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In the few months since I wrote this blog about ‘our’ pub, the Ancient Briton has won – count them – four awards:
Welsh Pub of the Year;
Welsh Eatery of the Year;
Welsh Gastropub of the Year;
First Place, Welsh Good Food Awards.
As I said before, it seems that the owners, Nils and Emma, are doing something right.
It so happens that we have a table booked for tonight. No particular reason, just because we can, and to relieve those post-festive-season blues.
On a more sombre note, we’ve just learned that the previous landlord, Gerald, died on Christmas Eve. He would have been well into his eighties.
I have little nostalgia for the pubs of my earlier days, mainly because the pubs in Sutton, where I spent most of my life, were, and are, a pretty sorry lot. But there is one pub I remember with a certain affection.
Watling Street, which becomes the Edgware Road, that arterial road that runs in a straight line through North-West London, starts near Mansion House as a narrow lane. Here stands a pub called Ye Olde Watling, where I used to go some lunchtimes when I first worked for what was then London Transport, in an office nearby.
It’s a seventeenth century building – beams, small-paned windows, the lot – reputed to have been built by Christopher Wren. Quite atmospheric. The clientele, by and large, weren’t my sort of people – I was never cut out to be a city gent – but ah, the beer. The guvnor was a comparatively young South African, but he had nothing to learn about keeping and serving good ale. The Bass was superb: this is where I first really got my taste for the stuff. I was rather sorry when there was a re-organisation in LT buses and I had to move to another office. On my last day at the old office I informed the guvnor of my high opinion of his Bass and stood him a drink. He seemed quite pleased.
It’s still there, and is now a Nicholson’s pub – I believe it was tied to Bass Charrington (as was) when I knew it, but I felt no need for variety when I enjoyed that one beer so much. I can’t speak for the beer now though. I haven’t been in there since 1979.
Mention of plain-looking pubs reminds me of another pub with a heart-warming story, the Hope in Carshalton, near where I used to live and even nearer to where I grew up. In appearance a nondescript 1930s local, it was going to close down until a bunch of its customers got together and bought the lease, and then a few years later the pub outright. Not the first nor the only ‘community pub,’ but the Hope has since become renowned for its beer, repeatedly winning CAMRA’s London Pub of the Year and specialising in the products of small breweries from the South-East of England. One poster on TripAdvisor witnessed an incident when someone asked if they sold Guinness, to be told, ‘We don’t deal with those capitalist bastards.’ On a personal note, the cellarman is a long-time friend of my daughter – I remember him as a rather shy, nervous teenage boy.
The owners have determinedly retained the atmosphere of a traditional local, with no music nor TV as they believe pubs should be for conversation. The last time I was in there I had the pleasure of sinking a pint of a beer whose name alone makes it worth trying. From the Surrey Hills Brewery in Dorking, it’s called Shere Drop – Shere being a village in, yes, the Surrey Hills, between Dorking and Guildford. I think that arch-punster, Roger McGough, would have approved. And yes, it is a pretty decent pint.
Also the last time I was there, the staff were wearing t-shirts with the legend ‘Veni, vidi, bibi’ (I came, I saw, I drank).
Sounds like your sort of pub, Ath?
Actually there was a bit of a wobbly phase on the ale front for the first year or two of the new regime, while Nils, who is not himself a real ale drinker, was finding out by trial and error what would sell. There was a heavy emphasis on those light golden bitters that are fashionable these days, but are not much to my taste (unless it’s hot weather and I’m very thirsty), and a shortage, occasionally total, of ‘decent, well-rounded bitters.’ But things have improved until recently, oh joy, he has started selling Bass. In this, at least, my tastes are very traditional, and Bass is probably my favourite ale – as it was my father’s.
Nils explained to me that he has a deal with whoever makes Bass these days whereby as long as he keeps selling the stuff they will maintain his handpumps – all of them, not just the Bass one – for free. So it looks like the future is pretty secure for my favourite ale at the Ancient Briton.
You’re not actually the person I was referring to when I said I knew I was preaching to the converted. Quite often people reply to these Literary Byways blogs saying they’re going to read the book concerned on my recommendation, but this is the first time I’ve had feedback on that, and I’m delighted that you share my enthusiasm for Pavane.
