Newsletter No. 4 July 2009
Hello BSC
T-Shirts
As you know there was a problem with the sizing of the free club t-shirts as they came
back much smaller than expected. I therefore upsized many of your ordered sizes (mainly xl to xxl) and we are waiting for extras to
arrive. Hopefully those of you who have already received them are happy with them and it will not be too long before everyone has
been issued one. I did email those of you who can collect now and those who had been re-ordered for respectively. Please make the
effort to get to a meeting to collect them or contact myself to pick them up from me at home.
IOW
Most of us going to the IOW
this year are beginning to make arrangements. We have 3 leave times as follows.
Thursday 12.00pm for 2.00 ferry (small
group) leaving from Karen and Andy’s.
Friday 10.00am for 12.00 ferry from KFC
Friday 1.00 pm for 3.00 ferry from Harvester
We are hoping to get a club photo taken whilst on this rally so take your new t-shirts!! More details to follow, but also stay contactable (mob numbers up-to-date).
VFM and Hipshaker weekender tickets are now available and
Ryde theatre are advertising their gigs too. Madness concert planned for the Sunday.
Recent Events
Congratulations to Ian Hurford
on the success of his ‘ska’ night at the Bang Bar which followed the recent Basingstoke Live event. Not only were we treated to an
excellent albeit short set from ‘The Beat’ who had a great live sound and brought back so many memories, (was it only me who thought
the band members looked very young?), but Ian entertained us further with numerous reggae/ska tunes. Many faces from the past
turned up particularly it seemed from the Vyne School 80’s era, much like a school reunion for some of us! Fab night all round.
Congratulations
also to Screwloose aka Andy Dry who by all accounts had a successful dj-ing session himself at a recent Northern Soul do at
Newbury, attended by a number of BSC members. Watch this space eh Screw....?
Camber Rally Karen Amass
Friday 3rd – Monday 6th July 2009
Having stopped at the most classiest of burger vans on route
for lunch, (one advantage of being married to a truck driver), we arrived at Pontins, Camber Sands around 3.30pm, giving us just enough
time for a shandy before check-in opened. Being front of the queue (and the first queue being A for Amass!!), we had our keys in no
time and off we trudged to find our luxury accommodation. Chalet standard was as expected and although a very camp Pontins employee
had to replace one dead fridge for one not quite so dead, we were lucky in as much as we did not have the resident slugs or suffer
the ant invasion experienced by our neighbours.
After a good meal and a few bevies we ventured off to the first nights’
entertainment. It was here we discovered that although only 3 BSC members were on this rally, myself, Andy and Kev Alderton, there
were in fact another 10 Basingstokers in attendance, so a quick catch up was in order, obviously. Having missed ‘Spring the
Calvary’ we did see Skatonic play all the popular (ska) covers, very well I might add, keeping the dance floor relatively full, (although
not my personal preference in musical style). They were followed by Time Bomb who unfortunately did not keep our interest and we ventured
downstairs.
The temperature in the main room and the soul room ranged from unbearably to ridiculously hot and the dance floors stupidly
sticky upstairs and dangerously slippery downstairs. All pretty normal really!
Usual stuff could be purchased on the stalls the next
morning and then the very well attended ride-out took us to Hastings. A traditional seaside town that still knows what fish and chips
(or pie in my case) should taste like and where ice-cream on the beach is an expected past-time. The seagulls were excellent shots
too!!
The highlight of the weekend for me was supposed to be seeing the ‘Purple Hearts’ again after so many years. They were however,
a bitter disappointment, sounding more reminiscent of a school boy punk pub band back in the day. Soon got bored with them so made
our way back to the soul room, venturing on the dance floor a while. Did feel slightly inadequate watching middle aged men throwing
themselves on the floor (no, not at my feet exactly), and managing to bounce back up quite nimbly, and some of those spins.....! I consoled myself with a take-away pizza, much to Andy’s disgust!
On Sunday we took ourselves off to Rye and had a very lovely cream
tea in a very respectable establishment. We then rode further along the coast to take a look at Dungeness. It was a strange part of
the country but a popular destination for bikers as we discovered.
