So, a bit of background…
My Mum and Dad married in 1956.
The song at No.1 at the time was (and I’m not making this up) The Teenagers featuring Frankie Lymon singing “Why Do Fools Fall In Love”.
Dad was 23…
…and had been brought up around Esher and Thames Ditton.
His dad was a keen and skillful gardener, who could mow the lawn to such a standard, it could pass as a putting green at St. Andrews.
A very quiet and good natured soul. Always pottering about in his garden shed for hours. A habit which passed to my own dad.
Dad’s mum was the polar opposite of his dad. A very headstrong, houseproud figure who was susceptible to the odd outburst or scathing remark.
This sharpness in her soul, and of her tongue could well have stemmed from any number of instances which could have happened in her life up to that point. Maybe it was hereditary, who knows now.
One thing I do know is that she had 3 brothers. All who served in the First World War, and all eventually perished in the murderous fields of Belgium by German artillery.
My Dad was his parents’ only son,..
…with 2 sisters either side of his arrival.
He served his time in the National Service from 1951 and, after training at U.K. barracks including Hilsea in Portsmouth, was sent to Germany, including Düsseldorf.
Quiet as his own father, he liked his alone time, which became apparent while stationed out in Germany.
One cold winters night on New Years Eve, he swapped roles with the poor guy who was to perform sentry duty that night.
To show the character of my father, he’d rather give up his place at a raucous New Year Party in the warm barracks, to instead pace up and down outside in the freezing German snow.
This type of behavior would become familiar, not only to me and the family in later years, but also inside of me too.
Mum was 18,..
…had spent her first few years in Hackney before her family got out of London near the end of World War II and moved into a quiet village called Hersham; not too far from the village green itself.
The 2nd youngest of 4 children (1 girl, 1 boy, then another 2 girls). The thinking probably was, the further away from London, the better the chances of survival.
Not far enough it seemed, as it didn’t stop one of Hitler’s Doodlebugs from destroying the end of their new road they were now quietly living in.
Luckily, they were situated more in the middle of North Road and survived unscathed along with the home they were living in.
After the war, they eventually moved again from one side of the village to the other. 49 Celandine Road to be precise. Just a short walk from Hersham train station.
A home which would become as familier to me through the years as almost my second home. Where my Mum’s side of the family would all meet up almost every Saturday afternoon and into the evening.
By that time, my mum’s eldest sister lived there as well, with her husband.
On those visits, we were also joined by my Mum’s youngest sister, with her children too.
All three sisters would natter the afternoon away on the back room, while their Dad (my Grandad) would sit quietly in his armchair in the corner and smoke his roll-ups and gaze out of the window.
Us children would usually be in the other room, along with my uncle, who would be checking the score draws for the pools, before we could turn the TV over and watch Saturday evening programmes, such as ‘The Incredible Hulk’, ‘Doctor Who’, before the game shows came on, like ‘321’, or ‘The Generation Game’.
Anyway, I’ve gone off on a tangent there, so let’s go back a bit, to before us children still didn’t quite exist.
Once my Mum and Dad had tied the knot…
…they moved from one place to another, sometimes staying with parents, such as my paternal Grandparents, sometimes renting a flat.
I think they stayed in Claygate for a while and also a flat within throwing distance of Hampton Court.
They would eventually settle, after all the constant moving during the end of the 50’s, into a semi detached two bedroom house , in the middle of another nice quiet road, back in Hersham in 1960.
Built at the turn of the 20th Century, it came complete with an Anderson Shelter in the back garden, left by the previous old lady who had owned the house, and had lived there since it had been built back in 1902.
The house had cost my parents £2,000. A huge amount back in 1960, and most of which they’d borrowed from the bank, which they then began to pay back on the most affordable plan they could just about afford. An interest only option.
My Mum remembers a day, many years later, when she was told the payments had ended. Relieved that she believed the house was now completely theirs, she felt now they could finally stop struggling, and could now look forward to an easier financial life.
Unfortunately, the relief was short lived, as someone gently explained to her that the payments they’d completed paying were just for the interest owed on the loan. Now the payments made would be paying for the house itself.
The prospect of more years of payments, stretching out into a distant future, snatched her financial freedom back, threw it on the ground, and danced all over it.
In all, it would take them well over twenty years to finally pay the mortgage off, well into the 1980’s which, back in the early 1960’s, was a vision so far into the future, it was akin to living in the space age, wearing silver suits and everyone living in second homes on the moon.
