She felt more for me than I did for her. But being a bit of a bastard that I was at that time I let her role with it. As long as she didn't find out about the other three or four girls I didn't mind. In between messing around I was going to parties arranged in school. These were held at different night clubs and I always managed to tag along to them and I always went with Jason. One of these parties was in a night club called Blisters. I think that it was called that anyway. Well I think that was what it was called. Me and Jason ended up at one of the tables with a few other guys. I got talking with this girl I knew from school. Her name was Anna.

I knew her well from school and also the fabled trip to Amsterdam. Now this is where looking back at all this I have seen a pattern emerging. She was a small lady, long hair and yes, she had a smile that most men would kill for. She had been going out with Ant for a while but I also knew that relationship had gone the way of the Dodo so I had nothing to lose. As the night wore on our talking turned to a few dances and then eventually turned to a kiss. One kiss turned too many and it didn't end all night.

The night ended and I went home with a smile on my face. I woke up the next morning still smiling and all I could think of was Anna. I didn't know where she lived or come to think of it I didn't know anything about her. But I wanted to know. The trouble was how I would go about finding out. I had my work cut out. After a bit of asking around I found out that she lived in Caerphilly and that her family owned a cafe next to the train station. The trouble was I didn't want to look like a stalker so I had to find a way to ask her out without actually asking her out. Yep, I had trouble figuring that one out myself. As luck would have it I had a very slim friendship with a guy called Nigel from school that just so happened to live in Caerphilly himself. What I didn't know was that he lived on the other side of Caerphilly. But I wasn't going to let a silly thing of a couple of miles stop me from getting Nigel to do my dirty work for me. I started going up Nigel's house on my motorbike and started to get to know him a bit better. After a week or so I dropped a hint about Anna. Nigel knew exactly where the cafe was so I asked him to ask her if she would like to meet up.

Are you following this?

Nigel agreed to ask her for me and the answer was a resounding 'SOD OFF'. OK, it might not have been as bad as that but things weren't looking pretty. I persisted and got Nigel to ask for me time and time again. Eventually one day I was visiting Nigel to pester him yet again when he hit me with some news. He supplied me with a telephone number and the news that Anna had caved in and agreed to meet me. That night I nervously called her. We had a little chat and arranged to meet up in a couple of nights. I was going straight to her house and we would take it from there. The night in question came around and dressed in my best Goth clobber got my mum to drop me around Anna's house. Anna answered the door and I just stood there smiling my head off. She invited me in and then promptly disappeared upstairs to get ready.

This was the first time I met her mum. Imposing wasn't the word to describe her. She, like Anna, was a small lady but had a fierce expression and used to smoke like a trooper. She looked me up and down, grunted and walked off into the kitchen. Little did I know that this woman, Mrs. G as I used to call her, was to be a rather lovely woman with an evil sense of humour who I would grow to respect and love in a motherly sort of way. Anna came down stairs shortly afterwards looking lovely and we went out. We had no plans on what to do so after walking about for a while we decided to go to the cinema. We went and watched a film called Moon Struck with Nicholas Cage and Cher. Terrible film but the company was great. I think we only seen about half the film, for the other half we just kissed. It was lovely. Not so lovely was the fact that I had missed my last bus home and had to phone my mum and a very late hour to come and get me.

I woke up the next day happy as a pig and set about doing a few jobs. Like ending a few other relationships I had going at the time. One was easy she lived up in the valleys so I just didn't bother seeing her again, sorry Paula. And the other was a local girl called Andrea. I had been seeing her for a few weeks so I tried to let her down gently. She took it rather well, crying, asking why, and then hating me for a while. But after this I could concentrate fully on Anna. Things went real well for us. We liked the same sort of things and she didn't seem to mind that I dressed like someone who just fell out of a very bad charity shop. We went out all the time, mostly to Cardiff and to the cinema or just to hang around Cardiff Castle grounds. Weeks turned into months and months started into years. I loved it.

I passed my driving test and that just opened things up for us. We started going further afield. Bath was one great place to go, and we did on a few occasions. Down to the coast was also pretty good as well. A place called Tredegar House was a lovely place to go. Mrs G used to pack up a huge picnic for us and off we went. We used to have great fun. We also started going to London on special deals that let us stay in the Hilton hotels around the city. There was nothing better than seeing the faces of all the people there looking in almost horror at the sight of two Goth type guys walking into the dining room of Regents park Hilton and making complete pigs out of our selves. We also went to a lot of gigs together as well. Ozzy Osbourne, Duran Duran, Living Colour, Gary Newman to name but a few. And to everyone's surprise at the time we also went to see an opera. It was La Traviata in Cardiff. That was a great night. It was all sang in Italian and I couldn't understand a thing but hell, it was fantastic. We also went on holiday together. We went to Poland for a week. Just the two of us, in Poland, getting drunk and having a whale of a time. I think it was on my sixteenth or seventeenth birthday she took me out for this huge meal. It was lovely. At the end of the meal she gave me my present. It was a gold skeleton pocket watch. The weights were rubies and it was engraved on the back to mark the occasion. It must have cost a bloody fortune that watch. Things weren't always great thou, well for me anyway. Shortly into our relationship I was tempted by another girl who was basically stalking me. I fell for that temptation. Ellen was her name and she was something different. She was all over me like a rash and would do and did do anything for me. I saw her for about three to four weeks. But as the relationship with Anna grew and the relationship with Ellen got heavier I started doubting myself. I felt I couldn't carry on doing the same stuff that I had done in the past all the time and had to make a choice between the two. I decided to leave Ellen. She didn't take it too well I can tell you. She went mental on me. She even threatened to commit suicide on me if I left her. So, I left her. Thankfully she didn't follow through on her promise. From that moment I promised myself that I wouldn't cheat on Anna again and by god I stuck to that. Thou I was tempted again, later on into our relationship.

I was going out with a bunch of guys from where I lived. It was a weekly affair and one that Anna knew about and didn't mind me doing so. There was about seven of us who went out, one of which was a girl named Tracey who I knew from school, back in the Zeeta days. Now me and Tracey were very good friends and always had a good time when we were out. As the drinking sessions wore on I started looking at Tracey a bit differently. She was very good looking, that no-one could deny. And I was starting to get very attracted to her. I went to the cinema with her once and I didn't tell Anna it was happening. We sat there and watched the film and after went for a drink. All the way through the evening all I wanted to do was grab hold of her and kiss her. I was dreading if she did anything because I honestly believe I wouldn't have been able to stop myself. Nothing happened and we continued to be good friends. But I always looked at her differently than the rest of my friends. I think I would have dropped everything if she asked me too. But that was it; I stuck to my guns. But by god was I sweating for a while.

Then came the time for me to take one of the biggest steps I had ever made in any relationship so far. It was the day I proposed to Anna. We had been joking about it for some time. I used to wind her up about it and she just used to laugh it off. So one day I went into Ponty and scanned the jewellery shops. I found a nice little ring that was way out of my price range and thought 'sod it' and bought it anyway. That night I went up to Anna's house and waited for us to be alone. I started to wind her up about it again and then told her to close her eyes. She thought once again I was kidding so went along with it. When she had closed her eyes I got down on one knee in front of her and produced the ring. Asking her to open her eyes I popped the question. She said yes and ran off into the kitchen where her mum was. There was lots of giggling followed by Mrs. G coming out and giving me a big hug. I even went as far as asking her Dad for his daughters hand in marriage. Anna's dad just looked at me blankly and said, 'What you asking me for? You've already asked her haven't you?' Blunt answer to a silly question but there we go.

We spent a long time thinking about how and when the big day was going to happen. We thought we should wait till I was in the Air Force and take it from there but it didn't stop us from planning the day. We had a party as well. This was held in Clwb-y-Bont in Ponty. Ceri got a band together and done the entertainment for us and everyone just came along and got hammered. Half way through the night I had sorted out with Ceri that I would sing a song. Yes, this coming from a man who can't sing a note. I got everyone together on the floor and got them to sing the chorus while I sang the main bits. It was funny as hell but the choice of song wasn't great, but at the time it was good. The song was 'Changes' by Black Sabbath. Go off and listen to the lyrics and you'll realise that it wasn't the best song to do a sing along to. This was it for me; life wasn't going to get much better than this.

With the advent of my sixteenth birthday so came the chance to get my own transport. My first choice was a motorbike. My mum was always adverse to me getting a bike of my own which was totally understandable. Her father, a miner in Ireland was killed in a hit and run while returning from work one day on his motorbike. Unfortunately he didn't die straight away but my mum had to go through the agony of seeing him fade away in hospital. I can't imagine how that must of felt and to then have your son plead to have a motorbike must have brought up some very upsetting memories. But, my parents being who they are agreed, if so reluctantly, to let me have a bike. There were rules I had to abide to thou. The first of these was that I had to take a bike safety course which lasted two days and taught me how to drive safely. Second was that where ever I went I had to phone up when I got there to say I was safe. I agreed to all the rules just happy that I could get a bike. I was finally independent!!

My first bike was an ER-50, in red. I loved it. It got me everywhere if not a bit slow if I had to go up hill. Thou it didn't start of good at all. One of my first rides was just in my drive way. I jumped on the bike, started it up and hit the throttle. I shot forward and then in my panic hit the front brakes and only the front brake. I went flying over the handle bars but refused to let go. My body went so far then I collapsed onto the end on the hand grip, tearing a hole in my T-shirt and a slightly bigger hole in my chest. OK, it wasn't as bad as all that but in between the blood and pain I was more concerned about the bloody big hole in my favourite Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt. I was gutted, but my mum spent a lot of time and within a few days and with some fancy stitch work the T-shirt was looking as good as new, thanks mum.

That was the first of a long range of accidents. Nothing major really, a few prangs, a few flips, mostly caused by me trying to show off and one of the best ones was when I came to a stop at some traffic lights and being on a different planet at the time forgot to put my feet down. The bike just fell over and took me with it; I must have looked like a right idiot. Everything came to an end thou some months later. I was on my way to Cardiff to start another day in work. I never went on the duel carriage way but stayed to the B roads as I found them a dam site safer to ride on first thing in the morning. I was travelling along Treforest Trading estate as I always did and was looking forward to my cup of hot chocolate which I used to buy every morning from a food hut at the far end of the estate. I came to the end of the estate and looking around saw that there were no cars coming and took the round-a-bout at about twenty five miles an hour. As I leaned into the round-a-bout I felt the back wheel of the bike start to slide out from under me. I tried to correct the slide but only succeeded in flipping the bike. Next thing I knew was that I was flying through the air and the bike was matching my every move, if not looking a bit better than me as I hit the road first. I had an open faced helmet at the time and as I was sliding across the road I was very aware that no nose was millimetres away from the tar mac. I came to a halt and slowly looked up; there some ten meters in front of me was my motor bike on its side, engine still running. A hand full of truck drivers that were enjoying their hot chocolates were running over to me so I decided to stand up and tell them I was OK and everything was fine. This was the point I realised that something was very wrong. I placed my hands on the floor and went to push myself up only to find that my legs weren't happy about being used. I rolled over and looked down to my now very stubborn legs. From the knees down it had looked like someone had sneaked up to me when I wasn't looking and painted my bottom half of my legs dark red. I was a bit confused really because there was no pain at all. Everything was there to cause it, accident, impact with rather hard road, no knee caps left and a lot of blood. But surprisingly no pain. The truck drivers picked me up while others got my bike. They dragged me to the side of the road and were on about calling an ambulance. I assured them I was fine and my legs weren't as bad as they looked, even thou I still couldn't feel them. I got them to put me on my bike, another put it into first gear and I made my way home. It took my about the best part of forty five minutes to get home because I couldn't change gears. On getting home I managed to get off the bike and somehow managed to get around the back of the house and into the kitchen. There was now a very dull throbbing pain emerging from my knees. I propped myself up against the work top and called out for my mum. She came down stairs cursing and asking 'why the hell I wasn't in work' and 'what had I forgotten now?'

