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I was born in a small town on the edge of the New Forest called Lymington. I was born in the police house on Waterford Lane, as my father was the local policeman. We then moved onto Gosport Street, where my parents opened a café. There main customers were passengers stopping off for breakfast before catching the early ferry to the Isle of Wight. The café was formally a Public House called the Prince of Wales and then became The Star and is mentioned in my book The adventures of Patricia the smuggler’s daughter. I went to the infant’s school at the top of Cannon Street and would play around the streets and alley ways that ran off the high street. Little did I know that back in the Napoleonic wars of 1804 to 1815 the streets and alleyways of Lymington would be use by the local smugglers transporting their wares by Moonlight hiding from the revenue men.
The family then moved to Southampton where they had a grocery shop on Burgess Road, there I attended Swathling Junior School until we eventually moved to a big old Victorian House in Belmont Road. At Hampton Park secondary school I discovered a love for playing the drums. Not thinking this would lead to anything I left school after taking my GSE exams and started an apprenticeship. Me and my mates often talked about forming bands as it was now the seventies, and it was cool to be a musician. My best mate Andy had a guitar with an amplifier and a drum kit. So, every Saturday afternoon we would practise as Andy knew a few songs we would play them repeatedly.
When I was at work as an apprentice coachbuilder, I discovered that two of the members of Agnes Stange worked on the production line and their roadie worked in the trim shop making seats. I got to know Malcolm the roadie and then pluck up the courage to ask him to ask Dave the Drummer for Agnes Strange if he would give me a few drum lessons as it would be nice to know how to play the drums properly. Malcolm then asked Dave, and every Wednesday night Dave would pop over and show me different drum rudiments. After a few months I had got the hang of it as every night after work I would play the drums for at least an hour.
It was 1977 and after playing gigs around the local pubs in Southampton as a pop band Andy suggested that we formed a Punk Rock band or New Wave as it was known then. We then formed the Mirrors and wrote our own songs which we recorded in Free Range Studios in Covent Garden. I then joined Agnes Strange and wrote songs with the bass player.
Sat at work one day I had an idea for writing a book, this was the beginning of the Tom and Dick stories which then led onto the Patricia Adventures.
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