Women's Lib

Something reminded me the other day about the Women's Liberation Movement (I think it was a newspaper article about how today's young women are indifferent to feminism, finding it irrelevant). Looking back I see it as something that was a fashion, something you did, because everyone else did. I know that I was very enthusiastic , buying The Female Eunuch and marvelling at it. I also read Kate Millett and some others whose names I can't quite remember at the moment, though I'm sure I'd recognise them if someone reminded me. Oh, I know - Jill Tweedie in the Guardian and of course pioneers like Mary Stott.

Anyway, I started to trawl my memory - I went along to weekly meetings of the local Women's Lib group with a couple of friends, one of which was a New Zealander, Heather, who arrived on our doorstep at the squat in Oxford that myself and my boyfriend had just moved into. She'd been looking for somewhere to live and someone had told her. She was, at the time, a radical feminist, dressed glamorously in an ankle-length ex-Nazi leather coat she'd picked up in an Amsterdam flea-market. She was as thin as a rake and stood on our doorstep, smoking a roll-up. 'Hi - I'm Heather', were her first words, in the broadest Kiwi accent. I'd never met anyone like her before. and her direct, down-to-earth Antipodean good sense soon sorted our flaccid hippy haven.
She introduced me to the burgeoning feminist movement and, along with a few others, went along with Heather to the early meeitings of the local Women's Liberation group. It was in a small church hall type of place and we all sat round in a circle and talked, and sometimes shouted. Our boyfriends would come along with us and sit in the garden of a nearby pub waiting for us, with an air of amused tolerance. Anyway, I don't remember much of what we discussed, except one occasion when someone brought along a film of miners' wives, and the support systems they'd created to help their husbands and their communities during the recent miners' strike (this was around 1973-4, so we were right in the middle of the ill-fated Heath government). This film caused a right storm - I think the woman who'd brought it along had intended to show us that working-class women were as capable of organisation as us middle-class types, but someone got up and angrily asked the group why we sitting watching stuff about a load of housewives, who, of course, were slaves to servility. There was a huge row about the direction feminism should go in - anywa, it was all pretty unedifying, and as someone, probably the only person in the room apart from Heather, also from a humble background, who had some personal experience of working-class life. I don't remember any other meetings, and we soon lost interest in going, though not before we'd participated in an event that still brings me out in a cold sweat every time I think about it.
The group had heard that the students at St Catherine's College, Oxford had hired a stripper to 'perform' in their Junior Common Room (JCR), so it was decided that we'd infiltrate the event and disrupt it. Although the college was all-male in those days, the students had been allowed to bring women to this event so it was pretty easy to get in and sit there unnoticed. What transpired was truly scary - the stripper got going and this was the cue for us to stand up and start shouting things like 'this degrades women' and chanting. There were quite a few of us, but the room was crowded and there were a hell of a lot of students. They went ballistic and chased us out - I don't know what happened because I fled into the nearest ladies' loo and cowered until the mayhem died down and I could slink out unnoticed. The noise was terrific and what was most scary was the bile and viciousness that emanated from the thwarted crowd. I suppose they'd worked themselves up into a state of high sexual anticipation and excitement, and we'd thwarted them. Anyway, I was terrified, not only of the students, but of being found out by my braver colleagues and labelled a coward, which of course I was. The whole episode told me that political activism was not for me and I went on to have babies and acquire the status of the dreaded housewife.
I wonder what happened to everyone there? I know that one of the group went on to marry a vicar and become a well-known writer, and Heather went on to forge a great career at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation after many ups and downs, becoming an Australian in the process. She's stayed a good friend and we've kept in close touch, but I sometimes think about all those other young feminists and wonder where they are....

Woollies

The news of the demise of Woolworths brought back many memories for me. I haven't set foot in Woollies for years so it was hardly part of my emotional landscape, but it provided me with my earliest work experience, so I have some long-ago, fond memories of the place.
I was 14, and in those days you could work legally for 2 hours a dayso I did Friday evenings. It was a small branch in a typical 60s shopping precinct and opened until 7pm on Fridays only in those far-off days before extended opening. Even that was considered pretty revolutionary.
The staff consisted of a handful of embittered regulars and the rest were schoolgirls. We had few customers, and our most frequent visitors were a gang of Rockers (we're talking about the mid-60s, so there were still Mods and Rockers, in the days before there were hippies) who would loaf around, shoplift and drop off stink bombs.
My memories are pretty fragmentary, but I seem to have spent most of my time there working on the biscuit counter, where we had those old-fashioned tins ranged in front of us, and we'd sell them loose. And of course there were the famous tins of broken biscuits. It seems unimaginable now, but people used to buy them! Why can't we be as frugal nowadays? I suppose we may have to be in the coming months as the credit crunch starts to bite, but Woollies will be long gone.
After we'd finished work, we used to go over to Lewis Separates which stayed open a bit later, and spend all our wages on clothes. We were Mods, of course, or tried to be - anyway, clothes, and music (increasingly) were all we thought about (boys weren't quite so important). Looking good, and knowing the latest dance steps were what was really important. I do remember vividly the exhilarating feeling of having my own money after years of a few coins pocket money and the unconfined joy of spending it on whatever I wanted - bliss! I felt I had the world at my feet.
So, while I can't feel much emotion at Woollies demise, I have fond memories, and I'm sure I'm not the only one as not many places were willing to employ girls as young as us. I know my brother found it much easier to work, and he seemed to have loads of jobs.
Anyway, once I was 15 I graduated to working all day Saturday, but that didn't last long. I got a much-coveted job usheretting at the Oxford Playhouse, but that's another story.....

stationary

I was thinking about stationary the other day as I was writing my diary. My diary's a beautifully designed moleskin-bound thing from Paperchase, with an elastic bookmark. It's heavy, luxurious, and perfectly-formed. I'm about to start on my second one - though I've been writing a diary for a few years using other designs, I finally discovered these lovely objects in the Paperchase concession in Borders.

