Twenty Years ago : Lockerbie

But before then 34 years ago...


I’m sat in my bedroom dreaming of Loretta, Lorraine and Louise.

And Doreen who is a hunk of a man,and she can wipe every boy from the land.

And that is what London is about when you’re 14. Victorian vases and girls that are trying to stick their cosmic philosopher’s words into rhymes.

And it all smells of incense and patchouli oil and there are violins and glam make-up and wicker chairs and wicker men and Britt Ekland.

And it’s Jesus wellies and cut-off Wranglers and it’s Orrell ressies. But it could be Hyde Park and girls that could sweep, skip, jump and leap into a room full of clowns.

And the sun shines and in my mind I watch Loretta taste the wine and kick the actor from behind.

And I am now home sprawled across the sofa and Marlene enters my mind and as her make up starts to fade away I spy Ramona by the door calling me the perfect whore.

And I never lost control.

And for a while it was a very strange show.

And it got stranger as five years later I am in Hyde Park and there is no Loretta, Lorraine and Louise.

And there is no hideaway. No lady from a background of pearls. Just me spaced out in this human menagerie – fooling with bravado.

And on that great song and that great album there was a bass player called Paul Avron Jeffreys. They were/they are my favourite group of all time. Cockney Rebel. The first two albums are exquisite, better than anything they later did. But that's always the case with bands isn't it? Well maybe.

Steve Harley disbanded the first Cockney Rebel, wrote his side of the story in a little ditty called Make me Smile. Life went on... Paul played in a number of groups with varying success

In 1988 Paul Jeffreys married Rachel Jones and he was begining his honeymoon on the flight Pan AM 103 when it exploded in mid-air above Lockerbie. 259 people on the plane and 11 people on the ground died that day.

RIP all of them