The door opened and in walked my mum. She stood there with a questioning look upon her face. 'Mum' I said, 'I've come of my bike'. I looked down at my legs and my mum followed my eyes and also laid eyes on my legs. She went deathly white and almost fell to the floor. She was a mess, she started crying and doing all those things that mums do when there kid gets hurt. I was trying to calm her down highly aware that by now my legs were really bloody hurting and I was really having trouble standing up. Eventually my mum got herself together and got me into the car and we proceeded up to the hospital with all the speed my mum could get out of the car.

We got to the hospital nice and safe. My mum helped me in and I was seen rather fast. The sight of a lot of blood and someone's knee caps hanging out normally does the trick. Thou I wouldn't recommend it as a way to get faster treatment. They got me on a bed cut my trousers off me, not bad for five minutes work. There was a group of doctors having a look at my knees and a few of them even decided that it might be a good idea to try and clean them up. They kindly asked me if there was any pain to which I answered through gritted teeth that, yes, there was now a lot of pain. They seemed very pleased at this and proceeded to jab me with needles. The needles seemed to do the trick and the pain slowly disappeared. All the doctors were replaced by two nurses, a kidney tray, a couple of pairs of tweezers and lots of swabs. They got to work on my knees and before long all the dried blood had gone just leaving two rather large holes where my knee caps were supposed to be. One of the nurses asked me if it was OK if the other nurse, who was a student at the time, could start to take all the grit, stones and tar mac out of my knees. I replied I couldn't feel a thing so, no, I didn't mind. The older nurse legged it out of the room just leaving me and a very nervous student nurse to clean up my knees. She was doing pretty well for about the first twenty minutes. I was watching her as she was doing her job and was amused to find that as time progressed the colour of her skin was getting paler and paler. I glanced down at my knees and was surprised to see the main reason for her demise in facial colour. My knees were pulsating. It looked fantastic to see them throbbing away, and every now and again allowing a trickle of blood to ooze out of one side. I was loving it, but unfortunately the nurse wasn't. The poor lady asked me if I minded if she took a break, I didn't prolong her torture any more than needed. She walked out of the room hand over her mouth and not looking well at all. That left me and my knees alone in the room. After about five minutes no-one had come back and I was getting bored. So I thought it might be a good idea to help the nurses along a bit and started cleaning my knees myself. I was having a whale of a time picking out all the stones but all good things come to an end and the nurses came back in and told me off. It took about three hours to clean them all up and another couple of hours putting all the bits back together. They wrapped my knees up and sent me out into the world on a pair of crutches I had no idea how to use.

It took me a bit of time to work how to walk without actually using my legs. But I got the hang of it in the end. The next night I think it was I stayed around Anna's house. All went well until the morning. I woke up with a dull throbbing in my knees and was very uncomfortable. I pulled back the duvet and to my surprise it didn't go any further than the tops of my knees. What had happened was that during the night my knees had, well, leaked. Blood and this gunky looking green ooze had decided that my body wasn't good enough for it and had tried to make a break for it. They got no further than the duvet cover, dried up and stuck like glue to the sheets. Anna and her mum had a great time trying to pry my legs from the sheets. It took a bit of time but it was done in the end. I had this vision of having to cut the sheets and going up the hospital with flowery patterned knees. That pretty much seen the end of my biking days but with the advent of my seventeenth birthday I swapped two wheels for four.

My driving lessons started in earnest on my seventeenth birthday. My driving instructor was a chap by the name of Dai Thomas and his car of choice was an Escort XR3. Dai was a weird chap really, always struck me as a bit of a seedy pervert type of person. But he wasn't a perv, well as far as I know, he was pretty OK. As well as driving in the XR3 I also drove my mum and dad's car, a Mark three Cortina which my dad had had a two litre Capri engine fitted into it. And last but not least my sisters little mini. I used to go out driving nion every day in one of those three cars. When it came to my test I was bricking it. I sat there in the car and the driving test instructor got in, looked at me shook my hand and then said, 'Hello Phil, how your mum?' Now this took me by surprise and I just looked at him blankly. 'Your mums Mary isn't she?' I nodded slowly thinking of how and why he knew my mum. I had a strange notion that this man was going to tell me that he was my father and that we should rule the galaxy together or other such things. Sadly this wasn't the case. He very kindly informed me that he had taken my mum on her driving test and she had past first time. Then he bloody asked me about my sister. Now I was in a bit of shock, here was a bloke I have never met before asking me how all my family was. I was confused. He had also taken my sister on her test and she also had passed first time. Not much pressure then?

Luck and family pride was on the line and I didn't disappoint. I passed first time. I was mobile once more. All I need now was a car. I looked around a lot and my dad was always with me to point out what was good and what wasn't. I came close to buying a bright canary yellow Vauxhall Viva but my dad found out the shocks was dodgy as hell. I wasn't having much luck until the fateful day my sister offered me her old little mini. I jumped at the offer. I loved that car and now it was all mime. I drove it for about two weeks and then the gear box fell out. It was an automatic when I got it so I decided to get a manual box installed. This made it go a lot better. It was bright orange when I got it and a little bit plain so I decided to smart it up a bit. Working as a printer had its advantages. Within one afternoon I had printed off about forty stickers and within an hour of printing my little mini was now covered in black polka dots and I had named her 'The Old Trout'.

Now driving around in a black polka dot mini was something of a novelty in South Wales I can tell you. I certainly got noticed. I don't know where I got the name from either, it just seemed right for the car. I even went to the extent of going to a trophy shop and buying a figurine of a fish and attaching it to the bonnet and writing her name above the wheel arches complete with a skeleton of a fish painted above that. Dave and I used to turn heads by driving through Pontypridd high street with the windows down while playing 'Sweet Transvestite' from the Rocky Horror Picture Show at full volume. We sometimes went around and do it several times just for the giggles. That car served me well over the next two or so years. But as with the bike it wasn't without its slight mishaps. The first one was on my way to work. Again it was late in the year and bloody cold and icy out. I think it was a place called Taff's Well I was driving through at the time. I was going down a bit of a hill, I braked to slow down but to my surprise the car didn't stop and kept on going, I had hit black ice and there was nothing I could do about it. The next thing I knew was waking up, still in the car with this chap next to me asking me if I was alright. I looked at him and asked, 'WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY CAR!!!!!' It had turned out that I had actually knocked myself out on the steering wheel for about five minutes when I made contact and didn't know anything about it. He just smiled and informed me he was the chap who I just ploughed into the back of. I turned my heads and looked out the wind screen. There in front of me in all its glory was a nice shiny BMW badge, 'Oh Crap' was what I was thinking. We both got out the mini and walked around to the front of my car and the back of his. The driver had pulled forward a bit and as I looked at my Mini a lump rose in my throat. She was smashed up pretty bad. Then I looked at his car. There was hardly a mark on her apart from a small scratch on the boot. My car was mangled his was fine. I hated all BMWs for ages after that. The chap was pretty cool thou. He obviously seen I was shaken up a bit and upset that my car was smashed up. He placed one hand on my shoulder and kindly said, 'Don't worry, It's a company car. I just say it happened in the car park'. With that he jumped in his car and drove off leaving me beside the road a bloody wreck. Git. One night I was coming home from work in Cardiff. It was pouring with rain and I didn't see the parked up post office van in front of me. Yeah........ That didn't end nice.

Another good thing about having a small car was parking wasn't a thing to worry about. The classic scenario for this was one night four of us went into Ponty for a few drinks. The only parking space we could find was so tight I couldn't even reverse into it. So, Dave, Ceri, Greg and me jumped out of the Old Trout grabbed a wheel arch each and picked the car up and just lifted it into the space. It wasn't all plain sailing with her thou. On several occasions I thought it was all over for her. Taking my sister into Cardiff one morning we were going around a roundabout and the front wheel decided to fall off. Coming home from Cardiff with Greg one night the engine mounts gave way and the engine was bouncing off the road. The exhaust fell off doing errands for my work place. The list goes on and on.

But as time got on my money was disappearing faster than I could earn it and I couldn't afford to run her any more. Sadly I had to let her go. I think I actual cried when I got rid of her. It was a bit of time until I got another car. Until then I just borrowed my mum and dad's.

I think my own self doubts also led to my own collapse. I don't know why it happened. Maybe I was too self centred. Maybe I believed that the mistakes I had made before where never to be repeated. Maybe I just thought about things too much. Whatever it was that started me off down that road I blindly followed it and believed I was doing the right thing. I started getting angrier with everything and everyone and I also didn't trust many people either. I was wrapped up in my own little world and anyone that intruded in on that was going to pay. Anna's ex boyfriend Ant was a huge concern for me. I knew that the both of them had a long relationship and still remained the closest of friends, but this didn't stop me from getting pissed off with what was going on. For several weeks Anna and I used to walk into Caerphilly and Anna used to pop into the pub where Ant was working. She used to ask for me not to go in and I didn't. She used to go in for about ten to fifteen minutes and when she came out she never spoke of what was said between them. Now this wound me up something terrible and it all came to a head one night in Ponty. All the guys from school had got together for a drink and I was there alone. Anna was not there, nor was Ant. I was downing drinks by the minute and with each one thoughts was coming into my head about what was going on. Ant then came into the pub. I was angrier than a pit bull with a mouth full of wasps. I just sat there staring daggers into Ant and wondering where the hell Anna was. Eventually Ant stood up and asked to speak to me, outside. This was it; he was going to tell me he was seeing Anna and I would knock his teeth out. We went outside and he turned to face me. My fists where ready to go and I didn't care how much damage I did. Ant just stood there, 'Phil,' he said very calmly, 'I've got something too tell you.' This is it I thought; I'm going too bloody kill him.