It got me thinking, and reminiscing about stationary. Now, I'm one of those people who love stationary, who have a bit of a fetish about it. I know that it's a syndrome as I remember reading an article about stationary-addiction, so I know I'm not alone. In fact there was an article in The Times the other day about a love, no, need for lovely leather-bound diaries in today's era of email and text.
Anyway, stationary-addiction can be defined, if such a thing can be defined, as a love of paper, pens, diaries, and all ancillary items. Computer stuff does not count. But where does this love of everything to do with writing come from?

I can only speak for myself, but I can trace it right back to childhood. I would go into town with my parents, and rather than drag me round Sainsbury's or the Co-Op, they would leave me in a wonderful emporium which I don't think had changed since the Edwardian era, called something like Oxford Educational Bookshop. At least I think it was called that but I may be wrong, but it was something like that. It was a two-story emporium - dark and overflowing with stationary stuff. The ground floor was relatively uninteresting, full of rubbers and pencils, but upstairs was where the action was. Or rather, inaction. It was usually empty of people, apart from me and the occasional browser, but it was full of piles of paper, exercise books - stationary. I would wander its aisles, such as they were, fingering the stuff, looking at it, stroking it, reading it, and, I guess, fetishizing it. I would spend hours there. And I could. No-one ever challenged or questioned my right to be there, in fact I don't remember the presence of any staff.
The funny thing is, when my daughter left school at 18, and decided that she wanted to work for a year to save up enough money to go to Australia for a year, she ended up working in - guess what? A stationary shop! And it was a wonderfully old-fashioned place that hadn't changed in decades. Not quite the Edwardian emporium of my memory but a 1970s-type of place with absolutely no 80s ambience at all. Anyway she spent a very happy year there, and still returns every now and again to see the staff. And it still hasn't changed. Though whether it'll survive the economic storm that's coming remains to be seen.
Anyway, one thing I've found in adulthood is that I'm definitely not alone - in fact I imagine that it may become more prevalent as stationary becomes a bit of an endangered species. Nothing can possibly replace the joy of pen on paper, especially moleskin-bound paper. And of course, the pen has to be a green Pentel rollerball pen with black ink. I've just discovered the WH Smith website so have been able to buy a big job lot of them. It's one of my biggest secret terrors that they'll be discontinued. Along with black notebooks!

Dylan again

I watched my videos of the BBC's collection of programmes they screened a few years ago the other day (I think they're from about 2005). I watched them when they were first shown, and I taped them all as I knew I'd want to see them again. The first was Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home which one of my sons has on DVD and I'd borrowed it from him a few months ago. but I couldn't resist seeing it yet again for the third time.

Here is an artist at the height of his powers, but who's clearly realised that everything's beginning to get out of control. I was struck this time by how acutely intelligent and perceptive Dylan is during this period (early-mid-60s). It's as if he has a kind of X-Ray vision and sees stuff no-one else can. He's a sponge, and soaks up everything that's going on around him. No Direction Home is interspersed with snippets of recent interviews with him and he's at great pains to tell us, as he has done throughout his life that he has no interest in politics or attitudes, or opinions. This was horribly at odds with 60s attitudes, and got him into much hot water as he repeatedly came up against people who wanted him to be their spokesman and a mouthpiece.
Dave van Ronk says in No Direction that he somehow tapped into the collective unconscious of the early 60s and could see that there was a fundamental sea-change going on (as evidenced by his famous 'something is happening and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?'). He was a cultural magpie, and his endlessly fertile brain soaked up everything around him like a sponge. This, together with his fascinatiopn with words, and their power, enabled him to produce epics like Hard Rain in which vast spaces and distances open up - giving us new visions with a myhtic, epic quality that have never been surpassed.
Tambourine Man was a kind of catalyst (it certainly was for me). Its wild, poetry took off into the stratosphere, taking us young folks who were ready and waiting with it, giving us a feeling that there wasn't anything that we weren't capable of. His quicksilver mind always outwitted the clumsy preconceptions of his interviewers, who were left trailing in his wake of his fierce intelligence.
There's wonderful footage of his performance at Newport in 1965 with the Paul Butterfield Band. The coruscating guitar of Mike Bloomfield begins Maggie's Farm, and in a way, it's even more cataclysmic than his later stuff with the Band. Boos and jeers ring out, and people who were there queue up to try and distance themselves from the hatred and rancour that greeted him. Few are prepared to admit now how much they loathed it all.
I remember clearly hearing Like a Rolling Stone for the first time and feel privileged to have been able to do so. It was on Radio Luxembourg, with its dodgy reception and Horace Batchelor
ads. What a time that was! To me, it remains his greatest period - Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde. His motorcycle accident happened soon after, but he was still able to produce the magisterial John Wesley Harding. Then something happened - and out came the dismal Nashville Skyline and although I dutifully bought it, Dylan was never the same for me.
I've just started reading Greil Marcus' Invisible Republic, about the Basement Tapes, so perhaps that'll shed some light. I'll post more when I've finished.
Anyway, No Direction is a wonderful picture of an artist at the height of his powers and Dylan has atremendous chronicler of his life in Scorsese. More please!

