yen_powell

It's a keeper that one!

I should mention that there is a sign outside these toilets that demonstrates that sometimes people just don't think things through before acting. I can't find my picture of it, but you can just about see it on GSV.

I gathered from the locals attempting to communicate that the ferry had been out of action for a long time and I was lucky it was actually up and running. I'd never been to Bungay before so as I say, I just tore a page out of an old AA map and headed cross country. My mate, for reasons known only to himself, had just uprooted himself and moved there because he could buy a bigger house, He had no job to go to, his wife was still working in Barking so they ended up staying at her parents in Dagenham and visiting their house only at weekends???? When he told me where he had moved to I thought he was making the name up or mispronouncing it! Thought I would drop in on my way home.

They did that with one in Whitechapel. A large pink coach full of commuters went out of control, hit the part that was above the footway and demolished it, I don't think it ever re-opened. The one at the top of Brick Lane is now an estate agents. The one in the pictures has something planned for it I hear on the grapevine.

It was a bit of a shock to me, I was expecting just a country lane not a body of water to get across.

I think he had a couple of striped bikes at one point. I met him one lunchtime in Greenwich and he'd turned up on a push bike, he loves 2 wheels. He's also a member of the XRV 2 stroke club, we both had one whilst owning an XRV, only he was riding in France when he had his.

Looking for the pictures of the Norfolk rally on my back up drives and found the toilet pictures Pete keeps mentioning. Everyone should have a hobby and mine is old toilets. This is Leyden Street toilets, built circa 1910 according to the drawings I have on my garage wall. It's been closed up since about 1970, but I persuaded my mate to let me have a look round. They don't build them like this any more. It used to have urinettes in the ladies according to my drawings. This is for ladies in Edwardian dresses to wee standing up by standing with a leg either side. Unfortunately even the local prostitutes the area is famous for refused to do this as they considered it unladylike and they spent a penny instead and used the normal cubicles. The urinettes were removed after a few years.

Aha, found the pics on my back up drive.

Possibly! It was on a camp site with very warm weather despite it being nearly winter and in the evening there was a fog so dense I got lost walking back to my tent. I rode to Bungay afterwards using a torn out page of an AA road atlas which seemed to show a direct route but was a bit misleading. Ended up on a very small ferry for a pound (Reedham?).

I've ridden that in a 'going slow between the cones' competition somewhere on the Norfolk Broads. I was trying to do it on my glitchy Varadero which did not like slow riding until I added a power commando and I asked to try again on Chris's bike. The winner rode a bloody Varadero!!!!!!!! I have video of it somewhere, the bloke just stopped all the time and stayed still without putting his feet down, it was amazing to watch. Sadly he died on the same bike later on I heard.

Is that Whealies old bike?

I think I may have already told you about the time they put a health testing machine in our town hall for a few weeks. I put my money in and stood on the scales. The instructions were in tiny writing and I bent down to see that it said to press this large red button which I did not knowing that this measured my height as it was pressed. The piece of paper it printed out said I was 12 stone but only 4 feet 8 inches tall and I was morbidly obese. I did it a few weeks later properly this time, a vast improvement and without even dieting or going to a gym.

Flares on the kickstart era!

They look like a trip hazard to me!

Laugharne?

The kerb stones are bloody high over there aren't they. Bet they take some bumping up!

We had a rough cockney sort working with us, called Big Al. Big Al was missing a belly button from a machete wound, got that during his bouncer days in south London apparently. He took a liking to Bobby and loved to hear his stories. One day Bobby was talking about various musicians and suddenly said, "You know George Melly once tried to pick me up on a tube train." Big Al considered this for a second before replying, "What 'appened Bobby boy, d'you fall over pissed?" "Oh no." say Bobby, "I was a much better looking chap in my youth".

I'd forgotten about Greeb and Grebo.

I also got called a headbanger.

When I were a lad in a leather jacket, the word for us was Grobs. This was applied to bike jacketed people who liked certain music, nothing to do with motorbikes, although a lot of them had one. The word is used on the small writing on the back of the Iron Maiden album from the 80s (Number of the Beast I think).

Sod that, those bolts holding it to the bridge deck look a bit flimsy. I wouldn't be able to concentrate worrying about that. To say nothing of the wind making my book hard to read.

In 1972 I was not long out of the remedial reading class (but still struggling due to I.T.A) and making Saturn V rockets out of plasticene because moon landings were all over the television.

I used to work with the bloke pictured below, he was related to the Queen Mother I believe and his father had been colonel of the Scots Guards. Bobby, as he was known, was super posh AND very light on his loafers. When he heard that the council's chief executive had decreed I should wear a suit when meeting councillors he replied, 'Well our chief exec is hardly an expert in sartorial elegance is he". I had to look up sartorial in a dictionary. The last time I saw him was after he had retired. I was sitting in a trial hole speaking with a large hairy Irish road worker called Big Dick. A Jaguar rolled past and he leaned out the open window and shouted, "yoohoo Ian!". Bobby must be very old now, but still writes for the sort of Royal fan magazines they sell in the US I hear.