From Larkin to Larkins...

 

Essence of ‘71... part one

 

I have started to say

'A quarter of a century’

Or ‘thirty years back’

About my own life.

So wrote Philip Larkin in 1971, in a short poem that would not see publication until after his death. Larkin was 49 when he wrote it. I’m now sixty... and I have started to say ‘fifty years back’ about my own life...

My memories begin around the age of two... hazy from 1963 into 1964, gaining greater clarity during 1965, sharply focused by 1966-67. In 1971, I was ten, and I can remember scenes from that year as if they had taken place last week. It was half a century ago, but I can still conjur up ‘essence of 1971’ with no special effort of memory. It wasn’t a year I remember enjoying particularly, but it’s most vividly recalled through some of the artefacts, cultural and otherwise, that surfaced at the time. For some reason, the summer months are particularly sharply focused. I remember weeks of heat and sunshine during the school holidays, particularly the afternoon of the school sports day. In fact, this short heatwave was something of a blip in what was actually an unremarkable summer. Met Office records tell us that June had been unusually cool and rainy, and August was notable for its frequent thundery breakdowns. It’s July, then, that I’m remembering: the end of term shading into the beginning of the school holidays. This is the story of how it felt to live through those few weeks, such a long time ago, conjured up through the time machine of memory and association... 

 

Endless weeks at number one:

I didn’t care much for the pop music of 1971. Tony Orlando and Dawn had annexed the top of the hit parade in mid-May with the amiable, lightweight tosh of ‘Knock Three Times’. It was somewhat unusual for a single to stick so long at number one – five weeks in total – and even more remarkably, it was replaced at the top spot by yet another song destined to outstay its welcome with another five weeks at the top. I was only ten years old, but I still regarded the inane nursery rhyme twaddle of ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ as being aimed at a much younger age group. Like the unborn. Nobody liked it, which begs the question as to how it did so well, for so long. It sounds as bad today as it did fifty years ago, with its half-way-to helium vocals (the master tape was almost certainly sped up). But what it does do is kick down the door to let in a draft of memories from the same time...

The rest of the top twenty didn’t offer much in the way of improvement. Another song that feels saturated in essence of summer 71 is Blue Mink’s ‘Banner Man’. I neither knew nor cared what a ‘banner man’ might be, but this slab of pomp-pop with its ‘sing-a-long-with-the-brass-band’ production was hardly off the radio during those weeks. Hearing it today gives me an instant Proustian rush of sight, smell and taste, beginning with...

 

Refreshing Ferrero Mints:

Nowadays known as ‘Tic-Tac’, these enduringly popular mint capsules were a new arrival on the sweet counter in 1971. I remember being particularly taken with the unique packaging with its flip-up lid. They were introduced to me by a kid who lived down the street, was probably mildly autistic, and looms large in memories of the early 70s. At least they still exist, unlike other confections of the same era: and the mere act of popping one today instantly tops that ‘Blue Mink’ sugar rush of memories, bringing us to...

 

The Munch Bunch: 

Later used as the name of a brand of kids’ yoghurt, back in 1971, the ‘Munch Bunch’ were in fact a series of anthropomorphic fruit characters designed as novelty pencil toppers. My friends and myself collected them as playthings and never put them to their intended use, instead inventing games or building lego vehicles and houses for them. I was introduced to these soft plastic creations by a lad in our class at school: I think he had an ‘Oswald Orange’ (they all sported alliterative monikers). Oswald’s mates included Perry Pear, Bertie Banana and Larry Loganberry amongst others. The first one I acquired was a pineapple (Percy, presumably...) I can still vividly recall the strange sweet scent that it gave off, redolent of Macintosh’s ‘Caramac’, the mere memory of which sets us off again in the mental time machine, arriving at (or perhaps in...)

 

The school swimming pool: 

Our modest suburban primary/infants school had managed to raise sufficient funds to pay for the construction of an outdoor swimming pool, which was ready for use by the early summer of 1971. I don’t believe I’d ever been in a swimming pool before, and was accordingly reduced to bobbing around with a piece of polystyrene as I attempted, without success, to learn to swim. No amount of public information films or entreaties from Rolf Harris could convince me that I needed to be able to swim, and the situation remains the same fifty years later. In any event, I wasn’t keen on any school activity that necessitated getting undressed, so the opening of the pool held no special appeal for me. What I do remember clearly is waiting for that swimming lesson, on Wednesday afternoons, whilst listening to a tape recording of a schools radio broadcast of... 

 

Singing Together: 

This BBC series for schools had been a regular fixture on the radio since 1939, although I never experienced it until this year, and perhaps for that reason it’s Summer 1971’s line-up that remains with me. Last year, I managed to acquire a copy of the accompanying music book (shown above), with its lyrics and simple sheet music for songs including ‘Linden Lea’ and ‘Donkey Riding’. ‘Linden Lea’ in particular, despite hailing from much earlier in the century, is steeped in summer of ‘71 for me, as are several other radio series, heard at the time and barely heard from since... 

 

Many a Slip: 

Like ‘Singing Together’, this was another well-established radio favourite, that had been on air since 1964, although once again, 1971 marked the first time I’d ever heard it. This only happened because a) the BBC had just changed the broadcast time from evenings to lunchtimes at 12.30, and b) I was coming home for dinner during 1971. I think I got home about half way through a typical episode, and I never understood exactly what was going on: two teams comprising, on one side, ‘The Gentlemen’ (David Nixon and Richard Murdoch) and on the other, ‘The Ladies’ (Isobel Barnet and Eleanor Summerfield) had to spot deliberate solecisms in short passages composed for the programme by Just a Minute creator Ian Messiter. It’s actually very entertaining when you’re of an age to follow the proceedings, but back in 1971, all I noticed about it were the familiar voices of David Nixon, host Roy Plomley, and ‘Musical Mistakes Man’ Steve Race. Most vivid of all, though, was the idiosyncratic theme tune composed by John Baker of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, using his standard technique of tape cut-ups. This was a fairly recent arrival, with earlier episodes going out sans intro or outro music, and with its burbling, synthetic soundscape, the MAS theme sounded exactly like ‘essence of early 70s’. Sadly, only a handful of episodes survive, the nearest to this era hailing from 1973. I only heard the series for this one season, and never again until a one-off repeat around 1991, when the theme song instantly transported me back to ‘that’ summer...

Those radio lunchtimes are, indeed, a particular feature of my recollection of 1971, with the schedule comprising a panel game, comedy or drama series at 12.30 followed by ‘The World at One’, presented at the time by veteran broadcaster William Hardcastle. Wednesday lunchtimes featured a programme I have never heard since and which, by extension, is almost certainly lost. Bernard Miles and Betty Marsden starred in ‘Just Perfick’, a series adapted from the popular Larkins novels of H.E. Bates. I can still hum the theme music, or most of it, but the rest is gone. Hearing it on those warm Wednesday lunchtimes was a reminder that an afternoon of Singing Together and swimming lessons lay ahead... and in retrospect, there's something very H.E. Bates about that songbook cover...

And, Larkin being where we came in, Larkins feels like an appropriate point to go out on... but we’re not done yet with 1971..