There Will Be Fireworks

Remember remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder, treason

Should ever be forgot...

The 'Gunpowder Plot' conspirators

Across Britain tonight, folks are commemorating the foiled Gunpowder Plot with fireworks and bonfires, culminating with the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes. But are we celebrating Fawkes' execution or honouring his attempt to do away with the government?

Either way, it promises to be a rather soggy event this year as it’s bucketing down outside! So, rather than hang around all night in some cold, wet, muddy field waiting for a couple of damp squibs to fizzle out, I’ve been perusing my photo archives to bring you some amazing photos of fireworks from the cosy comfort of my couch….amazing purely because it’s incredible that I actually got these shots without freezing to death (they were taken last New Years’ Eve, in Norway, in the snow, in a bracing -40°C….you get the picture, I suffered to get these photos!)

I do love fireworks! As a child, they thrilled me….beautiful lights and loud bangs, a kind of magic. Fireworks were a precious commodity, not easy to come by in Zimbabwe…so pyrotechnics shows were a rare event, reserved for very special occasions, like the closing ceremony of the annual Agricultural Show. Tickets to attend such a show were in high demand, and consequently came with a steep price tag. 

But my budget-conscious dad had other ideas. Why pay for a fireworks display when you can watch it for free….after all, most of the action is taking place up in the sky? So, along with many other like-minded families, we would find a good vantage point to park the car in the fields outside the show grounds and enjoy the spectacular show unfolding above our windscreen. 

One such night, the freebie fireworks show was almost over when my dad suddenly spotted a uniformed policeman coming towards our car. Convinced that he was coming over to “have a word” (yes, because it’s totally illegal to watch fireworks from outside the arena), my dad immediately started up the car and started reversing away…but in his haste, he didn’t spot a VERY large hole in the ground behind us. 

THUMP! One of the rear wheels rolled into the hole and we were stuck. No amount of revving the engine was going to get us out of that! My brother and I got out and started struggling to push the car out of the hole…luckily we were given a helping hand by the “policeman” who turned out to be a security guard from the show grounds, on his way home.

Hope your weekends sparkle!

It Ain't Half Hot Mum!

Temperature reading on my car display this evening (87F)

It’s been a mini heat wave in the south of England today! Yes, it really does get hot in the UK sometimes....the high humidity makes it feel even hotter, so as soon as it gets over about 26°C (77F) it becomes sticky and very uncomfortable. Some of the hottest times of my life, I’ve spent living in the UK, and in London in particular. The buildings trap the heat and the worst place to be is the Tube, where on a packed (and not air-conditioned) train, temperatures rise well above 45°C (113F)...it’s illegal to transport animals at those sort of temperatures!

Despite growing up in the tropics, I actually don’t do heat all that well....I get headaches and feel lethargic and grumpy. I’m much happier when it’s warm but not too hot, so living in southern England suits me well. Sure it’s cold and very wet a lot of the time, but it tends to be quite comfortable on the whole without extremes of heat or cold (this past winter aka The Great Ice Age of 2009/10 excluded of course). This surprises some people here, quick to point out the minute the mercury starts rising “You should be loving this....it must feel like home!”

Hmmm...yes, because it’s always hot in southern Africa, the sun always shines and it’s never cold or wet. I’ve been trying to remind some British friends travelling out to South Africa for the World Cup that it’s going to be winter there (they don’t quite get the reversal of the seasons going on between the northern and southern hemispheres) so they may want to pack a fleece and perhaps a rain jacket.

Winter in Cape Town can be beautiful....it can also be chilly and very wet, and it can be very wet for days on end. And then the wind blows....normally at the same time the rain is falling, and sometimes at gale force. It took me the whole winter (and three wrecked umbrellas) my first year of university to work out that such contraptions are redundant in the Mother City. Finally, there is no such luxury as central heating and double glazing, so you can be just as cold indoors as out. Over here, our homes are designed to keep the heat in...great in winter, but a real bugbear during a hot summer when it’s almost impossible to get cool enough to sleep.

