It was all a long time ago but some of it is coming back now. I'm sure that Emma stayed almost til the end because I can't believe that I dealt with the bizzarre letting agent, Greg McKenzie all by myself. Some improvements had to be made to the flat. New casements were made for the sash windows. Greg McKenzie found the ideal tenants, Geraint Cunnick and his girlfriend whose name temporarily escapes me. He was a commercial photographer and she worked in art ceramics. Cool tenants. I did explain to them that if they didn't pay the rent I would have to come back from my trip and if I had to do that I would simply have to find them and, regrettably, kill them.
At the time I was driving an old black Austin Healey Sprite (not the frog-eyed variety). There's a picture of it somewhere but I'm blowed if I can lay my hands on it. If I do I'll edit this and include it. Anyway, it was a fun car but in the run up to setting off the clutch went as I was leaving the underground car park in Sainsbury's in Camden Town. I was stuck in second gear. I was moving but stopping was no longer an option. If I stopped I would not be able to start again because I could not get it into neutral. It was perhaps a measure of my luck that although it was a journey of a few miles through countless sets of traffic lights I managed to get the car home and park it outside the house forwards. I had someone tow it away to a garage somewhere up the Caledonian Road where the clutch was fixed. The guy wanted £260 for the job. The car had only cost £650 and since I was saving like mad I didn't want the car. My brother Robin and sister-in-law Donna who were living in Islington had told me that they didn't want to look after it while I was away so I had a choice: pay the man and have a car on my hands that I didn't really need; or - the option I took - basically sell the car to the mechanic for the cost of the repair. It was a shame because I really liked that car. It had been great fun whizzing round London with the roof down.