'I'm gay'

Now this was something I wasn't expecting. He just stood there and told me just like that. He told me that Anna knew about it and had done so for several weeks. She wasn't there because he knew that I might not take it very well. He was just afraid what everyone would think. I called him a bloody stupid wanker and gave him a hug. I didn't give a dam that he was gay it was just a relief that he wasn't back with Anna. But looking back this was the start of the end. And I never saw it coming.

I was wrapping myself up in my own little world and slowly but surely I was blocking people out. The worst thing was that I didn't realise I was doing it till it was too late. The big turning point was the first time I applied for the Royal Air Force. I got through the interview, passed all my medicals and aptitude tests. I was feeling good. I had a letter through from the careers office asking me to go in. Anna came with me and waited for me as I went in to see what they wanted. They kindly if not a little blunt told me I had failed selection. Thank you and goodbye. I walked out the office in a furious mood. All I ever wanted was to join up and here they were telling me I had failed. Bastards. Anna tried to calm me down, tried everything to help. I was angry, I was crying, I was bloody angry. And I didn't listen to Anna.

My eighteenth birthday came about as well. Birthdays where big and your eighteenth was the big one, the time where everything was legal and the world was yours for the taking. On the morning of mf my birthday I woke and opened my pressies from everyone then me and my dad proceeded to drink a bottle of Jack Daniels and then head to the pub for more drinks. I didn't fancy a party like my sister had, all I wanted to do was invite all my mates to the pub and get hammered. And this is exactly what I done. I invited everyone I knew to Fernando's and at a time I walked in..... to an almost empty bar. I was a little bit gutted to begin with but within about half an hour all the guys were there and the drinks were flowing nicely. The night progressed and I was getting extremely drunk. Every time my glass was emptied some nice friend made sure it was full again, I didn't spend a penny of my own money all night. As the night wore on I got more and more drunk to the point that I can't remember much. As I stumbled around the place I vaguely remember turning around to a sight I couldn't believe at the time. I thought, in my drunken haze, I saw Anna and Dave holding each other and kissing. This sent me over the edge and I believe I swore a lot and headed for the door. That was the last I can remember. The next morning I woke in my own bed with Anna sitting next to me. My face and hands hurt like hell and I didn't know why. I looked down at my hands to be greeted with the sight of my knuckles on each hand heavily bloodied, bruised and split, 'Christ what have I done?' I looked at Anna; she was still beautiful but had a look about her. As I looked at her the memory of what I thought I had seen sprang to mind. I turned my head away from her and accused her of cheating on me. She stood and walked out of the room. I was furious. My mum took her home a little while later and I decided to get out of bed. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. God I was a mess. As well as my hands being a mess so was my head. I had a big graze on my forehead and dried blood holding my hair into the wound. I still couldn't remember a thing. Going down stairs I was met with my mum and dad who kindly sat me down and told me what had happened. They started with the Anna situation. They told me it didn't happen as I thought it had and a big apology was needed for Anna for the way I had treated her and I should give more credit for sticking with me. All this information went in one ear and out the next so certain was the thought on what I had seen. Christ I was a wanker back then. Then came the part them telling me what had happened with my hands and head. I had got extremely drunk and basically couldn't walk and thankfully my mate Chris took it upon himself to get me home, with Anna's help. Somehow they managed to get me on a bus or in a taxi, not sure which one and get me to my house. Now my house had a drive and my mum and dad always parked their cars on it. So to get around the back of the house you had to walk around the cars. Chris put me down in the drive and directed me between the cars. I took about three steps fell over and smashed my head on the brick wall of my neighbour's house. Thinking that someone had hit me I went to town on the wall, punching it, head butting it and generally trying to beat the shit out of an immovable brick wall. Needless to say I lost that fight. After Chris had saved me from the vicious unprovoked attack by the wall hr got me into the house. I staggered into the front room to be greeted by most of the street sitting there all to wish me a happy birthday. What they were greeted with was a very drunk idiot with blood all over him. I looked at them all and then thanked them all for coming in my unique way, I told them to all fuck off. Yep that's right, the people I had grown up with all my life, the people who were almost family in some cases I told them all to fuck off. I think they appreciated the gesture. I had to go around the street and apologise to all of them. Suffering like crazy with a hangover my dad said it was a good idea to go the pub that night, hell it was Sunday night and the darts boys would be there. I walked into the pub a pint was thrust into my hand by Jonny Q. I said thanks and raised the glass to my lips; one sip was all it took. I had to run to the toilet to promptly throw up. It wasn't a good night. I went to the doctors the next day because I was still feeling like shit. He kindly informed me that I alcohol poisoning and e was rather surprised I was still standing let alone alive with the amount of alcohol in my system. It took me a while to recover from that I can tell you.

Anna got herself a job working at a nursing home. It was a huge step for her as she had to move out and into a place of her own just outside where she worked. I didn't even congratulate her on getting the job. I just took it for granted that she was there. Our relationship which had lasted longer that I can remember was burning down around my ears and I was too bloody stupid to see what was happening. About a year or two later I finally got into the Royal Air Force and was flying through basic training. But again I never thought of everyone on the outside waiting for me. I expected them to wait, how wrong I was. I was on leave from the forces one weekend when I got a phone call from Dave. He sounded serious so I drove over to his house. He opened the door brought me into his house and sat me down. He then thrust a pint into my hands and told me to down it in one. This I did without question. He stood in front of me, 'Phil, whatever you think all I will say is it's not me.' I was confused, 'Anna has been seeing someone else.' Those words cut into me like a knife. All I could see was what I thought I seen and remembered from my eighteenth birthday. I was standing up and had Dave up against the wall in a heartbeat. I was livid I wanted to lash out at someone but Dave was not that person. He was the one person I couldn't hit. I phoned Anna and asked her was it true, it was. I was gutted. We talked for a while on the phone and she told a few home truths about what I was like and what I had become. I couldn't see what she was on about and begged her to try to make things work.

We tried for a while but things were never the same. Once again while on leave I had a phone call. This time from Anna. She asked me around to her parent's house. I drove over there, a dark thought in my mind of exactly what was going to happen. She answered the door looking lovely as ever and it was at that moment where I realised what a complete mess I had made. I can't remember what was said but it ended in the cliché of 'we can still be friends'. I hugged her and was afraid to let go. I kissed her, hoping that one silly kiss would make everything alright again. The kiss didn't make it all alright and I had to let her go. I walked away, got in my car and drove home. Not a tear in my eye. I walked into my mum and dad's house, went straight passed them and into my room. I stood there in front of my old pin board on my wall which was full of pictures of Anna and then I cried. I started taking the pictures of the pin board and with each one started a new round of tears. It took me hours to finish. Claire came into my room and didn't say anything. I turned and hugged her and cried. She hugged me back and still didn't say anything. Best sister in the world she is. I never did say goodbye to Anna and like so many other people I blocked out, it would be a long time until I seen or even spoke to her again.

Chapter 9.

College & Work.

I left school with hardly anything to my name. A couple of C and D grades and a mindful of great memories. But as with that transition from school to the real world I was at a loss of what to do with myself. Before I left school I had applied for college. I went for an art course on progressive art, this basically means I was allowed to draw whatever I wanted and someone taught me how to make it look better. I popped along to the college and sat in front of this chap who seemed to have something inserted a very long way up his never regions. I showed him my slim portfolio and answered all his questions as best as I could. After about an hour he stood up smiled and shook my hand exclaiming that I had made the cut for the course and he would look forward to seeing me in the new term. I was ecstatic. My first shot at college and I had done it. Then some two weeks later a letter arrived for me. It said even thou I had made the course along with several other successful candidates, it had been cancelled due to lack of interest. It was like someone had hit me with a mallet. I was gutted. Now this is where I fully discovered how great my parents really are. Seeing how pissed off I was they approached me with an alternative. My mum suggested I apply for an YTS course. YTS stood for Youth Training Scheme. It was the government's attempt to get the younger generation into work while paying them pennies for a full weeks work. They had looked into it for me and found a course that allowed me to continue my art work and also let me go to college to get some qualifications. They had got all the information for me all I had to do was show up. This I dully did and once again got accepted into the scheme. I was surprised to find I was teamed up with a girl I used to go to school with, Sarah. We both got picked up by some woman who set up the course and we were driven to Cardiff to a small printer in Kings Road. You had to go down this grubby looking alley way to get to it. It was based above a garage and generally looked rough as hell. Climbing some really dodgy stairs we entered the printers. We were welcomed by the guys who run the place, Diane and Simon. They reminded me of burnt out hippies from the sixties and for some reason always smelled of garlic. We had a tour of the place and even thou it was a small joint I was really amazed by the amount of work they pushed out on a daily basis. I accepted my placement with the understanding that I worked there for four days a week with the fifth being given to going to college.

So with leaving school I had a weekend grace to do with what I wanted to do and on the Monday I started work. Not being sixteen and not having my own transport I had to catch the train into Cardiff every morning and then walk about a mile and a half to work. This was easy to do when the weather was nice but Wales being Wales most of the time it was raining so, the first thing I got was a umbrella. When I started on my first day I was expecting to meet Sarah there to but she had decided to move into the health and beauty area and therefore was not working with me. So it was just me to begin with and that worked out great because Diane and Simon totally focused on me and I began my training in earnest. There's a lot more to printing T-Shirts and posters than you would think. Every stage of the design stage to putting the finished art work onto the finished article was immense and I loved learning. College wasn't what I expected at all. First of all the college I was attending was an old primary school situated at the very top of a very steep hill on the out skirts of Ponty. Stow Hill Art College wasn't exactly high tec. All us art students shared the same place as the wanna-be hair stylists which was funny as hell. We would all stand around smoking and looking rough as hell while all these girls with more make up plastered onto their faces it was amazing they could stand up straight, looked at us in fascination on how anyone let alone a whole group could look so bad. There was a mixture of guys on the course, from photographers to designers. We all looked like we just were there for a good time. And a good time was most certainly had by all. Every week I turned up at college and every week we didn't learn much. I really wondered why we were going there as working in Cardiff was teaching me ten times more stuff that college ever could. But I stuck it out as there was a chance to walk away from it with some nice qualifications under my arm.

As time went on I decided that I wanted more money than the twenty something pounds they gave me a week. I had a look around and found a job at a printer near Llantrisant common. I went along and had the interview. I sat there for about an hour talking to two blokes in suites and managed to wrangle a deal that allowed me to stay in college and get paid a dam sight more money. I walked away rather happy that I was earning shed loads of money. Then came a pang of guilt. I really enjoyed working with Dianne and Simon and felt a little bit guilty about leaving them. So I decided to push my luck. I went into work the next day and told them I had been offered a full time job and was still allowed to go to college. I said I would love to stay with them if they would match the pay offer. They thought about it for about an hour and came back to me saying they would love to keep me on and agreed to the pay. What they didn't know was I had added an extra fifty pounds to my pay packet. But what the hell, they agreed to it. I was in a job that I loved and getting even more money than I expected. With my first expanded pay packet I went out and bought myself a leather jacket. My mum went mental with me. Then she went mental the following week when I blew my next load of wages on a nice pair of cowboy boots.