And I can’t believe I’ve just managed to write a whole post about the weather....

Worthless info: 'It Ain't Half Hot Mum' was a slightly dubious (potentially racist) British sitcom about the adventures of a Royal Artillery Concert Party, broadcast between 1974 and 1981, set in British India and Burma, towards the end of the Second World War.

Global Citizen.....Or Nationless?

“What do you think of the new government? Personally, I’d rather have seen the Icelandic Volcano Party in power.... it’s done more to stop immigration than Labour managed in the last 13 years!”

This was relayed to me last night by the owner of our local Indian takeaway...an anti-immigration joke told by one immigrant to another - he the son of Bangladeshi immigrants, me born elsewhere and to parents who were themselves both immigrants to that country. I’m not too sure the jolly Tandoori owner saw the irony.

Immigration is a highly contentious issue in the UK, and one that can sometimes make me feel a bit uncomfortable. Do those born and bred here look at me as “one of them, coming over here and stealing our jobs!”? Not that I am perceived as a typical “immigrant”... for one thing, with my father being British born, I have always held UK citizenship. Years ago I forfeited the citizenship of my birthplace...dual nationality is forbidden in Zimbabwe, and since the late 1990s, anyone born to parents who themselves were not born in that country is deemed a foreign national unless they renounce their parents’ ancestry.

I’ve now lived exactly half of my life in a country that is not the one of my birth....the past nine years in the UK, and the previous nine as a student in South Africa. There, I had to abide by the Aliens Control Act, allowed temporary residence provided that I paid my repatriation deposit (a lump sum of money to cover the costs of deportation if I misbehaved and had to be hoofed back over the border). I also had to promise not to seek employment in South Africa when I finished my studies.

And so I left Cape Town a week after graduation, and came to live in the UK. I arrived with no standing on ceremony, no pomp or circumstance, no “Britishness test” or citizenship ceremony to swear allegiance to Her Majesty and sing the national anthem....B went through all that three years’ ago, with me present as his guest. I simply landed at Heathrow late one night, joined the EU Citizens passport control queue and started living my new life....one that has been good so far. I am close to my family, I’m building a fulfilling career, I've made new friends and have many older ones that are living over here too, we've bought our own hovel house and travelled a fair bit.

I’ll never forget my background....I’ll always be told that I have “a slight accent” of indeterminable southern African origin, but I don’t exactly know how to classify myself..... just “British”, “British, originally from Zimbabwe” or “Zimbabwean now living in the UK”...and does it even matter? Perhaps I’ll be an “International Woman of Mystery”...

One Would Probably Not Approve

Performance Anxiety

The thing I fear most at the start of every Aikido class (obviously apart from incurring grievous bodily harm along the lines of a cracked skull or shattered shoulder from an ukemi gone wrong) is being called up by Sensei to play uke (‘attacker’) while he demonstrates a technique to the class. Fortunately, as I am still completely useless one of the newbies, this has only happened twice so far and he usually asks someone who actually has a vague idea of what they are expected to do....or at least knows their left leg from their right...

Sensei: “Place your left leg forward...the other left leg...no, the other left leg...OK, you know the leg you have forward now? Well, it’s not that one!”

Never one to enjoy being the centre of attention, I feel extremely self conscious and awkward and become quite ‘incompos mentis’ if asked to stand up and speak or even walk in front of loads of people. I’m far happier being an observer in the crowd.

I was always in the background for school plays, and would keep quiet in class if I knew the answer, refusing to read aloud as I was too embarrassed to do so in front of my class. Consequently, for most of my first year of school, the teacher assumed that I had a learning disability and recommended that my parents consider placing me in a school for children with special needs, as my reading and speech skills apparently lagged so far behind the rest of my class. This puzzled my parents: “She never shuts up at home, and she’s been easily reading the school books of the neighbour’s son...and he’s three years’ ahead of her in school!”

