• 

• 

On Sunday 22^nd May 1966, with another two years to go before I could legally do so, I finally got to pop my cherry, cinematically speaking that is, when I attended my first screening of an X certificate film. The Carlton cinema in Westgate put on double-bill horror programs at the weekend so me and a group of school friends went along to see “King Kong vs Godzilla” and the Hammer production of “Dracula” starring Christopher Lee in the title role. I’m really looking forward to the release of “Godzilla vs. Kong” later this year as I know it’s going to be a damned sight better than the version I saw back in 1966. It was so bad it made the poster look good. “Dracula” on the other hand was bloody brilliant and brilliantly bloody.

• 

• 

• 

• 

This was also the year I started taking  the occasional trip up to London with my friend Max (not his real name) to catch some of the big movies of the day before they went out on general release to the poor people in the sticks. Above are some of the films we caught in the big smoke. Me, Max and Terry saw “The Bible” at the London Coliseum Theatre. It was shown in full Cinerama format which was very impressive as I recall. 

• 

• 

• 

• 

As well as the films I saw in London I also visited the various cinemas at my disposal in Margate twenty-eight times throughout the year which I think was a record even for me. The posters above are some of the better movies I saw at Dreamland cinema in 1966.

One film I refused to see at Dreamland was “The Sound of Music” which ran for alternate weeks during the summer from June to October. Although I still can’t bring myself to watch the movie whenever it’s shown on TV, I have seen the trailer about ten times which is why it kind of killed it for me. Not that I would have bothered anyway.  

• 

• 

We were spoilt for choice in 1966 when it came to TV with the likes of “Batman” and “The Rat Patrol” debuting in the UK.  It was obvious “Batman” was a tongue-in-cheek spoof not to be taken seriously. Unfortunately for war film aficionado’s such as myself the real veterans of the WWII desert campaign took “The Rat Patrol” too seriously seeing as no American soldiers actually fought in that particular area of conflict. The end result was that the BBC pulled it after only six episodes.

Bastards.

Finally, on the subject of television programs, ITV was the place to be on a Saturday night at 7:00pm as the latest one-hour episode of “Thunderbirds” unfolded on our little black and white 12-inch screens (I seem to remember a filthy joke at the time about a 12-inch Murphy which would take too long to explain here so I won’t bother). I’m still bemused by the fact that the nation sat transfixed by a puppet show on prime time TV at the weekend but we were simpler folk back then. I’m also bemused that many years later I met Sylvia Anderson who famously voiced Lady Penelope in “Thunderbirds”, but that’s for another time.

I want to thank all of the readers of my blog, both of them, for their kind comments regarding my attempt to get millions of people to buy my book “The Maynards of Margate”, now available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback at a competitively reasonable price. I updated the book recently to take the story up to the year 1972 but I’m going to take some time out for a few weeks whilst I move house and try to get to know my new granddaughter better before resuming the blog.

See you in 1967 in a month or so.

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.

I heard the Beach Boys on the radio for the first time in the summer of 1964 when they had a hit in the UK with “I Get Around”. I was instantly smitten by their harmonies and good time California summer music despite the fact it had absolutely nothing in common with a kid growing up in Margate in the 1960s, which is probably why I perversely loved it. I didn’t even know what they looked up to this point so it was quite a surprise when I saw the Disney movie “The Monkey’s Uncle” and realised they were the backing band for Annette as she sang the theme tune over the credits. The film was shown on the lower half of a double bill along with another Disney offering, “Song of the South”, a film which is now officially cancelled due to its not-so-satisfactual attitude towards slavery.

John Wayne was still churning out two to three films a year after losing his shirt on “The Alamo” which he both produced and directed back in 1960. “The Magnificent Showman” aka “Circus World” wasn’t one of his best but compared to his turn as the Roman centurion in “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, also released in 1965, it’s right up there in the Top Ten Sight & Sound list of the best films ever made.

I’ve never been a fan of Hollywood musicals but I’ll make an exception when it comes to “Mary Poppins”. I was so impressed I even bought the soundtrack on vinyl a few years later. Actually I quite like “West Side Story” as well. And “Singin’ in the Rain” of course. You’d have to be missing a pulse not to like that one. But apart from – hang on, I quite like “On the Town” and “An American in Paris” as well. And “Top Hat”. But that’s it. Honest. Time to move on.

