Here's the latest bit of scribble.
Is it worth writing part two?
I don't know why it's come out in different sizes.Maybe that's life?
Mike

Eric always been able to spin a good yarn.

One of his earliest memories had been of playing hide and seek and, finding himself with another boy,he had whiled away the boring hiding time with a potted version of Oliver Twist. He had been taken to see the David Lean version by his gran.During reel changes he had eaten jam butties, wrapped in bread paper.Ice creams were too expensive for a widow in 1950.

Even then he had "improved" the story. When Sykes was being brought to bay and but before he suffered the accidental hangman's noose, Oliver had thrown an axe,which he just happened to have with him, as obviously Victorian boys did, and by a feat of dexterity worthy of any circus knife thrower,had struck Sykes between the shoulder blades.Thus Oliver played a more active part in the drama than even Dickens intended.

When his captive audience had later seen the film for himself, he had been annoyed at finding the story, though exciting, axeless.So annoyed in fact that he had come looking for Eric to physically demonstrate his disappointment.

Luckily,Eric's cousin, Mary, an almost adult 13 year old, had been with him at the this time and had saved him from the worst of what his first critic threatened.

"All this making up stories will get you into trouble, our Eric," Mary had said. How right she had been.

All through school it had been the same. Not for Eric the mundane

slow clock; when he arrived in class after morning prayers were over he had always either narrowly escaped death,or serious injury. Sometimes a milk horse had run amok. Or the lady next door had been struck down by some mysterious, near fatal, illness which only Eric had averted by his fleetness of foot at bringing the life saving Indian Brandee from Critchley's the herbalist.

So perhaps it was only to be expected that he would be drawn to the theatre as a vocation.

Well, maybe not the theatre, but The King’s Picture Drome on Stockport Old Road was the closest most people in Eric’s part of Manchester got to seeing their favourite actors.

And Eric made it possible. Granted, Mr. Knowles was the main projectionist. But Eric was his assistant. And an enthusiastic one. He loved his job and everything about it. The clatter of the projector was to him an accolade for the gods whose images he helped deify.