As for ‘a book so well crafted, so literate,’ we all know, don’t we, that the quality of the writing has precious little to do with commercial success. The Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey… I could go on, but it’d be, as you say, too depressing.
No, there’s little or nothing to tell you a railway had ever been there. A short stretch at the Tralee end re-opened in the nineties with one of the original locomotives, but it only seems to have lasted less than twenty years. There’s still a Tralee and Dingle Railway Preservation Society page on Facebook, though.
It must have been well over thirty years ago, on holiday in North Wales, when, after visiting Beddgelert, we went for a riverside walk along what must have been the Aberglaslyn Pass. Noting the width and smoothness of the footpath and how it bored its way straght through some rocky outcrops, I remarked wistfully that we must be on the trackbed of the long-vanished Welsh Highland Railway. If you’d told me then that within the next quarter-century trains would be running again all the way through from Porthmadog to Caernarfon you could have knocked me down with a feather.
I think I should belatedly clarify my last post by saying that, whether you believe that striking and picketing are right or wrong, that’s not the point I was making. The fact remains that the Labour Party was originally founded to represent the trade unions in Parliament, so Starmer’s action was a betrayal of everything the party once stood for.
No, I can’t say I’m impressed with Starmer’s ‘Labour’ party. So little so, that, given that we live in a rock-solid Labour seat and that it was plain the Tories were going to get hammered anyway, I was quite glad we were in the far West of Ireland on polling day and so had an excuse not to vote. How can a party leader who disciplines one of his MPs for joining a picket line have the neck to call himself Labour? In my youth such a thing would have been unthinkable. It’s another symptom of how far right we’ve come.
Interesting that you should say ‘since 1951,’ because I was remarking only the other day that the last government we’ve had that could truly be called socialist was Atlee’s. But I don’t think it’s true to say that governments since then have been pursuing the same, even more or less the same, policies, and indeed your second para gives the lie to it. Ever since 1979, British politics have been lurching, or drifting, ever more rightwards. About ten years ago my elder son (born in 1980, to give the context of the political world he grew up in) called me an extreme left-winger. (Not in an abusive sense, I should add.) I replied that in my youth I would have been considered a moderate leftie, and if I was now an extreme one it was because the whole political climate had shifted to the right rather than any change in my views.
In the sixties Edward Heath sacked Enoch Powell from the shadow cabinet for his Rivers of Blood speech. Rishi Sunak appointed a woman who used even more inflammatory and hysterical rhetoric Home Secretary.
But yes, I whole-heartedly agree about the starting pistol. I lay the blame for the normalisation of greed, selfishness and callousness that has poisoned our moral and political climate squarely at Thatcher’s door.
(I should add that I don’t ascribe my son’s comment to any right-wing bias on his part. The nature of his job (he’s a researcher for a homelessness charity) tends to give the lie to that.)
There’s a couple we exchange visits with once or twice a year. I’ve known them both since we were all teenagers, longer than I’ve known MrsB, but whatever has kept the friendship going for all these years it’s not common political ground. About the only thing we agree on is Brexit, so most of the time we avoid talking about politics. The last time Thatcher was mentioned the wife pronounced that ‘the country needed someone like her.’ This was too much for me, and I couldn’t stop myself from retorting, ‘We didn’t need an evil bitch.’ ‘She wasn’t an evil bitch!’ the lady replied.
Oh. really?
As you say, the worst part of it was the appalling callousness with which Thatcher and her government, having vindictively devastated the mining communities, left them to rot. But then, as I mentioned, she thought that vicious murdering bastard Pinochet was a jolly good chap. I don’t think it’s stretching a point to call her evil.
Late, Seagreen? Not really. It’s only the second of the month, and I didn’t post my judgement yesterday until the middle of the afternoon. No apology needed.
A strong field indeed.
Oh, my. Four entries, all excellent, all completely different from each other. For such a small community, whar a range of talents we have.
Terrie, your gallop through the various endings we meet in life was entertaining and thought-provoking, with a nice humorous squib at the end to round things off.
Libby, I applaud your courage in essaying this free-form, stream-of-conciousness style. It’s so easy to fall flat on your face with this, but you carried it off with panache. And then that pang of sadness at the end, the drummer who’s had to give up a life-long passion.