And this one. I liked “Help!” as well. Not as good as “A Hard Day’s Night” but back then we just couldn’t get enough of those zany madcap fab gear mop top Liverpudlian beat combo guys.

• 

• 

• 

• 

It appears we still couldn’t get enough of WW II movies either, even if by now Hollywood owned the rights to the conflict and therefore insisted on inserting an American actor in the male lead role for every single war film they made. Check out the four posters above. I rest my case.

Another year, another James Bond film, “Thunderball” being released right at the end of December. To some fans this is where the series started to move away from Ian Fleming’s original concept of Bond as a sadistic killer licensed to murder on behalf of Her Majesty’s government and play it more for laughs instead. I couldn’t have cared less one way or the other. For some reason I was unable to articulate at the time, I just wanted to marry Luciana Palluzi. I guess it must have been the Italian in me. 

• 

Staying with secret agents and all that, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” proved to be very popular on TV over here although it seems the show dropped in the ratings in America when the producers decided to make it more tongue-in-cheek. I note that the U.N.C.L.E. ID card, one of which I purchased myself at the time, doesn’t have a Sabotage and Assassination department as I stated in the book. Probably just wishful thinking on my part.

Produced by Irwin Allen and another show new to TV in 1965, “Lost in Space” started out as a genuinely thrilling sci-fi series but soon lost its own way in the mind of the audience once Dr. Zachary Scott, played by Jonathan Harris, took centre stage. The best character in the show was the robot. The guy inside it had more acting talent than the rest of the cast put together.

A quick mention for “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”, another TV series from Allen. I think I must have preferred this one to “Lost in Space” seeing as at the time I bought a few comics of the show like the one shown above, recently unearthed from the darkest corner of my loft. Great artwork too.

• 

I was still sneaking over the road to my friend Jimmy’s house every Friday evening to catch the latest edition of “Ready Steady Go”. It was on one show in 1965 that I saw The Supremes for the first time and I immediately fell for Mary Wilson who can be seen in the middle of the image above. Sadly she passed away recently so our chance at a love supreme was never to be. Sorry, that’s the best I can do. It’s been a long week.

Take a long hard look at this photograph. I count thirty-five pupils all lined up holding their school prizes – in case you’re interested I’m the midget in the front row fourth from the right wearing the light-coloured jumper – and apart from one or two there’s hardly a fat kid amongst us. I know I’ve just offended two minority groups for the price of one in that last sentence but let’s be honest here for a minute. Two slightly obese children out of a group of thirty-five equates to approximately just over 0.05% of the group as a whole. However, the trusty internet informs me that in this day and age a staggering 1 in 5 children aged 10 or over are currently classified as obese. That’s 20% now versus 0.05% when this picture was taken. No wonder we all look pleased with ourselves.

As an aside, the two objects of my romantic ardour, Jessica and Emily (not their real names), can also be seen second and third in the front row, positioning themselves as far away from me as they could possibly get without appearing rude.

• 

• 

Here’s the book prize I chose which I received for convincing the RE teacher I was a committed God-botherer.

I enjoyed the ceremony so much I was moved to put my thoughts into words. I know, not exactly stylish reporting in the vein of Woodward and Bernstein but it’s a start.

This is a photograph taken during the summer of 65 which I labelled “Donkeys on Margate Beach”, but more accurately could be called “The Back of My Grandad’s Head”, seeing as that’s my mums dad in the black jacket. The only time I can remember him talking to me is when he told me a few years later to “get your bleedin’ aircut”. I’d hate to think what he’d say if he could see me now. What with the extended lockdown and no access to the nearest barber shop I’m starting to look like Ozzy Osbourne, and that’s on a good day.

• 

• 

Here’s my mum posing on the Margate Riviera. It’s actually the swimming pool located just in front of where the Sun Deck used to be, as shown in the second image. The Sun Deck, which was the gathering place for the after-school Margate division of The Beach Boys (read the book), is alas no more. They should have left it standing in honour of the local population seeing as most of them were probably conceived under it late on a drunken Saturday night.

The photo above is cropped in order to avoid litigation from the other individuals stood next to me posing in the water on Ramsgate beach. The main reason I’m including it here is because it’s evidence that I really did try to hide the unsightly mole that lurked beneath my left nipple. The fact that nobody on the whole of the planet other than me gave a rat’s arse one way or the other isn’t the point. I knew it was there and that was good enough for me.

