MEMOIRS:
CHAPTER 2 THE SWINGING SIXTIES
Two months later, the battered and travel-weary Humver bumped and back-fired its way onto the cross-channel ferry for the short trip back to the land of hope and glory.
The water was angry and grey as the white cliffs of Dover lurched mysteriously through a wall of grey mist. I don’t know if it was really like that, but that’s how it is in the movies… so angry, grey and misty it will remain.
My dad rubbed his hands together at the thought of returning to his homeland, the “nook-shotten isle” of sleet, bowler hats and fatty bacon. He was no doubt spurred on at the thought of at last having something to eat.
Raised on Yorkshire pudding, pork pies, peas and… well… nothing else, he was by no definition a gourmet and to call his diet bland would be to give credit where it was not due. At Christmas, apparently, his Grandmother would let the family pick at her earwax as a treat, but that was about it.
All foodstuffs he had come across in Europe over the past weeks had been declared definitively as “foreign muck” (pronounced loudly, with that embarrassing lack of awareness common to the Brit, as “fuhren moohk”), so his diet had comprised solely of bread. And even then, only after he had pawed and sniffed it to ensure there was no trace of olives, garlic, sesame seeds or any other non-bread matter.
My mother, on the other hand, had had a field day, sensibly sampling a range of local dishes and enjoying the novelty of eating foodstuffs comprised of more than potato or flour.
However, her return to old Blighty was less than spectacular. At the time, the nausea was attributed to the rocking of the little ferry. In retrospect, it was in fact courtesy of a nasty hormone cocktail called Beta hCG coursing through her bloodstream, thanks very much to the steady but yet undiscovered foetal growth of yours truly.
The sleet hammered the windows and the engine of the Queen Victoria hummed deeply as it carried its cargo of back packers and Coronation Street day-trippers inexorably from Calaise to Dover.
My Dad queued for black tea, tomato sandwiches and a “bag of crisps” at the kiosk, listening intently to the conversations around him. He was wearing a cardigan and polished leather shoes.
The lead news item in the newspaper that day was the announcement that Britain and France had agreed to build a tunnel under the English Channel.
The general consensus from the others in the queue was that it would never, could never, should never happen.
“Wha’s sa good of tha?” piped up one woman. “Ere’s a perfetleh gud ferreh.”
“Well, yu nevah nor, du yu luv? It mart be narce ketchin uh buhs tu Spairn for thuh hulidares.”
“Uh tuhnnel? Uhnder the worta? Ruhbbish!”
“Ah think et sarns eggs-ci-tin!”
“Ruhbbish! It’ll nevah get bilt.”
The Chunnel opened in 1991 at a cost of 18 billion dollars.
Aaahhh… London in the sixties. It was the dawning of the age of the now generation and if there was a groovy spot to be on the planet at that time, London was it.
According to Time magazine, every generation adopts a city as its heart, and in the sixties, the city was London. “London has burst into bloom,” it said, “it swings; it is the scene.”
Populated solely by fashion photographers, models, musicians, hairstylists, artists and my parents, London was the first city to have a modern youth culture. Wearing their miniskirts, beads, kaftans and hipsters, the entire populous (except for the Queen, I imagine) apparently sat around Hyde Park smoking pot and taking the pill in excessive quantities, before ducking around in new E-type Jags to Vidal Sassoon’s Carnaby Street salon for a Twiggy-style hair-cut.
The music scene back then was spectacular, literally the crossroads where the “old” was fading fast, rapidly bowing out to the new. For a few brief glorious years there, the “old” and the “new” existed side by side.
My parents desperately clung to the old as disciples of Dean Martin, Val Doonican and Bing Crosby. Their favourites were the likes of those crooning gems “Strangers in the night”, “Quando, quando, quando, quando…” and “When I was twenty-five, it was a very good year…”.
Meanwhile, in the exciting part of town, the Beatles were pumping out Elanor Rigby, Day Tripper and Paperback Writer.
The days were numbered for the horn-rimmed likes of Jerry and the Hoppers, and singers like Vince Mitchell and His Electric Backing Group. And the stage lights were coming up on a new phenomenon – the cult of the “rock band”. On Kensington Church Street, the girls with their garish eye make-up and stripy pants and the boys with their wild mops of hair and massive belt buckles were talking in excited tones about the now and happening new groups which were destined to write the opening page of modern rock history… The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and The Soft Machine.
Oh well, four out of five ain’t bad.
All things considered, London in the 60s was a great place to enter the world.