Seagreen, I quite expected this subject to arise considering the brief I set, but not that it would be dealt with so lyrically, so evocatively, so heart-wrenchingly. A beautiful piece of writing.
Athelstone, your piece struck chords with me, not just as a regretful celebration of a vanishing part of British life (I’ve always liked the ambience of the traditional pub), but because it reminded me of the time in the dim and distant past when they demolished the pub in which, a couple of years before, I’d fallen headlong and disastrously in love.
Ah, what a choice! It’ll have to Seagreen, for the way her piece pulled at my heartstrings.
Thanks, Ath. I should maybe point out that ‘the protagonist’ is in fact me. The brief didn’t say it had to be fiction, and my effort isn’t. I really am building, slowly and very carefully, a huge model car.
I salute you, Ath. The last time we had a kitchen makeover we had it done professionally, though to be fair to myself that was an intregal part of the deal. To show my respect I am actually responding to your prompt, for a change.
Modelling Therapy
I’ve always been a sucker for a nice model. In my youth I used to build plastic kits (Airfix and suchlike), but the problem with these is that the real skill lies not in the assembly but in the painting, and I’m pretty much ham-fisted with a paintbrush. I hadn’t done anything like this for a good while.
Until I became aware of the existence of large scale model kits, in the case of cars normally in 1/8 size. These are a different sort of kit. The base material is die-cast metal, with some parts in plastic and other materials as appropriate, and everything is pre-coloured. Whoopie, no painting. And assembly is principally by tiny screws, so there’s very little gluing to make a mess of either. Yes, they are expensive, but you can spread payment out over one or two years, getting a box of bits every one or two months. When I discovered that a model was available of one of my all-time favourite cars, the Porsche 917 endurance racer of 1969-71, I succumbed to the lure.
This is the car featured in the Steve McQueen movie Le Mans, but that wasn’t the appeal. Rather, it was that the car was an awesome beast, faster than the Formula One cars of its day, and looked the part. It is, however, not an ideal subject for a beginner in large-scale modelling. It has a complex multi-tubular chassis, and the engine has twelve cylinders and an insane ignition system: twenty-four sparking plugs, two distributors and four coils.
And in this scale there are no excuses, no glossing over. Every detail is depicted. That ignition system has to be wired up. Those sparking plugs, the buckles on the seat belts, the switches on the dashboard and other small details are separate pieces. The door catches work (and have to be assembled). There’s even a separate ignition key, about 3mm long. And some of the screws are just as small.
Now, I am not particularly dextrous (by the way, as a left-hander I object to that word), and I knew I was setting myself a challenge. But I thought it would do me good. It would keep my ageing brain ticking over, and shut out the depressing stuff around and within me by giving me something to focus on. Call it modelling therapy.
Yes, it has been a challenge, and yes, it has been therapeutic. There have been times when, struggling with some particularly fiddly or intractable parts, I’ve thought, ‘Oh God, I’ll never do this.’ And then, spurred on by the thought of all the money I’d be wasting, I’ve tried again and found that I can do it after all. This has taught me the value of perseverance, a virtue I’ve never been conspicuous for. And oh, the satisfaction when it finally comes right. Modelling therapy indeed.
The final challenge is going to be finding somewhere to keep it when it’s finished, because it’ll be nearly two feet long…
499 words
Yes, it’s rather chilling, isn’t it?
One doesn’t tend to think of Roald Dahl as a sci-fi writer, but he foresaw something like this. Over seventy years ago one of his early adult short stories, The Great Automatic Grammartizator, told the tale of a nerd who invents a machine that generates stories at such a prodigious rate that he takes over the entire publishing world, so that real authors are faced with the choice of either signing up with him and lending their names to artificially generated fiction, or going to the wall. It ends with one of the last authors to hold out crying in despair, ‘Oh Lord, give us the strength to let our children starve.’
At least he wasn’t engaged in the grubby business of exploiting people’s dearest dreams to con them out of large sums of money – which is what vanity publishing is all about.
Thank you, Sandra, for a prompt that actually got me writing. It’s ages since I last entered the monthly comp, possibly not since the Cloud imploded.
Just to clarify, this is a prequel to my earlier stories about Rebecca rather than a continuation, set ten years earlier. Rather like Athelstone with Teabreak, I can’t leave her alone. I love her to bits, as they say.
