FORTY odd years ago, thousands flocked to San Francisco wearing flowers in their hair. Which was an attainable ambition if you lived in America but I lived in Blackpool. I wore the right gear – beads, flowing locks, an Afghan coat and a Zapata moustache – and had watched the film version of Woodstock. I was a weekend hippy about to hit 30 and saw my youth disappearing fast.
In a final act of rebellion, my wife Maria and I sold the house and bought a battered VW campervan. I resigned my job as a journalist and we headed into Europe.
This gesture might have worked but for two things. The van was more battered than I thought and we had a nine month old baby called Siobhan.
The memories of that summer of 1971 came flooding back this week with the news that production of the VW campervan is coming to an end.
More than 10 million have been made since it first appeared 63 years ago. European production ended in 1979 because it no longer met safety requirements but it continued in Brazil, where they didn't care. Now they do and new safety laws means it will finally bow out at the end of the year.
Which is a shame because the VW campervan was the motorised symbol of hippiedom.
I paid £195 for a venerable old lady of a van. Our initial destination was Avelino near Naples where Maria's relatives lived. The first summer, we thought, could be spent in their beach house and I would become a writer.
But life doesn't work like that.
After crossing the Channel our trail meandered through Belgium and France. It was peace and love, man, until we reached Aachen in Germany, when Maria declared the trip wasn't working with a nine month old baby who was sleeping in a box covered with her bridal veil as a mosquito net.
Next day I drove non-stop back to Ostend. We docked in Dover in the early hours and parked in a lay-by to sleep. I woke early and set off to beat the traffic through London.
Maria and Siobhan remained sleeping in the back. We were in the city and stopped at lights when I noticed the passengers in the bus alongside were staring into the back of the van. The curtains were open and Maria had pushed the double sleeping bag down to her waist and lay as naked as Aphrodite.
“Don't look now but you've got an audience.”
It's very difficult to suddenly cover yourself with decorum in such circumstances especially when you're a hippy. So she didn't. Not that it offended anyone: she was a beautiful 22-year-old. She feigned sleep until we escaped the bus and then got dressed.
The van broke down on the motorway to Manchester. Maybe I had pushed her too hard, too fast and for too long (the van, not Maria). A mechanic filled the engine with the thickest oil known to man and said: “You might make it home if you take it easy.”
We made it home at 20 mph. The old lady's engine then died for good.
It had been an enjoyable, if short, and memorable journey.
And as far as our life together is concerned (with Maria, not the van), it still is.

The dictionary has several definitions of hero.

“A man favoured by the gods,” is one. That would be the definition to apply to my artistic heroes, John Lennon, Graham Greene, Elmore Leonard and Morecambe and Wise. Their genius can be embraced and enjoyed through their work.

Then there is “illustrious warrior”. In this category I place Douglas Bader, the RAF ace who flew missions during the Second World War despite having lost both his legs.

I met him in the 1960s when he flew to Blackpool from his home aerodrome in the south of England to open a BLESMA home (British Limbless Ex Service Men's Association). His trip had caused a bit of flak because, when he discovered his own aircraft wasn't ready, he simply took one that was without permission. He was friendly, charming and witty.

We were chatting when a mechanic ran across the airfield to join us. He was Maltese and explained he had worked as ground crew once for Bader during the war. The former air ace chatted with him warmly and then the conversation dried.

“You push off now, old chap,” he said.

“I can't, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're standing on my foot, sir.”

Bader laughed louder than any of us and ensured a niche in my memory.

The dictionary's final entry about heroes is: “A person who is greatly admired because of his special achievement,” which is where my Uncle Eric from Yorkshire comes in. He had a squiffy eye and a hair lip and a permanently amused outlook on life.

He retired early from the Post Office and was a moderately successful horse racing enthusiast but almost came a cropper when he was 70. This happened during a bookmakers' charabanc trip to Paris for the famous Arc de Triomphe race at Longchamp.
Uncle Eric never saw the race. He collapsed on the Champs Elysees and woke up in hospital. The problem had been French cuisine. He had steadily imbibed but had been unable to eat anything during the entire four day break.
“They don't cook their meat. They serve it raw.”