Wasn't much fun for me for long

In later life I had to learn to overcome my extreme shyness to cope with oral examinations and presentations, and panel interviews for a university scholarship, a postgraduate university place and jobs...but these have been some of the biggest challenges of my life.

With the rise in popularity of reality TV shows over the past decade, it seems like “Everyone wants to be on TV” and there is no shortage of fame-hungry people, willing to bare their bodies and souls for their five seconds in the limelight.

But I’m in no position to pass judgement on others. I must confess that I have in fact appeared on TV, way back when I represented my school in the Zimbabwe National High Schools Quiz. Yeah, yeah I am was a complete geek and I also didn’t really have a choice in the matter....feigning sudden appendicitis/leprosy/smallpox/bubonic plague didn’t hold much sway with the Great Dictator ("I only vant to hear von click!") aka my headmistress. I consoled myself with the hope that no 'normal' people would be watching the programme...but unfortunately this was in the days before satellite TV had really kicked off and therefore most of the country that owned a set were tuned into primetime viewing on that one (and only) channel.

I was never this 'cool' at school

Our school team made it to the semi-finals, which went to a dead heat...and then we were just pipped to the post for a place in the finals. My parents were ever so proud and kept a videotape recording of the show, that they would haul out and play to long-suffering relatives. What a relief when that accursed tape went astray when my family packed up to move over to the UK....

And Now For My Mom's Story

Today is Mothering Sunday in the UK...the equivalent to Mother’s Day, which falls on May 9th this year in most of the rest of the world. I've told you a bit about my dad's early life in my last post, so perhaps today is a fitting time to tell you a bit about my mom.

She was born in a small South African town, just a few days before the outbreak of World War II. My grandfather and most of his six brothers promptly signed up for active service, and while my grandfather never left the shores of South Africa as his welding skills were more valuable to the army on home soil, my mom’s uncles were sent to Egypt, where they claim to have almost single-handedly defeated Rommel’s forces.

Desert warfare

As for most families at that time, the war years were hard on my mom’s parents...they struggled to get by on my grandfather’s army pay, food was scarce and my grandmother was never well and often in hospital, leaving my young mom in the care of a cantankerous hostel owner. A year after the end of the war, my aunt was born....much to the disgust of my mom who longed for a new brother to replace the one she lost to pneumonia in 1941. My grandparents just managed to stop my mom from pushing her unwanted baby sister out of the window of a third floor apartment, otherwise she may have grown up an only child.

When my mom was nine years old, the family emigrated to the then British colony of southern Rhodesia. My grandfather was wary of the National Party that had come to power in South Africa in June 1948, and he believed that the family would have a better life north of the border. And so they packed up their belongings and took the train up to Salisbury (now Harare). I won’t dwell too much on the rest of my mom’s childhood... it was not a particularly happy one. My grandfather battled with alcoholism that made for an insecure home life and that would eventually destroy his health.

Salisbury

Luckily, my mom rose above these challenges and completed her school education aged 16 and entered secretarial college. Six months later she was a highly competent shorthand typist and soon found a job working in the offices of government.....she was working as a secretary there at the time Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence from Britain on 11 November 1965, and it was there in 1962 that she first met my dad, who at that time was working for the Rhodesian Tourist Board. They were engaged within six weeks, married a year later, and lived together moreorless happily ever after... through the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, the hopeful 1980s and the declining 1990s in Zimbabwe, until it became obvious at the start of the new century that they would have to move to safer pastures. The rest, as the saying goes, is history....

'The King' - my mom's first love

My Dad's Story

I wrote this quite a while ago and have been deliberating about posting it for ages. I'm not sure it will be of any interest to anyone...but then the same could be said for everything most of what I put up here. It may just give you some insight into my background.

