Much to my embarrassment I’ve only posted two blogs since last November on this personal blog site — I have been rather busier on the fotoLibra Pro Blog site. And there I was advising Mike Shatzkin (whose blog now has a gazillion readers) to write a store of (ideally 365) blog posts to hold in reserve in case you woke up one morning and couldn’t think of anything to say. Impossible in Mike’s case, of course, but all too likely for a modest, self-effacing chap like me.

Excuse alert: I’ve been really busy recently, what with the London Book Fair, fotoFringe and now preparing for CEPIC in June and of course Frankfurt in October. And of course Yvonne’s mother, bless her. So nothing much happens to me except work, and ma-in-law preservation.

But I do enjoy my spectator sports. This morning the papers were splashed with gory images of celebrity rugby player Danny Cipriani, who has come off very much second best in an encounter with a bus.

Now I’m old enough to remember the last glory days of Welsh rugby, in the 1970s, and particularly the iconic figure of full-back JPR Williams, impervious to pain, who once sprinted 50 yards upfield to knock out a South African lock he’d taken a dislike to. If you don’t know your rugby, locks are usually 33 to 50% larger than full backs. They were all amateurs at the time, of course, and JPR was a medical student. He later qualified as a surgeon, and practised under the sobriquet of “The Butcher Of Bridgend.”

What brings this all back to mind was that in the ’70s JPR was also involved in an encounter with a bus, in his case a head-on collision.

The report in the local press memorably closed with “The bus is doing well, and is expected to make a full recovery.”

In the 1950s I was a very happy schoolboy in Berlin. I enjoyed school, I had friends, we lived in a fabulous house. Where did it all go wrong?

I loved music, and listened raptly to “Twenty Tiny Fingers”, “You’re A Pink Toothbrush, I’m A Blue Toothbrush” on BFN — British Forces Network, until my friend Tommy, son of a USAF Major, spun the dial on the wireless and new, alien, appalling music filled the air. My feet started to move involuntarily; there was a throbbing, infectious beat. Tommy had tuned into AFN — the American Forces Network — and the music they were playing was very different to the pap I was accustomed to.

Even my father, a severe Army chaplain, was intrigued. He lowered his paper and asked, “What was the name of that last record?” Tommy told him.

And my father started to laugh. He laughed until he cried. His eyes were wet with laughter. He was still hiccupping with laughter a day later. I loved him for it.

When later in the week I went with Tommy to the PX (the American equivalent of the NAAFI) I had managed to scrape together just enough money to buy my first record, as a present for my father, because I loved to see him laugh.

So it was that the first record I ever bought was a 78rpm copy of “Roll Over Beethoven” by Chuck Berry.