Some memories from Graham

Memories of Rob Steel - still a work in progress.

I first came across Rob at the John Fisher School in Purley, our old alma mater. I say “came across” rather than “met” because I don't recall much of, if any, interaction at school. He was in the same year as me but a “stream” above. While I was in the middle stream, he was in the top stream. He was also a member of “The God Squad” a small group of boys who were much keener on the Catholic faith than I ever was. He was also fairly Conservative in his political outlook, and at one point chairman of the YC’s. He was also an ace chess player.

At school, he would have been exposed to three of the school's best teachers - all Geography masters. The meticulous Norman Rice, the amusing Ben Weston, and the very young Mick Legg.

I  remember him especially with several others reciting many “Moggerisms”, amusing words uttered by our eccentric French Teacher Mr. Mogford - I can still hear Rob imitating his voice in phrases like “Every time I open my mouff some damn fool speaks”...  Of course in that school, we only used surnames so he would have been Steel to me and because Rob’s voice broke rather late he actually had the nickname of Squeal...

Sixth formers at John Fisher School from Robs year

After the 6th form I don't remember seeing Rob for some years. I mostly kept in touch with John O’Gorman and on breaks from university we would meet up in the Cricketers in Croydon or the Greyhound in Carshalton. Sometimes in the Greyhound John would turn up with Rob and I  know I wasn't always that happy to see him. He was fairly opinionated and rather dominated the conversation. He had a holiday job in an industrial laundry and had tales of rooms full of steam, folding sheets and towels which sounded awful until his father got him a summer job at the Ministry of Defence (where his dad worked). I believe he was a sort of janitor there, moving desks and maybe missiles about in Whitehall.

It was around this time while at the University of Southampton that I believe Rob had his “epiphany” and left the young conservatives. He told me that he saw a report in the “Daily Telegraph” about an event he had attended and the report was so inaccurate and the editorial so biased against it that he had to rethink everything.

At this time Rob was famed for his unique “Handsweeping” gesture, used when speaking of a politician or other miscreant. It could very easily knock over any beer glass on a table that was within his striking distance and happened more than you might think.

After the pub - Rob, John, maybe a few others and I would head back with him to his parent’s house on Acre Lane. While John and I listened to records upstairs in his bedroom, Rob would prepare on a tray a neat mix of honey and marmite sandwiches and dreadful coffee. I always hid his hairbrush (did he ever use one?) in his bed to irritate him.

Evidently, I got used to him as when I finally moved down from York a year after finishing my degree, the Greyhound and Rob was somewhere I always went on Friday nights. Along with Patrick, John, Paul Nicholas and his “interesting” friend Jon (“what's your favourite car? have you got a sister?”) as well as mad Mick Crowley. Rob had also been away an extra year at teacher training in Nottingham and doing his practice in Long Eaton. He was undoubtedly the central figure of the meeting.

That was about when he introduced me to Youth Hostelling. We traveled up on a National Express coach to Bakewell and Rob got us let off at the start of the road to Youlgrave. A very long dark walk up a lane next to a river saw us get to the hostel just in time to check-in and then get to both a pub and the chippie. The first of very many “just made it” moments on trips with Rob. However it was an excellent trip confirming me in hostelling and giving me the same love of the Peak District as Rob.

Soon after this was a hostelling visit to Ironbridge where his geography, history and love of vernacular architecture were clearly on display in a foggy, autumnal landscape with constant coal fire smells in the air. 

We arrived at the youth hostel on a pitch black night - situated appropriately on a road called Paradise - so we woke up the next morning to find ourselves literally transported back in time to the beginnings of the industrial age.

Rob was now teaching at Wallington Boys and other teachers would appear - notably Rob Scales and Neville Lane who he had met on a training course 

Also, as Gay has so well documented, at age 23, Rob took note of something called the Ecology Party and together with elderly Quaker Richard Allen and a few others started the Sutton branch. This was the source of another vast bunch of new friends. Jan Skelton, Milly Price, Nina Dodd, Mark Brett, Nick Greaves and Karin Andrews...with this influx the drinking venue changed - and we met at the Sun pub late into a Friday night with landlord Dennis. “Come on you Greens” - his cry at the eventual closing time, and there were regular meetings in the room upstairs for party business (yawn)

Rob rented a room in a large house on a road just above Sutton Station. I recall the amazing exploding compost bin in the kitchen from which escaped an enormous number of writhing maggots, a very notable all-night party was held there, and it was the inspiration for  Rob's classic quote “ The trouble with women is they use all your bog roll.”

I think it was about this time that he purchased his Morris Traveller, I went with him to somewhere near Redhill where it was for sale and the deed was done. It was a great car, but as Patrick mentions, prone to mushrooms and moss in the woodwork and with a non-working petrol gauge and only occasionally functioning starter motor. He had something against putting petrol in the tank so it was always running out of juice. He carried a small reserve in a can, so after stalling it was topped up and then he had to hand-crank it to start it again, usually and embarrassingly this happened in the middle of a junction - and he would go to absoloutly any length to avoid paying for parking.