It was that evening’s entertainment that proved the
best for me. A band called ‘The Effectives’ who have both a male and female singer, played to a much smaller crowd by now, but one
that definitely appreciated their efforts. They were followed by Russell Hastings of ‘From the Jam’ currently providing a solo
Jam set and to the highest standard. It was a very intimate affair and he certainly captivated his audience, obviously all ardent
Weller fans. The spell was broken but the magic continued til 2.00am with countless soul favourites played by the rally dj’s. (Not
that we made it til 2.00am!).
We set off on Monday morning with heavy hearts, really not wanting the rally to end. Saying our farewells,
we cheered ourselves up by taking the longer but much more enjoyable coastal route home, stopping in Brighton for more pie and chips.
(Well it was a holiday!).
We managed to miss the torrential rain right up until we reached Hook, but even that was not going to ruin
the brilliant weekend we’d just had.
Maidenhead Phoenix Sc ‘do’ Karen Amass
Saturday 11th July
In all honesty we had planned to attend the Veteran Vespa Club rally in Chobham on
this day but, as the weather was so dire so we changed plans at the 11th hour and decided to support the Maidenhead Phoenix SC at
their first do instead.
Held at The Britannia Pub, Marlow, Andy, Nicky and I arrived to find 2 familiar scooters outside and sure
enough Purdy and Tony of Reading Rabble were there also. After a quick chat I managed to extract £10 from each of them (no I wasn’t
holding them at gunpoint nor did I resort to blackmail), as they became the next two members of BSC.
Not knowing many people there,
it felt like it was taking a while to warm up. Ian Hunter (a Maidenhead as well as BSC member), was already there and was obviously
overwhelmingly pleased to see us!! He introduced us to a few other members, strangely all women?? and a couple of vodkas later the
band came on.
‘Dynamite Road’ played a really good set with a slightly rough edged sound not unlike our friend from ‘Cool Jerk’, a
cross between the ‘Commitments’ and ‘Fast Eddy’ of old. An excellent performance - they certainly suit the scooterist/ska/dare-I-say
mod scene of today. Certainly recommend seeing them if you get the chance.
The remainder of the evening continued with I believe a
Maidenhead member dj-ing. Having been let down by a previously booked dj, this guy with little experience had stepped up to
the challenge. If this was the case, congratulations to the guy, as with a couple (more) vodkas, Nicky and I squeezed onto a full
dance floor to strut our stuff with the best of them. Well done Maidenhead SC.
Ian Hunter
Did you know that Ian Hunter has his own web site (www.southofwatford.com) where he has chronicled his early days on two
wheels. Here’s an edited extract from the journal – you can read more, and see some very dodgy pictures at the site!
The Last
Lambretta Ian Hunter
Part I – The Summer of Love
I’d had a Lammie since I was about 16 years old. My Gran bought it for me so I could get to away
games; I was playing footie for Kew, near Richmond, Surrey. Whilst I could always get to home games on a push bike from home about
6 miles away, the coach was unimpressed that his pocket sized striker struggled to get to the away games on a Saturday afternoon.
My
dad suggested I get a motor bike (he had a succession of BSA’s and Triumphs) and took me one Saturday morning to Commerfords on Thames
Ditton complete with a £200.00 budget.
Commerfords sold both motor bikes and my dad’s vision of the Anti-Christ – Lambretta’s.
I settled
on a chromed up six month old SX150 that had been repossessed and paid the man £190.00 using the change for a lid (not compulsory
then) The mortified old man was told it was Gran’s money anyway and I could have what I wanted. I rode the six miles home. It was
the bollocks.
Rewind 12 months...
Spring 1967. Around the corner was ‘The Summer of Love’. This refers to the summer of 1967, when an
unprecedented gathering of as many as 100,000 young people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco, creating
a phenomenon of cultural and political rebellion. While hippies also gathered elsewhere in the US, and across Europe, San Francisco
was the epicentre of the hippie revolution, a melting pot of music, psychedelic drugs, sexual freedom, creative expression, and politics.
Sounds like bollocks eh?
Anyway, the Summer of Love supposedly became a defining moment of the 1960s, as the hippie counterculture
movement came into public awareness. In the UK this pretty much spelt the end of the road for Mods. It was time to get out your love
beads.
September 1967: Summer was over and it was back to school - Kenyngton Manor in Sunbury-on-Thames. This year was the fifth form;
we would all turn 16 years of age and faced the prospect of GCE 'O' Levels at the end of the school year.