Accident

I watched Accident the other day - a British film directed by Joseph Losey and released in 1967 and now vanished into the cinematic ether. I'd videotaped it years ago but had never watched it, so was catching up.
I remember going to see it when it was first released (I used to see practically everything in those days) but hadn't seen it since, so it was an intriguing experience, rather like revisiting the scenes of one's childhood. I can't remember what certificate it was, but I obviously managed to get in without any problems if it was an X. I do remember that it was a pretty notorious film at the time, with its sex scenes, and 'permissive' (in the parlance of the time) attitudes, and of course it featured Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker, both 'A' list British actors who were attempting to reinvent themselves after a decade or so making endless war movies, and in Bogarde's case, Fifties froth such as Doctor in the House. Part of this process involved working for Losey, for whom both he and Baker had already worked. Losey, an American, was a director of some distinction, who had come to Britain after being blacklisted by Joseph McCarthy, and, after starting with potboilers, proceeded to make films which became increasingly more complex and intriguing as the British Sixties film boom took hold.
The 60s saw the beginnings of the sexual revolution, which was depicted in films as consisting of predatory men and submissive and available women. Accident was no exception, though it did take a more nuanced view, showing Bogarde as tormented and confused by women, and the Baker character as opportunistic and callous.
Seeing the film now was a strange experience. I can't remember what I thought of it in the 60s, but this time I found it brought up a great many memories. I think it's the Oxford setting that did it - it caught the atmosphere of the time perfectly. Claustrophobic, with beautiful women, pretending to be enigmatic by whom one always felt threatened. It somehow captured the feeling of the period - I found myself remembering long-forgotten parties in sprawling suburban houses I'd never been to on the edge of Oxford. We'd hear there was something going on - that someone's parents were away, we'd all pile in someone's Morris Minor and rush off to God knows where for a party which almost invariably turned out to be a disappointment.
I suppose that's what adolescence is all about - excitement, uncertainty and let-down. You thrive on the rush, the buzz and it doesn't matter really about the outcome, though occasionly you'd get lucky, and meet someone, or actually have a good time.
Anyway, it really is a peculiar little film. It was obviously made pretty cheaply, but Losey makes the most of what he's got. There are several long takes of Bogarde's country house scattered throughout the film, and there's a rather unsettling lack of music, I suppose the cinemtic equivalent of Pinter's famous silences.
An interesting experience. People get all nostalgic about the 60s, but not me. I prefer the 70s, that supposedly God-forsaken decade. I was older, happier, wiser - and the music was better!

The Forsyte Saga

A friend has just lent me the boxed set of videos of the original 1967 BBC serialisation of the Forsyte Saga, and I've found myself completely hooked. Why? It's ancient telly, black and white, videotaped in cramped BBC studios. The hairstyles and costumes are antideluvian; a lot of work's gone into the costumes and set dressing, and I know that at the time it was considered an expensive production, but, by today's standards, the whole thing looks rickety and a bit makeshift. And then, there's the mid-60s hair and make-up, with the women looking like Chelsea dolly-birds in Victorian costume. Nearly everyone is clearly wearing an alarming wig - hairsprayed to death.
The concept of period authenticity was in its infancy in the mid-60s, but the Edwardian period was still a living memory to many, and there was an authenticity about the tone which seems remarkable these days. The actors knew how to speak Galsworthy's dialogue convincingly, which they don't today, so we now get lumbered with Edwardians speaking Estuary English in too may production. So the production may look pretty flakey, but it sounds brilliant, like a window on a lost world.
Anyway, I have to declare an interest - a few years ago I researched the serial as part of an academic thesis, so I know an awful lot about it, though I could only manage to get a video with the first 4 episodes so this is the first time I've been able to watch all 26 episodes.
I do remember watching it when it was first broadcast, as I was still a young teenager who was usually in on Sunday nights. I invariably had homework, which I always left until the last minute, and ended up doing it late on Sunday night, so watching The Forsyte Saga, in those long-ago pre-video days, was probably a good excuse for putting it off.
In spite of the clunkiness, then, it's compulsive viewing. The whole thing is basically a high-class soap opera, and in those days there wasn't any such thing so the novelty value was enormous. Each episode ended on a cliffhanger and the serial introduced compulsive viewing to the bulk of TV viewers. Soaps barely existed - Coronation Street and Z Cars had begun but this was different. Of course the original novel was a major blockbuster when it was published and there must have been many people still alive in 1967 who could remember its publication and knew the book well.
It was an astonishing world-wide success. I've seen documentation stored in the wonderful BBC Written Archive Centre which tell of it's extraordinary impact in, for example, both the US and Soviet Russia. Public events were postponed all over the world so that people could watch it, and audiences all over the world were enthralled.
It resurrected Kenneth More's career, which had slid downhill badly after his affair with Angela Douglas, many years younger, became public. His experience and charisma reminded audiences why he had been so popular and his presence was crucial to the success of the production. But it was Eric Porter's performance as Soames and Susan Hampshire as Fleur which captivated audiences.
Anyway, it still stands up, whereas the recent lavish ITV production a few years ago has sunk without trace. The 1967 production is now available on DVD and the reviews from punters on Amazon testify to its enduring quality. Old telly has become a cottage industry and I found a leaflet insert in my latest Radio Times which advertised tons of old series which can now be acquired in box sets. The old Forsyte Saga was listed, but not the new one - says it all....

