Clint Hough - Kyndamagic - Personal Memories

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Welcome to Kyndamagic - the personal homepage of Sixties City

Sixties

About these pages...

'Flashback' is a few pictures of me and places where I used to hang out, in case someone remembers me and wants to let me know that they're still around and sharing the memories. It also contains some of the pictures from our 2004 reunion.

'Sixties City' started off as a few pages of messing about on the internet and is now one of the biggest ( and best?) Sixties sites on the web (not just my opinion - look at and sign my guestbook!)

My actual memories of the Swinging Sixties are a bit vague ( hey - aren't everyone's? ) and I'm not very sure why I can relate to them so well, particularly the music, but read on and I'm certain you'll find a few memories and possibilities that we can examine together. Maybe you'd like to tell me about some of yours?

Remember the California Ballroom in Dunstable?
Visit this fabulous tribute site by JayBee...

As it says, you are very welcome here...

My name's Clint - and here is where you'll find some pictures of me at varying ages and a few reminiscences, ramblings and disconnected jottings.... If you can struggle through them without becoming too bored then maybe, if you're not a Sixties child yourself, you'll understand why Sixties City came into existence.

Reunion - 23rd July 2004
It's been a while since I changed anything here BUT - several of us had a reunion on 23rd July and we hadn't seen each other for about 20 years!! As I had a few pictures to put up from that evening I've also taken the opportunity to add a few enhancements and memories to the text. For all of you who came - and absent friends - thanks for some great memories and being some of the best friends anyone could wish to have! The pictures are mainly for our benefit, but I hope you enjoy them too!

The Colney Heath Chronicle

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About me...
I already had a major interest in the music of various youth cultures by the Seventies, when I bought a Triumph Bonneville 750, having previously owned a Lambretta SX175 and TV200, also a Honda 250 K4. I remember all these machines fondly as they gave me the opportunity to acquire, and hang out with, like-minded friends and visit some ( to us ) really cool places...... (more)

O.K. - You asked for it......

I can remember the joy at the (eventual) arrival of a blue and white Dansette record player in the house one Christmas morning in the mid-Sixties. After the unwrapping, unboxing and plugging in this mood was slightly attenuated by the fact that no-one had actually thought of buying any records to play on the thing. Prior to that mystical morning, almost my entire musical input was limited to what I could get on a cream-coloured crystal set thingy which my dad had brought home or the afternoon radio programmes that my mum used to listen to. This acute lack of vinyl prompted a quick (and somewhat hopeful) trip to see the guy next door to borrow something to play and led to my first Sixties music acquisitions. His name was Chris Smith and he gave me a pile of single records to keep, for which I will always be grateful.

Chris, here's to you, wherever you are now... The most memorable (for me) of this unexpected windfall was 'Do You Really Love Me Too' by Billy Fury (and the superb 'What Am I Going To Do' on the 'B' side), which I've still got. Among others still in my possession are 'I Remember You', 'She Loves You' and 'Wayward Wind', to which I've since added about 4,000 more.

The first records I can remember actually handing over hard cash for ( well, record tokens actually ) were 'No Milk Today' and the 'Hold On!' e.p. both by Herman's Hermits, bought from 'The Record Room' in Chequer Street, St. Albans. What a fab place that was - anyone else remember it? Little sound booths (like telephone booths) on the wall where you could listen to the latest releases for nothing! Never mind Merseybeat, we had our own thing going in Hertfordshire with artists who included The Hunters, The Roulettes, The Zombies, Argent and, of course, Donovan and Cliff Richard.

I'll digress slightly from the music at this point, having already mentioned Chris, to embarrass a few other contemporaries. We (us children of the Sixties) lived in Smiths Crescent. This was the most fab place to spend a childhood in and consisted of two opposing crescent lanes with a central road through the middle. We thought of it as Smallford, a village nearby, although it was actually Sleapshyde which, curiously, the other side was named.

Friends of the time included Chris and, almost in no particular order, Mike, Ricky and Kevin Wilmot, Martin Marlborough, Chris Sellers, Barrington Sawyer, Janet Dickinson, Sandra Sales, Stephen and Val Littlechild (the threesome on the left are me, Val and Stephen), Marian Ryan, Margaret Russell, Patricia, Pamela and Mike Littlechild, Roy Beech, Dawn Blundell and a few others whose names escape me at this moment, for which I apologise.....

