Letter: Gin Mill Memory From Texas

Published on: 7 Jan, 2017
Updated on: 7 Jan, 2017

From John Dickinson

I live in Houston, Texas and on a whim typed “Gin Mill, Blues Club, Godalming” into the search engine and was transported back a half century and around the world back to some of my most wonderful memories.

I was really too young to fully appreciate just how lucky we all were to be a part of that place. I too went to the Royal Grammar School and also knew Jean Jacques (or John Burnel as we used to call him).

Remember the light blue Harley with the gear shift on the side of the gas tank? Remember the swastika meticulously painted on the front lawn in weed killer on the first day back from the summer hols?

We lived on Three Gates Lane in Haslemere. I remember walking across the quadrangle in the old school building with Allan Roelich the day after Jethro Tull played. He said: “You always know when you just saw something really special there”. Boy was he right. I remember it like it was yesterday.