Meeting friendly rivals, drinking to the Good Times

ONE of the pleasures of writing this diary is that occasionally you bump into readers who recognise the phizzog attached to it.

It’s mostly on Skipton High Street but I have been accosted, in the friendliest possible manner, as far away as Leicester bus station.

Most recently, I met Geoff and Ruth from Lancashire. He was a rival columnist on the Colne Times for many years, and the old hacks’ gossip put me in the mood for the Sounds Bar, next door to the bus station. This excellent pub-cum-musiccentre does a cracking pint, and sells classic vinyl records, hundreds of them, in racks. You can browse for Elvis or Ellington while savouring your beer.

Musical instruments hang from the ceiling, and there’s also a DJ set-up and a small stage, with a printed warning “Dance At Your Own Risk”. It’s like something out of Middle America.

Alongside, appropriately for me, is a Daily Mirror front page poster from the day that John Lennon was murdered, headlined: Death Of A Hero.

I wonder if some of our vinyl collection is worth anything? I have an original Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, bought when it came out.

Mrs R has a collection of LPs by John

Denver, The Everly Brothers and a droning Canadian bloke called Leonard Summat.

I also have a much-played selection of Yugoslav folk, plus some mournful Central Asian stringed music that I used to inflict on drinking pals late at night.

Those occasions don’t happen now, but I’m glad they did because they’re a longplaying memory of happy days, celebrated in Eric Burdon and The Animals’ immortal “When I think of all the good times (that I’ve wasted having good times)...”