Small world…I had a place to read Physics at Leeds in the mid 70s but decided to go to Newcastle University with the city being an adventure in itself.
Hard not to remember Sutcliffe if you lived in the UK in the 70s/80s.
Paul
…and continuing with my Newcastle days, we had a Paternoster elevator in the building where I had tons of lectures and sadly someone died in it a few months before I joined. Needless to say it was never in motion when I was there…nasty contraption and not something I wanted to ride in.
Paul
Had these when I was at Aston in the early 70’s. I loved them. The dry land equivalent of white water rafting 
Never did work up the courage to see what happened if you “went over the top” though…
Never got caught up in a murder investigation, but on a couple of occasions was recruited to take part in identity parades at the adjacent Steelhouse Lane police station. At the time I had a ginormous ginger Afro and even more beard and was fairly unique so no doubt ideal for the purpose 
None of yer cissy video lineups or behind one way mirrors then, you had to stand there while the witness walked up the line and scrutinised you, dreading the hand on the shoulder. We’d do anything for a fiver in those days!
Although there’s not much left on top, my beard is again approaching the grandeur of my youth in volume if not in colour. Just a small upside to the lockdown (this is unfortunately not the opinion of my XYL 
)
Ah, the Aston paternosters! I remember in the 60’s the astronomical society set up an exhibition at Aston called “The Moon and Beyond” with a Skylark rocket nose cone as the centrepiece. Late at night after final setting up we had fun riding up, across and down them! In the mid 70’s a student got himself killed hitting the lifting gear after riding on top of a unit and they never moved again, getting demolished in the 80’s.
There were a couple of Paternoster lifts in GEC Borehamwood - I can remember several young ladies worried what happened when the lift went “over the top”. Demonstrated by one fellow engineer going up and coming down the other side standing on his hands - such skills
Strangely the lassies avoided using the lifts after that 
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When I come to bed of late and strip off, exposing my chest and back, the xyl has been taking one look and exclaiming: “Oh Sean,”
I was quite flattered that she could see the (obvious) likeness to Mr Connery - until I realised she’s actually been watching old Wallace and Grommit episodes
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Classic lines “Did you need a prescription?” “No, I got it at the poison counter”
Poor old Des, always the butt of someone’s jokes when I was a young 'un. Still 88 is not a bad innings. And his interview with Stan Boardman and Stan’s “Charlie Polanski fighter pilot” joke is legendary even if it did cost Boardman his TV career and Des was never allowed live TV again. (It’s on you tube)
Joe Longthorne used to do a great impersonation of him singing “To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before” in the show when we were touring. That’s probably on YouTube somewhere!
Two in one day 
Apparently Ray had been suffering from cancer on and off for the last 15 years.
Darth Vader?
He wasn’t a big part of my youth Tom. I recall that when I was doing O-levels, my choices and the fact I was doing A/O-level maths (did O-level maths the year before) meant that during leave of absence for revision, most of my fellow maths set had a week between our second to last and last exam paper. We decided that one afternoon’s break was acceptable and 75%+ of my top maths set went en masse to watch the film. It was a hoot, nice warm early summer afternoon watching a film instead of revising. We all had an ice cream aswell. Oh the decadence and rebellion of youth.
The line " I find your lack of faith in The Force… disturbing" is always good for a giggle when applied to someone questioning my plan in meetings.
An obscure one. Martin Birch (27 December 1948 – 9 August 2020) Martin Birch was a sound engineer / producer. As I started buying records in 70s you would always devour the record sleeve for any info on the band etc. there being no internet back then. If you saw Martin Birch’s name on the sleeve you knew the record would sound good. He produced/engineered albums for Deep Purple, Rainbow, Whitesnake, Wishbone Ash, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult.
This one is a bit of a late lament, for I found that the amazing Jazz composer Graham Collier died nine years ago, somehow I missed it at the time. I first encountered him in a broadcast performance of his 1971 composition “Mosaics” featuring the amazing Harry Beckett on flugelhorn. I wore that album out! In 1977 he brought out his “Symphony of Scorpions”, which as it says on the label is a four movement classically structured symphony, a mixture of through-composed music, accompanied improvisations and free-form sounding (but not!) group improvisations. To put it bluntly, this piece took no prisoners! I lent a tape of it to a well-known British composer of 12-tone serial music (who also took no prisoners!) and his response was “very interesting but I just don’t understand it!”, so I’ll leave him nameless! In the 70’s I played a lot of Jazz with a band that was ostensibly formed as a house band for the Crescent Theatre in Birmingham (away from the pit we called ourselves the “Red Welly Band”!) and used Graham Colliers procedures as a starting point for my own compositions, now lost to time, but to this day Graham Colliers music has been a bright thread in my musical mindscape and it saddens me to find that his fertile imagination will gift us no more gems. To give you a fairly approachable taste here is the last movement of Mosaics, bear with it because at 4.40 minutes it changes drastically!
Another great guitarist passes away, Leslie West guitarist with Mountain died from a heart attack on 22nd December.
Probably most famous (to guitarists anyway) for his solo in ’ Theme for an Imaginary Western’ from 1969.
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I saw him years and years back, well 1988 on the Night of the Guitars tour which featured Randy California, Pete Haycock, Steve Howe, Steve Hunter, Robby Krieger, Alvin Lee, Andy Powell, Ted Turner and Leslie West.
I shall go and wake everyone up with Mississippi Queen.
Oh go then… a couple more of Mr. West getting some amazing tone out of a Les Paul Junior.
And this one from a Beat Club session with the lovely Uschi Nerke doing the intro.
A big 
for Corky Laing’s drumming on that track.
Mrs. FMF has a formative youth that is not documented… she has a copy of West’s second solo album, The Great Fatsby, her musical tastes being one of the things that attracted me to her.
I discovered this band through trying to find out who was responsible for the brilliant theme music to the Sunday current affairs show Weekend World, on ITV in the 1980s!
My father thought I was developing an interest in current affairs but he didn’t know I only watched it for the theme tune. (Nantucket Sleigh Ride by Mountain).
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