If any of you ever read this, please drop me a mail. Also, a few doors along, were the Atkin family - Anne, Paul, Jeremy and Geraldine. Dee, as she preferred to be known, was the younger sister and my first 'girlfriend' at the tender age of about 8 or 9 - ( that's her in the picture on the right ) - we lost touch after her family moved to Colney Heath and we moved to London Colney when the halcyon days at Colney Heath J.M.I. school (also on the right - me at the back, Stephen Hall and Philip Jeggo in front) were drawing to a close.

Anyway.... back to the Record Room. It was a sad day when it eventually closed down and I was reduced to purchasing over the counter from the rather more staid establishment on the other side of the street. I also remember going to see 'A Hard Day's Night' at The Odeon, London Road, St. Albans (they had 'proper' cinemas in those days, with balconies, two films and Saturday morning clubs - just a shilling (5p) to get in) with my friend Robert and our parents. If you want to know how to wallpaper a room sideways(!!) he's your man! He was really into The Beatles at that time, but also had another record I really liked, 'Tell Me When' by The Applejacks which I was to acquire from him some years later, after repeated badgering! The ageing Dansette eventually gave way to a posh-looking polished wood radiogram cabinet when my mum started acquiring Jim Reeves albums. If you were wondering where they went, mum, you can stop now! She came back from a friend's one night with a couple of Elvis albums, G.I. Blues and Elvis' Golden Records which I promptly commandeered and virtually wore out over the next few weeks. This was a major discovery in my early musical 'existence' which led to a lifelong love of The King's music and films. Having 'moved on' to tapes and CDs I have also since acquired the Jim Reeves collection and, for some strange reason, a vast quantity of Hawaiian music records which are OK, but don't have quite the same charisma as 'The King'.

By this time we had moved house to a maisonette in London Colney (as mentioned above) and, within a fairly short space of time, the guy upstairs moved out and his mum disposed of his record collection in my general direction. These consisted mostly of Cliff and The Shadows discs which led to my third musical love, instrumentals. Cliff's records fell into the general pop category but I found The Shadows recordings to be absolutely brilliant, particularly 'Wonderful Land' and 'Atlantis'. Also among these records were copies of the 'Cliff No1' and 'Cliff No2' picture cover e.p.s with The Drifters, 'The Spotnicks' and 'Cliff's Silver Discs' e.p.s - all in mint condition, which I still have.

It must have been around this time that I first started messing about with electrical bits and pieces, and I thought it would be a good idea to set up a kind of 'discotheque' console, time-sharing with spiders in the outside coal shed, where I could play my records as loudly as I liked without any parental (or neighbourly) complaints. The Dansette became the first 'victim' of this new technological departure, having its innards unceremoniously removed for remounting in a home-made wooden construction. The second 'victim' was the short-lived radiogram which suffered a similar fate to achieve the 'twin deck' effect - (yes, I did have permission!).

The third 'victims' were my mum's best sewing scissors (no, I didn't have permission!) which didn't take it too well when I used them to cut through the mains lead which, unfortunately, I had forgotten to unplug from the wall. The resulting bang and shower of atomised metal particles is a scenario that has been repeated many times since, in different ways, but the first time is always the best! The record collection sort of just grew from there and I now have several thousand singles and quite a few hundred albums. Most of my favourite stuff has long since been transferred to tape or CD but I can't bring myself to part with the vinyl copies. In fact, the pile still seems to keep on growing with each visit to a car boot sale.

A cherished part of the collection came via a local hospital from which another friend - Robin - and I 'acquired' a huge cardboard box of apparently unwanted and unused discs. Not realising their significance or potential future value at the time, we split them between us. They were all 'advance release' copies, not for re-sale ( presumably from the E.M.I. studios at Elstree ) many of which subsequently charted, but a large proportion of which didn't, although they are now quite well-known classics such as 'I Think We're Alone Now' by Tommy James and The Shondells. Regrettably, we did dispose of a lot of the unwanted items but I still have many rare and interesting examples of failed recordings - some of them amazingly good! Probably one of the best deals I ever made was when I bought the Rolling Stones' compilation double album 'Get Stoned' and took it round a friend's. He used to be a big Stones fan in earlier days ( he said ) and wanted to know if I would swap it. Although doubtful, of course I asked what he had in mind. He disappeared into the dust of the attic for a while and emerged with what amounted to pretty well a complete set of Stones singles from the Sixties - all in prime condition. Needless to say, the deal was completed almost instantaneously. I really couldn't say when my fourth musical love - The Beach Boys, surf music and the West Coast sound - really began. I remember seeing 'Beach Party' in a double-header (I think) with 'Summer Holiday' (it might have been an Elvis film) at The Gaumont in Stanhope Road, St. Albans, and loved both. Amazingly, St.Albans had 3 cinemas - there was also the Chequers cinema in Chequer Street (what else!).

