Ringmore Towers

Buckets, showers, drizzle and buckets again! It's been like that all day!

A little while ago I was contacted by someone who runs a history website in Beckenham, South East London (it used to be Kent to me) following a post I made on a forum about the Mistrale Club where I used to work as a DJ in the sixties. He was very keen on having more information about the club and asked me if if I would put something together for the main Beckenham History site. I agreed to do so and started pulling some stuff together, well, you know what they say: If you remember the sixties, you really weren't there. one way or another it slipped back in my priorities until I got a reminder from the guy this week.

I remember a fair bit but putting the facts together in the right order is another thing entirely. The memories are there but unfortunately, the date stamps have faded! I started looking on line to see if there was anything and when you start dipping into the past, things come up and bite you. I had a very good friend from those days and after I left that part of the world we stayed in contact for 10 years or so but gradually it was just Christmas cards and then they stopped coming. I did a search on-line and about the first thing that came up was a Facebook post telling me that his funeral will be in a couple of weeks and the wake will be held in the place that used to be that club where we worked together. Lots of pictures came up bringing back many good memories and showing me that he hadn't changed a bit. Very sad but what a coincidence that at the time I looked for him, the report of his death was so recent.

I went out in the afternoon to get a birthday card and picked up a few other things at the supermarket. As I returned there was a lull in the rain so I pulled up at a viewpoint and took this shot of the boats on the river with Ringmore in the background. The red castle-like building is Ringmore Towers.