I wouldn’t like you to get carried away with some romantic notion that it was anything more than a plastic box. Wash away from your head any ideas of a mahogany cabin with brass portholes overlooking the English Channel with your clothes folded neatly by a steward. This was my first foreign trip!

Graham Bourne had the dual profession of butcher and master builder, he preferred building. He was described, by my soon to be mother-in-law Grace Mellor, after his death, as a gentleman and a gentle man. He was a 40-a-day Park Drive man... that was his downfall.

The above photograph was taken on his honeymoon after marrying Maisie Woolly.

It was like witnessing the fall of Sodom! It was the mid seventies and fashion had gone mad - long strings of buttons on jacket cuffs, massive lapels and even bigger shirt collars. White trousers, white suits, even white platform shoes – yes I wore them - medallion man was alive and well and ready to kick ass. Men wore suits and women wore long dresses – god we thought we looked the mutt’s nuts… and of course we did – at the time! Oh, and let’s not forget the wonderful cheesecloth shirts! I was about to enter that bastion of “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll” in the form of the business known as show.

Finding out what life was all about!

It was a smoky old place, evident from the still-blackened sandstone buildings that stood proud in its centre. Black because of the filth and grime that once filled the air, courtesy of our staple industry – ceramics. I must admit, I don’t recall the air being smoky, or indeed filthy at the time I was born. There again I can’t remember much at all of that chilly September morning in 1952, in fact until I started to research this, I didn’t even know it was chilly!