The early and mid-Seventies drifted by through reggae, T.Rex and Glam and heavy Rock. Digressing for a second (what, again?!!) I was always criticised for loving 'The Sweet'. Fab group - although their hits were nearly all Chinn-Chapman written, have you ever heard their own compositions on the 'B' sides? Electric! One of my all-time favourite songs is their minor hit 'Sixties Man' - says it all really...... My secondary school was Francis Bacon Grammar School (now just common old 'school') in Drakes Drive, St.Albans. I loved it - fab people (hey - mail me!). I have been, and am still occasionally in touch with an American - Harry 'Hal' Rounds - who moved back to the States, and Lance Trendall who now runs a successful estate agency. Sadly, I've lost touch with most of the others. Colin Jones and I worked in the same grocer's/cafe - Murphy's - opposite Napsbury hospital. We were nearly a year older than the other kids in the year at school and were the only two with motorised transport - Lambrettas - in our final year. We were both successfully into sport as well, achieving (and enjoying) a degree of notoriety. Inexplicably, Parkas, green trousers, fluorescent socks, pink shirts and cerise tassled loafers weren't viewed by the staff as particularly conforming to school uniform standards. We both moved on to motor bikes - he a Yamaha 250 and me a Honda.

After leaving school I went to work in John Dale Foundries, where Savacentre (or whatever its latest name is) now stands, in London Colney. From there I became a management trainee and spent most weeks at college in Wolverhampton and West Bromwich, coming home for weekends, usually in the company of a guy called Steve whose Tiger Cub used more oil than petrol on the trips back and forth. The table tennis table in the games room at the student hostel was rarely in use, being covered by motorcycle engines in various stages of disassembly most of the time. That place was a madhouse - something happening all the time. I stayed over one morning after a Friday night out on the town and woke wondering why it was still dark at 11a.m. The light switch revealed a milk advert featuring Muhammad Ali - it was about 9 feet high and twice as far across - a complete advertising hoarding!!! To this day, I don't know how they got it in there..... and that was one of the saner happenings.

Weekends.... home....... I got together with a girl called Heather Worrall for a while - she had been a sixth former at school - we had met during my final year while performing in the school production of H.M.S. Pinafore and we had some good times together before she went up to University in Leicester. One weekend I was cruising around St.Albans at a loose end one saturday evening, late, in the 'uniform' - studded leather jacket etc. - when I heard another really loud motorcycle engine approaching. I stopped and waited, expecting to see some exotic machine come past. It did, but was not quite what I expected - a Garelli moped, flat out - no silencer to speak of and a rider wearing a fringed leather jacket. We'll have a bit of fun here, I thought, and started trailing him. We eventually stopped in a cul-de-sac in Marshalswick and I discovered the rider to be a guy who had been in the year below me at school - Simon Gilling. We chatted and agreed to get together again. That was the start of probably the most enjoyable years of my life and my introduction to rock'n'roll and the motorcycle culture. I made many friends, some of whom I've stayed in touch with but most of whom have drifted away now. However, the internet has allowed a few of us to get in touch again - two of the guys, Dave Burgoine and Paul Warner are now in Aussie. Paul came over in July 2004 and a few of us, including Paul, Simon, Charlotte (below) had a reunion in St.Albans, not having seen each other for the best part of 25 years. Most of the motorcycle years were spent in the company of Charlotte, who I went out with for about five years, and was very pleased to find is still as lovely and extremely happy, now living down on the South coast.

I always thought the surf scene was cool, but it wasn't until the mid-Seventies that I eventually managed to realise my first 'surfin' surfari' to the Skewjack surf village near Sennen, in Cornwall. Charlotte ( Charlie - my girlfriend of the time ) and I went down on the 750 Bonneville ( I had 'upgraded' from the Honda by this time ) for a fortnight's holiday which was absolutely brilliant and sold me on surfing and the 'Beach Boys'.

(Skewjack is, sadly, no more - but click on the logo to visit the 'official' site and see what the Cornish surfing scene in the Seventies was all about!)

I probably spent more time with my arms wrapped around the Bilbo surfboard than around her! Was it '76 when the hurricanes hit the States? I can't remember - anyway, they sent ten-foot waves across the pond and the action was awesome! We had two great years there and a fabulous 3 week holiday backpacking around Greece and the islands. It was towards the end of this that we decided to part. The local motorcycle scene was on the wane by then - work, family life and just 'growing up' reducing our numbers dramatically - out with more of a whimper than a bang. I was working for Polaroid by this time, the foundry industry in the South having nose-dived and being a qualified foundry technician not really worth the paper it was printed on south of the West Midlands. It was around this time I started playing darts on a more regular basis, (still do, but not as intensely or frequently) enjoying some limited success. From experiences such as these came most of the remainder of my long-term friends.