Rob sailed quite close to the limit on drink and driving, one trip to visit Dave Fryer near Redhill was particularly bad. Both of us had more than a few pints and he put the pedal to the metal to get back to Dave's house, executing a fine emergency stop to screech into the driveway - it could have been a scene from one of Rob’s favourite film “Vanishing Point”.

After a few years, the dry rot in the woodwork got a little too much even for Rob and he purchased a kit of all the bits of wood needed to rebuild it. With incredible patience and diligence, he eventually managed to complete one side and a rear door, but it was never to take to the road again..

It was a permanent fixture on his parent’s driveway for some years much to his fathers delight.

I forget when it was exactly but I got a job at Websters bookshop in Croydon. This had many benefits. Some incredible work mates, a place to leave bikes on evening trips to London by train and an ever open coffee shop at all times of night …There were many nights spent with Rob and others in the “staff room” after a London gig, or a bevvy in one of Croydon's pubs, drinking coffee and talking, listening to music way into the early morning...

The recommendation of one of our more trendy Saturday boys (who cut two trousers in half lengthways and stitched them back up so as to have different patterned trouser legs) - a fashion trend I have never seen repeated, was to go to see a group called Doll by Doll playing in East London. We arrived in a very sweaty pub and settled at the back next to some scaffolding. Both of us realised quite soon this was no ordinary gig and was a life-changing experience, hanging on to the scaffolding and watching them perform. 

Wherever Rob lived after that he had their iconic image of Antonin Artaud and the word “Remember” on his wall and whenever we could, we saw them live - later we made every effort to go and see just Jackie Leven, the singer, and songwriter when he came back from illness and began a solo career.

Other groups we followed all over London were Nine below Zero, The Marauders (and their number one fan “The Merchant Sailor” who never spilled a drop of his beer, dancing, while more than three sheets to the wind), Gerraint Watkins and the Balham Alligators, Dr Feelgood, Brett Marvin, Queen Ida, Rockin Doopsie…. We went to the Croydon folk club and saw Mike Moran, Rob's beloved Dick Gaughn and on almost every visit a guest song from “The Incredible Singing Robin”. (the only person I know with a worse singing voice than me)

Soon after that he started looking for his own house and eventually settled on one in Tharp Road in Wallington. In need of a tenant to help with the mortgage, it was me who fitted the bill. The house did not completely suit Rob's taste or style and he immediately had plans to, not exactly modernise, but Rob’ise it. The wall between the kitchen and the downstairs toilet was demolished long before the new one was installed upstairs, so the toilet sat right next to the oven when I moved in. Soon, with his football friend Andy’s help he had a fine new bathroom in gloomy green, his favourite colour, upstairs and a cosy fireplace and monumental mantelpiece above it in the front room. 

I know one abiding memory for him there was my alarm clock- set to go off at 6:00 am every day. I would always forget to turn it off on the occasions I was not going to be there overnight and Rob would be roused, untimely, from his sleep by its steadily increasing noisy buzz. It never stopped until turned off...so he had to trudge round from his room to mine and unplug and fling it across the room.

The very same dreaded alarm clock in America

He  kept it for me after I moved out and kindly presented  it back to me in America at my wedding to Lucy… I had already wrapped it to  give back to him on my return from America twenty years later - just before I heard the sad news of his death.

A very sad moment in Rob’s life was the sudden death of his mother just before Christmas in 19?? I remember sitting with him and his father and Patrick on boxing day struggling to find words to say.

Rob and a very young me, prepare for the Ireland trip. Rob was very amused at the thousands of Websters Bookshop carrier bags I packed everything in.

So many things happened around this time it's hard to keep them in sequence, but there was a fantastic cycle tour of Ireland made during a petrol strike on the unusually quiet Irish roads. Rob persuaded Neville and I to cycle with him to Reading and pick up the boat train there at about nine pm. When he saw us the train guard said - “you'll be lucky” and opened the door to a van crammed with forty or fifty bikes. In fact it was lucky as we threw ours on top of the others and thus at the ferry port were first to get our bikes out. 

Rob had a full itinerary planned, the lack of real ale on route only troubling him as Neville and I coped well with Guinness or Murphys. 

There were the usual Rob “short cuts”, one of which saw us crossing a salt marsh at high tide with brackish water a foot deep, only to find quite a sizeable river blocking our way that had to be crossed on a lot of stepping stones - not the easiest thing to do with a loaded touring bike. Just when we thought it could get no worse we entered and then got lost in a very large rhododendron forest. This trip was what caused me to often call him “Rob route march Steel.”

Other classic memories of that trip are arriving in an Irish town at lunchtime, walking up the length of the street with Rob rejecting each pub or cafe as we came to it for some reason. When we ran out of village and turned round with Rob now prepared to settle for a less than perfect meal, they had all closed (early closing day - remember that?)

In Cork we stayed at Rick O’Sheas pub, a very spartan place with literally curtains on the bed as blankets.

