"They're all watching me you know, Maron..."

He got on his bike...

"I grew up in the 30's with an unemployed father. He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking 'til he found it."

Norman Tebbit, 1981.

The merits of the former Conservative MP Norman Tebbit (a.k.a. the Chingford Skinhead) might be questionable, but his father and my granddad, Granddad Jack, had something in common: they both got on their bikes in a bid to find work and neither of them rioted.

Well, I should say that there is no record or memory of Granddad Jack rioting, but we can't be sure. Indeed, a riot in Banningham (Norfolk), where he and several generations before him were raised and lived, would be quite an event in the history of the sleepy village and would not have gone unnoticed.

This much we can be certain of: amid abject rural poverty and homelessness during the 1920s he left Banningham and cycled to Pocklington (East Yorkshire) in a bid to find work. And this is where he stayed until he passed away in 1995.

Now, approximately 90 years later, to honour his memory and raise awareness of issues of homelessness, we are taking "the route he might have taken" from Banningham to Pocklington, cycling the entire 237 mile journey, as he and others like him would have. We will also be raising money for the homeless charity Shelter (see link below, if you would like to contribute).

http://www.justgiving.com/onthetrailofgranddadjack

A humble man in life, Granddad Jack would never have understood the fuss that we are making to honour him in taking "the route he might have taken" all those years ago. However, as someone with a strong social conscience and charitable nature, he would appreciate that we are doing it to raise awareness of homelessness issues, as it is something that he and others like him had to deal with (unless you call sleeping under a comfy hedge a home).

We are consulting old maps, speaking to relatives and "contacting the other side" (consulting mediums, Ouija boards and archaeologists) in order to ensure that the route we take is as similar as possible to what he took.

We intend to produce t-shirts, film the journey, contact local newspapers, update the blog en route, and release a video diary after the event.

John William Eastoe, in taking the peddle from "Banny" to "Pock", we salute you.