(Please press ESCAPE to stop the background audio track if required, which is Procol Harum "A Whiter Shade of Pale")
I first met Mick in the summer of 1965 in the Orpheus Coffee bar at the other end of London Road. It was after his accident. Help by the Beatles was no 1, Woolly Bully by Sam the Sham was number 11. We were mods, although Mick started out as a rocker.
There’s a photo of him at 12, it’s 1960, at Walton on the Naze Martello caravan camp, Mick is wearing a big rocker-type jumper, tight jeans, winkle pickers, and he’s jiving - with two girls. The girls wore cowboy hats and skirts with loads of petticoats, and stilettos and stockings with seams.
He always said that he was only a mod because Chelmsford was a mod town and if you weren’t a mod you couldn’t pull the girls.
His scooter was a Lambretta 175 – it was metallic African violet and chrome panels. He said all the Chelmsford scooters had scuff marks where everyone used to fall off. We talked about fashions of the time.
He remembered that most London scooter boys wore berets - because it was really uncool to wear crash helmets. …
Tell me about it, he said.
He had a navy blue suede with a leather collar. He’d wear that and his shades and he’d look super cool as we walked round town and went down the Orpheus or into the Golden Fleece or up the Corn Exchange, dancing to Sam and Dave, Wilson Picket, Georgie Fame.
I was talking about the dances we used to do. He said, ‘Actually I didn’t take a lot of notice of dancing. I was more interested in smooching and groping.’
Mick ate his life in huge chunks – he loved speed, excitement, and bling. Those gold rings. He was a showman. And he appreciated his friends.
So many friends are here today, some old, some relatively new friends. He always had really good friends who were there for him, he told me stories of weekends in Clacton, nights in Southend, up in the West End of London, Isle of Mann racing, and friends around Chelmsford, who dropped in, who gave him and Ann lifts, had a drink at the Conservative Club.
And his mum was an absolute rock for him. She supported him through all the difficult years and through the good times too, as did all his family.
He was a good mate to have, always ready with a quip, a quick remark out of the side of his mouth or across a bar room, that had people laughing.
I left Chelmsford in 1968 but I’d see him whenever I came back. But we must have met up in almost every pub in town – the Saracen’s Head, the Brethren, the Prince of Orange, the Black Horse, the Cricketers. Usually on the same night. He’d have a Guinness in a straight glass and then another one.
Mick was a great philosopher, a bit like his dad, and we’d discuss everything from the Irish question, the price of beer, the State of the World. The price of beer.
When I first met him he didn’t have a dog and it wasn’t until some 20 years later that he went to S Woodford and trained. And then his life leaped into a whole new phase. The relationship with the dogs for one thing. I remember him telling me about going into town with Daley once to sort out some financial thing and saying to Daley, ‘Bank. We’re going to the Bank.’ And off they set, down the town, they went through some doors and Mick sniffed the air, and said ‘Oh he hasn’t brought me in here has he?’ Daley had taken him into a bar …
But the other huge thing that happened was that once he had the dog, he could go down to the hotel in Devon and there of course he met Ann. I remember him telling me about the very special person he had met there. What a difference that made to him. I think when they got married was the proudest day of his life. He would tell me of situations he’d been in, conversations he’d had where he would casually say ‘And my wife this,’ ‘But my wife that.’ It was an aspect of life that I think he’d never expected to happen to him and it brought him great joy. The house, the garden, the shed with the picture of Elvis, barbecues with all his mates. His recent years have been dogged by ill health, but even in his darkest moments he never forgot what Ann had given him.
He was a great bloke, we shall miss him, Chelmsford will miss him – he was a local hero if ever there was one.
Elizabeth Woodcraft
17 March 2008.
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