When my dad was very ill last year, he started reminiscing a lot about his early life. I suppose having a serious illness does that to you....you start taking stock of what’s gone before, as you’re not sure what lies ahead. I’m going to tell you a bit about my dad’s early life, which I've pieced together from a lot of conversations.

He was born in 1935, just outside London....the second of five children (four boys, with a girl in the middle). The first three children were born within a couple of years of each other and then my grandmother had many miscarriages, which took a toll on her health. My dad’s other two brothers are 15 and 21 years younger than him, so they didn’t really play a part in his childhood.

My grandfather was a carpenter by trade and my grandmother was a skilled dressmaker.  During the Second World War, my grandfather managed a shipyard that converted merchant ships into gun battle ships. He also did repair work on some of the bombed buildings in London. He was in fact repairing the damage to St Pauls Cathedral when another bomb fell that destroyed his work and all his tools. My dad can remember the noise and fires from bombing raids over London vividly...every night his brother and he slept in a cold Anderson Bomb Shelter in their back garden, while my grandparents took their chances in the house, with my aunt who was just a baby. Luckily for them, no bombs fell close by.

St Pauls in 'The Blitz'

When we were growing up, my dad always used to harp on about he had to walk miles to school (in the snow of course, as it was apparently always snowing). In reality, school for my dad was just over the road from their house...we found this out years later when when he took us on a trip down Memory Lane to the places of his childhood. My grandparents both came from large families, so my dad had a load of aunts and uncles around while he was growing up. One of my grandfather's sisters had a child out of wedlock following a brief romance with a “Yank” soldier stationed in Britain during the war...it was apparently a big scandal in the family at the time.

After the war ended, Britain was a pretty grim place....London was virtually a bomb site, food rationing would carry on until the mid 1950s and jobs were scarce. So it was probably no surprise that my grandfather decided to move the family out to the then colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which promised a good life of hot sunshine, wide open spaces, good food and jobs for those willing to work. Along with masses of other immigrants, the family set sail from Southampton for the long voyage to Cape Town and docked into Table Bay on Christmas Day, 1947....my dad remembers it being a scorchingly hot day.

The Royal Visit, Cape Town 1947

From Cape Town, the family travelled up north by train, finally settling in Bulawayo. There my dad restarted school and also took violin lessons. He became an accomplished musician, and was even offered a place at the Royal Music College....but being a musician was not a manly enough job for any son of my grandfather, and the stubborn old man refused to sign the scholarship papers, thus dashing my dad's hopes of becoming a professional violinist. Instead, aged 16 my dad took up an apprenticeship as a printer (back in the days when printing was done by type setting), and his music became a hobby that still brings him much enjoyment today.

Bulawayo City Hall

As a young man, my dad had many sporting achievements...he played rugby at provincial level, was a strong swimmer and earned a life saving medal. He was passionate about cars and spent months overhauling a Jaguar E type, back in his carefree bachelor days. Always keen to study new things, he went to university as a mature student in the early 1980s to obtain his Bachelor's Degree in modern history, another of his great interests. I remember going to my dad's graduation as a young child, and I think he was quite proud to attend mine..... a good education for his children meant everything to him.

Type setting printers

When I was younger (and sometimes still today) I clashed with my dad over almost every issue. Possibly we have personalities that are a bit too similar...he is incredibly stubborn, argumentative at times, fanatical about everything he does and persistent to the very end. I think I'm the diluted version...

It's been a year since my dad was first diagnosed with advanced cancer. He is still going strong and the most recent scan shows no further disease progression. Sometimes stubborn persistence can be a good thing.

Weekend Snippets

Savage Chickens found HERE

It was another exciting weekend in the Life of Nat...

Starting with a buckled wheel rim and flat tyre, courtesy of the plague of potholes left by the ice and freezing temperatures of recent weeks. Travelling on some of the UK’s roads at the moment brings back memories of the good ol’ Zim days of driving with the constant fear of suddenly vanishing into a bottomless pit of conjoined potholes (of course minus the added potential dangers of being shot at by the presidential guards for passing too slowly past one of his palaces, or running over a warthog).

