Lost in memories of listening to Apache in Woolworths on a warm summers afternoon in 1960

Now I wonder just what eight records we would all take away to that desert island.

It’s not a causal question and if you think about it, it turns out to be pretty hard especially if like me you were born in the first half of the last century.

My seventy one years have been packed with friends and events many of which were happy and a few less so.

So do you go for the music you associate with lost romances or stick with the big events from leaving home, seeing the birth of your children to the very great moments of the last two centuries?

And if you do go for the top eight events, does the death of J. F. Kennedy win over Dr King’s “I have a dream” speech or the release of Nelson Mandela or should the end of a world war stand above the magic of a night spent sitting beside the Thames listening to the barges banging together on a summer’s evening with the girl of your dreams?

I guess it is an impossible task more so because it changes with your age and your outlook and especially the love of your life.

Instead perhaps it should just turn on the eight memorable moments.

My first was walking in to a Woolworth’s store and hearing Apache by the Shadows sometime in the summer of 1960.

This still has the power to take me back to a moment in my life before everything became complicated and grown up.

More than that it puts me right back into that Woolworth’s store with its wooden floor, heavy and solid island counters and the smell of ice cream which came in those circular shapes with matching small round cornets.

Now you can’t get more basic than that, but would I take it on that island?  No I  think not which still leaves me a shedful of moments and songs to work through.

Picture; Cliff Richard & the Shadows arrive at Schiphol Airport, the Netherlands, April 6 1962, Nationaal Archief, This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands license.