Another Allnighter trip

Marooned in Cleethorpes in the seventies

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Back in the seventies again,  I was going through a bit of a bad patch when I lived in my little bedsit at 65 Mawson road Cambridge.  There was two lads who lived in the end room of the ground floor almost next to my room but with the kitchen betweeen us,  Steve and Chris were their names and they kept me alive by bringing home pork pies and steak and kidney pies etc for me to eat from the Harris vans that Steve worked on.   I had no job at the time as I was too busy during the week catching up on the sleep I missed at the weekends doing the allnighters.

Anyway as I remember; Steve kept on and on about us taking him to an allnighter but I wasn't too sure, he was not really into the music.  My mate "Wol" came round a bit later and said "do you fancy Cleethorpes this weekend" to which I replied " I would never miss a Cleethorpes" as it was my favourite nighter, but I had no money, no gear and no car to get us there (being the only one of us who could drive but being banned for 6 months after collecting six endorsements).

Funny enough Wol was just having driving lessons, 'I can't remember why' but he had bought a little "maroon" escort, with "Maroon" being the important word here as you will see later.  Wol suggested I drive his little Escort there and back if he in return paid for my night out.  I agreed to a free night out in return for driving them there,  I must have been nuts cos if I got caught I would be banned for 18 months. We were talking about this when in walked Steve, everyone used to just walk in and out of each others rooms then we were like one big family. Steve had heard our conversation about going to Cleethorpes and after Wol left he said "let me drive you all there"  I thought there has got to be a bit of cunning here on my part so I agreed to let him drive us there so he could sample his first allnighter, but I must drive some of the way first to earn my entrance so it looked like it wasn't arranged, What a cad!.

We set off for Cleethorpes that Saturday afternoon which was about 4 hours drive with a stop or two usually at "Swallow"    [see photos,]  which was our favourite little village en-route, but was not a stop on this trip as we were going dry, this little village was easily missable if you blinked while passing through but was just the right distance fromCleethorpes for a  nice little "refreshment brake" if you know what I mean.  Squashed in the car were Me, Wol, Gavin Stearn, Steve Day and Chris.  After traveling for about an hour Steve kept on about letting him drive, so I agreed with Wols consent to let him, we carried on with me as a passenger on a free night out, great eh!.

We arrived at at the front of the Pier and met up with an old pal of mine that I hung around with a few years before, no names mentioned but he was selling the "bitter talcum powder" unfortunately beggars couldn't be choosers at this time and I had to settle for that.  He was aware of a heavy DS presence searching everybody and was a bit paranoid so he decided to bury the stuff in a sealed plastic bag in the sand at the top of the beach.  we  then made our way to the entrance of the Winter gardens and waited outside for Steve to return from parking the car.  We went into Mary Chapmans famous allnighter and started to get into the usual nighter stuff.   At about 2 o/clock in the morning Steve was beginning to wane a bit so we gave him the keys to the car and he spent the night asleep in it. 

After the allnighter we waited outside for Steve for bloody ages and ended up looking for him, after a while we saw him driving by and stopped him.  " I've just been for a little drive" he said we rollicked him and told him to take us to the cafe on the sea front further up while my other mate went to dig up his "whizz " from the beach. as we pulled up I noticed a police car behind flashing Steve to stop which he did and upon doing so we all scarpered as quick as a pack of rats leaving a sinking ship. 

We piled in the cafe and left poor old Steve to be arrested, 'well there was no need for us all to be arrested was there?'.The car was impounded and we could not take it home with us as none of us were insured or indeed even had a license. Steve was later released after being charged and had to get a train home on his own,  we however had hardly any money between us to get home and were stuck there.  Meanwhile my mate "who's name I won't mention" had gone to dig up his gear from the beach only to find the tide had come in, Ha Ha!! What a Wally eh! I don't know if he ever got the stuff back.

As we could do nothing for Steve we had to some how get home,  we had very little money so we bought a ticket each for just a couple of stops and we jumped on a train which  took us as far as Huntingdon which was almost home, the idea was to pretend we had fell asleep if we were challenged by an inspector.  Somehow we managed to get to Huntingdon station without being caught, but had to fathom out how to get off the station without being caught with tickets for a much shorter journey, the second plan was to all march up to the ticket office kiosk and bang the tickets in the inspectors hand, and by the time we all had done this and he had noticed the tickets were no good we were halfway up the road, poor old Chris was at the back,  I don't know how he drew the short straw. Well It worked !

We managed to get home and Steve came back later and gave me a right roasting, Wol went up to Cleethorpes a couple of weeks later after passing his test and collected the car. The things we did for a laugh eh!

Do you have a piccy of this sign or are we the only idiots to take a picture like this?

Did you have a swallow in swallow?

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