Having a damaged wheel and flat tyre is never a good experience...certainly not one enhanced by the rude discovery that the brand new tyre on your spare wheel has at some point been deviously replaced by an old, worn tyre. Not sure who the dastardly criminal was, but it could have happened at the service garage, MOT test centre or long-term airport parking (moral of the story: check your spare every time you’ve had your car worked on and only choose parking where you don’t hand over your keys).

It was “Dumbbells at Dawn” in the gym as the competition for places in the Sunday morning aerobics class showed no signs of taking a weekend off...Dumb Ass is still in charge and is still a Dumb Ass. I almost fainted halfway through the class from the stress...although that may have been the lack of breakfast as I was too lazy to get out of bed in time to eat before the “Eat Now, Puke Later” threshold.

Aikido is getting...er...interesting...we’re learning to roll/somersault, forwards and backwards over our shoulders. Considering I haven’t been caught doing head-over-heels since I was about six, I fear shoulder dislocation at best, a smashed spine at worst. Last night, I finally plucked up the courage to do a “bended knee starting stance” roll...I managed three before the waves of motion sickness took over.

Finally, my cheeky friend is now one up on me in our ongoing “Give Each Other Rude Birthday Presents” competition, with this delightful gift...

Happy doodling!

Party Like It's 1979

Birthdays these days come and go without much of a kerfuffle. Last night, B and me popped down to our local ‘gastro pub’ for a very enjoyable, yet quiet dinner and a 'couple' of glasses of wine, but that was all...

The days of wild, outrageously-themed parties, fuelled by obscene quantities of cheap alcohol and resulting in hangovers that last well into next week are long over for us. They sort of fizzled out when the seemingly never-ending round of raucous 21st and 25th birthday parties finally rampaged to an end in the last days of the 20th century. There was a momentary, half-hearted revival of the “Party Like It’s 1999” days for some 30th birthdays, but we never really got up off the couch long enough to cause a stir...we are officially Old Farts.

For me, the best birthday parties were those of my childhood. My birthday fell just before the end of the long, summer school holiday, when the days were hot and sunny and carefree. Birthday celebrations were simple affairs, usually only lasting a couple of hours at most and followed a set routine. The whole school class would be invited to arrive promptly at 2 pm, when the festivities kicked off with the party games... predominantly running races but also the old favourites of pass-the-parcel, balloon relay, musical bumps and scavenger hunt.

My older brother took charge of the games at my birthday parties...what a great brother! you’re probably thinking, but he did have an ulterior motive. Any prizes left over at the end of the party would usually be divided up between the two of us, so he suggested “Let’s not be too quick to dish out the prizes, Nat....the more left at the end means more for us!” I was not 100% keen on his plan, finding it a tad unfair on our gift-bearing guests...but back in those days I believed Big Brother knew best.

BB decided we’d set the bar high....awards would only be given to the winner of three races in a row, and then it was a chocolate frog or lollipop only for the child in first place, nothing for any others. As the house that my family lived in at the time had a huge garden that backed onto vacant scrubby bushland, these running races became mini marathons....and had two friends reaching for their steroid pumps long before the games were over. Strangely enough, before responding to their invites to my birthday party the following year, the asthmatic duo first asked if BB would again be organising the party games....

Hot and exhausted from all that running about, we’d gather round the dining room table, which would be laden with the feast that Mom had probably spent most of the previous week preparing. A typical menu at my parties would be a salty/sugary/E-number overload from a combination of crustless sandwiches, sausage rolls and mini meatballs, crisps, cheesey curls, fairy cakes, rainbow jelly cups, biscuit happy faces and ice cream cone clowns, all washed down with lemonade or cream soda.