Two years seemed to pass in a blink of an eye and work was great. Before I knew it we were taking our final exams in college. This was a great day. We all sat in the class room and the tutor came in to hand out our papers. Now, I can't remember her name only the fact that she was a really stuck up woman who didn't like any of us. She handed out the papers and told us nicely that we had three hours to finish the paper but we would be lucky to pass at all. Lovely woman. So we sat there and scribbled away. After about forty five minutes one of the guys stood up and announced that he had finished. Still looking down her nose she gave a slight snorting noise from her nose and informed him that he had to stay there until everyone had finished. Twenty minutes later we had all finished. The tutor just sat there with a look of pure disgust on her face and told us to come back the next day to see who had failed the most. We said thanks and hit the pub. We all came back the next day to find out that somehow we all passed and walked away with distinctions. The look on the tutors face was priceless. She tried getting one up on us and told us that even thou we had passed and therefore finished college we had to stay in college until the end of the day. We said thanks and hit the pub. We spent our last day in Ponty getting wrecked out of our skulls. It was a good way to end the term. We did a mass pub crawl around town and ended up in Ponty Park drinking Thunderbird and cheap beer. And as all blokes do after a few drinks, we thought it was a great idea to start beating the crap out of each other. Apart from Graham who had disappeared into the bushes with Paula. He appeared sometime later. We had lots of bruises and a few bloodied noses while he just had a cheesy grin on his face and a necklace made out of love bites. I never saw anyone off that course again apart from Paula who ended up working in the same printer as I did. I never mentioned the Graham incident to her. I stayed working at the printers but I was approaching the time where I felt I was ready once more to try out for the Royal Air Force.

My dress sense was changing dramatically in those years. I went from standard dress sense to being a Goth to grunge all in a heartbeat. I grew my hair till it was down the middle of my back. I used to wear eye liner and nail polish, black of course. I even used to wear a bit of lipstick as well, but only now and again. My leather coat went through even more changes than I did. I painted the back of it on a weekly basis and my jeans became more holy with scarves and brightly coloured fabric wrapped around them to keep them together. My mum and dad never battered an eyelid when I was going through all these changes thou god knows what they thought about it. I wasn't the most well built of people and my skin tight jeans made me look a little bit famine to say the least, well from the back that is. This caused a few disruptions now and again when I was out drinking. On one occasion I was standing at the bar in The Square Club, waiting to get served when I felt a hand grasp my bum and a voice ask me if I fancied a drink. I stood upright and calmly turned my head in the voices direction, 'I'll have a pint please'. The man's face was a picture. He mumbled something about being gay took his hand of my bum and walked away. I never did get that drink. The hat bought in London with my sister never left my head. It was now adorned with scarves and other bits and pieces. Some of my favourite clothes were bought from second hand stores or vintage stores. I had a few tails, well three, black, green and purple. I also managed to find an old dressing gown which was orange wit black polka dots over it. It matched my mini, how could I not buy it. Evan thou I loved my hair I even let Greg shave the sides off one day. It actually looked really good so I didn't mind in the end. I got my ears pierced as well much to my mother's distaste. For some reason she didn't mind me wearing makeup but earrings were not a good thing. Could never work that one out myself. I was happy in the way I looked and didn't change to please others; it was the way my mum and dad had brought me up. Be yourself and sod what others think. But all my unique dress sense was going to end at some point in the very near future and I was prepared for it.

I remember the one day that finally pushed me in the direction I had always wanted to go. I awoke to my mum coming into my room with a brown envelope in her hands and a very concerned look on her face. The envelope had my name on it along with 'ON HER MAJESTY'S SERVICE' in bold type at the top. I took the letter and my mum sat down on the side of my bed. I opened the letter and read. There for all to see, if all wanted to see. Were the words 'well bloody done you're in!! ?' OK it didn't actually say that but the thing was I was in, the silly buggers thought it was a good idea to give me a go. I smiled like a cat with the cream and told my mum the good news. My mum looked at me didn't smile, didn't hug me, nope she stood and left the room. That took me by surprise. It wasn't the fact that she was annoyed with me, I think it was the fact that she just had the news that her little boy had suddenly grown up without her looking and was about to bugger off on his own. It must have been a horrible feeling for her.

### I started my training in earnest. Jogging, weights', ironing... it was fun. I handed my notice in to DiSi art and prepped myself for things to come. I left work the week before I went in the R.A.F and Martin helped me out by running around with me and buying stuff with me. The biggest shock of all was getting all my hair cut off. My Dad made a special effort to come to the hair dressers with me and sat there with a big grin over his face as the hairdresser cut it all off and kindly gave me a flat top. The same night I went to the pub with my dad dressed in normal blue jeans, normal trainers and a normal white shirt. I stood there at the bar next to my dad and one of the locals came up and stood next to us. His name was Jonny Q. 'Hello Geoff, how are you? No Phil with you tonight?' My dad just smiled again and leaned back exposing my also grinning face 'Hello Jon' His face was a picture, I think he suffered a mild heart attack that day. After some nicely versed swear words and me explaining to the darts team that I was leaving they all proceeded to get me horrendously drunk. Good night that was.

The day finally came when I had to go off to basic training. I was all packed and we all drove to Cardiff train station. It was a bit weird saying goodbye to everyone. I hugged everyone, Mum, Dad Claire, Martin and finally Anna. Things between us weren't great but I still had it in my mind that everything was going to be OK so I hugged her, kissed her and got on the train. I met some other guys who were also going to training and we had a good chat about what we expecting. None of us got it right.
Chapter 10.

R.A.F

We got off at Newark station and looked around. There off to one side was a R.A.F blue coloured bus with a nice Corporal waiting by the doors. We walked over and checked in. He smiled, ticked our names of the list. He kindly told us to leave our bags as he would get them on the bus for us and asked us to go and get some seats. He was a nice chap, or so we thought. We were all on the bus talking loudly, smoking and trying to be hard military personnel. The Corporal got on the bus and the doors closed. He calmly put down his clip board and stood in the middle of the isle and looked us all, 'SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SIT THE FUCK DOWN. YOU'RE NOT ON THE BLOODY SCHOOL BUS NOW!' I thought it was a bit harsh but it seemed to do the trick. We did all shut the fuck up and we all did sit the fuck down. By the time we reached Swinderby, our training base for the next eight weeks we were still all wondering what happened to the nice smiling Corporal that met us at the train station.

We were shouted of the bus by nasty version of the Corporal and very kindly asked to stand in three lines at a designation point. This we all did without hesitation. Several minutes later a short stout Sergeant turned the corner and approached us. He was your typical drill sergeant. Short, slightly round, wore his peaked hat so you could barely see his nose let alone his eyes and he had a large beating stick tucked firmly under his left armpit. His name was Sergeant Kenny and for the duration of our stay he was our new mum and dad. He introduced himself to us as he walked up and down the lines and said he was going to make our lives a living hell. Seriously, he actually said that. After several minutes of shouting and walking up and down he said that if there was anyone who didn't like it then they could happily fuck off now and get back on the bus. He did use that word a hell of a lot. To our surprise after he had said this one of our guys put his hand up. Sergeant Kenny marched up to him and nose to nose kindly shouted while pointing to the bus,' YOU, FUCK OFF'. He fucked off with no delay. So, that was our first five minutes in the Royal Air Force and already we had lost a man. Things we not looking good.

We were herded through doors, issued with uniform, boots, hats, blankets, and pillows and then herded out again. The first day was a whirlwind of people shouting at you, running somewhere to have someone else shout at you and then finally being shouted at some more. We finally got put into two separate flights, I was in Number two flight, and shown to our barrack blocks. This was where we would be spending the next eight weeks. It was a two story building. One flight was based on the ground floor and we, two flight was based on the first floor. Each floor was split into four main sleeping quarters consisting of sixteen beds in each room, a store room, a drying room, toilets and shower room and most importantly the smoking room.

We were all designated a room and off we went. We promptly collapsed in a heap or just stared at each other in disbelief. The days passed fast, so fast you lost count of how many passed or what the date was. Most of the time you didn't know what time it was. We learnt to live on about three hours sleep a night. You didn't get much more because you were constantly cleaning shoes or ironing uniform of trying to take in and learn everything they had thrown at you during that day. After about five o'clock thou the night was ours. Apart from all the cleaning. To our surprise Sergeant Kenny was actually an all right bloke, out of uniform. It was like a split personality. In the evenings he used to come into our barracks in 'civvies' or normal clothes to you , and come around asking if any of us needed any help or had any questions. But back in uniform he was a complete git. Once or twice a week we had mail call. This is where all of us got post from family and friends giving moral support and news from the outside world.

They didn't just hand out the mail thou. We all had a service number given to us when we entered the forces which were made up of a selection of numbers and letters, a bit like a car registration number but for humans. So a way they got us to remember our number off by heart was at mail call if your name was called out you had to stand up and recite your service number, rank, full name and the profession you were going to do when and if you passed out. Everyone learned their number real quick. If you got it wrong you didn't get mail that day. On one of these mail calls we were all gathered in one room and the names were being called out. I was waiting for my name, I always got mail. My name was the last to be called out. I promptly stood up and called out the information they wanted to hear. The corporal held up a post card but didn't hand it to me. He smiled and announced he was going to read it out. It read something along the lines of, 'Dear Phil, UP YOUR BUM Love Plumber, Basil, Ozzy and Shamus'. All eyes in the room turned on me as I tried to explain that the names on the card was the names of my cats back home in Wales and the up your bum term came from a film called Wish you were here. The card was actually from my sister. They just laughed and kindly told me that it was the closest thing to pussy I was going to get in a long time. I had to endure the next few days with the N.C.Os shouting 'UP YOUR BUM' at me at any given chance they had, thanks for that sis. One rule we did have thou and it didn't matter what time of day or night it was. Everyone had a wardrobe to keep all their stuff in. The rule was that if any N.C.O came into the room and your wardrobe was open they had permission to rifle through your stuff and generally take the piss out of you. This happened to me, only once thou and never again. I left my wardrobe open and in walked one of the female Corporals. She walked straight to my bed space and turfed everything out. She came across a set of juggling balls I brought with me and decided it was a good idea to get to stand in the middle of the room and juggle for everyone. Which I had to do with no argument.

