These are just memories as they come into my head, if I can remember them, to put here as they occur - maybe I'll order them later.  I was recently accused of being a frustrated writer.  I was shocked, I'd always been bottom of a class of 38 at grammar school and no way could I believe I was a writer, just judge by my English!.

18th February 2012

An early sailing photo:

I always thought I was 11 on this photo but according to the back of the photo, or one version of it, it was taken in July 1950 when I was 12.
My dad had arranged a sail with Chris, a fisherman who skippered my Dad's boss's fishing boat. He had his own boat, a traditional fishing boat, 'Dotrel'.  I thought it was a curious name but it turned out to be a sea bird.  It was too rough to go out to sea so we sailed up the river Wyre from Knot End. I was given the tiller and told where to steer, a succesion of landmarks until we reached what I have since come to believe was Wardley's creek. Later in the week we went out to sea but the boat was crowded and I wasn't invited to 'helm'.

I found this photo on a Lancaster Maritime Museum DVD. The boat I'm pictured on above was taking trips from Knott-End but it's reasonable to assume that the reason we got to sail in a fishing boat was similar to the Morecambe fishermen

16th February 2011   I've had lots of memories since I last wrote but now forgotten most of them.  Recently there has been a series of television programmes about an Edwardian Farm.  I was amazed that some of the machinery shown was still in use on my Grandad's farm.  
For some reason I spent most of my school summer holidays living at my Grandparent's.  They rented a small farm either side of Kellet Lane, Bamber Bridge.  Four fields to the north, one to the south and they owned one to the side.  My Grandad died of cancer around 1952 and the tenancy lapsed with him so my Grandma and Auntie Nora had to find somewhere to live.  In the summer of 1951 I would have just turned thirteen so I must have been very young when I started to work on the farm. I was the oldest grandchild.
I can remember mixing the proven to feed the hens - I can hear and feel the shovel scraping the bottom of the mixing trough now!  I then used to carry the food to the cabins on the old tramway which was on the south side of the side field.  Once fed I had to collect the eggs, in some cases put my hands under the hens in the nesting boxes, which I was terrified of doing.  The hens were free range so some of them layed all over the place under the hedgerows.  I was always delighted to find a clutch of eggs, sometimes double figures.  
Along the walk to the cabins there was a well.  I was told not to go near it as it was bottomless.  As you can imagine I was terrified of this, it looked like a small pond about two metres diameter (I didn't know what a metre was then).  I often looked at it, from a distance, I think it was a spring but there was no water flow.  Many years later it had dried out and it was only a foot deep, mind you when it was wet the mud could have been deep, but no way could it have been bottomless.  My Grandad was like that, he was always pulling my leg, very convincingly.  Until I got to around sixteen years old I was always rather slight.  He always threatened to put cow muck in my shoes to make me grow.
He used to accompany me some days and he always used to say that he would like to see the year 2000 but was reconciled to not doing so but he said I would.  Many years later, before the turn of the century, a medium told Suzie that there was someone looking after me until the the millennium and then I would be on my own.  I often wonder if it was my Grandad.

10th June 2009. I watched a programme last night on "The British Sunday".  It brought back lots of 'memories'. The Lords Day Observation Society - widely thought to be cranks at the time but now they are being shown to be right, but not for their reasons.  The programme made Sundays of yesteryear to be dull and boring but that is not how I remember them.

I've got several restoration projects on the web site.

The first restoration project I undertook, I don't think I would have used those words at time (2009 03 03 now), was a gents racing bicycle, well an apology for one.  I can't remember where it came from or the exact date.  I was promised a bicycle if I passed my eleven plus, which I was one of the privileged few who did.  I think at first I said I'd rather 'do up' the one I had.  I ended up with a new one bought from Millers Cycles on North Road at Preston, the top near the ring road junction, it's been knocked down many years now.  My Dad got a small discount because of where he worked.

I can remember painting the frame of my old bike and hanging it on the washing line to dry.  I can see it now but that's all I can remember.

I used my new bike for many years, mostly for riding to and from school, it was just under two miles, a few yards more and I would have got a school bus contract - free bus pass for the school journey.

My uncle Bill, Dad's youngest brother, brought a motor bike for my dad to repair and renovate, and I took it all to bits, I would say stripped it now.  Uncle Bill gave up on me and took the bits away to someone else to rebuild!

When I was eleven Dad bought an old car, a 1936 Standard Big Twelve - a Fourteen body with a Twelve engine, the numbers referred to the nominal horse power of the engines.  I did a lot of work on that as well as starting to learn to drive from eleven.  It would have been 1949 but probably a few years later when I was doing jobs on it - changing clutches etc.

In early 1959, just after we'd done lots of renovation, mostly welding up and fitting patches and painting it black, we'd done an early repaint in Valspar dove grey, I wrote it off in a head, well nearly, collision. Very sad.

The next car was a 1938 Jaguar, 1 1/2 litre. It was then known as an SS (Swallow Sports) and it had a Standard 14 engine, suitably tuned up - SU carburetors, one or two? Probably only one. the Standard had a Solex carburetor. I did a lot more work on this, it was 1958 or thereabouts.

By this time I had got interested in motor racing.  I joined the Austin 750 Club, based down south, no racing up north but that didn't deter me.  My Uncle Norman found two Austin 7 vans in a garage near him and I bought them.  they were in Chorley, I've no idea how we got them to Leyland?  I got a book written by someone who had built and Austin 750 from Austin 7 parts.  I was an accomplished gas welder by now and had stiffened up the chassis frame, as per book.  I had acquired some tubular steel and had built the basic body frame My Dad got the springs reconditioned to the new setting and I got to the stage where the 'thing' was a towable vehicle - I must have sorted out the brakes too - there were specialist firms who made special parts for these conversions.  We towed it my Uncle Norman's big farm shed in Kellet Lane Bamber Bridge - breaking lots of laws or we would be doing if we did the same thing now, where I worked on it for several months. This must have been 1959/60 ish. sadly I've no pictures of these adventures.

I got the message to go into hospital for my cartilage operation, inner right knee.  That was to change my life.  In 1961 I married the Ward Sister and moved to Wigan - the 'racing' car got left behind and eventually a work colleague of my Dad's bought it off me for £25.

My time was now devoted to house repairs and alterations and politics then golf.

1967 the bottom fell out of my life in Wigan and I gradually moved back to Leyland.