The darkest path

I’v been Coxswain of dive boats and scuba dived on sunken warships in the english channel to deep lakes in the uk

these days if people want to impress me its a simple task? don’t be an arshole as I’v wasted too much of my life on them in the past and I’v run out of storage space the truth be known you’re more than likely out matched as that’s a job i did full time most of my life.

“past tense”

I’v owned just about all the boats worth owning from this Phantom 21. to Ring powercrafts / Marshans right down to my first boat a little fletcher 129 with a little 55hp Yamaha

Mk 2 Ford Escort RS 2000. been there done it.

owned five of these. the last one back in 2001 one of the last off the production line. identical to the one pictured below. middlebridge scimitar 2.8

A ford sierra capable of 155 Mph. my XR4x4 which was intercooled and turbocharged by me in 1990. this was a ford cosworth eating monster in its day.

yawn !

The white transit van in the background belonged to David P

owned four of these.

cars bore me as does other stuff.

I am no longer materialistic.

I spent my entire life tinkering around with old wrecks trying to make something good out of them. like this old Mk 1 ford granada 3.0 ghia this was way back in the early 1980s

All this seems so pointless now. a waste of time and indeed effort. what does it matter what kind of steel box you go from point A to point B in ?

my old TVR 350i I rebuilt the thing from the ground up. a fast old car in its day.

Scott was one of my best mates and one of the best DJs i have ever known, even coming close to malcolm Jay. Scott worked for me during the early 1990s. this is the only picture we have of him.

Sadly the photographer was pissed and chopped off the top of his head. this was taken in the DJ Booth aboard the Stena Invicta in the aft night club one new years eve. scotts life would make a disturbingly sad story, he had everything going for him. The women loved him, he was charming funny bright and very talented. such a sad ending. I tried so many times to keep him out of trouble but alas i failed each and every time.

scott threw his life away and now serves a life prison sentence. I do have some truly hilarious yarns to tell of him.

I will be sending him a copy of my book this christmas as i think it may make some sense to him, he and i traveled similar paths his was to put him behind bars. mine was to take me somwhere infinitely more sinister.

Scott and I were the resident DJs for stena line during the early 1990s what great times we had in those days. if it were possible to reach back in time and space to help a person it would be him i would choose above all others ( myself included )

me aboard the Invicta having a cigarette in 1991

Not going to mention any names Ian 🙂 this was fully loaded at the time and ended up in a front garden of a house near a narrow bridge which was known as an accident black spot. As i recall Ian was belting along in a thunder storm and as he approached a narrow bridge at 70 mph a brand new mercedes was coming the other way.

As luck would have it Ian had the right of way, but the idiot in his shiny new mercedes thought he could make it before Ian got to the bottleneck bridge. His gamble didn’t end well. The end result being: Ford Transit 1 Mercedes-benz 0. My old transit being fully loaded with PA gear and what not crushed the merc like a tin can against the wall of the bridge and kept on going a few hundred yards down the road out of control and ended up parked in a front garden.

Amazingly no one died I’m pleased to report. it was a close thing, as flightcase with a mixer and two technics sl-1200mk2 decks inside missed Ian’s head by only a few centimeters on its way through the vans windscreen like a silver coffin shaped projectile. I was later told by Ian’s brother-in-law “Rob” that it was more than likely that Ian had been suffering from concussion before the accident ? from birth in fact. I’ll say no more 🙂

I remember the very nice couple that lived here in 1987, they made us all a cup of tea and let us use their phone. They also showed us a photo album of all the previous accidents. A decade or two later they built the bypass to the right .

it was after all the 1990s. This old disco trolley generated a great deal of work so don’t knock it. My trusty old ford transit 2.5 Di just kept on going and going. This was in the days when you didn’t need to be a computer geek to repair a vehicle.

some time later ( newly laid patio ) and new talon sprokets

Enjoy Bruce 🙂