I was born in Clapham Women’s Hospital, the result of an emergency caesarean. And when I say “caesarean”, I do not use the term lightly. There was none of the modern non-invasive keyhole stuff back then. My mother got the old fashioned deluxe C-Section package. The incision started near her collarbone and finished just above her knee-cap. By the time the doctors got to me, she was virtually inside out.
And that was that.
I was born. It was August 1964.
Fortunately, I was pronounced to be in good health and was promptly taken off to the nursery to gurgle and sleep.
Unfortunately, things had not turned out so well for my mother. Her liver failed, a lung collapsed and all her vital statistics dropped off the scales.
The next day, my father was called in and told to “make arrangements” and ensure my mother’s “affairs were in order”. Her doctor was a master of euphemism.
It was ironic that death was on the cards for the woman who had given me life.
My father spent a few harrowing days at my mother’s bedside having the kinds of holding-hands moments and whispered conversations that people have when they have the luxury of knowing that their time is up.
Despite her fragile health, I was brought in so she could gaze upon her son before shuffling of this mortal coil.
Then it happened.
Five days after I was born, just after breakfast, my mother got better.
Her obstinate refusal to go through death’s door made her the belle of the hospital for a few days. There were flowers and cards and telegrams. All the nurses came for a visit and stayed for a chat and a hold of the Aussie girl’s baby boy.
Unfortunately, Hilda’s popularity lasted precisely to the moment when she enquired about circumcision. Back in Australia, foreskins where whipped off as a matter of course and with the same casual regard one might give cutting the end off a carrot. In England, however, circumcision was definitely not common practice and was viewed with the same abhorrence as people today might look upon foot-binding or female circumcision.
My mother had to put up with the icy treatment from the staff, complete with steely stares, monosyllabic utterances, the throwing down of the dinner tray and multiple uses of the words “cruel” and “heartless”.
I was totally oblivious of the battle raging around me and the right-to-life of my fleshy appendage, up to the moment, that is, when they cut it off.
I’m sure I cried, but it was for the better in the long run as I was from then on ensured of a high level of penile hygiene and a unity of spirit with my Australian brothers in many change-room situations over the following years.
Only once have I regretted not having a foreskin. Late one night on a Sport and Rec camp, the boys in magpie cabin held an impromptu concert made up of burps, farts and penis puppetry. An English kid called Ralph performed one of his own creations entitled “The Early Bird Catching the Worm”. Us Aussie kids could only stare on in envy.
The water was angry and grey as the white cliffs of Dover lurched mysteriously through a wall of grey mist. I don’t know if it was really like that, but that’s how it is in the movies… so angry, grey and misty it will remain.
My dad rubbed his hands together at the thought of returning to his homeland, the “nook-shotten isle” of sleet, bowler hats and fatty bacon. He was no doubt spurred on at the thought of at last having something to eat.
Raised on Yorkshire pudding, pork pies, peas and… well… nothing else, he was by no definition a gourmet and to call his diet bland would be to give credit where it was not due. At Christmas, apparently, his Grandmother would let the family pick at her earwax as a treat, but that was about it.
All foodstuffs he had come across in Europe over the past weeks had been declared definitively as “foreign muck” (pronounced loudly, with that embarrassing lack of awareness common to the Brit, as “fuhren moohk”), so his diet had comprised solely of bread. And even then, only after he had pawed and sniffed it to ensure there was no trace of olives, garlic, sesame seeds or any other non-bread matter.
My mother, on the other hand, had had a field day, sensibly sampling a range of local dishes and enjoying the novelty of eating foodstuffs comprised of more than potato or flour.
However, her return to old Blighty was less than spectacular. At the time, the nausea was attributed to the rocking of the little ferry. In retrospect, it was in fact courtesy of a nasty hormone cocktail called Beta hCG coursing through her bloodstream, thanks very much to the steady but yet undiscovered foetal growth of yours truly.
The sleet hammered the windows and the engine of the Queen Victoria hummed deeply as it carried its cargo of back packers and Coronation Street day-trippers inexorably from Calaise to Dover.
My Dad queued for black tea, tomato sandwiches and a “bag of crisps” at the kiosk, listening intently to the conversations around him. He was wearing a cardigan and polished leather shoes.
The lead news item in the newspaper that day was the announcement that Britain and France had agreed to build a tunnel under the English Channel.
The general consensus from the others in the queue was that it would never, could never, should never happen.
“Wha’s sa good of tha?” piped up one woman. “Ere’s a perfetleh gud ferreh.”
“Well, yu nevah nor, du yu luv? It mart be narce ketchin uh buhs tu Spairn for thuh hulidares.”