No Direction Home

I saw Martin Scorsese's film when it was originally screened on TV a while ago, but when it was recently released on DVD, one of my sons bought a copy, and he's lent it to me. I watched both the original film, and the extras and special features on Disc 2 - many of these I hadn't seen before. It included some complete performances, from 1964 to 1966 - early TV appearances in his earnest protest-singing days, through to 1966, when he was in full, semi-deranged 'Judas' mode.
As I've said before, I know practically every note of his music in this period, right up to Nashville Skyline, after which he began to lose me. It's hardwired into my DNA, but seeing all this footage brought home to me for the first time his extraordinary diction. Every word can be clearly heard, even in the middle of his drug-fuelled, Blonde on Blonde period. This is crucial, as his words are central to what he's all about. Another thing; hearing so much Dylan at one sitting, one is reminded that he really is like Shakespeare. So many lines of his lyrics have practically passed into the language, so that you almost forget he was responsible for them.
The early footage, from '61-'62 reminds us how young he was - 20-21 when he started out, yet he was already becoming well-known enough for his performances to be filmed.
The film traces his development from his earliest years in Hibbing, Minnesota, ending abruptly with his motporcycle crash in 1966. after which he disappeared from view for 3 years, interspersed with clips from a recent interview with Dylan, in which he talks openly about his life. This is often revelatory, as he's never been one for interviews or profiles and he's never bared his soul in public to anyone before, as far as I can remember - certainly not about his background or influences. He's a highly unusual interviewee - I read the first volume of his autobiography, Chronicles, recently, and felt as if reading it was like hearing him talk; random, stream-of-consciousness stuff, overlaid with a sharp, spiky intelligence. He really does talk like that. Yet he seems a little uncomfortable; he's a bit reticent and unpractised - he's not a media-created figure, pouring out his emotions, yet on another level he's extraordibarily eloquent; it's like hearing someone speak as if they're scripted by Cormac McCarthy.
He seems to have profoundly ambivalent feelings about his upbringing in Hibbing. In the '60s he frequently claimed that he grew up somewhere more glamorous - a clip from an early interview is played in the film in which he admits to having been born in Duluth, Minnesota, but goes on to state that he grew up in Mexico. The interviewer obviously believed him, as everyone did in those days.
What's clear is that the young Dylan was a sponge; soaking up everything around him. There was little stimulus in his environment, but he made the most of it. His recollection of the carnival that used to come to town - a strange relic of pioneer days that survived into post-war society before TV took hold is vivid, and sharply detailed, and makes sense of the scene in I'm Not There in which Richard Gere encounters a travelling carnival - the characters appear as if in a dream; like a childhood memory, and mirror those recalled by Dylan.
He remembers feeling completely disconnected from his surroundings from an early age, yet he seems to have been a normal teenager, listening to the radio, and forming a band, yet his experience, as he remembers it, is of feeling as if he belonged somewhere else, like a changeling, adopted by his parents, and belonging elsewhere; feelings which must have fuelled all those invented childhoods. His self-invention is very much a part of his career trajectory - he's always been something of a shapeshifter. I remember when I saw him at the famous Isle of Wight festival in 1969; his first appearance since his motorbike crash. I almost couldn't quite believe it was him; he wore a white suit, had a skimpy beard, and had obviously put on quite a bit of weight. My picture of him up until then was that of the skinny, nervy sunglassed fugure memorialised by Cate Blanchett. Throughout his career he's perpetually reinvented himself - he's now a deejay, a very good one, but he's been all sorts of people, which is why I'm Not There works so well.
No Direction Home ends in 1966, and its centrepiece is the famous British tour in which he played with The Band, triggering the infamous 'Judas' at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. I acquired a bootleg LP of that tour in the early '70s, so was familiar with the music and atmosphere. The concert footage was superb, with excellent sound quality - it must have been remastered as sound systems then were notoriously bad. Seeing the 'Judas' footage again brought home the crushing failure to portray this sequence adequately in I'm Not There. The blistering music, Dylan's ferocious energy, with the Band's thunderous accompaniment - none of this was even remotely suggested in the film. Fascinating though Blanchett's performance was, I now feel that it didn't come near to the reality of the wasted, yet coruscating figure he'd become by 1966. Dylan performed as if possessed - astonishing. I still admire Haynes' film, but now feel that the Blanchett sequence was, in some ways, the weakest - her portrayal, precise and acute though it was, merely scraped the surface.
Anyway - a fantastic achievement from Scorsese - they were extraordinary times. The world hadn't seen anything like Dylan before and such is the nature of fame now, we won't see anything like him again. This film brought home for me the extent to which he, and his music, are deeply embedded in US culture and history - a giant of the twentieth century.

Ballet Shoes

I watched BBC's Ballet Shoes on Boxing Day. I had to - Ballet Shoes was a major part of my childhood, as I suspect it was for many girls growing up in the 50s and early 60s. The cast looked good, with reliable performers such as Victoria Wood, Emilia Fox, Harriet Walter, the peerless Eileen Atkins, and the impressive and highly promising Marc Warren.
None of them disappointed, and the young actresses who played the Fossil girls were well-directed. The costumes and scenery were meticulously realised, and the accents were better than usual. The older generation, of course, were fine, but Fox and Warren did very well indeed, and the girls who played the Fossil sisters did as well as could have been expected.
My main gripe, though was the changes to the story. I realise that some had to be made, but these were tiresome. Warren played Mr Smith, a single gentlemen lodger who runs a garage - in the book, Mr and Mrs Smith are a couple. This allowed the creation of a spurious love interest for Sylvia, the girls' guardian, and we had to have a ridiculous wedding scene at the end. In the book Sylvia remains single, accompanying Pauline to Hollywood, but this was clearly unacceptable for TV controllers. Sigh......
I got my Puffin edition of the book out from my shelf of children's books (I never throw anything away!) and had a look. It's an incredibly matter-of-fact book, with few flights of fancy. It's based firmly on everyday life with enough wish-fulfilment to satisfy. For me, it was as fantastical as Harry Potter is to today's generation, bearing no relation to my life whatsoever. yet it was the descriptions of everyday life that I relished most. I do think reality is unnecessary for a great children's book and I devoured Streatfield's stories of girls (they were all girls) achieving stardom against the odds, reading them over and over again.
The production truncated a great deal, as I suppose it had to, but it was an enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes, though it's 9.00 start was clearly aimed at 50-somethings who knew the book. I can't imagine it would grab any of today's 12-year-olds - but who knows?

