Author Description

Like a fairground Waltzer, the '60s was a spinning kaleidoscope of colours, lights, sights and sounds filled with young people, dressed to impress in the latest fashion and spinning in a dance hall daze. This is my story, the story of a boy growing up in Chesterfield, a classic English market town, surrounded by coalmines, heavy engineering and factories. Through this decade I will ride this Waltzer as a Rocker, Beatle, Mod and Hippie, a 'Child of the 60's', following the latest trends, living life to the full, but always being me, wanting to belong whilst being an individual. It feels kind off funny writing things down about yourself that others may read. How then did it come about that a sixty-something retired IT Lecturer should have the audacity to do this. Well, over the last forty or so years, at family gatherings the conversation would often lapse into family members remembering their youth. When my sister and her husband and my wife and I talked about life in the 1960s, this appeared to intrigue our children and later our grandchildren. It was at such an event when I had just turned 60, as I bemoaned the fact that I had little photo evidence of my youth, only my memories, that my sister and niece suggested that I should stop moaning and commit my memories to paper before they faded completely. This idea kept milling about in my mind over the next few weeks and then one evening I decided to start writing my story for the benefit of my family so that my children, nieces, nephews, grand children and eventually great grand children would be able to know about my life during that time. I dare say that one day soon the 60's will be taught in schools as part of modern history, but will it reflect the life of a working class youth in grimy old Chesterfield, I think not. Each chapter of volume one, 'My Soul Journey 19609 - 1965, contains one year of the 60's and starts with me age 10 in 1960. I use news items that were interesting to me and the music that ran through