At fourteen years, Laurence stood head and shoulders above his peers. Tall enough for his Eric-Clapton-style bushy curls to brush against the lintel across the worn, wooden swing doors to the Bird in Hand on Bromsgrove street. He stood in the autumn drizzle for a long time, plucking up the courage to enter, knowing his father would be there, sat at the bar, drinking the tar black ale favoured by railwaymen.
On payday, the men of the tracks would pour through the corrugated tin gates at the foot of the embankment running alongside the narrow lane at the rear of the Edwardian terraces of Clive Street, in a grey-faced snake of weary bodies, wrapped in sweat stained, stone-blackened overalls, knotted scarves, and Dai-caps. As one, they would make their way to the Bird in Hand, drawn not by its reputation as the best pub in Grangetown, but by its proximity to their work gates.