Dr Who Am I And The Zen Trails of Hafiz: a trip through hell and heaven

BBC Eastern Counties radio interview on - starts 75 minutes into programme -here

sound promo - https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/hendrix-and-beatles-sound-bites


PERSIAN AIRWAYS BOARDING PASS:

THE LAST FLIGHT TO HEAVEN…. SUNDAY JULY 19 £7.50

TAKE OFF - 7.30 PM from THE BICYCLE SHOP,
17, ST. BENEDICT’S STREET, NORWICH, NR2 4PE

YOU CAN CAST ALL YOUR HANG UPS OVER THE SIDE…


450+ views for this post...

Tickets online here or on 01485 571828.
£7.50. Doors open 7.00 pm . 7.30 pm start. Interval and bar.





 

l to r Hendrix, Lt Sarah Ji O Who Ru, Dr Who Am I...

 

All photos by Mark Gregory

A trip through hell, heaven and Hendrix (Hafiz's avatar) guided by Hafiz...

 

 

 

If you can just get your mind together, Taj Kandula (here she is again) John William (follow this link to hear him playing All Along The Watch Tower live) and me are bringing this show to the Bicycle Shop Norwich on Sunday July 19.

 

Zeus serves notice...

 

 

Part of Room at the Hanse Theatre Company's Four Shows In July, as featured in the Lynn News A magical combination of Hendrix music, poetry and theatre.

Slide down the cobra of Shiva and soar up Jacob's ladder with us.

Follow Dr Who Am I’s astro-knight grail quest through inner space - with Hendrix playing in the cosmic elevators. 

It is Easter 1967. Dr Who Am I's life is a Dis-aster. He needs to get away from it all and find himself. He  books the Tardis in for a major TOM and himself onto the Last Flight to Heaven, posing as timewaster Agent Whodo Do-be-do-be.

The love craft is a Hafiz, named after the 14C Persian mystic, perfect man and poet revered throughout the East.

 

Seventh Heaven agent 007 is missing, believed killed, survived by a 'suicide' note, written in whirling Dhervish.

Co-pilot Lt O-Who Ru - currently employed on the Inner Space station baggage check - topped the NASA tests but in 1967 was not allowed to fly moon missions. However, she speaks whirling Dervish and can translate Hafiz's flight manual.   

Dr Who Am I has flying experience in a Dante

 

and knows everything - except how to be and what to do... Is Hendrix with the trip or on a suicide mission...?

Can Dr Who Am I, Lt Sarah Ji O Who Ru and Jimi find the Grail (and themselves) and Save the Earth before Kuber destroys it? 

Experience a science mystical Universe, a parallel version of Dante's.

  

 

Dr Who Am I.....Gareth Calway (voice)
Lt O-Who-Ru ....Taj Kandula (voice)
Jimi Hendrix.....John William (guitar and vocals)

Hear Gareth's original demo

https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/hell

https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/purgatory (heaven part 1)

https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/the-last-four-heavens (heaven part 2)

Dante and the text:

The whole odyssey including Hell on Earth adapts The Vision of Dante Alighieri. It's the 750th birthday of Dante this year. They tell us only his Inferno suits the modern mind. But ruin your measly little Inferno ... and come with us to heaven... The view is amazing...

The Seven Heavens are as described in 'The Nothing and the Everything' by Bhau Kalchuri (the author) and Meher Baba (the source).

I used to live in a room full of mirrors
And all I could see was me
So I took my spirit and I smashed my mirrors
Now the whole world is here for me to see. (Hendrix)



**************************************************************

Heaven 004: At The Kuber Pass: Facing The Death Star In His Lucifer Starship

Hear it here

Tu dastgu shu ay khizr I pay khujastih, kih man
Piyadih miravam o hamrahan savaranand (Hafiz)
“O august master, lead me by the hand because I am traversing the Path on foot (helplessly) as compared with other companions who are riding along it.”


I see Lucifer didn’t fall – he was Pushed, by God's Whim;
God’s full Power garlands my neck, Shiva’s cobra coiling.

Nothing can stop him, this endless serpent, desire-unbridling
King of creation, his Potency can do anything.

Hell’s chaos-king farts new cosmoses, bursts worlds like bubbles;
Raises ghosts, zombies; possesses dead souls; haunts the living.

Caught between two worlds, my screen’s locked on both, my ace fuel low.
Humming occult energy eclipses thought, risks Grail’s destroying.

‘Lucifers’ have Omnipotent Divine Power, but no
Directions for use; a Joy-stick that’s stuck, controls missing.

‘Here’s the source of Earth’s destruction and the Wasteland’s dead root.
Yet here, also, Hope’s bright Threshold: the Grail that tips her wing.

Satan’s Eye thinks Earth’s destruction, and the Earth’s doom starts there
Straight away: all-anger, he wastes lands by thought’s dark willing.