It was a James Bond Christmas for me and thousands of other kids in 1965. The first photo shows the Bond annual that Santa brought me which featured images from the first three Connery films and has remained faithfully by my side since then. Underneath is the best-selling Corgi Aston Martin DB5 as featured in “Goldfinger”. Unfortunately I don’t have the original toy as given to me that Christmas. If I did I’d have flogged it and would now be writing this blog from my beachfront mansion in Hawaii. We had lots of fun ejecting the bad guy from the passenger seat then spending the next thirty minutes looking for the bastard thing on our multi-coloured carpet before launching him to his death again. The fun we used to have back then. You wouldn’t believe.

Tune in again next week for my take on the best films of 1965, the ‘Disney classic’ “Song of the South” notwithstanding.

My love affair with all things relating to “Famous Monsters of Film Land” continued unabated, particularly when it came to the Aurora plastic kits on offer in the magazine. The kits eventually went on sale in the UK and I managed to get my hands on some of those shown in the photo above. My first purchase was the Creature from the Black Lagoon followed by the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Due to the onset of political correctness I’ve since found out he’s not a hunchback anymore – he’s a bellringer. Coincidentally, due to a casually discarded  Gauloise cigarette last year Notre Dame nearly wasn’t anymore either.

I must admit to my nostalgia getting the best of me recently to the point where I bought one of a series of reissued monster kits currently available on a famous non-tax paying internet platform. I aim to put together my Phantom of the Opera kit once the Covid virus is brought to heel and I can stop identifying with the poor screaming sod you see in lockdown behind him. Still, good to see the Phantom brought his own mask.

As for the films, here’s a couple of historical dramas that started off the year with a bang. “Zulu” recently came under criticism for promoting outdated colonial values not worthy of consideration in this day and age. I thought it was just a bloody good movie. I dunno. You can’t please anyone these days.

John Wayne has also received a lot of stick from the PC brigade for his unapologetic views that he aired in an interview back in 1972. However, it’s only recently that someone has pointed out to me that Wayne had a spanking fetish, as you can see from the “McLintock!” poster and an image from “Donovan’s Reef”, which I never actually got to see in the cinema. They certainly don’t make films this anymore – which is a good thing right?

Three of the four above had brilliant soundtracks but the one that didn’t, “First Men in the Moon”, has great Ray Harryhausen special effects to make up for it.

Looking back I’d have to say “Goldfinger” was the best film of 1964 for me, with “Lawrence of Arabia” a close second.  At the beginning of the series you’d get a new Bond movie every year and it was a real event to go and see the latest offering, “Goldfinger” still one of the best . Even if  the current pandemic hadn’t delayed the release of “No Time to Die’ there would still have been a five-year gap after the release of the last Bond film, “Spectre”. Maybe they should rename it “No Time to Wait”.

I think it’s about time I revealed my somewhat disturbing obsession – in my defence I was only twelve at the time – for the mute blonde puppet Marina in “Stingray”. The program was part of our family Sunday viewing a few years or so before me and my brother started trying to beat each other to death on a regular basis on the Sabbath. I think it was the song at the end of “Stingray”, a romantic ballad called “Aqua Marina”, that set something stirring in me to the point where I genuinely felt affection for what was basically a few pieces of wood cobbled together and hung from a couple of bits of string wrapped in a doll’s dress. What can I say? I’m only human – even if she wasn’t.

My school mate Max (not his real name) lived just a few streets away and I used to drop round to his house to do our homework together. He had an ancient gramophone player in the parlour and just two records, the single of “The House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals and the Beatles “Hard Day’s Night” album. He played the Beatles LP practically every time I was there to the point where I knew the track listing by order of the songs on both sides. Amazingly it didn’t kill the record for me and I still play it to this day. It’s difficult to convey to someone of a younger generation how much the world brightened up back in the 1960s once the Beatles arrived. They seemed to be everywhere, on the radio and TV, in the newspapers, on the newsreels in the cinema, they even played the Winter Gardens in Margate the year before, although I didn’t have the money to see them which is one of my biggest regrets.

