Go to
Personal Picture Gallery.
Outside our shop. Crown Street,Hebden Bridge. 1969/70.
The mayor (left), one of my Dad's friends, rock climber, Don Whillans (centre) and my father, on the day the shop expanded into fishing and shooting. My dad was also an electrician and salesman. I learned to shoot air pistols and shotguns! My Mum taught my little brother how to fish, and grilled trout in our backgarden. I sold maggots as bait, measured in half pint pots into brown paper bags.
Not long after this photograph was taken our dad died, aged 41 in 1974, from an unexpected brain haemorrhage. I went into upper sixth and initiated an antismoking campaign.
But before that and among the upheavals of family life we all had a lot of fun. I remember we toured Scotland, loved our summer holidays in the south of France and spent many weekends in the Yorkshire Dales. My memories of Loch Ness, so very spooky, and Aberdeen in 1972 were some of the happiest and most reassuring of my teenage days, and I can see even now my baby brother trying to kick a football around with our dad in a Scottish field.