Oh, and a worthy winner. An awesomely intense piece of writing from Knicks.
This is in response to the original prompt, ‘What becomes…’
599 words (Phew!)Glan-y-Nant
She’s the reason I’m so far from home in this quiet corner of Carmarthenshire where the tourists don’t come, driving along this grass-grown lane to nowhere, neither knowing nor caring where I’m going. Walking-on-air. light-in-the-face, ice-in-the-heart Madeleine, who taught me the truth of that saying about the one who kisses and the other who offers the cheek. Madeleine, who took all the love I had in me to give, leaving me empty and flat as a used tube of toothpaste.
Grief has many ways of inflicting itself upon you. I never cried when Madeleine moved out – I’m a big girl now, a published author no less, and I’d seen it coming for a while – but life lost all its savour. I drifted on autopilot through every empty day, moving among the people in my life like a shadow, a ghost, apart. I couldn’t relate at all to the motivations that kept them busily leading their lives when it was all I could do to drag myself out of bed in the morning, and keeping up a brave face, a pretence of interest in the things they said and did, was becoming more than I could bear.
And I couldn’t write. There was not one breath of inspiration, not one word in me. I was close to the edge, and I knew I had to get away before I slid over it. To somewhere quiet, where I could put myself back together in my own time.
And I think I’ve found it. Ever since the lane dipped into this valley and plunged beneath the trees I’ve had the feeling I’ve entered a secret, secluded world, but it’s not until I’ve come round a sharp right-hand bend and over an ancient stone bridge that the view opens out and I can see what sort of place I’ve stumbled upon.
On the other side of the bridge there’s a space just big enough to park without blocking the lane. I get out of the car and walk back onto the bridge, in a vast hush broken only by the sibilant murmur and gurgle of running water.
As I lean on the parapet, looking at the beauty all around me, the steep wooded slopes to either side, the sunlight sparkling on the water below, something tensed inside me begins to uncoil. It’s like coming out of a hot noisy street into a cool quiet room. This place is speaking to me, speaking of peace, of healing.
Hey, isn’t that a house? Back there beyond the car, behind those trees?
I retrace my steps, and there it is. Nothing much, a plain little two-up-two-down, but it’s all I’d need. I could learn to be happy again here. I feel it, deep in my gut. Waking up to the sound of the stream. Nobody to please but myself. A simple life. I could grow my own vegetables, even keep some chickens. If only…
I sigh, and turn back towards the car. And then I see the sign. Ar Werth. For Sale.
I freeze, my heart thumping. Wistful dream has become real-life possibility. Dare I do this?
Come on, Rebecca, don’t be such a bloody coward. It’d be a big change, sure, but isn’t that just what you need? You can’t go on the way you were.
Yes. Whatever it takes, I’m going to buy this house. I note down the estate agent’s details and the name on the gate, Glan-y-Nant. As I walk back to the car I feel, for the first time in months, a smile creeping over my face.
A bit off-topic, but hey, this is the coffee shop, right?
I too have a huge amount of respect for Emma Darwin. And she gave me the happiest moment of my writing career.
The only time I went to the York Festival I (naturally, considering what I’ve just said) booked a book doctor slot with her. Mine was the first slot of the day, and as we sat down she said, ‘I’m glad you’re my first one, because I enjoyed your writing so much it’s set me up for the rest of the day.’
Pity none of the agents I submitted the finished novel to thought the same way (half of them didn’t even bother to reply), but i shall always remember that moment.
I’m glad you copied this, Libby, because you saved me the trouble. Your comments should definitely be an integral part of this thread. And I’m glad, too, that the poem seems to have had much the same effect on you as it had on me.
There’s more, much more, than ‘yet another translation.’ There’s a page with over forty, ranging from Catullus’ Latin version through Sir Phillip Sidney, Byron and Tennyson (pretty dodgy version, that) up to the present day – including Anne Carson’s:
He seems to me equal to the gods that man
whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speakingand lovely laughing — oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
is left in meno: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills earsand cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass
I am and dead — or almost
I seem to me.I was aware of this, but didn’t put it in the original blog because I didn’t like the way she leaves out all the possessive pronouns in the third stanza. What’s wrong with ‘my tongue’ or ‘my skin?’ Petty? Well, I’ve included it now.
