How it all began (just the facts ma'am, just the facts)

Of course, I should tell you all about that first day, so you get both sides of the story. Not that I am besmirching the word of Leonard Caine you understand, I'd never do something so callous. This was back in the days when students had honour and integrity and didn't try to brain a Rozzer with a fire extinguisher.

The building in which I found myself was a classic of early 60s functional design - a 16 story monstrosity close to the flight path into Southampton International airport. To say it was nearing the end of it's useful life would be an understatement, the mould growing under the window in my first floor room indicated this would not be a place I would hanker for from a comfort perspective, but to be fair I missed it like crazy when I was away. Bob Marley once penned a moving Reggae classic about the first floor rooms - No plumbing, No cry... and, as it turned out, no discount on the rent for the below par accomodation.

Not being in possession of a new fangled Compact Disc player and with my parents having left me to my student life, I cranked up the record player and slipped on something from my limited but eclectic collection - possibly the Pogues, although it could easily have been Queen or Elton John such was the Liquorice Allsorts I used to (and still do) listen to.
A cup of coffee later and I decided that sitting around on my own was not the best use of the day, so I set off from room 1G in search of my floor mates.

I didn't have far to search, for next door I could hear the sounds of music. So it was that the first person I stumbled upon in my student life was the inestimably comfortable Jonny Medcalf - sat in his armchair listening to The Jam. We chatted for a bit after the introductions whereupon we were invaded by a host (far from heavenly it was as well) - the remaining first floorers, already gathered and touring round to collect up the rest of us. A swathe of faces and introductions which at the time was a blur and now is just a happening in the memory I cannot play a clear image of.

Of course, by the end of the night I knew all of them for we spent the rest of the day as a collective slowly accustoming ourselves to each others mannerisms and patterns of speech. It quickly became obvious (due to the haze hanging over us) that this was a smoking floor, which came as a relief to me, being a pack and a half a day chuffer then (but no longer). Ten first floor ratbags, whom Len has already introduced in his inimitable style. But it was not just the ten of us, Rolf Benham-Parker and Ivan also were there - to this day I have no earthly clue why two twelfth floor guys spent that first day with us, but there you have it, there was Rolf and Ivan, the very first of many paradoxes in the Stoneham Years.

What more to say today? Not much, that is how it began on the first day, and that evening we went to the bar. Three years later I sobered up again, but being of strong constitution I can recall some, or perhaps all, of the haze in between and the tales therein that lead a young Len and Dave to the horrors of the Orange Book can now be told. Friends come and friends go and time marches on apace, but there will never be another Caning team nor a three years like that. Even the shit was worth the candle.