So much history had happened in that same period of time immediately before, starting with the beginning of the second World War, the Blitz, the rationing, the upheaval of getting all the children out of the cities and into the countryside (my Mum being one of them), the end of the War, the mess and deprivation left behind, the slow recovery, the beginning of the 1950’s, the death of the King, the Coronation of the Queen, Television, Elvis, Rock ‘n’ Roll, a new President in the United States, plus many other moments in their recent history so far. To have to live through such an expanse of time still paying off their home must have felt unbearable.
But they worked at it, and renovated the house themselves. Going from using crates as tables to eat dinner from, to slowly acquiring a proper table and chairs, and quietly turning the rest of the house into a home.
It would be another couple of years…
…after they’d first moved in, before my mum became pregnant with her first child.
Not much further along, my Dad, not a religious man by any means, went and quietly sat alone in the local church and prayed.
I know this, because, many years later, he came out with it one pleasant warm morning while I was sitting reading a biography about JFK (‘An Unfinished Life – John F. Kennedy – 1917-1963’ by Robert Dallek) in the back garden.
I was up to the chapter detailing the ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion, and the nuclear escalation it generated between the U.S. and Russia which became the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Usually my dad would come over, ask how I was, and then quietly go off and potter about with something to do with his shed.
This time though, he sat down and didn’t say anything for a short time. So, I carried on reading.
And then, out of nowhere, he just came out with “that’s the only time I ever went to church and prayed…”.
I stopped reading my book..
He never spoke like this. Ever.
Trying now to recall how the conversation continued from there is difficult for me. But, the outline was that my dad, struggling with a home to keep up with, an expectant wife to support, was genuinely scared to lose it all for the sake of the superpowers of the world vaporizing everything into oblivion.
(Ever seen the B.B.C. film ‘Threads’? Well, that’s where my Dad’s head was at that point. If you ever get the chance to watch it, I advise you to do so. It’s very good).
The whole global situation going on…
…four and a half thousand miles away in Cuba, where a blockade by the U.S. Navy was positioning near the Caribbean. Attempting to stop Russian ships from delivering more nuclear warheads into the small communist island, the crisis was deepening by the day, if not by the hour.
The Soviet’s argument, quite justifiably, was that their nuclear warheads being positioned in Cuba, were as much of a threat as the U.S. nuclear artillery which was already encapsulated in Turkey and Italy, directly next to the Russian borders.
By the 22nd of October 1962, President John F. Kennedy spoke to the deeply concerned U.S. via a televised address from the White House, which was then relayed around the world, that the U.S. Navy were placing any Soviet ships bound for Cuba, with offensive weapons, under quarantine.
The action, and speech which went with it, infuriated the Russian Leader Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, but was described many years later, by J.F.K.’s speech writer as “Kennedy’s most important speech historically, in terms of its impact on our planet”.
As the crisis escalated further during that week, the tension around the world hit fever pitch, which worsened still further until the 27th of October. A day, the White House would come to describe as ‘Black Saturday’ when the world held its breath.
Due to the U.S. Navy dropping depth charges onto an armed B-59 nuclear submarine, of which the occupants inside assumed, meant that war had already started, and began the necessary protocols to retaliate, which was only averted due to a decision from the Soviet submarine’s flotilla commander, who by pure luck was also on board the submarine. Giving the situation careful consideration, and ultimately holding off the command to fire a nuclear torpedo unless further developments occurred.
Meanwhile, the U.S. again took an unauthorized, (apparently) accidental flight over Soviet Cuban airspace which resulted in the scrambling of several MiG fighters in defense, which in turn pushed the U.S. to launch F-102 fighters over the Bering Sea, armed with nuclear air to air missiles just a few miles from Northern Russia itself.
It was probably at this time that my Dad entered that church and prayed.
If what was relayed to President Kennedy the previous year in 1961, and which leader Khrushchev was probably advised by his military associates also, were to be believed. If that first shot indeed had been fired that day, then the nuclear war which would have followed it, would have wiped out most of the U.S., the U.S.S.R., Europe, and China.
With my Dad’s expectant family so close to London, and between the two busiest airports in the U.K. Heathrow and Gatwick, the only possible hope left in his head was to seek higher guidance from the ethereal worlds, spirits, universe, any God you care to worship, etc. So, with hope seeming to be running out, he did the only thing he could think of. He went to church.
The thing that struck me was,..
…he showed a vulnerability, that day he told me, that I would have never suspected from him growing up. He never showed his feelings.
So I feel immensely lucky, that he revealed a hidden side to his often guarded exterior.
As history shows, the end of the world was averted, and so life for my Dad went back to normal.
