Just remembered another thing he taught me which should help with standing starts.
Doing a hill start, you pop it into first gear with the clutch down while still on the hand brake.
Give it some revs (not a huge amount, and how much exactly will come with practice) and slowly start to come off the clutch. What you’re looking at is the front of the bonnet. As you get to the biting point the bonnet of the car will lift slightly. At that point you should be able to take it off the hand brake without rolling back.
Same thing if you need to do a standing reverse start on a slope, only this time you’re looking for the bonnet to dip a little.
Back in the day I participated in poll tax protests (fuck Thatcher) and later in some Reclaim the Streets protests.
The poll tax ones were quite tense. What with that and the miners there was a lot of political anger at the time.
The latter were much more fun and often had a chill family feel to them. Such a mix of people from families with small kids to crusties to clubbers with kick ass sound systems. Occasionally you’d see a couple of the “fuck a copper” brigade but they were mostly chill.