Remembering the magic of 1967

Now there are some books and records which we all find difficult to part with.

Some evoke powerful memories of lost loves and missed opportunities with each scratch on a favourite track a reminder of a past girlfriend or party that went on all night.

And many of my old books are just the same.

So in front of me I have a battered copy of the Mersey Sound, a collection of poems by Adrian Henry, Roger McGough and Brian Pattern which I bought in the September of 1968 just one year after its publication.

The year earlier my mum had bought me the LP of one of their performances which mixed the poetry with music and I was hooked.

Back then I was still at Crown Woods doing my A levels and revelling in everything from Shakespeare and John Donne to Thomas Hardy and Charlie Parker.

Like Susan in Willy Russell’s play Educating Rita, I soaked it all up, never pausing to be over critical just hell bent on reading, watching and listening to as much as I could.

And so back to the Mersey Sound.

I haven’t looked at in five years which is a shame because re-reading At lunchtime a story of love, ,Mother the Wardrobe is full of Infantrymen and Without You is to go back to being 17 again.

But that is not all, after all one person’s nostalgia is another’s yawn.

Instead it is to remember how funny and relevant many of the poems still are.

None will stand against the greats but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth reading.

So I have set myself the task of going back to each one in the collection smiling at Roger McGough’s Vinegar*

"sometimes
i feel like a priest
in a fish & chips queue
quietly thinking
as the vinegar runs through
how nice it would be
to buy supper for two"

And remembering how I so wanted to be one of the

"Beautiful boys with bright red guitars 
in the spaces between the stars" **

But before nostalgia grips me in with its false rosy glow I shall conclude with Brian Patten’s Where are you now, Batman? which pretty much sums up why you should never look back

"My celluloid companions, it’s only a few years
Since I knew you.  Something in us has faded.
Has the Terrible Fiend, That Ghastly Adversary,
Mr Old Age, Caught you in his deadly trap,
and come finally to polish you off,
His machinegun dripping with years … ?"****

There will be those who mutter pretentious, some might be a tad offended but most I hope will laugh and get a sense of that decade.

*Vinegar, Roger McGough

**Mrs Albion You’ve Got a Lovelly Daughter, Adrian Henri

*** Where are you now, Batman,? Brian Pattern