While the bike was at Halesowen Cycles for repair I went off down to Exeter for lunch - as you do! I know, it is a long way, roughly three hours drive each way but when one hasn’t seen old friends for thirty years it’s more than worth the effort.
Mike and John were at shcool together and we all met, in 1968, in the School of Architecture & Planning at Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University). We eventually went our separate ways; I went back to Birmingham, Mike went to work in the South West and John travelled around the world, settling eventually in Australia. We’ve kept in touch and I saw Mike a few years ago at the funeral of a very dear friend, but John I hadn’t seen since he came to stay with me way back in 1979!
Mike, John and myself outside Exeter Cathedral
Amazing how the years just dropped away and the conversation flowed this way and that over the all too brief time we were able to spend together. We were reminded of various escapades, boat and punt trips, brewing nettle beer (unpalatable until mixed with proper bottled stuff!) and the Batman painting I did in 1969, which I have still in the office at home.
Batman's the one on the right...
Happy days, happy day!
I’d never visited Exeter before and was extremely impressed with the park & ride service. Well signed from the motorway, bus waiting at both ends, £1.70 for a return ticket, saved map reading, saved messing about looking for a city centre car space and saved money. Why don’t we have this in Birmingham on the ends of the main arterial roads (Hagley, Bristol, Walsall, Tyburn, Chester, Stratford, etc)? It wouldn’t be difficult to organise and, with dedicated bus lanes for a non-stop service, would dramatically reduce traffic flows in and out of the city and ease congestion within the city centre. There must be an opportunity to do this on the southwest access point from the M5 by building a car park on the old Longbridge car works site? Quinton M5 junction would have been another logical place for a park & ride terminus?
Some day, some day….