We started off with shed loads of people, well about sixty to seventy anyway. As the days progressed into weeks the numbers fell dramatically. Some people left because of injury some left because it was all too much for them. It wasn't unusual for people to go slightly mad as well. A case of this happened to me one night. Not as in I went mad but was witness to it happening. I woke up at some stupid time with the distinct impression someone was watching me. I sat bolt upright in bed and reached for the bed side light. I turned the light on and there on the side of my bed was sitting a guy called Fraser. 'Alright Phil' he said rather calmly. 'Alright mate', I replied, 'What's going on?' He just sat there looked at me then at the wall. 'Oh, nothing'. Just thought I would pop in for a chat, I looked at my watch, it said four thirty. 'Err.... OK chap, tell you what, it's a bit late shall we talk in the morning?' Fraser just smiled looked at me then back at the wall, 'OK Phil, see you later'. He calmly stood up and left the room. I just shook my head and went back to sleep. The next day he never said a word to me and in all honesty I didn't say anything to him. I just thought he was a bit weird. Two days after the event Fraser wasn't on parade. Shortly after wards I was called to the office to have a chat with Sergeant Kenny and the other N.C.Os. They asked me if I had noticed anything strange about Fraser over the last week or so. I told them of the incident that happened the night before and apart from that nothing else. They then told me that that night Fraser had been found outside the barrack blocks in only his dressing gown starring up at the sky. He was asked what he was doing and all he said was 'Aren't the stars nice?' He got shipped off to the hospital straight away. The reason I was called in to the office was that his last words before being carted off to the funny farm was 'Say goodbye to Phil for me'. I hardly knew the guy as well. It's funny how stress and certain situations make people go a bit mad.

Then came the best time of basic training, Military Field Training or M.F.T for short. This was two or three days of living in the middle of a disused air field in a tent learning all the cool stuff with guns and border control and loads of other stuff. We all slept top to tail in several large tents set up in a hanger. It was bloody cold and uncomfortable but you made do with what was there. I don't think there was much washing done either; you just didn't have the time. We got there early in the morning, shown our tents issued with our rifle and then promptly went on a nice two mile run. It got us warmed up. At the end of the run we were all standing there breathing heavily when one of the Regiment guys calls out 'GAS GAS GAS!!!' This was the verbal signal to get our gas masks on. You had nine seconds to place your rifle on top of your feet, helmet between your legs and put the gas mask on. Doesn't sound a lot of time but you learned how to do as fast as you can. Once the masks were on the Regiment guy came around with a flask of rather cold water. Anyone who didn't seal there respirators properly got the water poured over their heads which then promptly found its way into your respirator through the seal. One guy was standing there as water was poured over his head and you could see the water rising inside his respirator. The regiment guy kindly told him he was not allowed to take his respirator off and if he wanted to breathe he had to figure it out. He didn't, so we started shouting at him to use his straw. There was a tube wrapped around the outside of the mouth piece attached to a little lever. You unwrapped the tube and turned the lever. This twisted a tube inside the respirator to around the rough area of your mouth allowing you to drink if need be. This poor chap was made to stand there for another five minutes breathing heavily through his drinking straw. Needless to say he never messed up again.

The days were filled full of running, war games, first aid, gun training and N.B.C training, that's Nuclear Biological Chemical training. The war games were a good part because you put into action everything you had learnt. We were still separated into two flights so it was logical we had to fight each other at some point. It was a couple of hours of firing our guns, using blanks of course and dealing with set up situations. People were dragged to one side and applied with make up to simulate battle injuries and then we had to deals with them. One guy, Loftus, came across one said predicament. In front of him was a manikin dummy in full combats covered in burns and fake blood and with its head placed about three feet away from its body. So with this in front of him Loftus picked up the head placed it back on the body and started doing mouth to mouth. The regiment guy just looked at him blankly and asked what the hell he was doing. Loftus explained the ins and outs of mouth to mouth to which the regiment guy kindly pointed out that its head had left the body, he was bloody dead. Funny at the time but not for Loftus, he failed and had do it all again.

Gun training was always good. I prided myself in being bloody good at it. We trained with the old 7.62 SLR. It was a big weapon for its time and bloody powerful. We learnt to strip it, clean it put it back together practically with your eyes shut. We worked really hard perfecting all the different ways of cleaning it and making it ready for use which accumulated in a practical test in front of a few Regiment guys. I honestly thought I would fly though the test and I did. Right up until the very end. I did everything perfect apart from the part you put the weapon all back together again and hand it over to the Regiment guy. Before you hand it over you show that the weapon hasn't got any rounds in the breach of the gun, release the firing mechanism and fire off the action then make it safe by applying the safety catch. I, for some unknown reason forgot this last bit completely. The Regiment guy just looked at me and asked me a further two times if I had finished, on all occasions I said I had being so certain I was. He took the weapon off me, held up in front of my face and fired off the action. My face must have been a picture. He just smiled called me a very unpleasant name and told me to get out. I was furious with myself, I stormed out of the room past al my mates into the toilets and proceeded to fire a triad of nice chosen swear words at the toilet cubicles. It took me a bit of time to calm down and when I had I was told I was going to get another go. I went back in and done the test again this time not making one single mistake. The regiment guy just looked at me when I was done and kindly told me to 'Fuck off'. I was still angry at myself for failing the first time. I made sure it didn't happen again.

We done our basic training over the Christmas period so you can imagine it was pretty cold. Also we had a week off over the Christmas and New Year period. I packed my stuff and went back home for Christmas. Getting off the train I spotted my mum and dad waiting for me. Picking up my bags I walked towards them. I caught my mum's eye; she looked at me and then looked past me like she didn't recognise me. Truth was she didn't. When it dawned on her who I was she was awash with tears mostly at seeing me again and also in how much I had changed in such a small space of time. I went home and promptly got drunk. The first morning at home was a bit of a shock to the system. I woke up and rolled over in my bed and glanced at the clock, it read 7:45. I nearly shit myself. What was I still doing in bed at this time? Inspection was fifteen minutes ago. Why no-one had woke me up? Christ I was in trouble. I jumped out of bed and was panicking. Where was my uniform? Where were my shoes? Where was everybody else? Then it dawned on me where I was. I promptly got back into bed and fell asleep again.

That week flew by. I had a good Christmas. Spending my time with my family, Anna, Dave and Martin. But before I knew it I was back in training and I didn't realise how much I missed it. Life was good.

Training flew by at an alarming rate. More people dropped out as it got more intense but we all felt something was right. This was bigger than anyone had thought and those of us that made it all had a huge sense of achievement. The final week of training was pretty relaxed. We spent the days practising for the final passing out parade. This was a big affair and all our family and friends would be there to watch. I managed to secure six tickets for the big day. Most people didn't want all their tickets so I bagged two extra tickets. We had a big party in the last week. It was over in the NAAFI and we were allowed to have drink and relax. There was a dance competition which somehow I managed to get down to the last four or five. All our drill instructors where there as well and seeing them out of uniform was rather amusing thou you still didn't get cocky with them. We got a load of them onto the stage to pay homage to them by making fun of them and how they trained us over the last eight weeks. At some point during the night I got tied to the bar by some of the Regiment guys and they wouldn't let me go until I had explained to one of the female recruits, Caz was her name, the benefits of using tooth paste during foreplay.... I was tied up for a while. Our drill instructor, Kenny, got absolutely hammered and spent the night in one of the now empty rooms in our barrack block with a bucket just in case of emergencies.

The night before the big day came and so did all our friends and family. During the evening we were allowed off base to go and meet them all in the local pub. The place was heaving. I sat there with Mum, Dad, Claire and her boyfriend Stuart, Martin and of course Anna. This was one of the first times it dawned on me what a mess I had made of our relationship. We hardly talked to each other and anyone from the outside must have noticed something wasn't right. Me being me thou thought everything was still going to work out fine as long as I closed my eyes stuck my fingers in my ears and hummed a nice tune.

The morning dawned of our final day in training. It was a clear beautiful day and about minus four degrees. Needless to say it was bloody freezing. We wrapped ourselves up in our thermal underwear and lots of tape so you couldn't see it under our number one uniform. I actually made an extra pair of gloves out of newspaper and tape to try to keep my hands warm under the very thin white parade gloves we had to wear. It was also the birthday of our officer in charge, and for the life of me I can't remember his name. We called him Gummy on account he used to get his words mixed up a lot and to cover it up he always used to say 'put my teeth back in'. But anyway, it was his birthday and as a present we set up a little surprise for him. We lined up outside all ready to march off for our parade. Gummy gave us a few words of wisdom and encouragement and then gave us orders to move off. Now normally we would execute these orders with the precision we had been taught over training. This time thou when gummy told us to turn right some of us did the others either marched off in a different direction, stood at ease, about turn, salute, basically everything he didn't tell us to do. Gummies face was a picture. After he figured out we were just taking the piss out of him he laughed it off and off we went.

All our friends and family were sitting in the stands as we marched onto the parade square to the lovely sound of the band playing off to one side. I'm sure they we as cold if not colder than we were but the smiles on their faces was worth it. We went through all our marching, static and weapon drills and then had to stand there while some big wig officer went on and on about how we all had finished a long journey and now we were different men and women to who we had been eight weeks before. Now due to the time of year several of us had colds or chest infections and everything that with them. I was no exception. The rule was that if you couldn't stand still for the parade or could not complete the day you went down on one knee and waited for someone to come along and drag you off to one side. Our flight all made a promise to each other that none of us would fall out on this special day. As I mentioned I was no exception to having a cold and while we were standing there waiting for the big cheese to finish off is speech I decided to have a coughing fit. I was in the front row of our flight and if I couldn't contain the cough then I would have to drop out. It was one of the hardest things I had to do but all the guys behind me must have seen me struggling to contain myself and all I heard was whispered words in my ear, 'don't do it Morg' 'hold it together Phil' 'we finish this together'. I struggled for about five minutes but never gave in. If it wasn't for the guys around me giving me their support I would have dropped out. It's a great bond you form in training and even thou you probably won't see some of these guys again you never lose that bond.

Then came part of the pass out I still giggle about, the fly over. Its tradition that every squad of recruits that pass out in the Air Force has a fly over by some plane or another. We didn't even know what we were going to get. As the speeches came to an end I saw a dot in the distance behind the stands and it was getting bigger. We had the privilege of getting a Nimrod as our fly over. None of the guests knew it was coming behind them and Christ it was low. When it hit the parade ground it must have only been about three hundred feet off the deck. And it made a hell of a sound. Not only did it make most of the guests jump out of their skins to rub salt into the wounds it came around and did it again to the same effect.

With the parade over we all marched off the parade ground and fell out. We all sang Happy Birthday to Gummy and went to the NAAFI to wait for our friends and relatives. We all had photos taken and then mingled with all our training staff and officers to introduce them to our families. Then came a bit of a shock for me. As we were standing around having a drink and a smoke it was announced that some of us were leaving straight away to go to our trade training. I was one of them. I had one hour to get all my stuff together, say goodbye to everyone get on a bus and sod off. I thought it was a bit mean to leave everyone behind but such is life in the armed forces. And that was it eight weeks of training finished about three hours with my family and friends and I was gone to my next base. My trade training was to be at RAF Cosford.

Chapter 11.

Cosford, Drinking & Martin.