From day one classmates were
turning up at school and parking their Vespas, Lambrettas and motor bikes next to the bike racks, leaping off to light a cigarette
and draping their arm around some girl. Bastard. How the hell did that happen?
Well, it happened because they were lucky enough to
be born early in the school calendar year. My turn would not come until the last week of April - a lifetime away.
Then the 'first borns'
began to pass their tests and pretty soon the girls began to arrive at school on the back of the scooters. I was missing out big time.
My 16th birthday in April came and went marked only by best mate Peter Bollans (three weeks older than me) arriving at school on his
birthday with a brand new, fully accessorised, blue on white SX200. Bastard.
Like myself, Bollans was football mad and a fellow Chelsea
supporter and here he was on a brand new scooter in the team colours complete with a union jack seat. The next game we played in together
I gave him a bloody good kicking which caused quite a fuss as we were clearly on the same side. The ref gave me a funny look.
Peter
Bollans was all right really it's just that his dad had a few bob and no expense ever seemed to be spared. He used to take me to away
games on the back of his SX200 - he had passed his test in what seemed like just a few days after he got the scooter. Life always
seemed easy for Pete.
We started sixth form in September 1968. Most of the school football team had gone and got jobs that summer and
the team we cobbled together were useless and certainly no use playing for. Peter Bollans and I had gone for trials at Chelsea, Fulham
and Brentford when we were 14 but failed miserably. We both played for South West Middlesex though and then he came up with the idea
of us trialling for Kew FC who played at Old Deer Park near Richmond.
We both got in. Only it transpired Bollans made the first team
and I was placed in the reserves. What a bastard. Anyway, the upshot of this was that we were playing in different games each week
- sometimes he was at home whilst I travelled with the reserves and then vice versa. I had a transport problem. I needed wheels. Enter
the SX150.
Typically, I then got put up to the first team. Timing is everything. Had that happened a few weeks earlier there would
probably have been no Lambretta.
As a post script, Peter Bollans turned up out of the blue the other week after not seeing him for
30 years. He’s living in Lightwater and is a Chelsea Season ticket holder. Blindin’. He laughed when I told I had a couple of Lambretta’s.
A couple of days later he rang back and asked if he could have a go on one of them.
Lambretta - It’s in the blood!
Part II -
The Long & Winding Road
I'd always been a Beatles fan as a lad. Right from the beginning I had been in to music and whilst I never
mithered my parents for much the one thing I wanted more than anything else at the age of 13 was a guitar. I got one and then promptly
left it to rot when I realised playing it was just a tad more difficult than I had imagined.
In 1967, as I was starting 5th form, a
guy at school called Jimmy Blackman brought his guitar in one day and started playing and singing. Shit he was good and more importantly,
the girls loved him.
Hmmm… Jim said that if I dusted down my discarded guitar, got some new strings and was serious he would teach
me how to play. Next day I brought the guitar in to school. Jim tuned it and then taught me how to play three chords. I was a rock
and roll star.
By 1970 I was taking the guitar very seriously but was nowhere near as good as I thought I was. A group was formed with
some mates and the odd acoustic set performed. College was a chore. I was at Kingston University, (well it was called Kingston Poly
at the time) doing the degree in Applied Physics my dad had talked me into. Football had fallen by the wayside - not even Chelsea
beating Leeds in the FA Cup Final that year made me put the boots back on.
Getting around with a guitar was a bugger on the Lambretta.
It had to be slung over the shoulder in a case and you had to hope you didn't take out or maim any pedestrians if you rode too close
to the kerb. It also meant relying on being able to plug in to someone else's amplifier at the other end. There was no way a Vox AC30
would fit on the front rack.
Progressively my mates were all giving up two wheels for four but I was having none of it. Basically this
was down to money. When I got paid I still had a life. When my mates with cars got paid by the middle of the month I had to buy them
a drink down the pub after they had made their HP payments and filled it up with petrol.
My SX150 was running well and was extremely
reliable. My only mates at that time still with two wheels were Ray Gould but he hooked up with a girl called Rosemary who lived down
on the south coast. He was always there. He probably still is. Of my other mates only were still on scoots; Ian McClellan had a very
new and tidy blue and white GP150 and Ian Morris had an old S3 Li150.
