I was born in 1948 in Selly Oak, an industrial suburb in south-west Birmingham. I was the second of four children, brought up in a new 'prefab' until we moved down the road to a 'proper' council house. I passed my Eleven Plus and went to a better sort of school. After 'A' levels, I won a place at London University and left home in 1967. 

    I began writing this memoir in 2017 as a 'diary', recalling events fifty years after they happened with all the hindsight, revision, and re-invention that this entails. It was published online as a blog with occasional updates until a few years ago and you can see the original texts at: https://50yearsago.today/about/ . I am now revising and editing that text and setting it out on this website with new chapter headings. 

    I may present myself as a knowledgeable and confident observer but be assured that I was confused and uncertain. In 1967 I was 18 years old. I had just left school and expecting to go to university. I was on the threshold of becoming an adult, a bewildering process for any young adult, especially a working class youth from Birmingham. Britain was in the process of unprecedented social and cultural change which swept me along with it. This memoir describes some of my reactions to these changes.

    It is over fifty years since the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album appeared, fifty years since homosexuality was de-criminalised, half a century since new laws were introduced promoting equal pay and making racial discrimination unlawful. At about this time, censorship was relaxed, abortion made legal and the contraceptive pill became easily available. In 1967 I saw massive demonstrations against the war being waged in Vietnam by the USA. In a few months time, in May 1968 there would be a near revolution in Paris with other uprisings across the world including Czechoslovakia.

    This memoir recounts my recollections from fifty years ago. I will attempt to re-imagine what I was doing, thinking, feeling, reading, watching, experiencing at that time. I did not keep a diary at the time so I cannot be certain about dates or names in some cases. It will be how I remember it, but I will try not to make things up. This is a true story. I will only use real names with permission.

CONTENTS. To access an item, click on the title. 

On the Brink 

Mysteries of the Apothecary