I’m sure that he, along with most who’d been affected by the unfolding drama, took on a new aspect in life after that.
For a generation, the saying “Cheer up, it’s not the end of the world” may have left them with a slight edge to it. For they were the one’s who almost witnessed with helplessness, the real thing unfolding before them.
In the years after that dark week in October 1962, I hope the distress didn’t lay within him, that at any given moment the whole world as he knew it could be blown away.
If it did, he hid it well, which isn’t a good thing.
As the Autumn of 1962 gave way to one of the harshest winters on record,..
…so it was time for my mum to be carted off in a chained wheeled ambulance, at the age of 24 years, to the maternity ward.
Having no telephone in the home at this time, it meant that my dad would have to run next door to call for an ambulance, and soon off she was whisked to give birth to my eldest sister during the festive week, as the biggest snowfall that swept through the U.K. for some years, kept blowing a blizzard through to the end of 1962 into 63.
The song which hit No.1 on that very day she was born was Elvis Presley’s ‘Return to Sender’.
Further down the very same U.K. Singles Chart,..
…four Liverpudlian lads had climbed back up to revisit their highest debut peak position of No.17, with their first single ‘Love Me Do’.
Another 3 years and 8 months…
…would elapse in our family before sister number 2 arrived, at a home birth, during early August 1965.
The song at No.1 that occupied the U.K. Singles Chart that week was ‘Help!’. Funnily enough by the same group who’d had their first minor hit when her big sister was entering the world.
Help! was most probably what my poor mother was screaming at that point, as baby daughter number 2 ended up being the biggest she delivered. Ironic really, as my 2nd sis’ ended up being the shortest out of all of us.
Exactly four years later,to the day,..
…on my 2nd sister’s fourth birthday, the forecast was a beautiful warm sunny day.
How do I know this? And, why do I bring this up?
Well, it just so happened to be the same day, that the same group of four musicians (or as one particular photographer called them, “four strangers”) I mentioned earlier, and who had been at No.1 on my 2nd sister’s birthday, walked across a zebra crossing, just over an hours drive away, at St.Johns Wood, Westminster, London. Where someone took a photograph, and put it on an album cover.
Meanwhile back at home,..
…with this young family in Hersham, things would stay the same for another few years.
A suburban family, living out the rest of the 60’s in a nice quiet area about 10 miles from the edge of the outskirts of London.
Enough time for 2 sisters to grow up together and wish they had a real dolly to play with.
My Grandad (on my mother’s side) was a bit apprehensive…
…about his middle daughter having another child. Thinking her to be too old now, as there had already been one upset attempting to grow a third child, and now it could be too much of a risk, although at the time she would have been 32 (and 33 by the end of a pregnancy).
My Mum convinced him round to the idea, especially with the news that, if what the doctor had predicted was correct, my Mum’s new baby would be due to be born on her Mum’s birthday. The 16th of February.
My Nan had died several years previously,..
…and for a small lady, had left a massive void in my Mum’s side of the family back in 1966. And ever since she’d gone from my Grandad’s life, he’d missed her every single day.
But he was so certain, that he would soon follow her (due to a false reading from a psychic they’d both once visited, who’d struck lucky due to the fact that half her prediction, that his wife would pass at a certain time (which my Nan did), followed not long after by himself (which obviously hadn’t come true yet), had proved her correct so far).
To steal a line from Bruce Springsteen, “But come the wee wee hours, well maybe baby, the gypsy lied”.
My Grandad would have to eventually wait to meet his long lost wife again.
And wait he did. Sitting in a chair in his house most of the time. Just sitting, smoking his roll-ups, for 19 long years, before he would be with his beloved wife once more.
But for now, just 5 years after her passing, with news of my Mum and Dad’s new expectant arrival, it would be something positive my Grandad could look forward to.
Well, after all the hype…
…my mum’s pregnancy carried to full term, and kept on going.
The 16th of February came and went, and still no signs of my appearance.
Eventually, I ended up arriving 4 days late.
Instead of it being Wednesday, I emerged into the world around 5 minutes to 6 o’clock on the evening of Sunday 20th February 1972, at St Peters Hospital, Chertsey, Surrey. And thank the universe I was there at the hospital, as due to the events which happened next, would become the most stressful time of not only my Mother’s life, but my own too.
At the moment I came along, my poor mother never actually got the chance to hold me. In fact, after all her hard work, she didn’t even see me on the day she bore me at all.
You see, although I’d decided that my time had arrived,..
…the umbilical cord apparently had other ideas, and wrapped itself around my neck until I literally turned blue. Attempting, and almost succeeding, to end my existence barely out of the womb.
