[johnep]

In my teens a car was an impossible dream and even a motorbike was too expensive. Got a couple of army surplus radio bags and made paniers out of them for attachment to my bike. Had a couple of YHA holidays where cost of stay was 10p and we even cooked our own food to save money. Two weeks holiday cost £13 in total.

I was a bit shocked to meet up with a geordie who said we made hard work of it in the rain. he just got lifts in cars and travelled in style.

My extensive travels were in my role as a marketing manager for a galenical company - Bush Boake Allen and later as export manager for Roche vitamins and then pharmaceuticals. In those days we exported large part of production. Now the factories are closed and most imported from low labour cost countries.

We rarely had a mcs situation. We did run out of liquorish root in the middle of a flu epidemic in the early 70s. Told the govnmt and we substituted liquorish block juice. Liquorish Liquid extract was main ingredient of cough mixtures which were all swept away by the 'limited list' in 1984.

johnep