The party would culminate in the age-old rendition of “Happy Birthday”, with blowing out of the candles and cutting of the novelty birthday cake...again imaginatively and painstakingly created by Mom. My favourites were a guitar (with liquorice strings), a chocolate cat (with liquorice whiskers) and a kitchen stove (complete with chocolate biscuit dials). Every child went home with a 'present' of a piece of cake wrapped up in a paper napkin (and the more athletic ones with a chocolate frog or lollipop).

As we grew older, the parties became more sophisticated and expensive, and therefore restricted to only close friends. Two of the more memorable ones I was invited to were lunch at Wimpy (hamburgers and milkshakes) followed by a trip to see 'Canonball Run' at the cinema, and an afternoon of unlimited ball sinking at the putt-putt (miniature golf) course. Summer swimming parties and sleepovers were all the rage aged about 10 to 14, and thereafter childish birthday parties were replaced with the dreaded teenage (boy-girl) parties....

Those painfully awkward times are best left forgotten.

Savage chickens found HERE

A Bad Bout of Hypochondriatis

Savage Chickens found HERE

 

To say that my granny was obsessed with her health throughout her 80 years on this earth would probably be an understatement. For most of the time I knew her, she was never a very well person and she was on a potentially lethal cocktail of drugs for a multitude of ailments. In her last days, she was really ill with a failing heart, and was almost bent double from osteoporosis, which I now realise was thanks to her not getting HRT after a full hysterectomy aged just 34. But hey, it was the 1950s and what did they know?

I think my granny was actually quite a lonely person, and her preoccupation with illnesses filled the void and earned her some much craved attention. By the time my grandfather passed away and granny came to live with us in the mid 1980s, she had only two friends left in the country...all the others had either emigrated and lost touch or popped their clogs. One of those two friends was a former Follies dancer, now almost crippled with arthritis and not able to move out of her care home, but still lively in mind and spirit. The other old dear was quite mobile, but shared my granny’s passion for all things relating to bad health. When the two of them got together, they would talk for hours about ill they had been, were currently and expected to be in the near future.

I reckon you can talk yourself ill.

One day, my granny had been to the doctor for her monthly check-up....always a bit of a highlight for someone so keen on discussing her own health. She came home in particularly high spirits that day and announced that the doctor had told her she had malaria. We were puzzled...sure malaria is rife in Zimbabwe, but not in the capital city where we lived....and definitely not during the dry season (and the dust bowl pretending to be a garden was a bit of a giveaway that the rains had yet to arrive).

My granny was adamant she had a tropical fever: “I feel all hot one minute and cold the next!”. Naturally concerned, my mom phoned the doctor to confirm. He was as astonished as we were, “Malaria?! Well, she must have caught that between my office and home, as I’m treating her for arrhythmia!” In her haste to get to her doctor’s appointment that morning, my granny had forgotten to put in her hearing aid. Now it all made sense...

Could have been worse, I suppose...she could have gone to him suffering with a Glue-Ear, and come away telling everyone she had a bad case of diarrhoea...or even worse... gonorrhoea!

It’s been 10 years since my granny passed away. I wish I’d gotten to know her better, but I didn’t...as I was foolish and selfish in my youth and believed there were many better ways to spend my days than chatting to an old and (sometimes awkward) lady.

May she rest in peace and good health.

January 20th, 1974

On this day, 35 years ago, I entered this world....what was happening at the time?

I was born in Zimbabwe, which at that time was called Rhodesia with Ian Smith as Prime Minister. At the time, civil war, known as the ‘Bush War’ by White Rhodesians and as the ‘Second Chimurenga’ (or 'rebellion' in Shona) to supporters of the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe, was ongoing and would culminate in the creation of the Republic of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe in 1980.

South of the Limpopo River, Prime Minister Balthazar Johannes Vorster (better known as John Voster) was following white public opinion in South Africa by supporting Rhodesia publicly, but was unwilling to alienate important political allies in the United States by extending diplomatic recognition. Later that year, he would pressurise Ian Smith to accept in principle that white minority rule could not continue indefinitely.Nelson Mandela had already been incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town, for 10 years.


