Rob Hurst

So eventually Dad moved the family down to this little south-facing block in Barramore Beach.

There was a few reasons for that.

First of all, he couldn't understand a word that I was saying because I'd picked up this sort of...

semi-rural white trash dialect, and it didn't involve opening my lips.

I was kind of like the side of the fucking mouth, and everything was a fucking that, fucking that.

I was the age of seven, you know, and I lost communication with my parents.

So to regain that communication, and also because my mother was incredibly isolated, lonely, and what I realise now is she was having a series of nervous breakdowns, as you would, isolated on this block with very few friends, and suddenly with these three young boys to look after, you know, very demanding.

So Dad got the family and borrowed five or six thousand pounds, borrowed it from his mother and bought this little, little block down Balmoral Beach.

And he did that because he had these great memories as a child when the tram actually went down to Balmoral Beach and he wanted to swim.

In fact, um, Dad swam

At Balmoral then, from the time we arrived, which was September 62, every day without interruption, right through the year at Balmoral Beach, taking the temperature of the water, he had this giant kind of thermometer, the kind you stick up the back of a horse, and he'd go down and then he'd write the temperature in the sand.

And he sort of became the high priest of what was known as the Balmoral Braves swimming crowd.

So Dad was happy.

Mum was happy.

She suddenly had friends.

And then we had this marvellous childhood, you know, at Balmoral, you know.

Well, before that, I was drumming along on the carpet just with bits of sticks and things I found around the block before we even went there.

Absolutely, yeah.

And it was Mersey beat.

You know, the fact is...