Regle
Thanks for your thoughts and kind words. As I said at the beginning of these excerpts, the Old Man just sat down and spoke into a tape-recorder, as you point out, talking to me as if I were present. When, as a family, we stayed at Frinton, he and I would wander off to the Red Lion pub in Kirby-le-Soken at about midday on a Sunday and have a couple of pints. The place wasn't crowded and we could just stand at the bar and chat, he with his pint and pipe, me with my ears at attention so as not to miss a thing!
On the question of age, he was 23 when he went solo, being born on September 18 1917. This ageism thing appears later in an interesting encounter.
I'll post some more later today.