After spending that amount of time training hard and been shouted at everyday I was expecting pretty much the same thing. My how I was wrong. I got onto base with the rest of the guys on my course and we were signed in and allocated our rooms. Unlike basic training with its cold floors and sixteen people per room what I was greeted to was a four man room with partition walls, your own desk and wardrobe and a carpet. We had a communal toilets and showers that we shared with one more four man room. This was looking very nice. We settled in and the next day we went to our training block. There was only about ten of us in the class including two instructors. Now Our Instructors were pretty laid back for what we were used to. Sergeant Collins was the best. He was a Welsh man with a huge tash. They all got to know us really well and as long as you didn't mess them around they didn't mess you around. As with basic, training flew by at an alarming rate. We learnt all about the photographic trade and all the machines and equipment that went with it. Every day we had fun and most weekends you went home. Most nights we went over to the NAAFI and had a few to drink or went ten pin bowling. Every Tuesday night, well I think it was a Tuesday the NAAFI held happy our in the bar. This was two for the price of one and by God did we take advantage of that. We used to finish our day training get over to the mess for a bite to eat then get changed and head over and order shed loads of drinks. Jamie and I used to eat rather a lot of pickled eggs for some reason. It seemed a good idea at the time. Didn't seem that good in the morning thou. And you certainly didn't want to be the second person into the toilet in the morning either.

Things were very good indeed. Then came my break up with Anna. Within a space of a weekend I went from a person who thought they knew what was going on in life to someone who really couldn't give a dam. It didn't affect my job thou. In fact if anything it made me more intent on doing it. I took up fencing in my spare time, went to the gym and drank more Newcastle Brown than I ever thought was possible. I also started treating women with a certain lack of regard. I, at the time was blaming Anna for everything so therefore all women must be the same. Don't trust them and certainly don't start having feelings for them. A really shit way of looking at it but at the time it was the way I was. I was at anything with a pulse. I had two or three girls in Wales on the go and two at Cosford. I even went as far as entertaining a lady on the train once. I don't think I was a nice person back then. I still kept in touch with one or two people, Martin and Dave were the main two. But in all honesty it was just mostly Martin.

I had a bunch of new friends at Cosford as well. All the guys on the course were great. There were two girls on our course Caz and Rachael. I was friends with both of them and didn't see them as anything else. Caz was the girl I had to explain the extra use of toothpaste to at our party in basic training. We always had a bit off a laugh over that. After one weekend we turned up in class and Caz, Rach and another guy call Sturman wasn't there. We found out that over the weekend they had been involved in a serious car accident and were all in hospital pretty messed up. We, which is most of the guys, went along to see them and take the piss out of them. When they got better they would no longer be on out course.

This came in conjunction with a little incident in which I was the main instigator. We had a guy on our course, can't remember his name now. But this guy was basically a bit of an idiot. I walked into our room after lunch one day to find that he had been into my bed space and acquired a few of my cassettes. Not happy with this I confronted him face to face and nicely told him that if I caught him with any of my stuff again then I would break his legs. When I was having this polite conversation with him I noticed that the stereo he was playing it on. It was Sturmans. Now it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this chap had taken advantage of Sturmans currant hospitalisation, gone into his room and taken his stereo. I reported him the next day. I didn't realise the implications of accusing someone of theft in the military no matter how small. Before I knew it I was standing in front of a board of officers and NCOs explaining the situation to them and why I had done what I done. He ended getting a bollocking and being back flighted. Strangely I didn't feel bad about it at all.

While at Cosford I had my first taste of guard duty. My first shift was a night duty. This consisted of a twelve hour shift, two hours on one our off. To stay up all night patrolling the base or manning the main gate took it out of you at first but you soon got used to it. You went out in all weather. It didn't matter if it was dry, cloudy or just pissing down with rain you went out in it. We only had to do one guard duty a month and it was for some reason mostly nights. Daz, one of the guys on my course, was caught out once and ended up doing days which for him meant doing the entire weekend while the rest of us went home. He wasn't a happy chappy I can tell you. But time passed quickly and before we knew it our course was coming to an end. We all arranged to out into the local town and get totally hammered. Our instructors were coming out as well to buy us a few and celebrate with us. Unfortunately communication wasn't high on the agenda and we told the instructors one pub but stupidly went to another. We got drunk and never seen them for most of the night. In one pub I kept up my sleep with everything female role by 'walking' a young lady home who I had met in one of the pubs. When I got back to the pub we decided to go to the chip shop to get a bite to eat. This is where we bumped into our instructors for the first time that night. Now, we were drunk and they were sober. So we were load and rude and they stayed quiet and just looked at us. The night ended and we went back to our blocks and drank some more. Unfortunately we forgot that we had to back into the section the next morning. Our instructors hadn't. We all turned up and before we knew it we were all out in the car park marching up and down for around two hours. This was punishment for not meeting up with them for a drink. Even after all the time with them they still had the knack of letting us know who was boss and we had the knack of completely forgetting it.

My dad came up to see me in the last weeks at Cosford. It was great to see him, even thou I usually went home most weekends. We went ten pin bowling and went to the aircraft museum that was just outside the base. I loved spending time with my dad, hell I still do. He's a much laid back sort of person and a great laugh to get drunk with.

Time came to an end at Cosford and I received my posting. It was the number one choice on my list. I was going to North Devon to an operational training base called Chivenor. So saying good bye to everyone I knew I went home for a well earned break, caught up with seeing everyone and had a very nice surprise. My mum and dad had sorted out for my dad and me to go to Ireland on a drinking weekend. Mum and dad owned a small cottage in Southern Ireland in a place called Dungarvan and that's where we were going to go. We caught a train to Fishgaurd jumped on the ferry to Roeselare and then got a bus to the town. The drinking started as soon as we got on the train so by the time we hit Ireland we were wrecked. The bus trip to Dungarvan let us sober up a bit so we weren't too bad when we got there. My dad came up with the idea of hiring some bikes for the weekend to get back and forth from the cottage to town. We found a hire shop and sorted out a couple of bikes. There was a problem thou. We were leaving on Sunday and the shop was closed on that day. The guy said it was no problem, gave us a key to his shop and told us to drop the bikes off in the shop and post the keys through the letter box..... Unbelievable.

We stayed in town and got very, very drunk in several bars in the town, and trust me there were plenty of bars to choose from. Somehow we managed to get back to the cottage in one piece, not sure how but we did. The next day we had breakfast and headed back into town on our trusty bikes. We did make a bit of a detour and had a look around the local area and took in the sites. It was great. Then we went drinking. The day wore on and so did the amount of Guinness and whiskey we drank. We tried getting through as many bars as we could. Some were normal bars some were in the back of shops; one was actually in some ladies front room. Seriously, you walked into her house, sat down on her settee and she poured you a drink from a small bar in the corner next to the television. One bar we didn't go in thou. As we walked up to it song were being sang from inside. Now singing in bars is rather normal over in Ireland but out of this pub came the sound of Christmas carols. I think it was Rudolf the red nose reindeer. Not too strange really until you realised it was June.... We decided to leave that pub alone. In the evening we decided it was a great idea to go to the cinema and watch the new batman film which had just come out. Now being hammered and trying to watch a film was not a good combo for us. We spent most of the film throwing popcorn at the screen and shouting 'BOO' at the screen any time Danny De Vito appeared as the bad guy. It was funny as hell. We finished off the evening with some more drinks and back to the cottage.... mostly whiskey. We dropped the bikes off on the Sunday and got on the bus to go back home. We drank some more on the ferry and managed to drink most of the duty free on the train back to Cardiff. How our livers managed to survive is beyond me. It was a hell of a weekend and I loved every minute of it. That sort of time made me realise that life was good and to have parents like mine was something I was very, very proud of.

Another thing that happened was my mate Martin decided to get married. Nothing unusual there I here you say. He had a steady girlfriend by the name of Sharon who had a daughter by a previous relationship. They were all over each other every time I seen them, nice but a bit sickly. Martin was very obviously head over heals in love. The thing is he asked me to be his best man on his big day. I was very flattered and obviously said yes not knowing the first thing about what a best man does. The day came and I went to the church with martin in Pontypridd. He was nervous as hell and in all honesty so was I. We were sitting there waiting for the bride to be to arrive when something happened. We were sitting there as I said when we heard a grunting sound behind us followed by a thump. We both looked around and were greeted by the sight of who I believe was Martins uncle laying on the floor looking very pale and clutching his chest. He had suffered a massive heart attack. Now I don't know what clicked in but I stepped up to the mark. I asked the priest to pone the ambulance straight away and cleared the church. We made Martins uncle as comfortable as we could and I got someone to sit with him as I turned my attention to Martin. If he wasn't nervous before then now he was a bloody wreck.

I got Martin on his feet and went out the back of the church and told him everything was going to be OK. I don't think he believed me for one minute but a few swigs out of my hip flask seemed to calm him down a bit. I left him with the hip flask to go and check on what was going on in the church. His uncle was not looking good, not good at all. I went outside to see the wedding guests and to tell them that normal service would be resumed as soon as possible. It was at that point the ambulance turned the corner from one direction while in the other direction the bride turned up in her nice white Jag.

Both vehicles stopped nose to nose outside the church, I pointed the direction they needed to go while getting someone to show the way then ran over to the Jag. I explained to Sharon that there was nothing to worry about, that Martins uncle had just taken a turn and would be fine. Then I told her to drive around the block a few times and everything would be OK. So off she went and I headed back into the church to be greeted by the paramedics giving the uncle CPR in the middle of the church. The day was getting better and better. It was obvious to me that Martins uncle was gone and this was confirmed to me by the paramedics as they left the church with the body on a stretcher. How the hell was I going to explain this to Martin? I done the only thing I could think of... I lied. As far as martin and Sharon and everyone else knew his uncle had a seizure in the church but should be OK in time. Martin seemed happy with my blatant lie and the church service continued, a bit late but everything was good. The reception was in the sports club back home and I was a mess. The events from the previous couple of hours caught up with me. When it came to my best mans speech I totally botched it. All the funny things I had planned to say about Martin and his misdemeanours and his bazaar love of Top-Gun went out the window. I just stumbled through it. I was saved thou in the eleventh hour by his step daughter. She was sitting next to me and as I was mumbling about nuts or something she turned to me and kindly asked, 'Can I go to the toilet?' And with those words my day as a best man came to an end. Everyone had a laugh and then got very drunk. By the time of the evening bash I think everyone sort of knew what had really happened to Martins uncle and everyone was really nice to me. I was plied with so much alcohol, back slaps and handshakes I didn't know where I was by the end of the night.