My other interests ( passions? ) are kind of hard to account for except, maybe, Star Trek - the original series. I have always loved science fiction and have literally hundreds of SF books lying in various places around the house. I can remember well the impatient wait through weeks of 'coming soon' adverts on television for the very first Star Trek episode. I've since long lost track of how many times I've watched them but the pleasure doesn't diminish with the years, despite the rather more spectacular special effects now available. You may have formed the faint notion by now that I'm an incurable 'collector' and, yes you're right, I have cupboards full of Star Trek memorabilia picked up at sci-fi fairs, plus models, uniforms, magazines, books etc etc. In fact, one of the best days out I've had was at the Albert Hall Star Trek 'Generations' convention a few years back. Marina Sirtis is even more gorgeous 'in the flesh' and I also had the pleasure of chatting to the series production assistant, Lolita Fatjo, in the pouring rain afterwards while she was waiting for a taxi!

Speaking of collecting, I think my favourite bit of bric-a-brac is ( was ) actually a bit of junk. As people who know me now can probably relate to, I was always one for nosing around in 'skips'. Heaven knows how it got there, but on one occasion when I was about twelve or thirteen I came across a load of discarded film cans from Elstree studios in a skip in White Horse Lane, London Colney, one of which contained, unbelievably, about twenty yards of 'cut' footage ( including the clapper board sequence ) from the Cliff film 'Wonderful Life'. Being 'cinemascope' the images are somewhat stretched, but it's a fab artefact to have. I often send cells in exchange for other bits of sixties memorabilia that people are kind enough to send me.

I've been married twice, the first time to Vanessa for about five years and the second time to Cheryl, for sixteen years. Cheryl was into darts at the time and a good player - we won a lot of competitions together, including the McMullens mixed pairs - twice! During the latter marriage I became UK supervisor for Polaroid camera repairs, got made redundant after 18 years service, spent 6 months on the dole and, being bored stiff, got a job in security where I spent the next five years until acquiring my present job as a Service Management co-ordinator. The marriage failures were probably due to my interest in absolutely everything - I always had to be doing something - and in the fact that, although the body is increasingly ancient, the mind and soul are still stuck somewhere between the Sixties and Seventies. I've never been much of a 'family man' and accept the fact that I'm probably just selfish. From my second marriage I have two fantastic sons, Christopher and Jonathan - living with their mother - who I love very much and see as often as is practical. They are growing up so fast - I hope they have as great a time as I have, although I rather think we lived in the best era of all time.

Towards the end of my marriage, while working in security with countless hours to spare, Sixties City was born. First as a few 'just to see if' pages, and has now grown immensely, taking up a considerable amount of admin time. One of the benefits of having a website is that people can find you. Someone did. Dee got in touch - we hadn't seen each other for about 40 years! We spent a year or so instant messaging and e-mailing, even though we only lived a few miles apart. Having made the decision that I didn't want to continue being unhappy in my second marriage I met Dee for a drink and a walk around where we used to live. It was quite a magical evening, pulling so many memories out of both of us. Something from our childhood must have remained within us - I think we both felt it, although it was a perfectly platonic evening. Things grew from that and we are now together again - 40 years later. Seems to have been the year for reunions........

So that's me - late forties (at time of writing - 2004 - doubt if I'll be updating too much more. Work it out for yourselves.....) going on 19, great memories, a seemingly ever-increasing interest in most things and a house full of various collections which are still growing. The attic also seems to be half full of darts trophies - another 'lost love'. I don't get the practice now so can't play anything like I used to, but we used to have some great times at events connected with the game, not least of which was the world record for a million and one which we held for a while. It was a team of eight, but forgive my ego trip if I tell you that I scored over a third of a million by myself, being on the board for most of the fifty-six hours it took us to complete it. It's still in an old 'Guinness Book of Darts' somewhere. It's strange how things have a habit of coming together from odd angles isn't it? I have come across so many people with 60s musical connections who play that game and I have been priveleged to receive mail from many more sixties 'icons' as a result of Sixties City - it's been great! Anyway, if you stayed this far, thanks for coming! I hope you enjoy viewing my pages as much as I have putting them together - and there's plenty more to come. Forgive me for 'stealing' these lyrics..... they say so much.....

I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now . . . . Let's do it again . . . (and again!!!) Stay Lucky!

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