Led Zeppelin

I was interested in Led Zeppelin's reunion concert the other day at the O2 arena (previously the notorious Millenium Dome). It's funny, but I think I would have enjoyed it. I saw Led Zep twice, in 1969 and 1970, the first time at a Blues Festival at the Recreation Ground in the middle of Bath. I know Bath pretty well now, as my mother moved there 20 years ago, but in those days it was way off my beaten track.

It was in the early days of open-air festivals - I'm a bit muddled about the dates. I remember giong to the Blind Faith free concert in Hyde Park, and finding myself sitting next to John Peel - was that 1968? Or 1969? There was the famous Rolling Stones free concert in Hyde Park, just after Brian Jones died - the one where Mick Jagger released all those butterfies and wore a dress. I was on my own there (it's a long story), and found myself near the front, so felt immersed in the whole event. It's funny how time has cast a patina over such occasions - it felt huge at the time, and was, but now it's legendary. I was 18 at the time so you don't think you're making history - it's just your life. What strrikes me now is the way an 18-year-old could wander into Hyde Park, and drift about in perfect safety. Also the absence of money-making outlets, just the odd ice-cream van. And, even with so many people, the ease with which one could get around. Ah, those were the days - I think the lack of commercialism is the thing I'm most nostalgic about.....

I can't remember who I went with to the Bath Festival, or how I got there, but I know I must have been with some friends from college. I can remember vividly being there, where I sat in relation to the stage - I can see it now. I found a website devoted to Led Zep which had some pictures of them performing, against a backdrop of Georgian terraces. The stage was ridiculously small by today's standards, and apparently there were only about 12,000 people there. The website brought back so many memories, and there was much that I'd forgotten. Lots of people had posted their own memories, and it was interesting to see how young everyone was. I was 17, and most were around that age. I suppose we really were the first generation to really get into music in such an obsessive way, so there wouldn't have been many people there who were much older.

It was billed as a blues festival and according to the website page dedicated to the event, all the usual suspects played, the bands who seemed to be there at every festival at that time; Chicken Shack, Keef Hartley, Fleetwood Mac, Blodwyn Pig, Colosseum, The Nice, John Mayall, Ten Years After and Taste. I wasn't actually particularly fond of any of this, but, as one did then, convinced myself that I was. I was distinctly underwhelmed by much of what I heard, as, by this time, I was becoming deeply enamoured of American music. Blues music seemed dull, and the fashion for extended drum/guitar/etc solos - many of them exceptionally tedious, had firmly taken hold. Led Zeppelin seemed no better or worse than the other bands, and I took little notice of them.
They did even less for me a year later, at the huge festival at the Bath & West Showground at Shepton Mallet. I'll do more extensive blog entry on that festival, and the one on the Isle of Wight graced by Bob Dylan, but I'll mention Led Zep. I a year they had become huge, and played (I think) for about 3 hours. It seemed the longest 3 hours of my life. I found them unutterably tedious, though I was in a tiny minority.
I disliked their music intensely throughout the 1970s, but sometime in the 1980s I came across Kashmir, and I thought, I like this - with its pumping powerhouse underbelly. There was a perfect description of it in a recent review by Pete Paphidis in The Times of their reunion concert at the O2 arena - Kashmir, he said, had a rhythm that sounded like the 'advancing of Martian tripods'.
I saw a recording of a concert Robert Plant did a year ago at the festival on TV, and I enjoyed it very much. Such is the passage of time - it does strange things. I find much of the West Coast stuff I liked so much in the early 70s pretty hard to listen to now, and Led Zep's stuff now has a power, strength and authenticity which somehow sounds good today - who would have though it?

Bob Dylan

I can't wait to see the Todd Haynes film, I'm Not There. It's due to be screened at the London Film Festival this week, and it won't go on general release until Christmas, so I'll have to be patient. It's hard to describe, and I'm not going to try until I've seen it, but basically, six actors (I think it's six), portray Dylan at various stages of his career. Only they aren't called Dylan in the film. See what I mean?
I'm looking forward to seeing it because, as I think I've mentioned before, Dylan has played a major part in my life. My earliest memory of him is of hearing Tambourine Man and Blowing in the Wind and becoming hooked; buying a book of sheet music of his songs, and sitting in the front room (I was in my early-mid teens and had been learning the piano since I was seven), and doggedly playing the songs, singing them to myself. I'd never actually heard any of them, as we didn't have a record player then.
I can remember hearing Like a Rolling Stone on Radio London for the first time, one of the pirate stations, to which I listened obsessively - was it 1965? It's hard, now to conjure up a time when Dylan was new, hadn't been analysed to extinction. He was hard - wrote lyrics of a kind nobody had ever written before, and sang them with a passionate menace that was thrilling in the extreme to a teenager who was just beginning to become aware that the world was changing in ways that were only dimly becoming understood. Certainly not by my parents generation. That line - 'something is happening, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones', summed up how I was starting to feel about the world. We, the younger generation, were in possession of the world - there were more of us than them, our lives hadn't been blighted by having to fight in a war, and somehow, we felt we were in possession of a secret knowledge - we knew more than they did. I suppose it was our education, something denied to our parents, that gave us the key to all this, but Dylan spoke to us and articulated what was in our heads. HIs appearance in Don't Look Back, which I saw in about 1968, said it all. He treated people in suits with contempt - all the time he seemed in possession of a secret. It was revelatory.
So I'm looking forward with enormous anticipation to I'm Not There: I'll post more when I've seen it.