And finally, something I meant to include at the end of my blog posts for 1963, images of the train set my parents bought me for Christmas that year. I really liked this one because it appealed to the nihilist in me. Once the track was complete you uncoupled the red truck, the sides of which were held together on the inside via a set of metal clips. The train would then roll around the track until it was adjacent to the truck after which you would then illuminate it with the searchlight then blow it to bits with the rocket launcher. The truck could be rebuilt and the process repeated ad infinitum. Great fun for all the family, until one day it disappeared, ending up for sale in the window of Thanet Models at the lower end of Northdown Road. So, in case any of my family are reading this and want to know what I’d like for my birthday on March 1^st….

Just to prove I wasn’t imagining my first best friend, here’s a photo of me and Jimmy on the balcony at the back of the house I lived in across the road from him. His family was a bit better off than ours at the time what with him having a record player, actual records to play on it, a train set to die for and chicken for Sunday dinner. Just to make it worse he even had better hair then me as well. I wasn’t jealous though. Alright, maybe just a bit.

Jimmy was also quite a good gymnast. That’s his arse flying through the air in the middle of the photograph above as he and his fellow athletes perform the dreaded flying leaf. You can just make out the sadist in charge that was our PE teacher to the extreme left. Note that in order not to end up in court on a manslaughter charge he has positioned a couple of other members of the gym club on the ground to make sure they prevent any of the flying pupils from smashing skull first onto the hard floor below. As for the so-called “catchers”, the kid at the back couldn’t catch a cold let alone a teenage boy in full flight whilst the one on the far right looks like he’s just discovered religion.

Here’s our class in a music lesson learning the dreaded recorder with me sat closest to the camera. The music teacher is obviously so enamoured of our performance that she’s even set up a tape recorder to catch us in full swing. I hated the instrument to be honest but if I’d known how popular it was going to be once “Kung Fu” started on TV a few years later I would have concentrated harder. Yes, I know kick-ass Grasshopper Caine played a flute and not a recorder but I’m tone deaf and can’t tell the difference.

This is the program for my first sports day at Hartsdown school. The pupils were separated into four ‘houses’ in order to create some element of competition. I can’t remember the house names apart from Alexander, the one I was in. I lost every track event I took part in. Whoever said “it’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts” obviously had both paddles out of the water.

Above is the report for my first academic year at secondary school, this and my other reports having recently been discovered inscribed on a tablet in a field on the edge of Margate, that’s how old they are. If you look closely towards the bottom you can see that I was absent fifty-four out of seventy-five days just for that first term alone. Just think, if they’d graded truancy I’d have got an A plus.

And where was I for most of those fifty-four days you might ask. The answer is this now-derelict and decommissioned piece of Margate history formerly known as the Westbrook Bay public shit house which amazingly is still standing. The boarded-up door in the middle was the gentlemen’s entrance, so to speak, and the ladies the one to the right. I actually spent more days in this architectural monstrosity of a building than I did for two out of the three terms of my first year at secondary school. However, if you want to know exactly what I got up to in order to entertain myself whilst there then you’ll have to buy the book. I know. There’s always a catch.

• 

• 

On a happier note it’s wonderful when life unexpectedly throws a surprise your way. I happened to wander into Woolworths in Margate High Street one day, maybe one of those days when school didn’t appeal to me, and to my amazement they were selling leftover cinema brochures for about two shillings and sixpence each. I bought the two as shown above then immediately rendered them worthless by pinning both of them to my bedroom wall with a thumbtack.

Drop by next week to check out my thoughts on some of the films released in 1964 as well as details of my unrequited and totally impossible love for a beautiful dumb blonde.

• 

• 

As I write in the book, my main memory of the big freeze is scavenging for winter fuel on Westbrook beach as well as hoping that the weather might break soon so I could get to the nearest cinema for a celluloid fix. I’d managed to get myself down to Dreamland cinema just after Xmas of 1962 to catch “Hatari!” before the ice set in, my next visit a whole two months later on March 1^st, my eleventh birthday as it happened, when my dad took me to see “Bridge on the River Kwai”.

Over the Easter holidays, once the snow had finally melted away, I embarked on the now familiar Maynard ritual of taking two of my siblings to the cinema, this time to the Plaza in Margate High Street, without actually having enough money to pay for the tickets. Again. This time a genuine Easter miracle occurred when the manager took pity on the three bedraggled mites gathered in the foyer and let us in to see the film anyway, a Disney adventure called “In Search of the Castaways”. Take it from me, the film was much better than the poster.

