b'eventually came to manage my local pub for aand I played a lot of snooker and pool. (Sports that while. I do notice that alcohol, and in particular,include bits of woodwork and engineering, and Single Malt gets mentioned a lot in this story. I onlydont get you sweaty, dirty or damaged) I had an drink in company, I like company. I like being byidea for an aluminium cue case, and it became myself as well; Gemini. the backbone of a whole new business venture. I I started again as Fylde Guitars rather than Fyldeinvented and patented a device that could be put Instruments Limited, just Bill and me at first, andon the end of your cue to reach long shots, which took a different approach. For a while I didntis still a feature in todays game. Once again I was want to make guitars anymore, but I didnt wantable to build my own tools and machinery. I made to stop either, so I continued on a small scale butcues for many of the professional players, including also began to build a business making snooker cuesRay Reardon, Alex Higgins, Dennis Taylor and Jim and accessories. Bill and I returned to old habits,Meadowcroft.John Parrott and Terry Griffiths were spending far too much time playing pool overfrequent visitors, and Steve Davis favourite cue long lunchtimes, but I think we needed the lightwas saved from disaster because it was in one of relief for a year or so. The guitar market was nowmy cases when he crashed his Porsche. I went into non-existent and Bill moved on, but once again, webusiness with Ray Reardon, who was world snooker remained close friends.champion six times, and used one of my cues in many of his matches. I was always behind the A change of direction scenes at the major televised tournaments, in fact the current Sky Sports commentator Jim Wych was Half way down a bottle of Whisky (again!! Ima good friend, and he still uses the cue that I made such a lush) with Nic Jones and Dave Walters, afor him. I probably have just as many stories about combination of my nickname, Barry, (actually,snooker players as I have about guitarists. I even just one of my nicknames, but we wont go there)started writing a murder mystery about the game and the word Cues resulted in Barracuda, whichof snooker, I must finish it one day, but it wont be was to become very successful worldwide.easy, because I killed off the hero in chapter three. I was already a great fan of stick and ball games,He died by having a snooker cue pushed up his Dave SwarbrickAll the people I am writing about have a part to play in this story. When the Ian Campbell Folk group had their hit with The Times they are a changing in 1965, it was Swarb playing twelve string. You didnt know that Swarb played guitar did you? Well he does, and he had a rather nice little Goodfellow from me. A few months ago I was going to chase him upPaul McCartneyand persuade him to put something on YouTube with it, just for fun, but then II didnt know about this until a customer heard that he had sold the guitar tocontacted me - its one of the perks of pay off his mortgage. Does that meanhaving a wide customer base.The guitar that a Fylde guitar is now equivalent tois strung left handed but doesnt seem to a house?? Probably not, but it soundshave been fully converted, so I suspect good. its been borrowed, maybe from Pete Dave was another of my early influences,Townshend or Laurence Juber. It isnt the I started playing mandolin and fiddleway I envisaged the Ariel being played because of him, and Ive travelled more- but hey, its Paul, he can do what he miles to see him and Martin Carthy than Iwants.have for most other artists put together. I have a lot of stories about Dave, but Ive decided its about time I stopped telling them.63'