It is only a few days since I introduced you to Charlie’s first words. I thought that this was the earliest recollections of Charlie’s cycling exploits but now in “A Long Memory” David has turned up this charming vignette of some much earlier excursions.

As someone who was brought up in a place from which you could actually see the moors above Belmont village then I suspect that I appreciate probably more than most just what an adventure it must have been for a seven year old to go out on such a journey – and in the dark too. I know that the roads must have been very quiet in 1911 but even without modern traffic I don’t think that I would have seriously contemplated that journey at the tender age of just 7 years.

In this piece Charlie tells us that he is now fifty four suggesting that he wrote this in 1958.