“Uh tuhnnel? Uhnder the worta? Ruhbbish!”
“Ah think et sarns eggs-ci-tin!”
“Ruhbbish! It’ll nevah get bilt.”
The Chunnel opened in 1991 at a cost of 18 billion dollars.
Aaahhh… London in the sixties. It was the dawning of the age of the now generation and if there was a groovy spot to be on the planet at that time, London was it.
According to Time magazine, every generation adopts a city as its heart, and in the sixties, the city was London. “London has burst into bloom,” it said, “it swings; it is the scene.”
Populated solely by fashion photographers, models, musicians, hairstylists, artists and my parents, London was the first city to have a modern youth culture. Wearing their miniskirts, beads, kaftans and hipsters, the entire populous (except for the Queen, I imagine) apparently sat around Hyde Park smoking pot and taking the pill in excessive quantities, before ducking around in new E-type Jags to Vidal Sassoon’s Carnaby Street salon for a Twiggy-style hair-cut.
The music scene back then was spectacular, literally the crossroads where the “old” was fading fast, rapidly bowing out to the new. For a few brief glorious years there, the “old” and the “new” existed side by side.
My parents desperately clung to the old as disciples of Dean Martin, Val Doonican and Bing Crosby. Their favourites were the likes of those crooning gems “Strangers in the night”, “Quando, quando, quando, quando…” and “When I was twenty-five, it was a very good year…”.
Meanwhile, in the exciting part of town, the Beatles were pumping out Elanor Rigby, Day Tripper and Paperback Writer.
The days were numbered for the horn-rimmed likes of Jerry and the Hoppers, and singers like Vince Mitchell and His Electric Backing Group. And the stage lights were coming up on a new phenomenon – the cult of the “rock band”. On Kensington Church Street, the girls with their garish eye make-up and stripy pants and the boys with their wild mops of hair and massive belt buckles were talking in excited tones about the now and happening new groups which were destined to write the opening page of modern rock history… The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and The Soft Machine.
Oh well, four out of five ain’t bad.
All things considered, London in the 60s was a great place to enter the world.
I was born in Clapham Women’s Hospital, the result of an emergency caesarean. And when I say “caesarean”, I do not use the term lightly. There was none of the modern non-invasive keyhole stuff back then. My mother got the old fashioned deluxe C-Section package. The incision started near her collarbone and finished just above her knee-cap. By the time the doctors got to me, she was virtually inside out.
And that was that.
I was born. It was August 1964.
Fortunately, I was pronounced to be in good health and was promptly taken off to the nursery to gurgle and sleep.
Unfortunately, things had not turned out so well for my mother. Her liver failed, a lung collapsed and all her vital statistics dropped off the scales.
The next day, my father was called in and told to “make arrangements” and ensure my mother’s “affairs were in order”. Her doctor was a master of euphemism.
It was ironic that death was on the cards for the woman who had given me life.
My father spent a few harrowing days at my mother’s bedside having the kinds of holding-hands moments and whispered conversations that people have when they have the luxury of knowing that their time is up.
Despite her fragile health, I was brought in so she could gaze upon her son before shuffling of this mortal coil.
Then it happened.
Five days after I was born, just after breakfast, my mother got better.
Her obstinate refusal to go through death’s door made her the belle of the hospital for a few days. There were flowers and cards and telegrams. All the nurses came for a visit and stayed for a chat and a hold of the Aussie girl’s baby boy.
Unfortunately, Hilda’s popularity lasted precisely to the moment when she enquired about circumcision. Back in Australia, foreskins where whipped off as a matter of course and with the same casual regard one might give cutting the end off a carrot. In England, however, circumcision was definitely not common practice and was viewed with the same abhorrence as people today might look upon foot-binding or female circumcision.
My mother had to put up with the icy treatment from the staff, complete with steely stares, monosyllabic utterances, the throwing down of the dinner tray and multiple uses of the words “cruel” and “heartless”.
I was totally oblivious of the battle raging around me and the right-to-life of my fleshy appendage, up to the moment, that is, when they cut it off.
I’m sure I cried, but it was for the better in the long run as I was from then on ensured of a high level of penile hygiene and a unity of spirit with my Australian brothers in many change-room situations over the following years.
Only once have I regretted not having a foreskin. Late one night on a Sport and Rec camp, the boys in magpie cabin held an impromptu concert made up of burps, farts and penis puppetry. An English kid called Ralph performed one of his own creations entitled “The Early Bird Catching the Worm”. Us Aussie kids could only stare on in envy.