The witnessing of my life being squeezed out of me, at the very instant I should have been taking my first breath, must have been the most tense moment for all who were desperately trying to save me.
As soon as all involved finally untangled me, I was then rushed off to get further assistance somewhere else in the hospital, while my exhausted, panicking Mum had to just lay there, not knowing if the delivery had even been a success.
From that point, the procedures at the hospital for a probable stillbirth situation, must have taken over. Not giving the chance for my mother to properly bond with her newborn either. A process which probably seemed necessary, in the predicament that they were facing, that there was a probability that my mother could have to go home broken and empty of another life lost, which she’d carried for over nine months.
It was only after inquiring with one of the young nurses, most probably after news that although suffering from strangulation, I was clinging to life, that Mum found out she’d had a baby boy.
After a sleepless night,..
…without me there, Mum was eventually led to the crèche where she finally met me and found that I wasn’t hard to spot out of all the other babies in the room.
I was the one with a head so out of proportion to the rest of my body, that it was about twice the size it was meant to be.
With a face so puffed up and swollen, it looked like I had gone the distance with a heavyweight boxer.
But I was breathing.
One night over, and I’d already been through the biggest battle of my little life.
Fortunately, over the next few days, my big head deflated back to its healthy size…
…but not without leaving a couple of souvenirs.
Physically, the incident left me with firstly, a lazy left eyelid. The second was the same eye had a little bit of brown in there to spoil what would have been 2 completely blue eyes. I’m guessing (in my non-medically educated head) probably from a blood hemorrhage leaking into it or something. I don’t know.
These seemed the only small but permanent after effects to all the drama that had taken place in my first few seconds, minutes and hours.
There would also be one further gift that I’d been given. Something that would go unnoticed by me, and everyone else, for the first fifty years of my life, but that I would eventually discover and accept forever more.
A gift which, had no connection with my birth trauma, but which I believe was passed down from my Dad. Just as he’d had it passed to him by his own father, in my hind-sighted opinion.
Anyway, that’s a story for another time. For now, at the moment of my botched entrance, all I had to do was recover and breathe.
I’m quite glad that my memory doesn’t go back to that moment.
Can you imagine. It must be a hellish time for any baby to be born, especially for the poor mother, let alone the baby, and then with all that extra stress going on.
And what’s the best way I could describe it from the point of view of the baby?
I can only think of it as being so comfortable, floating in a small, soft warm cosy chamber with the lights out. Nice and quiet apart from a few muffled sounds which are at a safe distance, until a force pushes you head first (hopefully) out into a blinding light with nothing to hold on to and a group of strange noisy beings looking on.
I’m sure those first cries are really saying ”Put me back RIGHT NOW”!
Well.. they probably would have been with me, if I wasn’t being strangled by the very thing that had fed me. But of course it’s far too late for that now.
Better get used to it mister. There’s no way back. You’re out.
Welcome to your new world.
So let me turn the subject a little, lighten the story a bit, and talk about music for a moment.
Now, I may have been 4 days late but…
…it was impeccable timing in a music chart type of way, as back then, a Sunday evening meant the broadcast of the U.K. music chart at 6pm (although this was from sales counted from the previous weekend, I’ll explain all that somewhere else in my next post). Not that my mother exactly had this at the top of her agenda at this point. Her mind was slightly preoccupied with other matters at the time.
But, up and down the country, people would have been tuning in at that moment to listen to the most up to date significant songs of the time.
So, if my research is correct, I think it was the U.K. Top 20 which was being broadcast on the radio, and by radio, I mean B.B.C. Radio 1, a radio station that had only been in existence for less than 5 years at this point from the British Broadcasting Cooperation.
The U.K. Official Chart itself has always been bigger than that.
For instance, the radio rundown only gives some of the picture. They never play all the songs (which are heavily edited), and it’s there purely as an entertainment programme.
The present Official U.K. Singles Chart takes in 100 entries. Although, when I came along, the Chart was only publicly compiled to half that size.
There’s even less attention paid to the Official U.K. Albums Chart on the radio.
At the moment, during the U.K. Top 40 Singles run down, called ‘The Official Chart On Radio 1 with Jack Saunders’ (with the clever multi-meaningful tagline “The Only Chart That Counts” – get it?), they only mention the Top 5 albums which are released simultaneously with the singles. The other 95% doesn’t even get a mention!
Well I think that needed to change, and I’ll come back to that intriguing comment in a moment.