libraries

I always feel completely at home in any public library - I suppose it's because I've spent so much time in them over the years. My parents didn't have much money, but they were took me to the children's library in Oxford as soon as I was old enough. I can't remember not being able to read, and have always been a pretty voracious reader, so the library was a treasure chest and I spent hours in there. My parents used to drop me off while they went shopping from a pretty early age - you could do that in those days - and I made the most of it. The holy grail was finding an Enid Blyton book on the shelves - she was so popular that her books were always out, but I discovered other children's authors, Ruby Ferguson was one, I remember - I loved her books, which were all about girls with ponies on Romney Marsh, and I adored school stories. It amuses me to read that children's books should be 'relevant' - why? Nothing could be further away from my life than the pre-war girl's boarding school, but I was addicted to them. I suppose stories about friendships, bullying etc. are universal wherever you are, and the Harry Potter phenomenon is testament to the fact that the boarding school still has a hold on the childish imagination. I suppose it's the fact it's a self-contained world where adults are entirely peripheral and their world is merely incidental, so it can provide a convincingly child-centred universe.
Oxford built a new, modern, much larger library and that's where I first took my children. I don't remember too much about it - the old library remains a much more vivid memory. As soon as we moved to Bristol in 1983 I discovered the Central Library on College Green, a magnificent building which retains the original Edwardian grandeur. It's surroundings have improved enormously in recent years - traffic is banned from outside and attractive fountains and flower beds are nearby, and it's recently been expensively refurbished and reorganised. I'm sorry that so much space is now given up to DVDs but I suppose libraries have to find ways in which to survive. I still love going there, mooching around the shelves, and I can see myself spending more and more time there as I get older.
Now, the reference library upstairs - it's magnificent! It has lovely big old desks and capacious, comfortable chairs. It's not what it was and has had to make room for the music library which was expelled from the ground floor and is now a shadow of its former self. But you can still spend hours in there reading ancient bound copies of magazines and newspapers and probably much else. There's always plenty of retired people doing family history research and much else I expect. The whole place a comfortable, well-used public service and I always feel as if I've come home whenever I go there. Public libraries are a repository of ecverything good about our society and I feel sure they wouild probably fail every one of the government-inspired financial 'public use' audits. It's hugely important that we keep them, use them, preserve them ,develop them - do whatever has to be done for them - they're a necessity, a public service in the most fundamental sense. Maybe not quite as important as water and sewerage, as demonstrated by the recent floods but still a vitally important part of public life.

1982 - part 2

Watching Wimbledon this year has been a frustrating experience at times due to the relentless rain, but it's the final Saturday, the sun's shining and it looks like it'll all be done and dusted on time. Growing up with a sport-loving father, I remember it was always on - one of those events, along with Test match cricket, football, late-night boxing and the Grand National that are part of the fabric of my life.
There's been lots of talk about the previous 'worst Wimbledon ever', in 1982, so, once again, my thoughts have been drifting back to that year - the Falklands campaign and my father's death as the conflict ended. I was reminded that the rain during that month was indeed torrential and never-ending. As I was up to my neck in small children at that time my memories are very fragmented, just a series of vivid images. My father had an allotment; as it was summer everything was coming up so I needed go down there and pick everything. More often than not, I did it in pouring rain. It's one of those memories that becomes etched on your brain - grief, rain, vegetables and fruit, and Wimbledon, all jumbled up together, and so intense it seems like yesterday.

football - the early days

It may seem strange to be talking about football in July, but in many ways it's the best time to be thinking about it. New players are being signed up, new kits are wheeled out, and the disappointments of the previous season are beginning to fade. It's a time of year when hope triumphs over expectation - supporters can dream of next season before those dreams collapse, crumbling into dust.
Many football-lovers are seriously disillusioned and disaffected by Brisith football and it's not hard to see why. The dominance of the Premier League, preposterous wage levels, the impact of television etc. etc. have led to non-renewal of season tickets and non-attendance at games. My brother, who was a huge football fan from early childhood - he attended Manchester Utd's European Cup victory at Wembley in 1968, is one of these - he now watcheds rugby. Although I don't attend matches I can't say the same, I still get a thrill when the season starts, even though I only watch games on TV these days - I suppose football's in my blood, and my interest goes a long way back
It started, I suppose when my father took me as a toddler to the ground over the road from where we lived. The club, Oxford City, played in the Isthmian League against such sides as Corinthian Casuals and Wycombe Wanderers, and attracted a pretty good crowd in those days. It meant my mother had Saturday afternoons to herself so it became a habit. I would happily occupy myself toddling up and down the terraces while my father watched the match, so I guess I absorbed the atmoosphere through a kind of osmosis. My brother who was three years younger actually played there for the school team in a primary schools' cup final, which was a great day - he still has the team photo.
I passed the 11 plus, went to a new school 'up the hill' and quickly became drawn into the orbit of Oxford United, heresy in my father's eyes - he always referred to them as 'Headington United', even though they'd changed to 'Oxford Utd' in 1960. Anyway, Utd made it to the Fifth round of the FA Cup in 1964, and beat Blackburn Rovers, who were then a top Division One side, 3-1, in a memorable match at the Manor Ground. The ground was packed and it was an incredible game. Oxford then drew Preston North End at home in the Sixth round and lost, but didn't disgrace themselves; 22,000 packed into the tiny Manor Ground and again, it was an unforgettable occasion.
I continued to go to games for couple of years, but then got a Saturday job; my football watching days were over. My interest stayed with me, though. I'll write about it again as there's plenty more to come.

