EVEN the funniest memories can come wrapped in a sigh, according to Bournemouth author Robert Lawson.

For a birthday trip, his son took him back to the places that had been milestones of his distant past and found so many of them did not exist any more.

But their importance to Robert, who lives in Lowther Road, Bournemouth, has been charted in his autobiographical book, Over the Distant Hill, that meanders through his memories of a Tottenham childhood, summers hop-picking in Kent, and moving out with his family to pastures new at Harlow.

Robert, now 60 and retired, had been a betting shop manager but moved down to Bournemouth in 1978 with his wife Ann, to be nearer to family living in Sway. He sold insurance and, in 1994, graduated with a BA in health and Community Studies at Bournemouth University.

His memories of seven summers hop-picking at Petham, Kent, will touch a chord with many Londoners of his generation. His first summer there was in 1953 from the first kiss on a cheek from a little girl as part of a game of "dare, truth, kiss or promise".

Young people may think today's pop festivals can be primitive but summers at Petham were something else, when it came to toilet facilities.

"We had two for all the people living in the huts," writes Robert.

"The seats in the wooden structures, he recalls, comprised holes in planks over what was known as the "stench trench".

When half full, two men from the farm would lift it like a rickshaw and walk it to a pre-dug hole which would be its new site, with earth shovelled over the old trench.

"Unfortunately, on one of these change-overs they did not check whether anyone was in the ladies. Mary, four foot ten in stilettos and about eight stone in weight, was clearly not singing, whistling or drumming on the seat when occupying this particular space.

"She must have been shocked speechless as the men, not aware that she was inside, lifted her three feet in the air, then... walked her to her new destination."