104
Memories Are Made Of This
The average price of a house when I joined the Navy was about £500, (In 1953, 31 Walterton Road was sold for £400), now prices were in the three to four thousand pounds range.
The mainly American Rock ‘n Roll era was beginning to fade, and being replaced by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and other British talent. Pirate Radio Stations in the North Sea fed the latter to a keen and enthusiastic audience. In the mid fifties, the Bill Haley “Rock around the Clock” film caused cinema seats to be ripped out so that the audience could Rock ‘n Roll in the aisles. Some bright spark took the idea a little further by inventing the Disco Dance venue, and the grand old Ballroom Halls that had been so popular during the war, like the Hammersmith Palais, started to die. The Friday afternoon school Ballroom Dance lessons now seemed to have been a waste of time and effort.
With the vehicle MOT test you could no longer buy an old banger from a bargain basement and drive It until it dropped, and the Mini Moke was the car to own. Motorways were beginning to scar the countryside. For the fellar’s, flared trousers and kipper ties were a must, along with Sideburns and shoulder length hair. Lager was the beer to drink, followed by a Curry and, if you wanted to take a trip, you flew LSD.
The novel Lady Chaterley’s Lover had “opened the floodgates”, and Mary Whitehouse was fighting a losing battle with the Nations morals and the BBC. Suzie Wong, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davis were the Ladies with whom to be seen, and the Contraceptive Pill and Sliced Bread were competing with each other for the title of ‘Eighth wonder of the world’.
The glory of the 1966 World Cup football match was just around the corner and, as if all these were not enough, a lovely lady, by the name of Mary Quant, had just invented the Mini Skirt - and, with some of the girls, it was difficult to tell where a skirt finished and a pellmet began.
The mainly American Rock ‘n Roll era was beginning to fade, and being replaced by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and other British talent. Pirate Radio Stations in the North Sea fed the latter to a keen and enthusiastic audience. In the mid fifties, the Bill Haley “Rock around the Clock” film caused cinema seats to be ripped out so that the audience could Rock ‘n Roll in the aisles. Some bright spark took the idea a little further by inventing the Disco Dance venue, and the grand old Ballroom Halls that had been so popular during the war, like the Hammersmith Palais, started to die. The Friday afternoon school Ballroom Dance lessons now seemed to have been a waste of time and effort.
With the vehicle MOT test you could no longer buy an old banger from a bargain basement and drive It until it dropped, and the Mini Moke was the car to own. Motorways were beginning to scar the countryside. For the fellar’s, flared trousers and kipper ties were a must, along with Sideburns and shoulder length hair. Lager was the beer to drink, followed by a Curry and, if you wanted to take a trip, you flew LSD.
The novel Lady Chaterley’s Lover had “opened the floodgates”, and Mary Whitehouse was fighting a losing battle with the Nations morals and the BBC. Suzie Wong, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-
The glory of the 1966 World Cup football match was just around the corner and, as if all these were not enough, a lovely lady, by the name of Mary Quant, had just invented the Mini Skirt -
Bob Dylan summed it all up nicely with his song, ‘The times they are a changing’. It was the 23 rd of May 1966, and I was about to enter a bran new world as a Civvy - but, by heck, it looked and felt good.