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As you might know, that from 1980 through to the end of the decade, I kept my own versions of the charts. From this I can accurately chart my changes in music tastes, ranging from plain pop and chart music through to heavy metal and on to electropop and back pretty much back to chart and dance music in 1987.

From 1982 through to 1985 I listened to John Peel four times a week, staying up from ten to midnight, finger poised over the record button on my hifi, taping the cool and strange music that Peely would play. Through his show I learned to love and appreciate music from new Order to Quando Quango to Martin Carthy to Link Wray, and all points between. Those four years shaped my musical tastes, and if you would have asked me at the time, I could not imagine not listening to his show.

And once I had a car I could go to see bands in concert in Norwich, so did.

But the job at the chicken factory really put a stop to that. Getting up before six in the morning to drove to the factory or catch the bus meat I could not stay up very often to listen to Peel. I have a box of tapes taken from his shows, and they all finish in the summer of 1985, the last half of the final tape had U2 and Led Zeppelin from Live Aid.

I have no idea how I consumed music after that, outside being stuck in the factory listening to Radio 1 on the crappy tannoys. I do seem to remember we were happy enough with our lot.

Live Aid was a turning point. I had wanted to get tickets, but I didn’t have a credit card, and my banks laughed when I applied for one. So, Live Aid passed me by, but turned out my Grandmother was friends with the manager at the local branch of the TSB, and he said he would see what he could do.

Now, me with a credit card was never going to end well. Over the next few years I spent and spent, and had to use my life savings of Christmas and birthday money to keep me in the black.

Anyway, thanks to the credit card I did get to see: Madonna (twice), Prince (3 times), Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson among others. Madonna and Jacko were seen at the old Wembley. An experience for sure, but having to get into the stadium at midday or something, then wait for hours and hours looking at people throwing bottles of piss at each other before the dreadful support bands came on and played to the indifferent thousands.

Working meant I could now support my vinyl habit, although my taste in music was by now more mainstream.

As a young child I had always been small. Not just small, but thin too. I was always too busy to ear, stopping just to wolf down a few mouthfuls before going back out.

And then at the age of seven I began to put on weight; looking back a result of Mum’s expanded menu selections, and weekends full of fish and chips, fry ups, roast dinners and Saturday night suppers of fried chicken and chips. I put on lots of weight, the story of my life, really, and I carried those extra pounds and inches into adult life.

Now, I can’t explain what happened, but in December 1986, Mum brought home food poisoning, passed it on to us all. We did not eat for a week, but when we did, we ate less.

In six month, the three of us lost over 20 stone. I lost so much weight I went to the doctor, I had a new one and he refused to believe I had ever been overweight. But they you have it. By the end of June the next year, I was literally half the person I was, had a waist of 29 inches, rather than 44 and hardly recognisable.

As I said, I can’t explain it. But my parents lost similar amounts of weight, and we all looked so healthy, felt so good. But of course, inside we are the same people.

I mention this because the weight loss made starting running in preparation for joining the RAF so much easier. So, by the end of June 1990 I was lean and fit. And not having to work I was able to sit in the garden before the next World Cup game started, getting tanned on top of everything else.

The only blot was, as we left the last post, that I had broken a small bone in my thumb in a car accident. I found out it was broken and was in tears. I thought my new life had been snatched from me. So, once home I called the RAF recruitment office and told them the story. Amazingly, he understood and said leave it with him.

Two hours later he called back to say that he had swapped by entry in with another guy from Norwich, he would take my place, me his, in short I was now joining the RAF in the middle of September, all I had to do was pass a medical, but apart from that it was perfect. Even better, I was signed on the sick all over the summer getting paid for being at home, money to buy records and beer, watching football and cricket and tennis.

A week before I was due to join, I had to go up to Norwich to meet the Army doctor who was to assess my now mended arm. The cast had been taken off, and I had to exercise it, but it ached all the time. On the day, it was the first day there had been no pain. I went up to Norwich and went to the Army offices. He doctor said grab his hand and squeeze it as hard as I can. I did, and he looked at my eyes as I squeezed.

I passed.

He signed my fitness as A1, and so all was set for me to join the RAF the next week. I drove back via Bungay and went to the chicken factory to hand in my week’s notice, and hand in my final doctor’s note for another week on the sick, my last as a civilian.

So, I spent the next week frantically getting the stuff I was told I needed, including 144 name tags which would have to be sown into every piece of kit I was to be issued with. All this time, I really did not know what to expect, because the RAF has messed up my application, so I didn’t see the presentations on basic training, nor on the trade which was to provide me with my meal ticket for the next 15 years, as it turned out.

How bad could it be?