The experience did not deter him from going again the following year. This time, Auntie Doris made sure he was well prepared: he took a small cardboard suitcase filled with Marmite and dripping sandwiches to provide proper sustenance for a Yorkshire lad.

Truly food for a Yorkshire hero.

WE take personal computers for granted. We use them to surf the web, stay in touch with relatives overseas, send emails, transact business, conduct banking, buy goods and socialise through sites like Facebook and Twitter.
But how secure are they?

We are warned frequently to be careful about phishing attempts to obtain personal details or scams that encourage the gullible to part with their money in the hope of receiving millions of dollars from a Nigerian bank. Identity theft is a possibility and, if you open the attachment on an apparently innocent email, you could be inviting a Trojan into your machine which can open a back-door to hackers and filch sensitive information.

The US National Security Agency has, it is said, been snooping on the computer habits of thousands of citizens for years through the electronic surveillance programme known as Prism. Britain's electronic intelligence gathering agency at GCHQ has been implicated in its use.

Debate is ongoing about the Communications Data Bill which would allow the monitoring of all internet use by UK citizens. Those in favour of such measures say they are necessary in the fight against crime and terrorism. Those against say they are a basic infringement of human rights.
The benefits of internet technology are many – I'd be lost without a computer. But are we slowly edging into the sort of world of government surveillance envisaged by George Orwell in his novel 1984?
Health, work, police and service records are on computers. Driving and television licence applications are online. All those electronic transactions we undertake are recorded. Births, marriages, deaths, water rates, criminal convictions and parking fines. All mobile phone calls and texts and the daftest comments you make on Twitter.
Even the photographs we take could become part of every individual's personal cyber file as many are now stored on laptop or web cloud. The modern citizen's life can be scanned and followed from the cradle to the grave.
Maybe, in a few years time, a new science will develop to collate all this information so that when you go for a job interview, you will be questioned about an unflattering remark you made on a social networking site late one night when you were drunk 15 years before.
Sting summed it up, although he didn't know it, back in 1983: Every breath you take, Every move you make, Every bond you break, Every step you take, I'll be watching you. Every single day, Every word you say … I'll be watching you.
Should we be nervous or reassured?

THE news that £2 million has been handed to academics to study how humans get on with chickens has caused the usual squawks of outrage and claims of a waste of money.
Students at Bournemouth University will be leading the project that is catchily entitled Cultural and Scientific Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions. And I didn't even know it was legal.
I'm a bit disappointed because my own suggested project was kicked into touch: Cultural and Scientific Perceptions of Human-Beer Interactions. And it would have cost a lot less than two million.
As part of the research, students will be sent to live in Cuba and Ethiopia and Robert Oxley, campaign director of the UK Taxpayers Alliance says: “This is frankly an absurd sum of money to spend on what appears to be a ridiculous study. Given the limited budget and important challenges facing the UK, research like this should be way down the pecking order for taxpayer-funded grants.”
Pecking order. Nice touch.
Don't laugh, but I think the more we know about chickens the better in case they ever declare war.
At any one time, there are 24 billion chickens in the world – that's more than four times the human population. Fifty billion are reared every year, many having a short and unhappy life as they are fed into the food chain.
Brits alone consume 29 million eggs a day. Hens can wear themselves out with intensive breeding and lifespan can be reduced from seven to two years. Personally, I take care only to buy happy eggs from happy chickens that are allowed to roam the range. Not many are so lucky.
Worldwatch Institute says that 74% of the world's poultry meat and 68% of eggs are produced using intensive farming techniques.
In the US, statistics for 2003 showed that 75% of all flocks were force moulted to encourage them to lay more eggs. This involves the complete withdrawal of food and sometimes water for between seven to 14 days. If this was carried out against humans, it could result in trials at Nuremberg.
But these are chickens. Who cares?
Let's take a closer look at the gallus gallus domesticus, so popular they named it twice. It originated in India where it was prized for its fighting abilities and was bred for cock fighting. The ancient Greeks considered its valour worthy of Ares, a god of war, Athena, goddess of military intelligence, and Heracles, greatest of their heroes.
Chickens live in flocks and have a collective responsibility when it comes to incubating eggs. They also really do have a pecking order, where the strongest leads.
What I'm worried about is the advance of genetic engineering. How long before some bright spark creates a chicken six foot high and 18 stone?
Oo-er, 50 billion six foot chickens striding the world?
Then we'll discover a new pecking order when those fighting cocks organise their flocks into legions and fight back against the tyranny under which they have lived for years.
Chicken and chips?
There will be plenty of chicken but mankind may have had their chips.
Unless, like me, they buy happy eggs from happy chickens. And keep the cartons to prove it.
Read more at Huddersfield Daily Examiner: http://tinyurl.com/k6omhwv).