music

Music's always played a big part in my life and my earliest memory is listening to the radio. 2-Way Family Favourites and Housewives' Choice, which my mother listened to every week provided part of the soundtrack of my childhood, introducing me to, among much else, Nellie the Elephant, The Laughing Policeman and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, always played as the grand finale. Then, in 1962, I can't remember what prompted me to turn the radio on at 4.00 one Sunday afternoon, but I know that I heard Pick of the Pops with Alan Freeman for the first time around then. I'd been aware of Saturday Club in the background of busy Saturday mornings, but not really listened to it; on Sunday afternoons, though, my parents tended to fall asleep over the papers after Sunday lunch, so I had the radio to myself.
I looked at a list of the top twenty number one singles for 1962 the other day and was overwhelmed with memories; I could remember almost every line of every song. I know that memories of things experienced when young go very deep and stay there, certainly these songs, the only pop music I listened to then are virtually imprinted into my DNA. The first Number One I remember ever hearing was Frank Ifield's I Remember You and I can recall every note, every yodel. Other singers I remember well from that time were Roy Orbison, Del Shannon and Neil Sedaka and their songs were always in the charts.
Anyway, that was it; I discovered Radio Luxembourg soon after, and then of course, the tidal wave of the Beatles crashed on to the scene, drowning everything. Nothing would ever be the same again. We had fierce debates at school over who was the best Beatle, and then, when the Rolling Stones appeared, the class was divided into camps, Stones versus Beatles, and we spent our breaktimes arguing passionately. When With the Beatles was released, I remember going round to a friend's house on a dark December afternoon to hear it for the first time as her older sister had just bought it, and we sat round the dansette record player on the floor, listening to it in silence, over and over again. I still know every line, every note, of every song, by heart and I suppose most people of my generation do.
The next major development was pirate radio which opened up our musical horizons further and we used to spend our breaktimes talking endlesslyabout the songs and DJ's we'd heard on Radion London. I don't think our teachers had the faintest idea that our minds, our whole beings, were being gradually colonised by music. I can only speak for myself, but I was totally obsessed with music, with clothes and boys coming second (although they were important - I was a teenager after all). I'd started going out to a club where Motown and soul held centre stage - my schoolfriends and I were mods, or thought we were, and danced around our handbags to Sam and Dave and the Temptations, among many others.
Bob Dylan, though, was always there, and, although the only music of his I knew were his hits, Tambourine Man and Blowing in the Wind, I knew that he was special. I bought a book of his songs complete with music, and, as I was learning the piano at the time, I doggedly laboured over Chimes of Freedom and many other early songs - I hadn't got a clue how they should sound as I'd never heard them, but they moved me deeply and I played them (very badly) over and over again. Then gradually his songs could be heard on the radio more often, and Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde became part of the soundtrack of my life.
My horizons opened up further as I discovered bands such as Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. America music of the hippy era was what me and my friends were listening to now and soul became deeply unfashionable and a bit of a joke. West Coast music was now of central importance and we began to think that music had the potential to change society. Almost nothing else mattered. But when punk and new-wave hit the country in the mid-Seventies I found that it was more to my liking; the Clash, Talking Heads, Television etc. and I've realised that this is the music I enjoy the most. I've always retained a love of the short, snappy pop songs that I grew up with in the early Sixties and have returned to them.
I'm pretty eclectic in my musical taste, all the same, and I'm listening to Patti Smith and Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers a lot at the moment, but am also enjoying Rufus Wainwright and Richard Hawley, about as different as it's possible to be. There's classical music as well, of course, but that's another story......

1982

The commemorations of the 25th anniversary of the Falklands invasion have sparked off some strong memories for me. My father died in the middle of the conflict - he'd been suffering poor health for several years but I've often wondered whether seeing ships full of sailors setting off, followed by the scenes of ships under fire and sinking might have been too much for him. He was a sailor during the war and was under fire many times. He was from a humble background yet travelled to places I can only dream about, Africa, the Far East, the Mediterranean, even Virginia in the US. He returned safely, but with his hearing permanently damaged by heavy gunfire. He was from a generation who never talked about their experiences - all they wanted to do after the war was try and return to normality as soon as possible, and as most of the servicemen and women were only in their twenties, what they wanted to do was get married, settle down, earn a living and start a family. As the economic situation improved, their whole focus was on the future. They had grown up in the Depression and as austerity began to fade and rationing eased, the war soon began to be something that belonged to the past. One of my most vivid memories of my father is Sunday lunch. We would sit round the table eating roast beef, or lamb, or pork, with all the trimmings, including vegetables he had grown himself on his allotment, and he'd say, with a sigh of deep pride and satisfaction, 'We're living off the fat of the land'. His own father had died in the 1920s, so he grew up in poverty, his mother struggling alone to bring up her children with no welfare benefits. He left school at 14 and was faced with a very uncertain future - life was very much hand to mouth, so sometimes he could hardly believe his good fortune. He returned from the war to full employment, managed to buy a house and saw his children go to grammar schools, so, for his generation, the war was a job well done, and who could disagree? They fought for a better life than the one they'd grown up with and achieved it. That was why the Labour government was voted in so resoundingly in 1945; memories of the 1930s were too vivid and the people felt they had fought hard, saved the country, and deserved better.
Memories of what they endured were, therefore, buried very deep. I don't know for sure, but I wonder whether the sight of young men setting off in ships to battle was too much for his health. I'll never know, but I see the Falklands commemorations as a memorial, not only to those who fought down there, but to my father and all the other WWII veterans who came home, scarred and ravaged, but full of hope for a better life.