Ian Morris went off to University to study political science
and I have never heard of him since, until that is a few weeks ago when he contacted me via Friends Re-united and called me up. He’s
running a school in Cuba. How the hell did that happen?
I spent too much time in 1971 trying to be a rock star. It was never going
to happen but it was OK to dream. All of a sudden I noticed my parents had left home and moved to Lightwater in Surrey. I remembered
my dad vaguely muttering something about the company he worked for relocating to Basingstoke in the summer but never really took much
notice until the time came for the move.
Lightwater was about halfway between where home used to be and Basingstoke where dad was working.
I tried it for a week and gave it up as a bad job. At the time I was still going to uni in Kingston-on-Thames. The SX150 was up to
the job but I wasn't so I moved in with my nan back in Ashford.
My god that was hell but I was soon rescued by my friend Tony Denton
who persuaded his mum to let me come and live with them. Mrs Denton was great. She had divorced Tony's dad - a complete prick as far
as I was concerned - some years previously and worked at Heathrow for BA. She was more often away from home than there and life for
Tony and I was good.
Mrs D even put up with the guitars and amps which was pretty incredible really. At the time I had graduated to
a bass and the boom from which must have caused the neighbours to consider slashing their wrists. But no, never heard a peep from
them either.
Around this time my band made our first foray in to a recording studio. Back then a four-track reel to reel was pretty
good - Sgt Pepper was recorded on a four-track supposedly. We didn't book Abbey Road however and nor did we have George Martin sprinkling
magic dust over our recordings. Eden Studios in Kingston-on-Thames was our choice. We all pitched in some money to cover the costs
and came away with a few recordings.
Of course we thought we were 'the dogs bollocks' but sadly, as we soon found out from all the
rejections, that this description was two words away from the truth. We were just 'bollocks'. We did however have balls and somehow
got ourselves up in front of an A&R man at Apple, the Beatles label, in London's Saville Row.
We walked in as the Righteous Brothers
were in the lobby. We thought we had arrived. But we were soon leaving by the same door. We persevered for a number of years. I knew
we were bollocks but what the hell, I enjoyed trying.
Then one day at Tony's mums place there was a knock at the door. It was my girlfriend
du jour announcing she had come to pick me up and take me to the pub. "Oh yeah, and how are you going to do that then darlin’?" I
said. She countered that she had been taking driving lessons on the quiet, just passed her test and had gotten hold of her mums car.
“No shit. Drive on darlin'.”
It was the beginning of the end for the Lambretta. No longer would the girlfriend jump on the back in
the pouring rain and head off to the pub with me. Bastard.
Actually, it was in reality turning out to tbe beginning of the end for
Lambretta - full stop. Their big sales years had taken place in the 1950's and 60's and now, with the Mod era long gone and the Innocenti
brand was in its' last year of production.
Just as he did when I found myself 'homeless' Tony Denton came to the rescue again when
it came to learning how to drive. Tony was only 18 but had always wanted to be a truck driver ever since I had known him and he was
already living his dream.
He passed his driving test soon after he was 17 and bought a Ford Transit pick up. He began doing small time
haulage and he was on his way. Tony said he would teach me how to drive and sure enough my first ever driving lesson was in the Transit.
He was a bloody good teacher mind. Once he let me drive him all the way to North Wales on a customer delivery run with L plates up
and him in the passenger seat. I learnt a lot about driving very quickly in the two days we spent on the road.
After that I had a couple
of lessons with Ashford School of Motoring (I needed to use their car for the test) which I passed, to my utter astonishment, at the
first attempt on 15 June 1972.
The SX150 was still running well but it had to go. I could get the guitar, the girlfriend and an amplifier
in the car.
I sold the scoot to my sister's boyfriend Kevin for £90.00 or thereabouts and never really saw it much again. He married
my sister, they both got cars and whatever happened to PUC89F will probably never be known.
And finally.....................
As
you know Ian recently had a major health scare from which, thank goodness, he has made a remarkable recovery.
We wish him well for
the further treatment he is soon to have to complete this recovery process.
It gave us all a scare, but also serves as a reminder.....
Appreciate what you’ve got and make the most of the opportunities that come your way.
Stay safe
Rev Karen Amass