March 13, 1970

 It was about 7 PM on Friday, March 13, 1970. 

My father and I had left Kingsbury Tube Station,  got in the car to drive home and turned on the radio to listen to the BBC. In that time slot they played tracks from the new albums released that week. 

It was the last day that I would be commuting in London, that is why it is emblazoned in my memory. One album they played was Willie and the poor boys, from Credence Clearwater Revival. Here, from that album, is a track that was released as a single and became a hit. It is forever in my memories of those transitional days. CCR and Down on the Corner. 

The number one tune that week in the US and UK was Bridge Over Troubled Water from Simon and Garfunkel.

And also in the top 10 Billboard chart  that week was The Hollies with He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother and the Beatles'  Let it Be.

All songs that are still played on the radio in 2020.

And all very much linked to that drive home from the Tube Station with my dad.

October Crisis

 I was still in my first year as an immigrant in Canada. I had travelled a fair bit around southern Ontario but did not feel that I was a Canadian yet. However, I did think I still belonged to the community of western democracies.

Canada, just like America, the UK and Europe were embroiled in a struggle between the present generation and the old guard over the need for the Vietnam war.

As I had mentioned earlier, the struggles that Canadians were different from the other countries  had not really sunk into my consciousness. It was a great surprise to find Canada suddenly struggling over of a sense of identity and free speech and radical groups when the October crisis occurred.

I was living in Toronto but had friends in Montreal and I travel there quite a few weekends in my first months to stay with them. It was October 1970, I was visiting the family friends who lived in the western part of Montreal Island and I took the train into the city.
It came as a great shock to see tanks travelling down Ste. Catherines.  I went into Le Château to browse clothes and when I came out,  standing right by the exit, was a soldier in full uniform and weapons standing guard looking out. I had to walk past him, no more than 6 or 10 inches apart.  He just stared ahead. I assumed his eyes were sweeping up and down the street looking for trouble makers.

It was surreal.

Not something I had expected to experience in my new country.

Drag Racing

As baby boomers grew up in the 1950's, they were fascinated by the experiences of their older siblings.  The ones who were too young to go to war, yet, because of the war,  had a very unusual childhood & adolescence.

The post war period saw these new "Young Adults" adopting new lifestyles -  the original Hippies and modern music; either Jazz or Folk. Basically rebelling against the previous generation.

So, while we were still teenagers,  the life style that became known as the west coast lifestyle was something we aspired to; even we in Britain. Maybe I am stretching it too far to say Britain, it was probably more a case of being centred in London.

It began with Surfing and Surfin' music then the marketers needed to move up an age cohort and looked to Drag racing and muscle cars. Both of these interests were reflected in our musical fancies:

Surfin' Safari; Wipe-out; lots more surf based themes,  then, Little Deuce Coupe; Shut Down; Hey. Little Cobra. (Mind you, there was nothing little about the Cobra. It was a beast of a motor. If you had kept your 1965 AC Cobra, you could probably get $2 Million for it now!)

Strangely enough, the record companies thought there was a market for albums of Drag Racing Sounds. The first one, "The Sounds of the Big Drags" actually sold over 100,000 copies! It led to follow ups specializing on the different Drag Racing categories, such as Nitro burning dragsters.

Above  are some of the albums we were intrigued by in that era.

Pre-fab homes

 I have a memory of our early days in Kingsbury of walking through a small group of pre-fab houses on Kingsbury road at the edge of Roe Green. (That was the open green space that had existed since Norman times.) My grandmother and I walked home from Kingsbury Tube station to 16 Princes that went passed these homes.

Mostly, we went to Burnt Oak station and Watling Avenue when we went into town, and returned home from the opposite direction.  So this is a rare memory. I was about 12, (1956). 

By the time I traveled around Kingsbury regularly with my friends, it was 1959 and those homes had gone.
I do not recall ever discussing them in the intervening years.

However, Recent TV shows on housing in Britain over the centuries had an item on these structures. Suddenly, my memory of them returned. I had to find out more about them and what they were doing there.
They were a result of the extreme shortage in housing after the Second World War and were short term relief. Only meant to last 10 years or so. They were factory built and supposedly could be put up quicker than the usual brick built homes found in the UK.  They also required the Local Council to have available open space to place them in. Hence Wembley Borough offered Roe Green. (Wembley is now a part of the bigger Borough of Brent.)

Interesting enough, I found that Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts lived in one of the homes and their replacement council houses. That was how he ended up in the same school as me for a year, (I transferred out,) and in his newer home he was also a neighbour to my school friends.

vaccine for the traveler

In 1966, I was planning a trip to the United States during the summer break from college. As it happened, the UK and parts of Europe suddenly had a spike in smallpox cases.

America demanded that all visitors to the country must have been vaccinated against smallpox and had to show proof of such vaccination.

I went to my GP and requested a smallpox vaccination and asked what was the proof of vaccination. He gave me the vaccination and a small book that was acceptable to  the authorities. I am assuming to both the US and WHO standards. In it he wrote the name of the vaccine, and the date and his signature.

