Festival winners nearly left me jogging for joy

We used to jog past the Scrubs, late at night. Up this grassy path, under the M40 when people still rambled on about it being the longest stretch of raised motorway in the world, back down the other side, past the Mail Coach and home.

That was before they demolished a whole section of Holland Road, of course, forcing four of us to find another place to share. Cricklewood, if memory serves, George Ward and the Grunwick dispute, people all over the road, television cameras etc. Not really a trade union man, old George. We moved on in our different ways and I steered well clear of Grunwick when interviewing him for the crowd at Cheltenham, concentrating instead on Bonusprint, Tripleprint and all the other prints.

I still go back to Holland Road, of course, although the Kensington pub has gone and we eat in an Iranian restaurant with wine from the supermarket next door. It's a pity because there was music in the evenings, a decent jazz quartet and a female vocalist, Annie I think, who did a mean, sultry version of How Insensitive.