Well, I had watched all those Hollywood films about how bad basic training could be, Full Metal Jacket had just come out, and I was worried, but knowing two people who had got through it, was told that basic training took just 6 weeks, after which you moved onto trade training, where you were treated as grown ups again,. Or that was how it supposed to go.

I had one final evening with my friend, Scarecrow, drinking pints and pints of Stella at the Fighting Cocks and playing pool. Granddad had gone with me that morning to swear allegiance to the Queen, I signed on the line and took my shilling,. Or in this case received my rail warrant to Newark.

The next morning, I climbed my overhung ass onto the early train to Norwich where I met four others to board the train to Peterborough where we changed again to get to Newark just up the line. And waiting there was the usual MOD bus that we would see the rest of our careers, and an MT driver puffing away on a roll up outside.

Up to that point it had been an abstract thing, joining up. And even driving across the Wolds to RAF Swinderby it was still a jolly jape. But then I saw the low buildings and hangers, all painted dark green.

Basic training exists to make us think like we are in the military, and do it without thinking. Give us the very basic skills that mean we won’t kill ourselves or our comrades. That was the plan.

We marched up and down, we did PT, we had lessons, we learned ground defence, GDT, playing at being soldiers, learning how to put on our gas masks, move as a squad and fire our weapons. And then treat injuries.

Each week you had a task to complete, and if you did that, as a course, you moved onto the next part. So, carrot and stick.

It did involve long, long days. Up at half four to do last minute cleaning of your room, making bed packs, getting your kit perfect before going to breakfast, then be standing by your bed at half seven for inspection. A full day of marching, GDT, PT and lessons followed, then dinner, and an evening of washing, cleaning, polishing until gone midnight.

Rinse and repeat for six weeks.

In the last week the course prepares for the pass out parade, where our friends and family come to see us march onto the parade ground. March some more, listen to the band a bit, a fly past and march off. There is time for dinner in the mess with your family before you either pile on a bus to the next base for trade training, or you could drive.

I had a Skoda Super Estelle which I threw my stuff into and drove from Lincoln to Wolverhampton, arriving before the buses on which my friends were on, moved into new barracks with rooms for four people, not sixteen, which hard carpets and curtains. Heck, some even had a single room.

The next morning we were told to be by our beds for our course mentor to come round who would take us to the hanger for our first day. We all made bed packs and stood at the end of our beds. Oh yes, forget about that now, just make it look neat and be downstairs in 5 minutes.

We were marched to the ground photography section where the course picture was taken, then onto weapons squadron where we were shown around. This would be our day home for the next seven months, get used to it.

Each day, after breakfast in the mess, we would form up and march down to the hanger, except on Tuesdays when there was an inspection of all those in training. This was really the only concession made to being in the military really.

Nights were spent in the cavalier club, supping pints if we could afford it, or revising for tests. At the end of each module there was a test, and at each three month point there was another exam on what we had done up to that point. We did Maths, engineering science and aviation theory before we were introduced to basic engineering.

Basic engineering was to teach us the very basics of our engineering trade, from the names of tools and treatments given to metal. And then hacking and bashing began.

Hacking and bashing was turning what was an iron bar into a block cut and filed to certain dimensions, and flat. That lasted three weeks.

Get that file moving, was Mr Hyde’s familiar call if he thought we were exercising our jaws too much. At the end of it, you had to submit your block, you “final Test Job, FTJ, and be marked. It was this I failed, so had to give up evenings and Saturday for a month until I got my block up to standard. See, I told you I didn’t have the skills.

That passed, we could go onto the rail point, an introduction into the various parts of the armament trade; bombs, small arms, missiles, ejection seats, small arms, bomb disposal and flight line servicing. This went on for months, until in your last two weeks you went to the airfield to play with real aircraft, learn to refuel them, marshal and arm and rearm them.

The final weekend I went with a friend back to his house in Swindon to spend the weekend at his parent’s mansion in one of the new estates in the town. We went to the football, a club on Saturday night, then on Sunday we drove in my Skoda into London, parking on Park lane to see Harry Connick Jr. in concert at the Royal Albert Hall. It was like being a civilian again, but on Monday morning we were on the airfield again, getting the Jet Provosts ready for a day of taxiing round the airfield.

And at the end, we were told we had all reached the minimum standard and would be allowed to graduate.

As during basic training, you began your time on the lowest rung, until your course was the senior one, you got to sit at reserved tables and the such. Upon leaving Cosford, I was posted to RAF Marham near to kings Lynn back in Norfolk, and on leaving we were promoted and each of us was given our new rank slides showing we were the junior ranks, but had completed our training. A simple two bladed propeller showed we were Leading Aircraftsmen, LACs, and as such we received another pay rise.

We were now entering what we had been told was “the real Air Force”, and we would be bottom of the foodchain until the next intake at Cosford passed out and were posted in.