‘Secret’ Pit: Sunday, 11th December, 1977

After lunch and a sunny, warm summer’s morning, Tiki informed me that she is going to leave her full-time job and look for casual employment.

Having arrived at her parents’ she clipped her pet poodle, “Fifi”, who resides there, whilst her father carried out a mechanical check on the ‘Galant’ for we shall soon be on holiday. He fitted it with new points and cleaned the battery’s arm of acid prior to coating it with Vaseline. He then positioned the car above his “secret” pit that can be accessed from the recess where the lawn-mowers are kept and is situated below the level of the concrete area of yard before the garages. Despite having lived there for nigh on six months, I had no idea that such a pit existed!

Anyway, he declared the transmission oil to be “all right” and gave each nipple on the vehicle’s underside seven squirts with a grease gun. As “Dad” was doing this, I watched two boys, one fat and the other slim, hit a golf ball on the sandy beach below. When the thin one lost the ball in the bay the pair resorted to hitting tins and stones. We departed at half past five after I had assisted “Dad” in the removal of a front wheel. This permitted him to examine the brake pads.

This evening’s edition of “Hawaii Five-O” centres principally upon Danny Williams, portrayed by James McArthur, who, to escape from crooks, jumps off a cliff and on to a load of sand that is being hauled by a truck. He strikes his head in the process and, as a result, develops amnesia. At half past eight we turned the dial from Channel Nine to Channel Seven to watch the far-fetched spy movie, “Kiss The Girls And Make Them Die”. Produced in 1966, it features Michael “Tightrope”/”Mannix” Connors, Dorothy “The Roaring Twenties” Provine and the English actor, Terry-Thomas, who doesn’t have to do or say much to make one smile.

Chris Andrews

Born in London, in October of 1942, Christopher Frederick Andrews formed his own group, Chris Ravel and The Ravers, in the mid-to-late nineteen fifties. He coupled his ability to sing with that of being able to write songs.

It was in the ‘Swinging Sixties’ that, as Chris Andrews, he came to the fore in both of these fields. “The First Time” and “We Are In Love” were hits for fellow Englishman, Adam Faith, and “Girl Don’t Come”, “I’ll Stop At Nothing”, “Message Understood” and “Long Live Love” all did wonders for the career of the barefooted singer, Sandie Shaw.

As a recording artist Chris’s heyday came in 1965, with his release of “Yesterday Man”. The single reached No.3 in Britain, No. 13 in Australia and No.1 in Germany and Ireland.

“Yesterday Man” was soon followed by “To Whom It Concerns”. Although it peaked at No.13 in Britain, subsequent releases pointed to the fact that the popularity of his own recordings, in his homeland, was definitely on wane. Fortunately for Chris, this decline was not detected in mainland Europe and this success extended to South Africa, in 1969 and 1970.

Despite the calibre of his work, neither Chris’s songs nor his recordings created scarcely more than a ripple on the American pop scene. This, in spite of the apex of his career having matched that of the so-called ‘British Invasion’.