The Collection

We had a skiffle group… The Six Squares. I made a tea chest with a broom handle and a piece of string, and I painted 6 squares on the side, red and black squares, and there was 6 squares and we said, we’re all pretty square, and there were 6 of us, so we called ourselves the 6 Squares. We started off in a pub called the Hope Inn at the bottom of Mitchell Hill. We used to practice in the back room. Just outside this room was a bus stop and when we were in there playing they used to come in and listen. After a couple of weeks the landlord said, “Look don’t practice in the back room, come into the pub itself…And course it used to draw the people in. Word got around that this group was playing this skiffle, and we got these invites to go to different pubs and hotels, and it got more and more. The night that I was due to go into the Army, our skiffle band were playing in a talent competition out at the Perranporth Memorial Hall. We actually won it so we had to go on again to do an encore and I was looking at the watch and thinking, “I’ve got to catch the ten past 10 Cornish Riviera.” I’d already said to my parents, “take my suitcase up to the station, I’ll come back straight from the do and go from there.” Twenty past 9 we were still on the stage playing. I thought, “this is getting a bit tight, we’re at Perranporth, 9 miles away.” Derek Hall used to have a butchers shop in Truro, he had a van which he used to take us around in, so we finished, hurriedly packed the stuff into his van, hammered back to Truro and got onto the station about 5 minutes before the train was due in. And what the chaps did, they brought the gear into the station, set it up and started playing to give me a send off, just as the train was pulling in. This is in the days of the steam trains. And who should be driving the train, but one of our friends. Cause he stopped and got out and held the train up for quarter of an hour while they had a sing song. And that’s the last time I saw my guitar. When I came out the Army, no one knew what happened to it!