‘Research,’ said my mother. ‘So much research.’

‘Right,’ I said, recalling my father’s research. ‘He always researches the various strengths of alcohol in the local public house, but never takes a job there.’

‘Not in a single public house,’ said my mother, once more the stickler for detail. ‘He does his research in many different public houses. He’ll do so much research in one public house that the landlord will urge him to go elsewhere, lest he over-researches.’

‘Right,’ I said. With the same inflection I had put into the previous ‘right’.

‘But no,’ said my mother, now applying vinegar and brown paper to my forehead, for she had read in a nursery rhyme that this was a timeless remedy. ‘He won’t be researching in public houses because he already has a new job.’

‘Already?’ I said. ‘But he was only sacked this afternoon.’

‘I know,’ said my mother. ‘What a world we live in today and no mistake. It must be this Space Age that they are all talking about. But a man knocked upon the door earlier this evening and offered your father a new job. And he took it, right there and then.’

‘Well,’ I said. And, ‘Well indeed. No, hang about,’ I then said. ‘Dad mentioned a travelling salesman and a gatherer of the pure. He hasn’t got a job shovelling up dog shi-’

‘No, no, no,’ said my mother. ‘Something quite different – your father has been given a job as a roadie for a rock ’n’ roll band.’

‘What?’ I said. And I said it loudly, too.

‘A chap in dark glasses who looks a bit like your music teacher gave him the job. He’s going to be the roadie for a band called The Rolling Stones.’

‘What?’ said I. And even louder now.

‘But let’s not talk about your father,’ said my mother. ‘Tell me, Tyler, what was your really exciting news that you mentioned just before you fainted?’

The Saturday that followed the Friday evening that had been The Sumerian Kynges’ very first gig was much the same as any other at that time.

My father was doing some home improvements. He was papering our sitting-room walls with billiard table baize and Captain Lynch had taken my mother to the pictures, because there was a film on about Jesus that my father wasn’t particularly keen to see.

I got up, then went without breakfast because my mother had apparently left early for the pictures so as to be first in the queue. Then I watched my father’s increasingly abortive attempts to paper the sitting-room walls until I could control my laughter no longer and had to rush to the toilet and be sick.

Which made me feel even hungrier. So I did what all lads of my age did and went off to the Wimpy Bar for lunch.

Wimpy Bars were the latest thing. They were American and therefore cool. They served a variety of foodstuffs that had never before been served upon these shores. And there were ice-cream desserts with names like the Brown Derby and the Jamaican Longboat.

How fondly I remember those.

I once found a pound note blowing down the street, which I considered was surely a gift from God. And myself and Neil Garden-Partee tried to spend the lot at the Wimpy Bar. And we really tried. We had as many burgers (with fries, as the Wimpy Bar’s chips were called) as we could pack in, then we laid into the desserts. And the milkshakes.

But we only spent fifteen and sixpence, all told.

Which wouldn’t, nowadays, even buy you a cup of tea.

As I have lived my long and eventful life and watched the world falling to pieces all around me, I often think back to those more innocent days of the early nineteen-sixties.

A time when two young men, in the full flush of their youth, could not eat their way through one pound’s worth of Wimpy Bar grub.

And I feel grateful, somehow. Blessed.

That I hadn’t been born twenty years earlier and got myself killed in the war.

What goes around comes around, I suppose.

Like diseases.

And whilst we are on the subject of diseases, I have to admit that I caught my first one of the ‘social’ persuasion in an alleyway at the back of the Wimpy Bar.

But not on this particular day.

Because on this particular day I was still a virgin.

I wasn’t too phased about being a virgin. Most of my pals, I knew, were similarly so. Although most bragged otherwise.

Neil, I knew, was a virgin. The girls didn’t take to his goatee. And Rob, although a genius with a chat-up line, never seemed to pull. Toby, however, was another matter. Toby was a bit of an enigma and if all was to be believed, and it probably was, he had had his first sex while at junior school.

With the teacher.

And the teacher wasn’t a man.

Just in case you were wondering.

I took the Sixty-Five Bus from South Ealing to Ealing Broadway. My favourite clippie, the Jamaican lady with the very white teeth, wasn’t clippying on the bus upon this morning and so I had to pay the fare. The Jamaican lady with the very white teeth always took pity on the hang-dog expression that I wore and my tales of poverty and child abuse, and let me off without paying.

The evil harridan of an Irish woman who patrolled today’s bus cared nothing for my tragic plight and demanded I fork out my penny-halfpenny without further ado.

Which left me no option but to shout ‘stop that dog’ and leap from the bus at the next traffic lights.

And travel the rest of the way on foot.

So I had worked up a really healthy appetite by the time I got to the Wimpy Bar.

I could spend time describing the interior of the Wimpy Bar, but what would be the point? You either know what it looks like, or you don’t. So to speak.

Neil was already there. And so was Rob and they were sharing a chocolate-nut sundae, with extra nuts.

I seated myself in my favourite seat, yawned a bit and stretched and gave my young belly a bit of a rub. ‘Give us a spoonful of that,’ I said.

‘No,’ both Neil and Rob agreed.

And I had to order my own.

‘Why do we always have the dessert first?’ I asked as I tucked into it. ‘Surely one should have the main course first.’

‘I’m sure one should,’ said Rob. And he chuckled.

‘Are you chuckling at me?’ I asked him, pointing with my spoon.

‘Yes,’ said Rob. ‘I am. Do you want to make something of it?’

‘Do you want a fight?’ I asked him. ‘And if so, why?’

‘Why?’ said Rob. ‘Why? You know why.’

‘I don’t,’ I said. And I noticed Neil moving the chocolate-nut sundae that he had been sharing with Rob somewhat closer to himself.

‘What is this all about?’ I asked of Rob. ‘What have I done to you?’

‘You signed me up to something with a maniac,’ said Rob. ‘While I was out cold. And what was that about? What happened to me last night?’

‘You came over a little queer,’ I said, hoping to lighten the situation with a cheeky little double entendre.

‘Outside,’ said Rob, rising from his chair.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No. My dessert will melt. Or Neil will eat it.’

‘Are you having a go at me now?’ asked Neil, rising also.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No. I’m not having a go at anyone. And I’m not fighting anyone. We’re friends. Aren’t we?’

‘Something weird happened last night,’ said Rob, who was showing no signs of sitting down again. ‘It was before ten, then suddenly it was midnight.’

‘I noticed that,’ I said.

‘Shut up!’ said Rob.

‘But I-’

‘There was something weird,’ said Neil. ‘My watch stopped at midnight and my watch never stops. It’s an Ingersoll and I wind it religiously.’

‘What, in church?’ I asked.

‘I will hit you,’ Neil said in ready reply.

‘Oh, come on, lads,’ I said and I raised calming open hands to them. ‘We’re friends – we shouldn’t be behaving like this. And we’ll get thrown out of here. And that won’t be cool.’

Rob made serious fists. And he shook them at me. And then he sat down.