A Magical Mystery Tour

Psychologists from the Leeds Memory Group at the University of Leeds are asking people to blog their memories of the Beatles to enhance understanding of human memory.

Psychologists know that certain cues will trigger memories and that music in particular is a strong trigger. This will be the first time psychologists have attempted to gather a huge database of memories by tapping into the influence The Beatles have in shaping our personal identities.

The survey is aimed at anyone, anywhere who has a memory relating to the Beatles. It doesn't have to be from that era, nor do you have to have been a fan.

Go to the website and add your memory(ies). Go on, you know you want to!

Scary ......

..... the way your past can come back and bite you. Taken during Rag Week in the late 60s, yes, it does include me, and my future husband was there too. The costumes were "kindly" designed by an art student with an evil sense of humour.

I'm somewhat relieved to see that they did similar things even in 1936, though I grant you they looked less silly.

Lie back and think of England - part 1

In my efforts to find the origin of this phrase, which I'm fairly sure isn't Victorian, I came across this poem by Philip Larkin, a modern English poet. I love it - definitely my era.

Annus Mirabilis

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Philip Larkin 1967

Though I hasten to add that in 1963 it wasn't too late for me!

Sixties

Early days

We were students in Liverpool during the sixties. It was well after the Beatles were famous and had left Liverpool but the Penny Lane road signs were still disappearing with monotonous regularity, reputedly turning up in students’ rooms. Eventually the council gave up replacing them and just painted the name of the road on a building.

During that time the fashion was for long, blonde, straight hair. So what have I? Short, dark, and curly. I was scarred for life! The length and the colour you can do something about, but curly, it was such a raw deal. I would have so liked to have hair like Marianne Faithful.

As I finished university I started applying for jobs. The very first one I think was as a research assistant at the Unit of Human Reproductive Biology. I would have loved that job but the interviewer actually told me that I would most likely leave to have a baby in a year or two so he wasn’t going to give it to me. That was something there were able to say in those days but you’d think the Unit of Human Reproductive Biology would realise that I did actually have some choice in the matter. However I had my indirect revenge: the person who did get the job was someone we knew. He lasted seven months, whereas I didn’t have a baby for six years.

It’s amazing now to look back on how employers were allowed discriminate in those days. I remember at one point having a refusal letter because they intended to give the job to a man, no further explanation. They were perfectly happy to put it in print. I was disgusted even then. I remember asking my mother if she would have been a suffragette, although that would have been before she was born.