During 1981, having left Long Road Sixth Form College and finding myself a full time job at Sainsbury's (hey a man's gotta eat!) I found myself looking for a band. I had been friends with Steve while still at Long Road, through Art Class and a weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons at his house (yes, I know!!). The Dungeon Master, another friend of his called Jan Pitman, was also interested in music and had recently bought himself a set of Northumbrian Pipes. The 3 of us decided to try and form a band taking as influences Hawkwind, Steve Hillage and Gong, with a smattering of pseudo-folk.

As it turned out the jam sessions with Jan were not very productive and so things went quiet for a while. However, Steve and I kept meeting with the idea of doing something musical together. Another Long Road student John Reed turned up to one of these meetings one day and proceeded to join in with our jamming on bass guitar. It almost started to sound like a band. Within a few weeks he had not only introduced us to his new keyboards but also his girlfriend Jo de Waal, who it turned out had a beautiful pure singing voice.

Months of intensive song writing followed in which there were no rules as to composition. If we liked it, we did it. This meant that some of the songs stretched on for 10-15 minutes at a time. These were not gratuitous solo-fests either, but long compositions. Steve was the main lyric writer but being only a fledgling guitarist he would stumble around and come up with very unusal 'bits' which I would craft together into full songs. John also came in with a few completed ideas e.g. "The Bridge". I would tend to contribute in a more random fashion, supplying the glue to make ideas flow together better - as in "The Chronicles of Earl Vermin, Parts I and II" inspired by the writings of Michael Moorcock with music and lyrics by Steve - or sometimes as with "Lazy Summers Day" and "The Minstrel", the complete music.

Most of the bands set was written before were able to find a drummer; we eventually hooked up with Ashley Wykes through a girlfriend of mine who shared a house with him at the time. This was early in 1982. Ashley was a basic style of drummer but he was able to pick up the material quickly and it was great to hear the songs we had written finally take shape with the full band.

John knew a guy who had managed his previous band and he helped to get us lots of gigs throughout East Anglia (his day job was in Sales) including a Sunday luchtime spot at the then happening "Peterborough Glasshouse". We also put on our own event at Coleridge School in Cambridge, with over 300 paying attendees. Incidentally, the support band for this gig was "Zoom", a mainly instrumental jazz fusion band featuring Chris Maitland (that name again)on drums!

Early in the Summer of 1983 my interest in the music and the band was beginning to wain. I mentioned to Steve that I didn't want to continue with the band, he agreed and Masque split. I wanted to get a more jazz-rock type band going in the vain of "Bruford" and "Brand X". I tried to steer Steve and John in this direction but after a couple of abortive rehearsals we decided to call it a day. I was already working at BT with Mick Holloway at this point and soon I was rehearsing with the band which would become "Cheap Sneakers".