I agree about the translations. Simple is good. Paraphrasing is okay; adding stuff not in the original or leaving out stuff that is, is not okay. I’m not interested in what someone else thinks Sappho ought to have, or might have, written. I want to know what she actually wrote.
It seems to me that that’s exactly what Gregory Nagy has tried to do in the translation I quoted in my last post, since he obviously hasn’t tried to convert it into ‘proper’ English. So I took it upon myself to try to do that, keeping as close to his translation as is compatible with fluency, and I came up with this:
He appears to me the equal of the gods, that one,
the man who’s sitting facing you,
up close, listening to that sweet voice of yours,
and to you laughing your sexy laugh.
Oh, it sets my heart fluttering in my breast.
You see, the moment I look at you, in that instant
I lose all power of speech.
My tongue seizes up and all of a sudden
a delicate fire races under my skin.
My eyes can’t see a thing,
and there’s a roaring in my ears.
I’m running with sweat and my whole body
is seized by trembling;
I’m paler than dry grass, and it seems to me
I’m close to death.(‘Paler than grass,’ which is what Sappho appears to have written, doesn’t make a lot of sense to us, accustomed as we are to our bright green British grass. ‘Greener than grass,’ as many translators have opted for, doesn’t make much sense in the context of the poem, unless you assume it’s about jealousy, which I don’t believe is its main drift. And was jealousy even green to the Ancient Greeks? I believe she was thinking about sun-scorched Greek grass, and so I have reluctantly made an interpolation, inserting the word ‘dry.’)
Rather annoyingly, shortly after posting this I came upon another translation. Annoyingly, because its publication on a page headed ‘The Center for Hellenic Studies,’ its juxtaposition with the Greek, and most of all the clumsiness of its English suggest to me that it is the closest to a word-for-word rendition of Sappho’s original that I’ve yet found. It’s by Gregory Nagy, and goes like this:
He appears to me, that one, equal to the gods
the man, who, facing you,
is seated and, up close, that sweet voice of yours
he listens toand how you laugh a laugh that brings desire. Why, it just
makes my heart flutter within my breast.
You see, the moment I look at you, right then, for me
to make a sound at all won’t work any more.My tongue has a breakdown and a delicate
– all of a sudden – fire rushes under my skin.
With my eyes I see not a thing, and there is a roar
my ears make.Sweat pours down me and a trembling
seizes all of me; paler than grass
am I, and a little short of death
do I appear to me.It contains one interesting nuance that every other translation I’ve quoted misses. Others have rendered the girl’s laughter as ‘delightful,’ beguiling,’ ‘exquisite,’ ‘lovely,’ etc, but this version says it is ‘a laugh that brings desire.’ Now, I did find one effort that described it as ‘sexy,’ but I thought that was a bit over-the-top and dismissed it. But if this translation is as true as I think it is, then ‘sexy’ is exactly the right word. And that cranks the watching woman’s feelings up a notch or two.
You can tell I’ve really got into this, can’t you?
Stephen King, Ath? He’s said that he never knows what’s going to happen when he starts a novel, and he’s published nearly seventy of them.
Your method (if we can grace it with that name), Ath, sounds very much like mine: a rough idea of the story arc and the ending, and not much more. The nearest I ever got to planning was to write out the rather extensive backstory of one of the characters in my second novel, who had ‘a past.’ If ever I tried to plan properly, my eyes would glaze over.
Mind you, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this approach, considering the reaction, or rather total lack of it, when I submitted either of my completed novels…
Burkhardt’s first reaction to the disaster was to lay the blame on Harding (now there’s a surprise…). This, after Harding had expressed concerns about the locomotive, which were dismissed, and made his offer to go and check on the train, which was also dismissed. The transcript of the phone call makes his anxiety plain. After he’s told he’s not needed at the train he begs Labrie to call him back. ‘Call me back, RJ.’ ‘No, no. Go to bed.’
To me at least, Harding comes across as a conscientious man who made a mistake, and Burkhardt as an unprincipled rat.
It’s still going on. Only last February a train carrying an assortment of hazardous chemicals derailed in Ohio, resulting in a fire that burned for two days, mass evacuations, and vast environmental damage – though fortunately no casualties. And these trains are still running through rowns.
