Fast living

TO visit some houses in the Devon boondocks in the 1970s was to be in Ireland with 70% of the rain and more cider. Hidden in deep folds in the landscape were families who seemed to share many of the bucolic eccentricities of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, unconcerned by tumbling masonry or leaking roofs. It was there that I enjoyed some of the most carefree times of my youth with Robin Grant-Sturgis, one of life's great characters and a man who has prematurely joined the Turf Club after living his allotted span to the maximum on Southern Comfort and untipped Senior Service. He did a 'proper job', as they say in those parts.

- Joe Gibbs

Perhaps every generation thinks its youth was wilder than its children's. Robin's memorial prompted consideration. Were we outrageously irresponsible? Hell, it was fun, but I think we were, especially in cars, by today's reckoning. Consider the change in attitudes to drink driving. In 1979, after anight out that left two of my passengers unconscious, I was chased home all squeally tyred by the police giving it the full Sweeney in Fulham.