I got my first job in 1966, taking on a paper round for twenty-one shillings a week on behalf of the local newspaper and Post Office shop in Westbrook. My route took me along the seafront where I was required to deliver to the dwellings you see on the right of the image above. One morning I happened to look up at the top window of one of those houses and stood transfixed by the sight of a naked man staring out to sea, his genitalia hanging out in all its glory for any passer-by to clock if they were so inclined. Deciding this was not right and proper I instantly put in a transfer request for a different route. Thankfully it was granted a few weeks later but unfortunately the damage was done. There are some things a callow youth of fourteen years old should not be exposed to whilst doing his paper round and a stranger’s family jewels is one of them.
Now that I was earning a crust I was finally able to quench my desire for that which every teenager worth their salt craves – to buy my very own record player. The Dansette was all the rage at the time so after hiding as much of my paper round money as I could from my dad who was always on the lookout for a permanent loan, I managed to scrape enough together to purchase a player that looked very much like the model in the image above.
The very first record I bought and played on the Dansette was “From Me To You” by the Beatles. This is the actual original vinyl single I purchased from a second-hand record shop located in Duke Street down by Margate Harbour. As my family will no doubt attest I have difficulty shedding the detritus of life one gathers over the years or, to put it another way, I have a bit of a hoarding habit. Thankfully I am able to justify this to my therapist on account of being able to use images in my blog of the numerous pieces of ephemera (Latin for crap) I’ve collected since my early teens.
Towards the end of the year I bought my very first long-playing vinyl album, “Best of the Beach Boys Vol. 1”. This is not my original copy, which I swapped with someone for “Led Zeppelin IV” in 1971 in a desperate attempt to gain some kind of street cred. The record in the photograph you see above is a replacement I purchased a few years back. If I was a real nerd I’d tell you that this album is slightly different from the one I bought in 1966. It has the original version of “Help Me Rhonda” from the “Beach Boys Today” album as opposed to the one the group put out as a single whilst “Barbara Ann” is the full version from the “Beach Boys Party” album, and not the shorter version released as a single, but as I’m not a nerd I’ll keep that information to myself.
As I write in the book I got lucky in my third academic year at Hartsdown when my form teacher turned out to be nowhere near as mentally unbalanced as the one I’d been lumbered with for the previous two years. The report above with a number of A and B grades illustrate how much more confident I was becoming at school. Also, I was only absent for ten days that term which has got be some kind of a record. Unfortunately, this was about as good as it got so savour it while you can.
In September of 1966 I started my fourth academic year at Hartsdown and, as luck would have it, I got another pleasant form teacher, Mr. Shaw (not his real name). He not only encouraged me in my love for horror and sci-fi by introducing me to the books of Ray Bradbury, John Wyndham and Isaac Asimov, he also acknowledged my passion for cinema by giving me this very booklet you see in the image above. I’d never heard of the British Film Institute up to that point so it was good to know my obsession with film wasn’t actually a mental affliction of some kind.
No James Bond film this year so I had to make do with another annual for Christmas instead. I don’t know at what age you’re supposed to start leaving your interest in toys behind you and replace it with a healthy enthusiasm for pornography, but I guess I hadn’t reached that point yet seeing as I asked Santa for a combined Dinky Thunderbird 2 and 4, as opposed to a subscription for “Bound and Gagged”. And no, this is not the original toy I found at the bottom of my bed on Christmas Day morning. After all, you can’t keep everything, although I tried as hard as I could.
See you next week for 1966 Part 2 in which I list my favourite films of the swinging mid-1960s. Groovy.
Steve Mayhew 