("BOY" Employee / Security, unofficial & unpaid Roadie but first and foremost, a good friend)
In the late seventies upon leaving school I found myself yearning to be different from the others.
Music has usually been a guiding force for most teenagers and my first love at that time was the music of the Fifties and I flirted with the movements that followed such musical trends i.e. Teddy Boys, Rockers etc.
It was also a volatile period as one would often witness from the front pages of many Sunday newspapers of the day after the hostile mayhem of a Saturday afternoon in London's Kings Road between the Teddy Boys, Punks and Skinheads etc.
Not for me was such activity.
However, with my appearance and somewhat pacifying nature I was recruited by the Punk fashion house of the day, ''BOY'', to try and calm matters on a Saturday afternoon in the shop in case Teddy Boys turned up to cause trouble.
I experienced no problems in doing this and I did make some wonderful friends and for the next few years I immersed myself into the colourful world of the punk Rock!
Most of the Kings Road Punk crowd that I knew were from fairly working class, North or East London backgrounds except one girl whom I met as a result of her doing some work at BOY.
This was Lynne, she was a little different from the rest of the crowd and for me became a bit of a soul mate.
There were some other girls working at BOY ...... Suby, Nina and Dee, all great friends and when they decided to form their very own all female punk band they enlisted Lynne as bass guitarist.
I remember many nights accompanying the band to gigs at The Marquee, Roxy and Vortex - I'm not sure what was the main attraction, the all girl band or the Teddy Boy lost in a sea of punk rockers!! (But I survived!!)
The best times for me were probably just chilling out on a Saturday evening after work at BOY in one of the Kings Road pubs always starting out at The Chelsea Potter and usually followed by a stroll down to the Roebuck with Lynne.
It's those times that always bring back fond memories for me of Lynne.
(I would like to stress that my friendship with Lynne was purely platonic.)
There were times when Lynne didn't seem to fit into certain punk circles, often picked on for being a bit of a 'posh bird' as the phrase once was. However, her big warm personality won her many friends.
It wasn't until a very late night out in the Kings Road that both myself and Lynne found we should both be trying to find transport to get home. I would normally get the tube but by this time of night the service had closed down.
Lynne said she was getting a bus and regardless of my own need to get home I felt the priority was to stay with Lynne until the bus had arrived and she was safely on board.
We had never previously spoken of where either of us lived and so it was a pleasant surprise that we discovered we both needed to get to Wimbledon. We shared the bus trip back to together with Lynne departing before my final destination to Merton Park. I think the Wimbledon connection somehow but strangely bolstered our friendship.
That was a journey home that I never seem to have forgotten possibly for the fact that I felt I had been with a Lynne I had not experienced before. Far from the sometimes big strong boisterous personality that might have been on display at the shop or of course on stage in the band but instead I found a very caring, big hearted girl but one that was easily hurt.
I think she possibly had a naive quality about her but for me I remember that as being one of her most attractive qualities.
It's been well over 20 years since I saw Lynne yet she remains fresh in my mind.
She's been time-locked in a period of my memory that was one of the most exciting of my life and I will always remember her.
I'm somewhat stunned to learn of Lynne's passing at such a young age, and I apologise now, but I felt I needed to get some words written down about my friendship with Lynne, the most elegant punk that ever strutted the Kings Road!
©Detour Records