Then, I had to take the little book to Wembley Town Hall where the county medical health office was located. There, a charming bureaucratic lady took out a book of all the doctors in the county, with an example of their signature. She compared my GP's signature in the little book, agreed it was the same thing, and took out a little bureaucratic rubber stamp and proceeded to place the requisite stamp into my little book. It verified that everything was above board. I truly was vaccinated against smallpox. I had to show that little document when I arrived at passport control at JFK that summer.

Whenever they finally sort out COVID-19, I envisage a similar kind of document for travelers proving that:
a) they have tested negative for COVID-19 within the last 14 days, or, 
b) if a vaccine is available, we will have to be vaccinated and the signatures authenticated.
This process is in place, has been used for decades, but if a    Covid-19 vaccine becomes available, I am sure there will be people claiming infringement of all manner of liberties!!

I had a talk with my man

It is amazing how some friendships start and what it is that holds them together for nearly 6 decades.

It was my first month of attending Regent St., Polytechnic in 1964. The daily lecture schedule always began with an economics lecture in the main auditorium and then after 90 minutes or so we had a break.
Almost everybody would go to the cafeteria and have a cuppa tea. As one would expect from impoverished students, we had nothing more than a "round of toast." Do you know what a round of toast is? A peculiar English phrase meaning two slices of bread toasted, lightly buttered and then cut into a triangle; at least that is my memory of it.
The cafeteria had long tables with seats all around. We usually just plonked down without regard to who we were sitting next to. As it was our first month, friendships had not really been cemented yet. However, there I was sitting at a table, when a guy at the adjoining table leaned, over tapped me on the shoulder, and said:
“ heard a song on radio Luxemburg last night, a really great song by a female singer about her boyfriend. Do you know what it is?”
No, hello, my name is... or, who are you, whatever. Simply a question about music.
His name was Paul, as I found out later. I had never spoken to him before and I have never known why he picked on me. But he made a good choice because I was mad on music, particularly, as it turns out, the same kind of R&B and female group singers that he liked. I answered:
“ I bet it was I had a talk with my Man by Mitty Collier on Chess.”
“ yes yes, that’s the one. Do you want to go buy it at lunchtime?”
“OK, I replied.”
And so began the friendship that has lasted 56 years and counting.
There was no introduction it was straight into a question with a Stranger that happened to hit the mark. The quirkiness of that introduction was replicated in our relationship over the following decades. No one understood Paul the way I did, not even his beautiful wife, that I am pleased to say remains one of my friends to this day.
That simple music question led to a friendship that resulted in the three of us emigrating to Canada in 1970.

Libraries

Most people know that I lived in Kingsbury, NW London during my school years and early adulthood.
However the suburban area our house was located within a little area everybody just called the "Village". I never thought much of it at the time but I have come to learn that it was a reference to Roe Green Village, and its adjoining open space just called Roe Green. It is in fact, a 1000 year old village and it is referenced  in the Domesday book of 1086. There was nothing that old in the village; However, there was  a quaint setting of small cottages with beautiful thatched roofs.  In the same location as those cottages was a small library, an offshoot of the main library in Wembley town hall. This little library on Stag Lane in the village served me well all my growing up years.

I had a library card almost as soon as we arrived and when my Nana joined us she too was an avid reader. I remember many occasions that she and I would walk from 16 Princess Avenue to that little library on Stag Lane to take out the three books that you were allowed at one time.

Whoever ran the library was culturally aware and a very astute person. The little reading room for newspapers not only had the obvious The Times, Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Manchester Guardian (as it was known back then, now, simply The Guardian.) Our local paper naturally,  but also many magazines. I went regularly every week to read the latest copy of Autocar, Motor, National Geographic, Scientific American and as I look back on it now I realize they did not stock any of the tabloid magazines. Something that would be unheard of in the modern world.
What was especially interesting as you walked in  there was the check out and return desk facing you, but  right in front of that, was a table displaying the new additions. The librarian must have particularly liked to read the Sunday Times and The Observer for their book reviews; because what had just been reviewed was prominently  displayed. As those were two of the six newspapers we got every Sunday at No.16,  I and my friends looked over the new books for the ones that might interest us. It was great to be able to walk around the corner and borrow them as soon as they were published. It may not seem like much in today's world of clicking on your computer or iPad and having access to millions of books and journals, but it was pretty rare back in the fifties and sixties to live in a little suburban enclave and have such ready access to current books. It was especially significant as the library often had the books before they made the bestseller list or became controversial and then everybody wanted to borrow them!

As I said it was a small library, it did not have tens of thousands of books but a very eclectic collection. It focused on fiction and then in one corner, it had a non-fiction stack of shelves full of science books.
Starting from the time I was about 12 until I emigrated to Canada in 1970,  I can proudly claim that I read every science book in the library; regardless of which science discipline it was featuring. So began a lifelong love of science.

I am a staunch supporter of libraries and how empowering they are for all people in the community.

Support Your Library !