• 

• 

Next up was a double bill at Dreamland cinema of “Mouse in the Moon” and “Sons of Thunder”. The former was yet another in a long line of seriously unfunny so-called “comedies” that the British film industry insisted on inflicting upon the non-discerning cinemagoing audiences of the time. To me though, “Sons of Thunder” was the best of the Italian sword and sandal epics I’d seen up to that point and let me tell, you, I’d seen quite a lot in the last few years. Looking at it again fifty-eight years later on YouTube it of course doesn’t seem quite as good as I remembered but at the time I was totally enthralled by it. 

• 

• 

In early summer I caught up with a couple of the big Hollywood road-show movies still doing the rounds, “The Longest Day” and “El Cid”, although by 1963 these “event” movies were starting to pall somewhat to the point that the form eventually bit the dust a few years later. 

• 

• 

Christmas came early for me with the release of both “The Great Escape” just before I started secondary school and then a few weeks later “From Russia With Love”, to my mind still the best of the James Bond films bar none.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Just before I thought things couldn’t get any better along came a film that to this day brings a huge grin of delight to my face whenever it plays on TV. Like a lot of kids of my generation I’ll always remember the very first time I saw “Jason and the Argonauts”, Ray Harryhausen’s masterpiece by a long shot . I held my breath in wonder as I watched Jason and his fellow matelots taking on the likes of the Harpies, the giant statue Talos, the seven-headed Hydra and, the best of the bunch, a gang of screaming skeletons looking to stab everyone up at the end. 

• 

It’s here where I digress from the book and show you a couple of images from an event I attended nearly forty years later in 2002 in which I got the chance to meet my hero up close and personal. I’m the grinning idiot between my new best mate Ray Harryhausen and Gareth Owen, producer, writer and another all-round good guy who arranged for me to sit at Ray’s table. Mr. Harryhausen brought along examples of some of the creatures he’d created for his films, including one of the skeletons that featured in “Jason and the Argonauts”. He told me he wasn’t sure but he thought it was also the model he’d used for the skeleton fight at the end of “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”. It’s said you should never meet your heroes but in my case having quality time with Ray Harryhausen is one of the greatest highlights of my life. 

Apart from meeting my wife and the birth of my three children of course, he added hurriedly. 

• 

• 

Finally, bringing 1963 to a close, two hugely enjoyable TV shows from my childhood that still resonate with me to this day. First up is “The Untouchables”, a gangster series based on the exploits of Eliot Ness, the Prohibition agent who helped take down Al Capone and if I’m correct aired on UK TV just as it was being cancelled in America. The other program that caught my attention was another American import, “The Outer Limits”, a ground-breaking sci-fi fantasy show featuring actors such as David McCallum, Donald Pleasance, Robert Culp and Bruce Dern. Dern appeared in one of my favourite episodes, “The Zanti Misfits”, in which prisoners from another planet are sent to Earth for incarceration but escape and cause all kinds of mayhem before they’re wiped out by us caring humans. 

PS. I can’t leave 1963 without referencing the assassination of JFK on November 22nd. Like a lot of people of my generation I’ve been asked quite a number of times over the years where I was when he was killed. I just want to state here and now that I had nothing to do with it. I was watching “The Harry Worth Show” on the BBC at the time which is almost a crime in itself. To borrow a phrase from director Howard Hawks that he employed when describing Danny Kaye, Harry Worth “was about as funny as a crutch”.

Join me next week for my in-depth exposé on the unspeakable horrors of secondary education in the 1960s.

Where do I start with 1963? The introduction to my very own school appointed bully who plagued my life rotten for almost two years? The beginning of my long-term fascination with the Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine? The embarrassment of riches that poured forth from the numerous cinema screens in and around Margate? The debut of two of my all-time favourite shows on TV? Let’s hold off on those last two items until next week and concentrate instead on how, during the first three months of 1963, I ran the risk of having my gonads frozen off on a daily basis before they’d even descended properly. Ladies and gentlemen (I am obliged to point out that there are of course other genders now available should those not be to your liking) I give you – the Big Freeze of 62 /63.

• 

• 

The snow fell on an almost continuous basis from January right through to early March. The sea froze for over a mile, meaning that you could walk from Westbrook Bay to the end of the pier over by the harbour . The first image looks as though it was taken from the harbour wall, showing the frozen tide on Margate front. Note the Arlington Flats under construction in the background, a building that to this day continues to ruin the skyline along the promenade. The second image shows the harbour itself. I did not try walking on the ice myself on account of being a coward but I’ve heard a story or two about friends of mine who did and nearly regretted it on account of it wasn’t quite as thick as they might have hoped in some places.

