“Say for what were hop-yards meant? And why was Burton, built on Trent.” The words of Housman’s poem returned to me recently when I read that home-brewing is currently undergoing a boom in the UK. I came across an old picture of myself taken in October 1982. Here I can be seen busily pulping apples with a German-made crusher and cider-press. A friend and neighbour Steve Roberts had borrowed this rustic device from a community then living on Osea Island, in the Blackwater estu

Following let’s just say my ‘troubled’ teenage years, having returned to Essex at 19 years old, under something of a cloud, aged 20, only months later I’d emerged like a butterfly to become the singer in a Colchester glam-rock band. I was also still on probation, as my father dryly described it, for being stupid enough to get caught. My new probation officer was in Clacton. I think she was a first-timer. After an initial meeting she said that she’d need to visit me at home. “