Sometime after the wedding Martin and I were out drinking again when he had some unexpected news for me. He was going to become a dad. Needless to say we got very drunk but the other thing he asked me was if I would be God Father to his kid. I was over the moon. I couldn't believe that after the disaster at the wedding and my comings and goings with my private life and what I was becoming he still seen me as that sort of friend. I agreed straight away and some months later Sharon gave birth to a son, they named him Alex. It was a very strange proud day for me standing in the church watching this small bundle of stuff which was now by all means part of the family. I'm still in contact with Alex today and the scary thing is he's the spitting image of his old man. I kept in contact with Martin all the time. In fact I think he was one of the only friends I did keep in contact with. He was always there to tell me I was a twat or to talk to me, a truly great mate to have. But it is only now looking back on things do I realise how good he was, Martin, thanks mate. Everyone should have a Martin in their life.

Chapter 12.

Devon & Jets.

The train journey to my new base in Devon wasn't too bad and took about four hours. I was met at the train station by my new sergeant, Steve. He was a short chap but had an air about him that told me he wasn't someone to mess around. I was thrown a bit when I got into his car because it had duel controls. I didn't say anything I thought it might be a bit forward of me to find out why. Later on thou I found out he had a side job as a driving instructor. Second jobs I also found out were rather common in the armed forces. Chivenor was about three miles from the train station but it didn't disappoint. I got onto site and Steve dropped me off at the main gate so I could get issued with a room and sort out all the paper work that goes with it. This was the first base where I had a room to myself. It wasn't huge but it was mime. I had my bed, sink, desk and a couple of wardrobes. But it was all mine. I started work the next day and was introduced to everyone in the section. Again it wasn't a huge section and it was split into two sections, one side for the ground photographers and the other side for the processors. There were two guys on the ground side, Glen and Tony while on the processor side there was Dave, Jon, Jasper and a couple of other guys. My first day consisted of getting to know the equipment I would be working with and how the system worked. All the while throughout the day the peace was shattered by Hawk jets taking off every ten minutes. I was in heaven.

Work in the section was great all the guys did their work but also had a great laugh with it. I was still getting to know the guys in the section and was unsure of some of their names. Now, the phone rang and I answered it, the voice on the other end asked for Tony. I said I would go and get him. So trying to look eager as a new guy should be I ran around the section looking for him. I asked the first guy I met 'Where's Tony?' Tony looked at me, smiled and kindly told me he was in the dark room. So I went into the dark room only to find Glen, he told me that Tony was in the main office. So I left the dark room walked passed Tony and into the main office only to find Steve. I asked him where was Tony, he smiled, called me a muppet and gave Tony a shout. He shouted back he would be there in a minute because he was on the phone.

I found out that being in the real Air Force and not just in training was extremely relaxed and I mean so relaxed you were almost horizontal. My shifts were seven thirty till about half twelve on one day and on the next day it was half twelve till cease fly which was normally about four thirty or five o'clock. The hardest part of my day was in the mornings when sometimes I had to pick up the keys from the guard room and collect the milk for our day's supply of tea and coffee. So as you can imagine I had plenty of spare time on my hands. I got to know most of the available, and some of the not so available ladies on camp especially one who used to work in the NAAFI. And with having so much time off throughout the week it didn't take long to get to know everyone. A old friend of mine from Wales lived in a nearby town called Braunton so I made a habit of popping along to the NAAFI every other day saying 'hello' to my lady friend, buy some beer and head off to my mates house for the day. Life was good.

I still went back to Wales now and again but not as much as I used to. I mostly seen my Mum and Dad and Martin but that was about it. Most weekends were spent in Barnstaple drinking a few beers and enjoying the night life. The guys on camp and especially my section were fantastic guys to be with. Well most of them were anyway. You couldn't trust Jon for as far as you could throw him and that wasn't far on account he was, shall we say well fat. He had the habit of dropping you in the brown smelly stuff at any point to further his own personal cause. This came to a head one night when Tony and I got rather drunk and when we got back onto camp decided to pay Jon's room a visit. It was rather early in the morning and Tony and I tip toed up to Jon's window which he always left open and steal all his house plants. We thought it was hysterical at the time. The next morning we went to work as normal and as soon as we got there we were called into Steve's office and given a huge bollocking about what we had done to Jon's plants. Both Tony and I argued that we didn't do it but in our drunken state we had left a trail of dead house plants from Jon's barrack block all the way to ours. So, we finally admitted our wrong doings and accepted defeat. Jon on the other hand had other ideas. After we admitted the crime he decided to take it to the next level and report it to the next higher power. It was like what happened at Cosford but this time I was on the receiving end of the punishment. We were marched in to the Officers office and got given a thorough dressing down. Then the officer had a look at what we were in for and couldn't help trying to suppress a smile. He told us our punishment was to apologise to Jon and pay a grand total of about seven pounds each in compensation. We saluted and marched out of the office. Jon was outside looking smug thou he didn't look as smug when he was called into the office and was given a bigger bollocking than we were for bringing such a pathetic charge up in front of an officers committee. What Tony and I laughed about was the fact that on the night of the great house plant massacre we also urinated through Jon's open window onto his bed whilst he was asleep. For some reason Jon never mentioned that at the hearing.

Now, in between getting drunk, sleeping around and basically having an easy time of it you can't forget I was working on an operational base. This means planes flying at all times of day all within an arm throw of where I worked and slept. This was one of the main reasons I joined the forces. It went back all those years ago when my dad took me to all those air shows and I fell in love with all things that flew. I found out whilst on base that you could go on what was known as a jolly flight. This was the weather flight that went up every morning throughout the week at about seven thirty. I looked into it and found out that as long as you were fit enough any one could sit in the back seat and have a free flight. I signed up straight away.

About a week later I had a phone call in the section telling me to go to the medical section and get checked out ready for a possible flight in the next couple of days. I went along got checked out and to my delight was told everything was OK and I could fly. Now was the waiting game. I didn't have to wait long, twenty four hours to be precise. I got another phone call telling me to get me ass over to forty two squadron's flight room first thing in the morning and they would sort me out. I woke up as nervous as a jelly in an earthquake. Here I was, eighteen years old and about to fulfil my lifelong ambition of flying a jet fighter. They got me a flight suit, helmet and the dreaded G-Suit. G-Suits are basically inflatable bags that fit around your legs and abdomen and inflate at the right times to stop you blacking out while you're flying.

Then came the most awesome sensation I had ever felt. I know it sounds a bit stupid but for me walking towards the jet, seeing it all fired up with people waiting for me so they could strap me in to this fantastic bit of machinery, this for me was almost as good as sex. They strapped me in and hooked up my microphone and G-Suit. Next thing I knew was the pilot sitting in front of me asking if I was OK and if I had ever flown before. I answered like a giddy school boy without realising that the jet was already moving into position at the end of the runway. As the jet got into position I held my breath, listening to the pilot and the tower talking to each other. There was a brief moment of silence and then the jets engines fired up and we hurtled down the runway. The sensation of having an engine strapped underneath you and the sounds in the cockpit is something I will never forget. Pilots get used to it I suppose but not me; yep I know I sound like a complete cabbage. We flew around a bit and checked the weather and the pilot called it in then he kindly asked me to strap everything down and keep a look out. I asked him why and he said there was another jet in the air and we were going to do a bit of cat and mouse stuff with us being the mouse. About five minutes later the other jet came into view and came straight at us. What followed was to be the most scariest yet fascinating twenty minutes ever. The pilot ducked and dived, flew straight up and pulled heavy turns that made me want to throw up, but I never did. I'm telling you those guys have balls of steel to do what they do in those things. When it all over and I had regained use of by bowels and other bodily functions we returned to base. Upon landing Glen and Tony were there with their cameras waiting to take the piss out of me and of course take some nice photos. I loved every minute of it and just to make sure it wasn't a fluke I signed up for another flight straight away.

Chapter 13.

Sharon.

So all in all I was having a whale of a time. Drinking, having fun with several young ladies, flying several times a week in a jet fighter, drinking more, it was amazing. When I didn't go home back to Wales on the weekends I normally went out into Barnstaple. Either out with Chris to a pub called the Exeter which catered for heavy metal and Goth types or to a night club called Bees with the guys from camp. When I first went there with Tony he kindly told me, 'If you can't get laid in here then you must be dead or gay, and being gay won't stop you either' I thought he was kidding but no, he wasn't. Every time I went in there I was pretty much guaranteed to leave with a lady or in some cases leave with one and go back for another. I cooked up in my head a black book of chat up lines which worked, granted some better than others. It was sometimes too easy and in all honesty I was getting bored because I could get whatever I wanted and most of the time all I needed to do was smile and I was in.

One night I was going through my usual routine in the club. I was with my mate Mike and things were going good. I eyed up a likely candidate for my evening's entertainment and made my move. I worked my way over to where she was and acquired a seat close by. I timed it well as she was shortly standing next to where I was. I kindly asked her if she wanted to sit down and she did, phase one complete. We made small talk for a few minutes. You know the stuff, names, where you live, the weather, do you come here often all that crap. I then moved on to see if she wanted a drink. Now normally this worked and things moved on from there but on this occasion she said 'No'

This took me a little by surprise. No one ever said no. I asked why not and she kindly said 'If you buy me a drink then you want something in return' she then followed that up with a knee trembling smile. The type of smile I hadn't seen in a while. Now saying that got me interested straight away, well that and that smile of hers. I hadn't come across this before and it perked my interests. We got talking some more. Her name was Sharon and she was from Barnstaple. We got on to the subject of our occupations. She got mine straight away even if I tried lying and telling her I was something else but she just smiled again and I knew I was beat. She asked me what I thought she did for a living. Now looking at her properly for the first time I took her all in. She was a small lady long blonde hair and had a killer smile, yeah I know, you can see where this was going but at the time I didn't. She was wearing black tight leggings and a white crop top which showed off her mid riff and her shoulders but covered all the other parts. Her arms and shoulders were amazingly defined. Not bodybuilder defined but she had great form. I decided that she must be some sort of fitness instructor or gym junky. She laughed it off when I said what I thought and kindly told me she was a nurse. Now if I had known nurses looked that good I would have fallen ill a lot more often.

The night went on and we talked a lot more, we danced and I did manage to buy her a drink as well. With the understanding it didn't mean anything and she bought me one back. Towards the end of the night as with most clubs back then the slow tracks came on. I asked to dance and she came on the dance floor with me. I wrapped my arms around her waist and was surprised how petit she was. I managed to steal a kiss from her at the end and we actually agreed to meet the next day at the bud station. I did try to persuade her to let me come home with her but she wasn't having any of it. Well I had to give it try didn't I? She went home and I went back to base with my head a little bit messed up. How could one woman mess up such well laid plans? I had it all sorted, meet, drink, and sex. That's all I did, but with this one meeting all my plans flew out of the window. I decided by the next morning that it wasn't worth the hassle and I didn't turn up for our meeting. Life resumed to normality.

