INCENSE, SWEETS AND INNOCENCE

Back in the 60's when we were kids in Preston I did everything with mates.

Mates were as important as family back then and formed an essential part of daily life. Everything was done with mates, every major event, every small step, every scrape. Like family, mates were there when it counted.

I snogged my first girlfriend with a mate doing the same near me behind the Catholic Church. I played with my Action Man with mates. I went to the Top Rank disco with mates. My mates were there when I discovered the Lake District. My mates were there when my life fell apart as a teenager.

My mates changed over time. As a younger kid my friends were basically kids who lived on the same road as my family and we did everything together, constantly in and out of each others' houses and gardens all year round. We rode our bikes to the local park and tore around the small wooded hillocks there like the Bash Street Kids! These pals were Robin, Nick and Cass, with the occasional visit from guest mates Mike and Gary. I don't know what happened to any of these special guys and like old air, miss those long lost days of my early childhood years in Ashton-on-Ribble immeasurably.

When I discovered Kung Fu in the early 70's, for some reason, I lost these full-time friends and in a strange osmotic process evolved new ones: John, Masey, Nipper and Crooky with part-time re-appearances of Nick and Cass. We were all members of our very own Kung Fu club, the Powis Road Dojo of Bugei. It was a magnificent time. All around 12 - 13 years old, we all went to see the X-rated Enter The Dragon at the ABC in Preston and life would never be the same. Bruce Lee became the centre of our kicking, blocking, ki-aiing universe and everyone was Kung Fu fighting. The peak of this marvellous gang was the Indian summer of 1976, when we all went to the Lake District for a camping trip, jumping and cartwheeling like shaolin monks. We had one more year to go at School, Ecky Thump was everywhere and everything was perfect.

Alas, within a year it would all fall apart. The worst of all personal tragedies happened to me and I retreated into a world of bottomless grief. My mates tried to help but the long hot summer of 1976 became a distant memory and the strong forces that held us together faded and the group dispersed. 

Some friendships did remain strong, particularly Masey and two brand new friends emerged, brothers Pete and Dave.

It was around this time that I discovered heavy rock and the pounding music of Budgie, Rush and Uriah Heep became the focus of this new band of pals. In the vacuum of a motherless home I would cook hot meals for them on Saturday afternoons, whilst we listened to Budgie's Squawk at full blast and stuffed our faces on chicken pie, home-made chips, processed peas and gravy. It was a rite of passage round that front-room stereogram as we stared at each other licking our chops, trying to measure the yards ahead. School was over and the future beckoned. I didn't know it but those musical Saturdays would become the swansong of a life I'd loved in the home I'd grown up in for 17 years. The house I adored was sold by my Dad as he struggled to make sense of the death of his wife.

When I turned 17 I had a flat on my own. It was situated in a different part of town to where I'd grown up. It was here that I met a new group of pals, whilst staying close friends with Pete and Dave: the chief ones being Blue the dancer and George. Between us and a fluid cast of hundreds of other teenagers in Ashton and Fulwood, the crucial experiments of our late teen years were all made together in a fug of hormonal creativity, beer, parties and and hot adolescent desire. 

Dave and Pete were pivotal to this new 'group' and their enormous shed became the de facto centre of teenage operations. We did it all: home brew, girls, parties, massive heavy rock marathons, Joni Mitchell adoration, Neil Young worship and the emergence of our own latent musical talents. The guitars came out and we began to learn how to play. It was 1978.

From this side-burned riff of patchouli and rock George and I began to busk in Blackpool. We wrote a few tunes and settled on the name Alien Cage. We only made a few quid and ate fish 'n' chips on the prom but it was great fun and we felt like we were kings again that summer. We even gigged in a pub.

George introduced me to his pals Boyley and Raff, who were part of Preston's Sixth Form college scene of talented young rock musicians looking for a home. The most talented guitarist of this teenage milieu was a young wispy haired kid called Nick Dias, who played in a band called Israel Hands if I remember rightly. Boyley and Raff's own zest for playing rock was immense and it was a happy coincidence when we all got together to form a band.

I remember playing a bunch of original tunes to them in one of their parent's homes and them saying pleasant things afterwards like 'great lyrics' and 'like poetry man!'. And so, thanks to George's introduction, Sirius was born.

We practised in the space above my Dad's sofa workshop were he was book-keeper. Being 18 I was one or two years older than the rest of the band - and the only one working - so I bought the amps for the band. We had everything else and with Dave having passed his test and having access to his Mum's mini he became roadie, sound technician and sound recordist.

Being part of Sirius was the most creative period of my life. I wrote songs like they were going out of fashion and along with tunes from the rest of the band we had a great repertoire. A mixture of Free, Sad Cafe and Genesis, sort of, we had a distinct sound of our own with songs immersed in teenage angst, Arthurian legend, space, CND and young love.

Sirius's finest hour came when we gigged at one of local pubs, the Unicorn, in the summer of 1980. We'd invited all our friends and their friends too so the place was rammed. It was a superb night of rock and beer and Dave recorded it all. We felt like the Pink Faeries and I thought we would go all the way. My friends went to Uni instead.

Within six months the glory of the Unicorn was but a run-out groove. My band mates had left for University and Dave and I sat there twiddling our thumbs. It was the end of an era and we knew. I had already met the young lady who would become my future wife and Dave had discovered motor bikes. The writing was on the wall for the final friendship and when I eventually left Preston as well that Winter we said our goodbyes. 

Along with Pete, Dave and I would resume our friendship briefly in 1983 when I returned from the Continent, but the road beckoned and I left for Wales with my girlfriend shortly after and the two brothers emigrated to Australia. We were all around 20 years old. I saw them once again. That was 35 years ago.

From all those deep and important ashes of teenage incense long ago I have at least managed to keep in touch with George, easily my oldest friend now as I begin to stare down the cold loaded barrels of Sixty years of age. Its a strange feeling looking back isn't it.

And so I'll draw this nostalgic postcard to a close. Rather than Wish You Were Here, for some reason a line from a Neil Young song is running round my head as a sign-off. 

'I have a friend I've never seen. He hides his head inside a dream'.

Have your friendships changed over the years readers?