In July 1962 I went on holiday again to Douglas in the Isle of Man. I had just won a lot of money on the roulette wheel in Bolton and because of my change in fortune decided to join some younger lads to this old haunt.
On the second day of my holiday, I decided to try to follow this winning streak on the roulette wheel in the local casino in Douglas. I lost all the money I had gained in Bolton and spent the rest of the week borrowing from my friends. Later in the week, we gathered in a hotel in Douglas for our usual drinking session. As I sat there I began to feel an intense hate for the hotel and all it stood for. The hotel lounge was heaving with people and in a moment of madness picked up pint glass and threw it through one of the hotel windows.
The pub began to empty quickly until the manager shouted for all to stay where they were until the police arrived. I did not care and when the police did arrive and question the scores of people in the lounge I still did not care what happened to me. When the police came to our table my four young friends protested their innocence and after about an hour we were allowed to leave.
This brief account of my life sums up the kind of aimless life I was leading and the kind of person I had become. On my return home things continued as before; daily work, the local pub, the local dance hall on a Saturday, Casino on a Sunday, borrowing and paying back and generally squandering all the money I earned. In the meantime in the dye works where I worked I began to hear and notice one of the work’s mechanics who was going around claiming to have ‘seen the Light.’ On a memorable day sometime in 1963 whilst working at the Dye Works I left the centre to go outside for a break and a smoke.
The man who had seen the ‘light,’ Ernie Westwell, was halfway up a factory chimney doing some maintenance work. It was a lovely sunny day and in jest I shouted up to Ernie that it was about time ‘He’ sent us some of this sunshine, Ernie was down the ladder in double quick time to share ‘his life-transforming experience.’ I cannot remember what he said to me on that day, but this encounter was the first of many over the next two or so years.
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