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ONLINE shopping is great. You can surf for bargains, compare prices, check reviews on electrical items to discover which is best, then buy whatever it is you want at the click of a button and wait for it to arrive at your front door.

I've bought loads of stuff this way and it is simple, easy and relatively safe if you use trusted companies and Paypal.

The only trouble comes with the delivery.

Have you had to stay in for 13 hours waiting for a white van man to turn up?

That's what I was told when I bought a pair of super dooper training shoes for my fitness regime. I opted to pay extra for next day delivery and was then told the man in the van could arrive at any time between 8am and 9pm.

Which is a but a bit tying, even if, like me, you work from home. What if you want to go to the shop for a newspaper or a loaf of bread? What if you want to to take a walk?

Sorry. You have to stay in and wait.

How do people who work full time manage with online shopping? Easier, I would have thought, to wait until Saturday and go into town and do it the old fashioned way.

And yet the internet is the way forward, we are told. Supermarkets, fashion chains and hardware stores all have websites and offer home delivery.

A report from the Centre for Retail Research predicts the growth of online shopping could lead to the closure of one in five high UK street stores by 2018, which will mean 316,000 job losses.

Well I have an idea about how to alleviate those retail redundancies. The former shop workers could be re-employed as house sitters to wait in for 13 hours until your training shoes are delivered.

Read more at:    http://tinyurl.com/k6omhwv

WE'VE all heard it. The noise in the night that causes you to wake up and wonder if you imagined it.
Or could it be a burglar? Not just any burglar, but a six foot tall bloke with biceps like balloons and evil intent in his heart. Not the sort of chap to reason with.

“There's no money in the house but the TV is fairly new. Shall I help you carry it to your van? Or you could take my car, if you want. I'll get the keys.”
Oo-er. What do you do?
According to research from home security company Yale, 25% of men pretend to be asleep so they don't have to get up and investigate. A tenth said they were too scared to go and look and 20% said they would send their wife.

“Have you seen her in her curlers and face pack? Enough to scare anybody.”

Personally, I can't let a strange noise go without investigation. If I try to ignore it, the possibilities get more extreme in my mind. I run through scenarios of meeting the burglar half way up the stairs and knocking him back down and through the front door with a well delivered Kung Fu kick.

Not that I have ever practised Kung Fu and would probably strain my clack in the attempt and, if the kick was successful, the chap would probably kill himself in the fall and I would be charged with manslaughter.

The mind is a wonderful thing, particularly when running rampant in the night, so I always get up and go and look, turning on every light in the house on my way until we're lit up like Blackpool Illuminations.

I used to pick up something to use as a weapon but no longer bother. If it's a violent burglar, he'd probably take it off me and hit me with it. Best to pretend old age and poverty.
Anyway, I tell myself, it's probably Casper the cat from next door, who has a habit of sneaking in when you're not looking, and kicks up a fuss when he wants to get out again.

It never is Casper. It never is anyone.

But I'm always relieved when I get back in bed with the lights off again knowing the
house is secure.

“Where've you been?” my wife Maria might say, still half asleep.

“Killing a burglar.”

“That's nice.”

(Read more at Huddersfield Daily Examiner: http://tinyurl.com/k6omhwv).