A little while ago you may remember I wrote about Coffee Books, a bookshop that used to occupy part of the ground floor of an old vicarage in Stratford called ‘The Firs’? Anyway, my wife and our little dog used to live there back in 1971 and when we moved into the top floor flat all those years ago the house had long ceased to have any social standing architecturally and slumped grey and peeling in what was left of a now very overgrown garden. Only from the vantage point of our third floor bay window could the collapsing gazebo, entwined with generations of un-pruned roses, still be seen.

But the old house lived on so to speak, with the aforementioned Coffee Books to the right as you came in, with, next to them, a ladies hairdresser that specialised in blue rinses, pink rinses, orange rinses, with matching poodle rinses for an additional 17/6. Have you ever seen a pink poodle? Believe me they can stand out on a dark winter’s afternoon.

Further back on the ground floor was the Stratford School of Driving whose priceless motto was Don’t Pass Us Because We’ll Pass You! . Virtually the whole of their reception area was taken up with the engine and gearbox of a 1929 Bentley 3.5 litre Roadster, which had the legend, Exposed, That Which You Fear The Most, hanging dustily above it. The company was run by a father and son who both had handlebar moustaches, wore tweed jackets and grey flannels, and had the bad habit of finishing each others sentences.

“ Are you sure…”

“ You want driving lessons…”

“ Young man, because…”

“ We are very…”

“ Busy, don’t you…”

“ Know.”

I did manage to book one lesson with them but lost my nerve when the father turned-up in a three ton army truck that looked as if it still belonged to the army.

I was eventually taught to drive by a former World War II Lancaster Bomber pilot ( the charming man is still around) who used to correct my erratic steering by demanding more right or left rudder. Three point turns were always three point landings, and cyclists were invariably bandits at twelve, one, or three o’clock.

Next to the driving school was the WRVS ( Womens Royal Voluntary Service), whose members in those days all seemed to use the hairdressers next door.

To the left of the WRVS was the illustrious Caledonian Society, who met on the same evening each week as The International Society of Friends two door doors along, which was fine, unless the Caledonian Society had bagpipe practise, which was okay, unless The International Society of Friends had either a Juliet Greco or Jacques Brel record recital, which wasn’t.

Most of the first floor was taken up by the town’s Youth Employment Agency, which was very adept at turning would-be Mick Jaggers and Marianne Faithfulls into bank clerks and shop assistants, which is something we have to be thankful for I guess.

Opposite that busy office was an accountant who always seemed to be leaving for a game of golf.

“ Bloody fine day for it, don’t you think? Bloody fine day.”

At the far end of the corridor was a private detective who, scouts honour, always wore a Sam Spade style raincoat and trilby hat, summer or winter, with, I think, very little else underneath.

The whole of the second floor, beneath our flat, was taken up the laboratory of two boffins who were developing computers. They often worked late into the night and smoked pipe after pipe of St Bruno tobacco, discarding the empty vacuum sealed tins into a metal dustbin outside. Every Thursday, without fail, they would have a huge bonfire in the back garden, and into it went heaps of shredded papers, old circuit boards, and yes, all those old tobacco tins, which, once they got hot exploded and took off like mortar shells, to come whistling down onto our roof and into every back garden across a radius of a hundred yards. It certainly helped keep the cat population down. They always apologised, of course:

“ Sorry, old chap, won’t happen again.”

But it always did.

The old house was also haunted, very haunted. And when all those crazy people had gone home and the place was empty, with the exception of the Newmans on the top floor, the place began to creek and moan like some old ship at sea. And in the early hours of the morning you could actually smell the sea, and hear the masts straining, and the sails stretching and screeching against the wind; and sometimes, very occasionally, you could hear distant voices, and shouted commands.

After a particularly stormy crossing one night I mentioned the noises to one of the guys who owned Coffee Books, who told me that most of the timbers used to build ‘The Firs’ had come from the remnants of Nelson’s Navy, and didn’t I realise that wood absorbs noise in the way a photographic negative aborbs light, releasing it later to a receptive listener. My little dog was a very receptive listener.

Early one morning the dog and I were woken-up ( my wife could sleep through an earthquake) by a deep moaning coming from the hall three floors below. The dog was all for investigating, but I wasn’t so sure. It was the middle of winter, freezing cold, and dark. Eventually I plucked up the courage, and with the dog firmly tucked under my arm made my way downstairs. The hallway was very dark indeed, but outside, pressed up against the stained glass of the front door, and silhouetted by a distant street lamp, I could see an even darker shape that was moaning and pulsating, and pushing, yes pushing, against the door, which was bulging dreadfully and about to break loose from its hinges. Suddenly the dog leaped from under my arm and ran back upstairs as if it feared one of those damned tobacco tins was about to land. I wanted to run after the cowardly thing but my curiosity got the better of me and I yanked open the door.

It was a milk float, and the driver was slumped over the steering wheel fast asleep. I prodded him, nothing. I prodded him again. He woke up, loudly.

“ What?! What?! What time is it?!”

“ Half four.” I told him.

“ It can’t be? I wanted to finish early today.”

“ It is early.” I said.

He looked at me as if I was half witted and slammed the float into reverse sending it skidding backwards across the driveway and half way across the garden where it crashed into the rose concealed gazebo, which collapsed on top of it, and him.

It was nearly three hours before they came to pull him out, but he just sat in his float, under the rubble that had been the gazebo, entangled in rose brambles, and drenched in milk. He even refused a cup of tea and a biscuit.

I have to say he did look as if he’d seen a ghost.