#combatjacket

This photo was taken in my bedroom when I lived with my mother in Bury, just experimenting with my photo gear.

I was about 20 years old then and I had a Triumph Benneville 650 (one of top bikes of the time) The combat jacket was probably part of the gear I was issued with when I joined the TA, couldn't afford a leather jacket.

When I was in the TA about 1968, this was when the regiment was the Lancashire Fusiliers. as an aside I tried to join the regular army, I'd signed up for REME and all I needed was a medical. Unfortunately about a year before I'd had a motorcycle accident and had a spleenectomy, so they wouldn't accept me, but the TA was OK. As it happens I was taken ill on weekend exercise and had to have an emergency op!!!

This was taken at Hollingworth lake (Littleborough) with colleagues that all worked in the laboratories at Transparent Paper in Bury, we were more than colleagues we were friends and went out together drinking etc. I ended up marrying the girl on the far left, still with her today (2013)

In the routine laboratory at Transparent Paper, standing L to R, Jan Zuc, Nigel O'Garr(Nog), me, Paul Hughes, Steven Atkinson (Ackers), sitting Geoff Stretch. It was like a big club we had a social club we used to go to at lunchtime for a game of snooker or a game or a game of table tennis. Playing jokes on each other… a good time!