Rob also cycled a Lands End to John O’Groats run with James Deane and Derek Coleman.

Pennine way

Palmerston Road

When Rob flew over for his only visit to America to be best man at my wedding you could still wait by the gate and look through a window as the passengers left the plane and headed down to immigration. Rob had bought our wedding gift which as a heavy Le Creusault Dutch oven as hand luggage together with Gay’s gift a set of cutlery- both would now be banned in our less innocent age.

I wish I could remember the speech he gave at both our pre-nuptial or the wedding itself as they were both very clever. He did as aforementioned, present me with my old and very irritating alarm clock.

Rob borrowed a bike to see a little of Philadelphia and was not I think, vastly impressed by what he saw, though “our” bit of West Philly was an anarchist paradise. He stopped off in New York to visit Heather on his way home and I know went to the top of one of the two towers - he was subsequently a believer in many conspiracy theories about 9/11 from this visit.

He got on very well with Lucy’s brothers, Guy and Barnaby, and subsequently gave them both guided pub tours of London, taking in curries on Brick Lane and many architectural delights of British pub architecture.

Rob was also best man to Paul Nicholas on his wedding to Megan, my main memory of that is of Rob and I watching as Paul tried very ineffectually to iron his shirt on a contour seated chair, wish I could remember more (or any) of that best man speech as well.

Wardlow Mires: this was for a time Rob’s favourite pub, very small and run by two hippies, Geoff and Pat. Geoff was a potter and made the very large plates that the very large meals got served on, if you could keep the very large lurcher dogs they owned from eating it. 

Rob would stay in nearby Tidswell and make the trek to this pub in the middle of nowhere several times a year. Patrick relates one notable night when he headed back sober and driving to the “gaff”, while Rob and I stayed late and slept in the barn across the road with “Animal” and his motorcycling friends. What a noisy, uncomfortable and sleepless night that was. It was also here that I cycled down to the pub between Christmas and New Year with Rob and came off my bike, breaking my elbow. Rob was not very sympathetic at the time as I was on my folding small-wheeled bickerton, but some potholers who were about to leave the pub drove me to Chesterton Hospital. When it turned out I needed an operation Rob was much more sympathetic. 

Also at that that time he had met Caroline, a doctor from Lancashire, through “Natural Friends” and she joined us on several walking trips with her rugged 4 wheel drive Lada and her adventurous dog.Also remembering one very wet trip to Yorkshire with Rob. Steve Gove who I worked with at Websters and a friend of Rob’s from Red Rope headed off to Yorkshire in a very nice old VW bus.

It wasn't the speediest of vehicles till Rob took over driving and we fairly whizzed down country lines till we finally arrived somewhere Rob thought suitable for wild camping. Steve and I were in an old tent I bought in a jumble sale for three pounds and Rob in his super new lightweight three season tent. ?? stayed in the VW . At about 3:00 am Rob’s tent blew down and he moved into the VW which then started leaking through the roof canopy - amazingly my cheapie tent survived OK.

Next morning we walked along in steadily increasing rain. Rob took to walking on top of a drystone wall to get us through some floods till we got to the village of Clapham where we had booked accommodation in the pub that night. We arrived absolutely soaked through and, luckily it turned out, ordered a meal before heading up to our rooms and drying off. When we got back down we found the pub bursting at the seams - not just the bars but the hall and every bit of space - the train line had flooded and a full train of passengers had subsequently arrived in the pub for shelter. 

We got to eat before retiring to our room and out of the maelstrom.

When I was clearing up Rob’s house after his death, I found lots of diaries and letters and photos from his father. It was odd that though Rob would always see his father a few times a week or send him a postcard on his trips away that it was on the odd occasion that I met him that he found out most about what Rob was up to. I guess my mother might say the same sort of thing.

He served in the war on the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious (that launched the famous Taranto raid) but was badly injured in an accident, (not in action), when his arm was broken so badly it had to be removed below his elbow. He then had a desk job in London. Rob had both his mother and father’s diaries from the war years and it was so poignant to see how he was recording the times they went out together in his, and her recording the same in hers.

There were lots of photos, Anne, soon getting a car, with lots of photos of the family at the seaside and on trips to Anne's native Scotland. (Rob’s dad subsequently learned to Drive at 70 with just one arm!) and every year a holiday to Selbourne. 

Rob's father was a true Daily Telegraph reader and there was much political banter between him and his “Green Son”. Interestingly his fathers best friend was Stan who was an actual communist party member - but they regularly drank together and put the world to rights.

Rob's parents are buried together in Bandon Hill Cemetery in Wallington in grave I 71, I found Rob  kept a small trowel there to keep the sedum groundcover neat and in order.

“I think it was your goodself who first alerted me to this guy’s popular guide books. Well, believe it or not he rang me up tonight. He is in London. We have arranged to meet up next Thursday (14th) and have a two hour shimmy around a few pubs and I think he is going to do a write up on my walks in his next edition! “

(I alerted Rick to Rob’s Aletrails and I think that was what got him so many American customers)