children and cinema

I've been thinking about one's relationship with cinema, and how it is formed; recalling the history of my cinemagoing experiences and the impact they had on me. The first film I can remember going to see was Tom Thumb which was released in 1957 so I suppose I must have been very young. I can't remember too much about it, but I have far more vivid memories of Ben Hur and Spartacus, released, I think, in 1960 and 1963. My mother loved wide-screen spectaculars and we went together to see many others including King of Kings, Becket, The Fall of the Roman Empire and The Lion in Winter, all lavish historical/biblical epics. My father was fairly deaf, so rarely went - I remember him going to see Rocco and his Brothers, an Italian film about boxing which had subtitles, so was manageable for him, but not much else. He died 25 years ago - how he would have appreciated the subtitle facility available on television now! Not to mention movies-on-demand.
When I was old enough to go to the cinema without an adult I managed to see many of the best-known 1960s British films, Zulu, Morgan, a Suitable Case for Treatment, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Charge of the Light Brigade and many others, including B-films of all descriptions, mostly Hammer horrors and science-fiction. though I remember a sleazy little shocker called All Neat in Black Stockings. The B film, of course, was a major part of one's filmgoing life, mostly they were terrible, but occasionally proved an unexpected treat.
In 1969, I spent a summer working as an usherette in a local fleapit. I sold tickets, tore them in half, put them a length of string threaded through a darning needle, showed people to their seats and sold icecreams from a tray - everything, in fact. The films were usually double bills, ancient horrors, Swedish sex films, science fiction, a wide range of foreign films and old movies of all descriptions. I could, and did, sit and watch everything - I remember seeing chunks of Ingmar Bergman's Shame several times, but never succeeded in putting the various parts together. I still haven't seen the whole film. Towards the end of my time there the cinema closed for 'refurbishment' and reopened soon after as smartly redecorated multi-screened cinema, one of the earliest. I was hired for the opening night, and the first film to be shown there was Anne of the Thousand Days a stodgy, bloated historical epic featuring Richard Burton as Henry VIII. Things were never the same and I left soon after. I have very fond memories of the place (pre-rtransformation) - it was a haven for the old, lonely and dispossessed. I would regularly see an old chap sitting on his own on a quiet, wet afternoon in a near-empty cinema with a transistor radio clamped to his ears, happily listening to the cricket. The seats in the back row were doubles, something I'm sure hasn't existed for decades. The odd stink bomb would be set off, couples would snog away in the double seats, film fanatics were able to see the most obscure and esoteric foreign films and impoverished students could receive an education in the history of cinema. It was a small, local cinema which anyone could pop into at any time - it may have been down-at-heel, but it was well-loved, and provided a useful service. The regulars, I'm sure wouldn't have been welcome at its replacement, and probably couldn't have afforded it anyway. It was a happy summer.
The seventies, were, of course, a golden age. I remember going to see The Godfather, McCabe and Mrs Miller, and many others. I feel very proud that I saw the famous double bill of Don't Look Now and The Wicker Man, both great films, when first released. I went many, many times to the cinema - I was at college, there was a fleapit nearby and I often used to bunk off in the afternoon. I remember being the only person in the cinema for Fellini's Satyricon and seeing WR, Mysteries of the Organism several times, for some, now-forgotten reason.
My cinemagoing ground to a halt in the mid-Seventies when I started having children, but restarted as soon as they were old enough to go. To be honest, my memories of that period are somewhat hazy, but I do recall taking the older two to see Superman II when they were 3 and 5. It was the younger one's first film and he sat silent and awestruck all the way through its 2 hours - he's never looked back and remains a huge film fan.
Throughout the 80s all of them went to see everything - I asked my third son the other day what his first film was, as I'd forgotten, and he reminded me that their father had taken them to see ET but the queue was so long they couldn't get in, so along with many other weeping children, went to see The Dark Crystal instead at another cinema. They did, of course get to see ET eventually, along with The Return of the Jedi and many other 80s spectaculars. There was a fleapit down the road (now closed of course) so the three of them occasionally used to go on their own, and were sometimes the only ones in the cinema, watching stuff like The Emerald Forest; apparently someone would still go round with an ice-cream tray for their benefit.
Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts were other favourites. I always tried to take them to see as many reissues of old favourites as possible. Although they saw a great dela on TV there's nothing like the big screen.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a major event in our family. I'd read all three volumes to them at bedtime so we all went along during its first week. The cinema was packed an hour before it was due to start and a girl behind me started furiously kicking the back of my seat. I turned round and her apology was heartfelt - 'I'm sorry', she said, 'I'm just so excited!' The atmosphere was electric and the film didn't disappoint - I still feel the first one is the best, but I
suspect that's because it was the first and had the element of surprise - no one knew what to
expect.
My children remain film fans, though most of their viewing is done at home on DVD. But they still try to get out to the cinema and I often find myself providing a taxi service to the nearest multiplex. I don't really mind as it's an excuse to go to the cinema and I sometimes end up seeing films I might not otherwise have gone to. I'm drawing the line at Pirates of the Caribbean III, though - I went to the second one and was bored senseless. But I feel quite proud of teaching them to love film - I know it'll be something they always have.