Monday came around again and into work I went. Just after lunch the phone rang and Glen answered it. Two seconds later he called me and handed me the phone. 'Hello' I said as I always did and what came back was a female voice asking me why I hadn't turned up on Saturday. Confused wasn't the word that described me. I asked who it was, the woman's voice asked me if I forgotten her name already. My brain was in a bit of a meltdown. I recovered slightly and responded with her name. The she asked me what her last name was. I will admit I didn't have a clue. She told me it began with O. So in my wisdom I said O-B One. As in the Star Wars character. I was wrong. She told me she had turned up on the Saturday and I didn't and what was my excuse. I couldn't really say I wasn't looking for anything more than an easy night. So I told her I had forgotten. She then asked if I was interested in meeting up again that evening. I couldn't come up with a reasonable excuse so I replied what the hell. We sorted out a time and a place and the phone went cold. All the way through this bazaar phone call I had Glen and Tony off to one side taking the piss out of me for being under the thumb already. I really didn't know if was a good idea going to meet her but I thought what the hell and turned up anyway. She didn't.

I sat there for over half an hour wondering where she was, and wondering what I was doing there in the first place. How had this one woman got me doing cartwheels and I didn't know why. While I was pondering how it was all happening she turned up in front of me. She looked wonderful. She kindly looked at me and said, 'So you decided to turn up this time?' I smiled in return and replied, 'Yep, fancy a drink?' We got along like a house on fire. We had several drinks and just talked. I was surprised at how good it was just to talk to a woman without trying to get her into bed. Sharon turned out to be very charming to be with. She was funny; in fact she had an evil sense of humour, and one I could to relate to all over. The evening came to an end we kissed again and agreed to meet again that week. I went back to base in a mess, again. Should I see this woman? Do I need another relationship? Is this going to hurt? All these questions faded into dust before I had time to answer them. I had no answers I just thought of Sharon. It was a weird feeling. We continued to meet up and have a few drinks and just talk. It was lovely. I really looked forward to meeting up with Sharon and started making a bit of an effort in the way I looked when we did meet up, but in honesty not much of an effort. I was getting the piss taking out of me in work. They knew what I was like, well sort of knew anyway and thought it was funny as hell seeing me all googly eyed over a new woman. I finally made the effort to go to her house and meet her parents. Where she lived, sorry to say wasn't a nice place. She lived on the far side of a not to desirable trading estate just on the outskirts of Barnstaple. I saw past the state of the estate and focused on who I was seeing not where she came from. I found out she had two sisters and a brother. Sharon's two sisters were already married and had homes and families of their own and her brother was still living at home. Her mum, Kay was a straight forward lady who sounded like she told it as it was but in a very nice way. She reminded me of Mrs G, Anna's mum. Her father was a blunt sort of man. Hard working, loved his sports especially football and cricket. He sort of just grunted at me when I met him. I don't think I made much of an impression on him.

Time went on and we grew closer together. We saw each other whenever we could. With my shift patterns it was easy to pop up to house and see her, and when she was working Kay, Sharon's mum, had no problems with me popping in and crashing out on her sofa while I waited for Sharon to finish work. I did the quit a lot and most of the time fell asleep in the front room. Her dad, Terry, questioned Sharon once and asked her, and I quote, 'Why are you going out with an unemployed bum?' She replied that I had a job and I was in the armed forces. I don't think he believed her at first. I could see where he coming from thou. Every other day he used to come home from work to be greeted by some bloke asleep on his sofa wearing bomber boots, ripped black jeans, black T-shirt and a holey black cardigan. I would have loved to seen his face when Sharon told him what I did for a living. After he did find out what I did for a living he made an effort to speak to me. The first time this happened ended in disastrous results and put me back to the starting point as far as he was concerned. I was sitting in the front room watching telly and Terry was sitting opposite me reading his news paper. Sharon was in the kitchen staying out of the way; it was like she knew what her dad was going to do. Terry very calmly folded his paper and placed it on his lap and turned to look at me. I felt his eyes on me but didn't turn away from the telly. 'So Phil. Did you watch the game last night?' I had no idea what he was on about so I just looked at him, smiled and replied, 'Game? What was that game?' 'The football game' he replied. My mouth opened before my brain formulated the proper response. ' Nah. Don't watch football Terry. I can't stand the game.' Terry looked at me for another split second and very casually picked up his paper and carried on reading. Then from out of nowhere Sharon appeared and grabbed my arm and dragged me into the kitchen. Sharon asked me what the hell I was doing. I had no idea what she was on about. She kindly informed me that her father never spoke to any of her boyfriends. I was the first boyfriend he had made an effort to talk to and all I did was blow him out of the water by telling him I didn't like football. Thank god I never told him how I felt about cricket. I did make an effort from there on in thou to lie my teeth off and pretend I liked certain things that Terry did so things ran a bit more smoothly.

Now, everything in our relationship was going bloody well. We spent all our time together. Sharon was even now coming back to base with me and sleeping over. Thou everyone I knew on base knew her and what went on when you had a lady to spend the night Sharon still was lying to her mum by telling her she was sleeping around her friend's house. Technically she wasn't lying. Her friend was seeing one of my mates on base and was sleeping downstairs in his room most night Sharon came onto base. Then something very strange happened in our relationship.

We, that is Sharon and myself were sitting in her house one day not doing much apart from snuggling up to each other on the settee and talking. I got on to the subject of maybe moving off base and getting a place in town. After all a lot of the guys on camp did it. It gave you a certain amount of freedom you can't get while still living on base. Sharon said it was up to me what I did. I said I was thinking of it but, if I did get a place would she be interested in moving in with me. Sharon didn't react much apart from saying she would never rent a place as it's a bit of a waste of money, you might as well buy a place. I replied that I would only buy a place with someone unless I was married to them. Now as soon as said that I felt Sharon's shoulders stiffen a little bit and saw her head turn towards me. She smiled that smile of hers and asked me what I had just said. I repeated it for her but thought nothing of it. 'So,' she said, 'what you're saying is that you won't buy a house unless you're married?' I nodded and asked her again if she wanted to move in with me. She noted again that she didn't want to rent a place so I said, 'Fine, we'll buy a place'. Sharon looked at me, 'Are you asking me to marry you?'

My brain exploded with possibilities. In a split second I weighed up the pros and cons of the words to come out of mouth next. I looked at Sharon and seen my future in a single heart beat. 'Yes, Will you marry me?' Sharon looked at me for what seemed a life time then she patted me on the knee, smiled and said two words, 'We'll see'. It wasn't the answer I was expecting. It was neither a yes nor a no. I was totally confused. I asked her again the next day and she replied she would think about it. Christ what was the problem here. I couldn't figure it out. So I asked her. Sharon is the type of person to think about things and think about them for a long time but this time she was waiting to give an answer until I was sure that this is what I wanted as well. I went off and thought about it and thought about it hard. I ran through everything I could, every possibility I could think of and still I came up with the same answer. Three weeks later we were together and Sharon sat forward and took my hands in hers, 'Ask me again' she said. 'Ask what?' I replied. 'Ask me again' she said. My face must have said it all and she just smiled. 'Will you marry me?' The next second seemed to last forever then she spoke one word, 'Yes'.

We told her family and everyone was very happy. I told all the guys on base and there was mixed reactions to it some were happy others said I was an idiot. Thou I think that was mostly military humour. Then I had to tell my family. I went up to Wales by myself on account Sharon was working and broke the news to my mum and dad. My mum started crying and shook her head while my dad hugged me and kissed my forehead. I explained we had no ring as yet so in all effect we weren't properly engaged but for all terms we were. If that makes any sense. We hadn't set a date but we were going too soon. Well when it all became official with the ring and all that stuff. So we went ring hunting in earnest. We did have a slight problem thou. Sharon is a very petit lady with very petit hands and exceptionally small fingers. Every ring we seen that she liked was too big for her or the clusters of stones just looked stupid on her hand. After searching thou we did come across one she really liked. It was a lovely ring with a Ceylon sapphire in the middle with diamond clusters either side. As usual it was too big for her fingers but the jeweller kindly informed us that this ring could be altered to fit her with the sacrifice of a few diamonds either side. We talked about it and because Sharon was besotted by the ring we agreed to get it altered. The ring cost an arm and a leg and would take several weeks to get altered but I didn't care. This wasn't for me it was for Sharon and that's all that mattered.

We decided to both go to Wales to stay with my parents for the weekend. Basically to show everyone that we were serious and that this engagement wasn't a flash in the pan affair. We had a great time through the day just talking about things, the engagement and the approaching wedding which still had no date. In the evening I told Sharon we were going down to the Holly Bush and meet the darts team I used to play for. Sharon was a bit nervous about going down there but she had no choice in the matter. All the guys at the pub embraced her with open arms and before she knew it she was playing darts with everyone and never having an empty glass in front of her. I didn't actually spend any time with her that night as she was just being hassled by all the guys who were trying their best to get her drunk. They succeeded. It was a great night. Seeing her totally at ease with guys I had known for years and seeing them accept her like we had been going out for ever meant a lot to me. I knew I was making the right choice.

Life back in Devon continued as it ever did. We were still waiting for the ring to come back from the jewellers. It seemed to be taking for ever to get altered. What Sharon didn't know was that I knew exactly when it would be ready and I was busy paying it off so I could propose to her at a time that she wouldn't forget. So on New Year eve two thousand and ninety two we got ready to go out to celebrate the New Year. Sharon knew there was something different about me and was pestering me what was going on. I didn't say anything, just smiled. We were in one of the pubs having a dance when Sharon started searching me. She was practically frisking me on the dance floor. It was really funny. I asked her what she was doing, she replied, 'looking for the ring'. I laughed it off telling her the ring won't be ready for a bit of time yet. She didn't believe me and kept searching. She never found a thing.

The night went on and New Year's approached. Sharon and I were in the bay window of the pub waiting to see the fireworks go off from across the river. Everyone mostly went down to the town square and jumped in the fountain to celebrate but it was bloody cold outside so we decided to stay indoors, saying that the pub was heaving with people. On the stroke of midnight I turned to Sharon and went down on one knee in front of her. This brought a cheer from a lot of the people in the pub. With smiles on both of our faces I produced the ring from its hiding place and asked one of the most important questions a man can ask a woman for the last time.

'Will you marry me?'

The answer was simple and produced an even bigger cheer.

'Yes'

Acknowledgments.

Thou this book doesn't cover everything that has happened to me because let's face it if I put everything in then you would be reading for a day and an age. But what is here is some of my life that has made me who I am.

I would like to thank everyone who has been and still is in my life especially the four women who have always had my love.

So this is for you, Mum, Miriam, Anna and my beautiful wife Sharon.

## No-one Famous

### I was in my local book shop looking for my next book, as you do in a book shop. When I noticed how many autobiographies there were. From pop stars to sports men and women. There was also a huge selection of wanna-a-be stars, people who really, let's face it, have had everything handed to them. So it got me thinking, why can't I do that? I may not be on the cover of magazines, you won't hear me in the music charts you won't see me on some generic TV show. My Life, I think has been a full and rich one. Growing up in Wales in the 70s and 80s was fun and exciting. My days full of adventure. I have a good life and wish to share these experiences with you.

### Enjoy.