On the other side of the Victoria Falls, Kenneth Kaunda ruled Zambia as a one-party state, while Seretse Khama was the first president of a democratic Botswana. The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique were mounting their guerrilla campaign against Portuguese rule, and would take control of the territory by April that year, gaining independence from Portugal the following June.

Internationally, the Cold War was simmering away, the ‘Iron Curtain’ was firmly in place and there was an East and a West Germany. Leonid Brezhnev was leader of the USSR (which comprised 15 'union republics') and Richard Nixon was in the White House. In just over a week’s time, Nixon campaign aide, Herbert Porter, would plead guilty to the charge of lying to the FBI during the early stages of the Watergate investigation. Nixon’s resignation would follow 8 months later.Mao Zedong was Chairman of the Communist Party in China.

The United States had withdrawn from Vietnam the previous year, but fighting still continued between the communist North and the government of South Vietnam. Two days earlier (18th January), Egypt and Israel had signed an armistice agreement officially ending their 1973 war. The agreement became known as Sinai I because it was signed in the Sinai peninsula and involved Israel’s occupation of that strategic desert. Sinai I had been achieved after a heavily publicised week of shuttling between the two countries by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who for his efforts was hailed in the media as the 'Superman of diplomacy'. It was only later that American taxpayers would learn that Sinai I laid the groundwork for the start of unprecedented massive aid to Israel by the United States, which continues to this day.

British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, still had two months’ tenancy on Number 10 Downing Street, before Harold Wilson (Labour) would move in for his second term. A fortnight earlier, the Conservative Government had introduced The Three-Day Week to conserve electricity during industrial action by coal miners.

Conflict (‘The Troubles’) was ongoing between elements of Northern Ireland's nationalist community (principally Roman Catholic) who wanted Northern Ireland to be politically reunited with the rest of Ireland, and the unionist community (principally Protestant) who wanted it to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Trousers made from about four square miles of fabric (typically polyester - the new staple fibre) had begun making an appearance, together with massive shirt collars, so big that you glided if you fell over. Platforms were everywhere, but had not yet reached the heady heights of 1975, when, to be 'hip', at least 2 inch soles and 5 inch heels were required.While the 'No Style' hairstyle was the barnet of choice, the mullet was already popular, due in part to the influence of David Bowie, who wore the haircut circa 1972-1973.

'The Sting' (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) and the original 'The Exorcist' were showing in US cinemas, and Peter Benchley's novel, 'Jaws', had just been published (16th January).

The New Seekers were top of the UK singles’ chart with their second biggest hit, 'You Won't Find Another Fool Like Me'. Towards the end of 1971, the group had recorded an adaptation of the Coca-Cola jingle, ‘I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke’. Reworked as ‘I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing’, the song became a worldwide success.

The top selling album that week was ‘Sladest’ by glam rock group Slade.Meanwhile, in the US, Al Wilson’s ‘Show And Tell’ was the #1 single, and Jim Croce’s ‘You Don't Mess Around With Jim’, first released in 1972, was in its second week at the top of the album chart. Renewed interest had been sparked in Jim Croce’s albums following his premature death in a small commercial plane crash in September 1973. He is probably best remembered for the songs ‘Bad, Bad Leroy Brown’ and ‘Time in a Bottle’, both #1 hits in 1973.

'Time In A Bottle' by Jim Croce (written for his unborn son):

If I could save time in a bottle

The first thing that I'd like to do

Is to save every day 'til eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you.

If I could make days last forever

If words could make wishes come true

I'd save every day like a treasure and then

Again I would spend them with you.

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do

Once you find themI've looked around enough to know

That you're the one I want to go thru time with.

If I had a box just for wishes

And dreams that had never come true

The box would be empty except for the mem'ry of how

They were answered by you.

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do

Once you find them

I've looked around enough to know

That you're the one I want to go thru time with.