So anyway, going musically into, and through, my first year…
…what do I know about music at this stage of my little life.
Well I’ve got 2 older sisters at this point. One of them (the eldest) listens to a lot of music. She turned 9 less than a couple of months ago.
As does my mother listen to music, when she’s got the radio on in the kitchen, which during the day is left on most of the time.
I probably also hear things on the TV in the living room as well, when there is actually something on, apart from a test card, or a hypnotizing pattern set to library music.
For the first few years of my life, TV scheduling was kept to the evenings, with maybe an hour during the early afternoon for children’s programmes.
Now, I suppose…
…I could have heard songs via osmosis or something, but when I hear them again now there is something that I get from somewhere. Could’ve been years later on the radio I suppose, but they were released in this year.
Sooo, for this and probably the next year too, I’m taking it that they went in there somehow when I was a baby in that first year.
It’s a selection which I remember more than any of the other songs which would have been playing constantly.
In fact, a better way to describe them would be ‘feels’.
Now, you must understand that musical tastes, and what people were buying and listening to, was a lot different than it is today, so this is where the Chart rundown comes in.
Going back to my comment…
…and I suppose for the first time in as much entirety as I can get it at this time, I’m going to run down the Official Singles Chart compiled from that fateful Sunday, the 20th February 1972. All the way from No.50 down to…No.1.
The songs will be featured to listen to for each position (and that includes the B-sides as well you lucky lot).
Then, once I’ve done that, I’m going to go through the album chart as well, doing the exact same thing, featuring the album compiled in the same way it was released back then, for you to listen to.
Now the keen reader may have observed…
…that I say “in as much entirety as I can”.
The reason is that, with my searching, I can’t find every piece on the chart – but I’ve done my best.
I’ll keep trying to plug the holes as the journey progresses.
And after the charts, I’ll showcase the songs I feel went into my tiny ear holes during that first year, while I started growing into my new life.
Anyway, back to real life…
Soon, it was time for me and my Mum to leave the hospital together.
Mum could finally relax back at the house, and for me to meet the rest of my family at home.
Once everyone had recovered and adjusted to a new chapter, with a new addition to the family, it would be time for me to also be introduced to some of the extended members close by.
Most would come over themselves and visit me at home. However, there was one which my parents made a special trip for, quite early in my life.
My Dad’s Dad had suffered a debilitating stroke, which had left him bedridden.
I was therefore carried over to my Nana and Grandad’s home to meet him, and was laid on the bed next to him so he could meet me.
It was to be the first and last time I was ever there and to be with him.
On Easter Sunday,..
…the 2nd of April 1972. Exactly six weeks after I’d struggled into this world, my paternal Grandad’s soul peacefully slipped away.
For one fleeting, but immensely important moment, my father had given his father the gift of seeing his Grandson. Three generations. Grandad, Dad, and me.
No photos were taken of the moment I met my Grandad for the one and only time in either of our lives, but my parents were there, and I cherish the memory of that moment that they passed on to me.
Every year since my Grandad passed,..
…my father would sit quietly and miss his Dad all over again. It didn’t matter that Easter Sunday fell on a different day each year. It would be the ritual of the Easter weekend which would connect him to that somber moment of remembrance, to a father he still longed for.
In a way, a prophetic twist of fate, the No.1 single, which was beginning to spend its final week at the top of the charts that day was Nilsson’s version of “Without You”.
As the year grew warmer, and myself having survived those first few hours,..
…and recovered in the days and weeks immediately after, I was then faced with a new peril, this time from an uncontrollable double danger.
Sisters.
Probably for the first 6 months of my life, while recuperating and adjusting to my new environment, I had it relatively easy.
The second 6 months, probably not so much.
So, most of the time I could play and sleep and do all the other cute baby things that babies do in the comfort and safety of the home.
Not so, once the schools had broken up, and all the kids were let loose on the world by August.
Do you remember me saying the house had a recreation ground right outside?
Well, by the summer holidays that place was indeed a place to play. However, I’d find myself becoming the plaything.
That summer was when I ran the risk of being paraded round the Rec outside our back gate by two big sisters, who replaced whatever teddy, dolly or soft toy they’d used to put in their toy pushchair up to that point, with me, and then loved taking me into the Rec, and showing me off to all their friends living nearby, proudly telling them (and I have been told this is fact from said sisters), that although their friends had life-like dollies, theirs (ahem) had a “real one”.
My big sis should know, as I apparently got her in the eye, proving it was in perfect firing order, one nappy changing session while she looked on.
Happy days.
Adrian – Wednesday, the 1st of March, 2023
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