63

IN WHICH… I SIGN OFF

I had recently returned from a trip to New Zealand with my wife, to visit family living there in general, and infant grand-daughter, Georgia in particular. Whilst in the record shop, Lo-Cost, in Petone, I’d helped a middle-aged lady who was wondering which of several records to buy her husband. I pointed her towards an early Jethro Tull LP as the best investment – and she told me how she still rages at her sister for getting rid of her record collection while she was off travelling for an extended period. ‘I wouldn’t have minded so much, but I had a signed Beatles’ album and a Lennon book of my Dad’s – he’d worked for, or with, them at one stage.’ They would have more than paid our fares to Kiwi-land, but I’ve never managed to find Beatle autographs.

On the flights over and back I killed time by watching a few films – and found three recent ones of which I’d been unaware, all featuring records, record shops and record collectors, and which I’d recommend to readers yet to see them. On Chesil Beach features a scene crucial to the plot set in a record shop where the ‘hero’ is working; Juliet, Naked, written by Nick Hornby, includes a record collecting obsessive fan of an obscure singer-songwriter and demonstrates an unsettling number of my own shortcomings; and Hearts Beat Loud opens with a scene in Red Hook Records in which a customer rebukes the unimpressed owner, Frank, by telling him: ‘You can’t smoke inside.’ He receives the deadpan reply: ‘Buy something and I’ll put it out.’

My wife and I were still suffering from the effects of jet-lag from the flight home when we decided to breathe some fresh air into our lungs by walking to the paper shop, one Sunday in early 2019. Before leaving we caught up with events in Ambridge by listening to the omnibus edition of The Archers and I was delighted to discover that Kenton Archer had introduced record decks and vinyl records to the entertainment offered at the local pub, The Bull. He launched the Ambridge vinyl revival by playing Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds LP.

On our walk, I began to tell Sheila that I thought Second Scene’s Julian had finally discovered his Holy Grail. I’d been in to see him the day before, buying a copy of an LP by Colin Hare, formerly of Honeybus, and an original 1967 Cat Stevens’ album. Julian had been elsewhere in the building when I arrived, and I greeted his wife, Helen. Her phone rang, and she told me, ‘A chap is coming to collect 1200 records he’s bought from us.’ She explained that, like all record shops, they acquired many almost unsaleable records. Julian had initially solved this problem by giving them away to local charity shops – until they began to tell him they had quite enough old movie soundtracks, Jim Reeves records, Black & White Minstrel LPs, m-o-r classics, and the like and could no longer take them. ‘They used to welcome and thank us for them, now they turn us away.’

Without any great hopes that it would produce any sales, Julian had begun lumping large numbers of these currently unwanted, unloved discs together and listing them for sale online as collections. This would be the second such collection which had actually sold, and now the gentleman who had bought them had turned up. He’d arrived without boxes to put them in, or help to get them in his car. Julian obliged, then came in to the shop where the three of us speculated on why the man may have been prepared to pay a three-figure sum to acquire them.

We were joined by the man himself, who reminded me a little of an ageing Neil from the TV series, The Young Ones and was, according to Helen, just as pungent as one might imagine Neil to have been. But he showed an understanding of music – discussing early ELO LPs, for example – which suggested that he was well aware of what he was purchasing, so it remained a mystery what he would be doing with them. He seemed in no hurry to enlighten us. Julian was so delighted to have shifted them out for money, that almost before the man had departed, he listed another tranche of unsellables online for opening offers of £470 or more. And, as he told me later, he soon flogged off another chunk to a lady who used them instead of tiles to decorate the walls of her loft extension. On a later visit he was out, having sold two four-figure job lots of otherwise unwanted records to Polish sources. No, NOT to make Polish sauces!

I noticed a framed photograph on the wall, which hadn’t been there last time I’d come in. Closer observation revealed it to be of The Beatles in their early days. There was also a typed letter in the frame, explaining how the writer had been in Plymouth in November 1963, where the group had been playing, around the time that they had just stolen the show at the Royal Variety performance. These two items were accompanied by a piece of paper with four biro-penned signatures, at the top of which was one by Paul McCartney who had helpfully appended under it, lest anyone be unsure of his identity, the word ‘Beatles’. The three other members had clearly expected their identities to be perfectly well known by anyone seeing them and had not included the group name alongside the hand-written names. The signatures had been authenticated by a leading auction house, explained Julian, and had turned up for sale recently at a regular local auction, to which he and Helen had repaired, interested to know how much the autographs might sell for. Julian was surprised that only he and one other bidder present, along with a single internet bidder, showed any desire to own this great item, and, although he didn’t tell me how much it had cost him, he came out on top of what must have been a competitive bidding war. I was later able to discover that the final bid at the auction was £2300. (It was listed on the auction house’s website.) However, Julian’s investment was now, in his opinion, worth ‘about 5,000’ sovs.

It was probably just as well I hadn’t known the auction was happening. I might well have found myself bidding against Julian, and a beautiful and vanishingly rare friendship between Watford and Luton fans could have come to a difficult end. As I was recounting this story to Sheila, she commented: ‘Yes, it was a pity I lost my Beatle autographs.’

I stopped dead in my tracks as Sheila continued power-walking along. I was thunderstruck:

‘You had The Beatles’ autographs and lost them?’

‘Yes, my brother’s friend worked at Elstree film studios when The Beatles were filming there. He got a set of their signatures which he gave to his wife who offered them to me. Don’t forget no one dreamed they’d ever become valuable back then.’

‘So you accepted them?’

‘Yes – but they got lost when we got married and moved into our first home in Fairfield Drive.’

This was the maisonette in which I had nearly come to blows with neighbours when I marked the announcement of Elvis Presley’s passing with a late-night playing session of the great man’s best-known vinyl works. At some volume.

‘Did I know this at the time?’

‘Yes, you seemed a little annoyed when I told you…’

The rest of the walk home was conducted in silence.