Two monkeys. I'm the one wearing the gabardine raincoat. The gabardine raincoat! God, how a school cloakroom
full of them soaking wet from the rain used to pong!
This picture was shot in London in August 1963, just a month before I started at Cardiff High School. We
were staying with an old schoolfriend of my mother's in Surrey for a couple of weeks, so we went sightseeing in London almost
every day. Saw Madam Toussauds - some gruesome waxworks models there in the "Chamber of Horrors' (loved it!). We went to see
Tony Hancock at the London Palladium. He wasn't very good. Where did he get the idea from he was a stand-up comedian? But
he was a fantastic comedy actor - the best! I have loads of his 'Hancock's Half Hour' shows, both TV, and the better radio
shows, in my archives. I think the funniest sketch of all was the one where he imagined he was a test pilot, and took off
with a mechanic (Kenneth Williams) still in tow. Even after forty years, and many hearings, it still cracks me up. You should
hear it sometime. Today, if you say "A pint?" or "Dis GLK London. It is a-raining not here also," to anyone not of a 'certain
age', they look at you rather strangely!
No, I'm not in training to join the Freemasons (the wrong sock is falling down anyway, I think.) And didn't
the garters I had to wear to hold those socks up dig into my legs and hurt sometimes. I couldn't wait to get into long
trousers, but still had to wait another couple of years before I could do so.
And talking of the Freemasons, did you know there is a Freemasons Lodge consisting entirely of ex Cardiff
High School pupils? They have a website, but I can't tell you what it is. I've been sworn to secrecy!
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