Steaming to Paris, 1968 (for John May); Music, Rock Festivals and Cars 1967 to 1971

Steaming to Paris, 1968. Amiens station. I seem to remember that 1968 was a busy year, what with being at University (Sheffield), anti-Vietnam War demos, LSE, pop festivals and Paris. There were also John Mayall, Ravi Shankar, A J P Taylor, The Incredible String Band and The Pentangle at the City Hall, and visits to Oxford, Amsterdam, Maldon (for sprits'l barges), Cultybraggan OTC Camp, the Brown Bayley Steelworks, Hull fish dock (St Andrew's Dock), etc.

1969 was also a good year for music at Sheffield (and elsewhere) - see the ENTS schedule below:

And then there were also Pink Floyd at Plumpton, Dylan at the Isle of Wight, as well as more anti-Vietnam demos . . . And I've still got this giant matchbox from the Dylan festival:

Below: me in July 1969

Biba was fun . . .

And so was The Prince Consort on the sea front in Ryde (1971-2, before I did the Afghanistan trip, where I used to drink with Anthony Minghella (I taught him A-level history), Clare, Georgina, Frank, Martin, Debbie and the rest of the Sandown High School contingent. The Minghella Ice Cream Parlour was fun too:

This was my yellow Series I Land Rover 'Gandalf', which I had from 1968 to 1970 (after I had to sell my 1932 Rover Nizam 2-seater sports tourer), taken in the winter of 1969-70 somewhere near Farthing Down while I was on the Foundation Course at Croydon Colege of Art. I used to drive in this to the Sculpture Annexe at Norwood, giving a lift to most of Group 5. Bruce McLean took us for 3-D studies on Fridays - great days. Lunch was a baked potato with baked beans - wonderful grub. I was paying my way through art college by washing the floor at Littlewoods supermarket in the evenings. A shame I can't find a photo of the whole group - there area a few of them in the back of Gandalf (Mick Shillaker is the one with the specs). I also drove Gandalf to the Blues Festival at Plumpton in 1968, Pink Floyd festival at Plumpton 1969, Isle of Wight Festival 1969 (Dylan) and Bath Festival 1970. He got around the Derbyshire hills all right in my last year at Sheffield (1968-9), but broke something serious on Abbotsbury Hill in Dorset. Apart from the name painted in gothic black letter script on each door, he also had a black and red anarchist flag painted on the front mudguard. No heating of course. I froze right to the bone.

Below is my 1932 Rover Nizam 2-seater sports tourer, outside my digs in Sheffield in November 1967. The water pump never worked, so I had to keep stoping at garages and elsewhere to top it up with water when it boiled over. I bought it for £40 in 1966, and drove it up the M1, which was gradually being extended northward at the time, from Thornton Heath to Sheffield (the M1 at the time ran from Hendon to south of Chesterfield, I think). No heating of course. I froze right to the bone. In the end I couldn't afford to restore and keep this splendid car, which had a wooden body frame with metal over plywood panels, going, so I had to sell it (again for £40). I hope it's still running somewhere.

Below is the poster I designed for the event on 18 November 1969 when David Bowie came to play accoustic guitar and sing Space Oddity (and other stuff) at the Gun Tavern in Croydon. I was part of something called Croydon Arts Lab at the time, but we somehow shortened that to Egg, hence the shape of the image.

The one below is self-explanatory:

And so is ths one:

Bath Festival 1970. What a line-up!:

I went up from London to the Lincoln Folk Festival in July 1971 on the wing of an open Mini-Moke, with my Canadian friend Frank (who I travelled with to Afghanistan and India in 1972) and his friends. There were 7 of us in and on this Moke. I don't think this would be allowed now! I was living in Muswell Hill at the time, kitchen-portering at John Lewes in Oxford Street as a summer job before going to teach for a year on the Isle of Wight: