I forgot to include the image above in my last post for the year 1961. As you can see I was fairly active on the school sports field but obviously not good enough in any of them to make my mark in the world of sport. Having lost a lot of family photographs from our childhood when we had to hurriedly leave a number of dwellings due to non-payment of rent this is one of the few images of a personal nature that survived the chaos of my life in the early 1960s. I will therefore concentrate in this post on most things cinematic and televisual. The miserable stuff you can read in the book.
1962 was a fairly threadbare year for me cinematically speaking, although I did get to see two of the most memorable films of my chequered childhood. First out of the gate was a great double-bill consisting of “The Pirates of Blood River” and “Mysterious Island”, the second of these films a wonderfully entertaining exercise in sci-fi fantasy that I still revere to this day. I saw it at the ABC Regent in Chatham and sat open-mouthed whilst a parade of animated creatures including a giant crab, monster bees and predatory birds appeared one after the other. It knocked the main feature into a cocked hat and initiated my love for all things Ray Harryhausen, blessed be his name.
Towards the end of the year we found ourselves back in Margate, this time on a permanent basis as it turned out. In October my dad took me to see “Dr. No” and I thought at that point it was probably the best film I’d ever seen. This may have had something to do with the sight on the huge screen in Dreamland cinema of Ursula Andress slowly making her way out of the sea like a real-life Venus from a Botticelli painting. Being a tender and sweetly innocent boy at the time I was so overwhelmed by a heretofore unknown feeling of ecstasy and desire in my nether regions it was a miracle I was able to walk unaided out of the cinema at the end. I promised myself then and there that as soon as I was old enough I would save up my money and buy me a lady just like Ursula. It wasn’t until I was in my late teens that it dawned on me such behaviour might result in a long period of incarceration as a guest in one of Her Majesty’s houses of correction. I therefore did the next best thing and spent the money I’d saved on recreational drugs instead.
Seeing as I wasted any spare time I had with my face stuck diligently in front of the TV my passion for cinema was nudged into second place – only for a while though. The programs I remember most from this period include the three shown above.
Oh, and one other thing. We saw snow fall in Margate on Boxing Day of 1962, which was nice. Unfortunately….
Steve Mayhew 