My, you have been doing your research, haven’t you?
I never for one moment thought you were attacking him. I assumed that you were thinking what I think, that he’s an admirably level-headed bloke with both feet firmly on the ground. No regrets, move on, ‘that was then and this is now,’ to quote one of the songs. I would have said that he comes across as the sort of person I’d like to meet, except that I have met him and yes, it was a pleasure. And I agree: I think you could call that a pretty successful life.
I’m rather relishing the irony that this blog about some very much overlooked (but close to my heart) music has prompted more response than any other of my byway blogs…
I wouldn’t describe it as tiny, but neither is it very huge, and you do have to scroll down a way before you see it. So yes, not exactly a blaze of publicity.
To augment that line in Wikipedia, here are Pete Atkin’s own words on the subject: ‘I’ve never ever spent much time trying to figure out why the songs Clive and I wrote in the seventies – and more specifically the records I made of them – didn’t turn out to be hits. That was just what happened. Get on with the next thing.’
And yes, I have ordered my copy of the album.
Some afterthoughts.
After getting negative reactions to Atkin’s music in the past, up to and including on one occasion ‘Rubbish!’, I was a little hesitant posting this blog at all, so it’s particularly pleasing that it seems to have made at least two converts.
And now, the plug. If anyone wishes to put their hard-earned money where their enthusiasm is, the new album I mentioned, The Luck of the Draw, has become available since I posted from (and only from as yet, as far as I know) the Hillside Music virtual shop on the Smash Flops website. Buying it from here cuts out the middle man, as you’ll be buying it directly from Pete Atkin himself.
A lot of people seem to have missed out on Pete Atkin, Janette…
Details and links for the gigs can be found on the Smash Flops website. Just scroll down a bit.
Wow, you mean I’ve turned somebody on to Pete Atkin? Result!
Yes, he is good live, preferably in an intimate setting. There are actually three gigs in very unusually quick succession lined up for next month – in the King’s Road, Ambleside and Middlesborough – plus one in October in Whitby. One 200 miles from me (and I’m reluctant to go back to London unless I really have to: Rebecca’s attitude to the place in that story was written from the heart), the others more like 300.
I see you’ve been having a good listen, Ath…
Interestingly (or not) Messrs Atkin and James have each blamed themselves and excused the other for the lack of sales. After Clive James wrote in the fourth volume of his memoirs that the problem was that his lyrics were too cerebral, Pete Atkin wrote a long and thoughtful refutation (it’s here on the website if you’re interested) which boiled down to his belief that his tunes weren’t simple and catchy enough. ‘The egg is on my face.’
I’d like to see him one more time before one or other of us pops his clogs, but since I took myself off to the wilds of Wales he hasn’t done a gig anywhere within convenient reach. About the nearest was a recent appearance at Ledbury (Herefordshire), but that was a workshop-type thing at a poetry festival, rather than a ‘proper’ gig.
Ah, Ath, your wife is French, n’est-ce-pas?
I don’t find it particularly surprising that a folk music lover should like Pete Atkin. Folk audiences, right from the start of the revival sixty and more years ago, have always been receptive to more serious subject matter in what used to be called ‘contemporary folk’ – though it’s often been with a left-wing political / social commentary slant, and such stuff is almost entirely absent from the Atkin/James songbook. I nearly left out the ‘almost’ until I remembered one song about the Kent State shootings (‘There isn’t much a target needs to know’), and another about the My Lai massacre (‘Just lying there were ladies so old they hardly bled / Thin kids who never needed a red hole in the head.’).
Tracking down the music, at least on-line, is dead easy. If you go to the discography section of Smash Flops you’ll find a play button beside just about every track Atkin has ever recorded. Hard copies are another matter. The reissues of the seventies albums I mentioned in the blog vanished when the record company went bust. They were reissued again, re-mastered even, about ten years later, only for the company’s whole stock to be destroyed in a warehouse fire during the 2011 Tottenham riots. I once suggested on the forum that there must be a curse on them. Pity, because the second time around I had my moment (a very brief moment, as it turned out) of fame when Pete Atkin mentioned me in the sleeve notes to one of the albums.
Yeah, the appearance of the website has hardly changed at all over the years, though the content has grown quite a lot.
Glad I brought back some meories for you, John.