Billy the Kid

   Ian (Billy) Kidd was not a typical posh boarding school kid but a down to earth lower middle class lad from Wales. His parents were Bohemian academics (lecturers) and when I stayed at their hilltop farm near Aberystwyth, the Palamino horses were led into the kitchen for feeding while I was waking from my put up bed. I liked Billy because he was different and an outsider like me. I always knew where I stood with Billy, he had no pretences and he was a good laugh at school.

   Billy and I used to play `chicken` with a sheath knife in our sixth form study. `Thud, thud` the knife went as we stood barefoot with feet apart aiming between the toes. The English master was teaching a group of the more academic members of our class in the library below and must have heard these odd sounding thuds coming from the ceiling. He left his class and crept up to our study. `Thud` and the door suddenly opened. The English master was knocked speechless to see the knife land within a couple of inches of my bare feet. On one occasion we used darts instead of a sheath knife and I stupidly let my concentration wander and hit Billy in the leg. He just looked up at me and laughed. Then as he withdrew the dart the air must have rushed into the wound and he swore at me in agony. 

   It was Billy who taught me the guitar. He was a natural and had a beautiful nylon strung classical guitar. I learned two chords 'A' and 'E' and spent most of that year practising and adapting the chords to tunes like 'Tom Dooley' (Capitol Records 1958) whilst other classmates studied for their A levels.

Suddenly one day Billy disappeared. The local CID interviewed me and our other best mate, Derek. Nobody actually knew. Rumour later had it he had got his girlfriend pregnant and was last heard of playing guitar with a gypsy band in the south of France. 
  I guess I owe my early guitar inspiration to Billy. It was only in the past few years I progressed from being able to play just two chords.

The first guitar made by Jeremy Broun at school

A short extract from Missing Jean