• 

• 

The photos above compare how the house we moved to in Margate looked at the time versus how it looks now,. You can see in the first image that the entrance to our house is located to the right of the entrance to the hairdressers. We lived in the floors immediately above, whilst the hardware shop next door is where I would be sent to purchase copious amounts of Esso Blue paraffin to keep the home fires burning in our gaff.

These are the pupils of class 4A of Garlinge Primary school 1962 / 63, the first and only school group photograph I ever appeared in. I’m the Asian kid you can see located on the extreme left of the first row. The melting pot that is my DNA continued to impose so many changes on my appearance during my childhood that I was forced to check in the mirror  almost on a daily basis in order to anticipate what kind of racist epithets would be slung in my direction once I got to school. If you’ve read the book then you’ll know that in the photo I am uncomfortably close to the bully who plagued my life for two years. On a positive note however my good friend Terry Hill (not his real last name) is sat at the other end of the same row. He doesn’t look like that now though. 

This is my primary school report in which you can see the teacher has stated I have “obviously suffered from having had several changes of school” which was the understatement of the year. I ran out of fingers trying to count the number of times I had been forced to change educational establishments since I started school at the age of five in Malta. Let’s just say it was a lot and leave it at that.

• 

• 

The issue on the left above shows the magazine my mum unexpectedly brought home to me one day in June of 1963. I was so enamoured of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” I continued to beg, steal, borrow and steal issues of the mag from before and after that date right on into my late teens. The image on the right shows one of the earliest issues that has accompanied me on my journey in life up to the present day. And no, they’re not for sale.

And finally an image that signifies one of the greatest events of my generation, and which on occasion elicits jealousy from those who weren’t around at the time, the first Beatles LP, released in March of 1963. And no, I’m not selling this either. 

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….

As mentioned in the book there really was a washing powder called Omo back in the early 1960s. Us boys had a lot of fun calling each other boxes of detergent even if we didn’t know what it was we were actually laughing about.

I guess you had to be there.

Here are a couple of group family photos from round about 1960 – 61. The recently discovered black and white image shows us as a family of seven standing outside a building housed in the grounds of the hostel in West Malling. On the back someone had written the word ‘Homeless’. As you might also note from both photos all of my younger siblings suffered from an untreatable ailment that rendered the image of their heads impossible to capture on standard camera film stock. I on the other hand managed to maintain the ability when the occasion arose to project both a handsome toothy grin as well as a suitably miserable look at the thought of having nowhere to live.

The most memorable film of the year and one that will be seared into my consciousness forever was “The Alamo”, a big roadshow epic showing at the Odeon in Gillingham starring John Wayne as Davy Crockett. It took me a long time to get over the fact that John Wayne could actually die, even if it was only for a film. Great poster as well. In fact I think it was the very first one I ever bought. It has pride of place alongside my other JW posters including “The Searchers”, “Rio Bravo”, “Stagecoach”, “The Quiet Man” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”. Not that I’m obsessed or anything.

• 

• 

My dad took me to the Regent ABC in Chatham to see “A Thunder of Drums” and “The Colossus of Rhodes”, one of a number of instances in which the second film was better than the main feature. I think it was also the first time I’d seen an Italian peplum movie, a short-lived genre that would be superseded in the mid-1960s by spaghetti Westerns. Interesting to note that “Colossus” was directed by Sergio Leone who of course made his name with the Dollar trilogy. And by the way I don’t care what anyone thinks – as a kid I loved those gladiator movies. There. I’ve said it. I’m out and I’m proud.

I also managed to catch “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” at the Ritz in Chatham, the movie that went on to spawn the later TV series. The scientific basis of the film that the Van Allen belt surrounding the Earth can catch fire is of course total bollocks. On the other hand when did Hollywood ever let authenticity get in the way of good old-fashioned entertainment?

1961 was also the year I discovered how much I hated “Coronation Street”. The foster parents I was lodged with at the time kindly let me stay up to watch “Rawhide” each week (now that was a good television show) but unfortunately it was preceded by half an hour of the hugely popular but to me deeply miserable saga of folk up North. Give me “Crossroads” any day of the week.