King of all except himself, at black-hole tipping point of
Falling every moment, roving-proud-Eyed, All-desiring.

Owning everything there is; Eyeing everything he owns, he
Locks me with his black-hole glance, and into dust I’m crumbling.

Lucifer trolls, transforming from light-winged merlins
Flown by lesser masters, roar up the limitless ceiling.

Light flows from within - without, above, below, all round me,
Streams behind, before, the white rose of a bright noon’s shining.

Shielded thus, ‘Lancelot’ soars, high as an archangel’s sword
Sheathed in spells Morganna sings, Mother of All-healing.

Cutting edge, State of the Ark, pure simple light, Christ to sky
Risen; as a hundred rays to the Sun connecting.

Closely guarded Key to the spirit world - Infinite Power
Without Gnosis, all heavenly Secret enchantments, turning.

Who-do-be do-being; Voodoo-be do-being, Who-do-be
Done being, Voodoo-be done being, Dis-Dissed, Dis-Dissing...

Satan peaks, HOT FEELING HARD-WIRED, ALL-SUBLIME-THOUGHT KISSING:
MOI!- gone– thinks he’s stone now, lies flat on the floor in ruin.

Highest ace, your measured mind beats the Lucifer in flight.
Love remains, the love’s you: sends your dark side Kuber-flushing.



*


Notes:

The form is the Persian ghazal, Hafiz’s favourite. It combines a formal control with a passionate content.

The Sun is a metaphor in this sequence but the reality of this life-giving heart and home of light is astonishing: visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b048nlfb

Women topped the NASA tests in the 60s, especially the endurance of boredom and pain, but didn't fly moon missions until the 80s due to ‘lack of combat experience’. Dr Who experiences each heaven in both genders.

For more mind-blowing stuff about the seven heavens and seven planes see ‘The Nothing and The Everything’ by Meher Baba/Bhau Kalchuri, published by Manifestation Inc, California, 1981.

 

 

Review of Kelly Oliver at the Lynn Arms Syderstone

showing Bob Harris how to introduce a young star.

  

Lessons in glory gold

These are three pages from Aiming At Progress, a KS3 skills series I edited for Collins. (2nd edition - go to www.collins.co.uk for how to order the series - which has three ability levels Books 3/4/5- for your school) I imagine such pages might go down well with classes inspired this summer by Bolt, Mo and Jess at the Bejing World Championships. Students can painlessly absorb language skills while admiring sporting greats. I've always believed (against the prevailing literacy trend) language is about what you say first, then how. If it's of interest to them, if it enables and empowers them in fact or imagination, they'll learn it.

Here is a bonus lesson spread that had to be taken out of the book as it went to press because Collins couldn't get permission for the picture we were going to use. It's level 4 - very simple. You'll have to provide your own picture of the sublime Jess.

3.5 Present your work effectively on the page

This lesson will

·       show you how to make your work look attractive on the page

·       show you how to present a magazine article.

As well as planning, structuring and keeping your writing organised, it is really important that your work looks good on the page.

Getting you thinking

Have a look at this extract from You magazine, about Jessica Ennis 15 September 2013

 

Now imagine if the article was set out with words and sentences and nothing else. It might look something like this:

Olympic gold, fairy-tale wedding, CBE – it’s been a glittering two years for JESSICA ENNIS-HILL. And, despite her recent injury setback, the future’s looking even more dazzling.

BECOMING OLYMPIC CHAMPION demands extremes of dedication and hard work, but in many ways that is the more straightforward side of the job for Jessica Ennis-Hill. Six days a week, injuries permitted, she is at the track or gym honing her tautly contoured body. It’s on the seventh, when she attends her sponsorship commitments, that things can get complicated.

1 Discuss with the person next to you which version you would be more likely to read and why.

Now you try it

Find a magazine of your choice. Look at one page with an article on it.

1 Make a list of exactly what is on the page. Try to include everything you see from the heading to the pictures.

2 How much of the page is taken up by

·         the heading

·         pictures

·         subheadings

·         the writing in the article?

3 What colours have been used on the page? Why?

4 Does the layout of the page make you want to read the article?

Development activity

Work in pairs. Imagine that you work for a magazine. Your editor has asked you to include an article about a famous celebrity (your partner) in the latest issue.

5 Take it in turns to interview each other. The reporter should ask at least three searching questions and the celebrity should give some interesting answers.

6 Now you know your subject, what should you include on the page to make it attractive to the reader?

·         Draft out how your page would look.

·         Roughly draw in where the headings, pictures and other features would be on the page and put in boxes where you would want the writing to appear.

·         What colours would you use? Why?

Check your progress

Level 3            I can use headings to present my work clearly on the page.

Low Level 4     I can use pictures, headings and colour to present my work effectively on the page.

High Level 4    I can use a range of presentational features that suit the purpose and audience of my text.

The Clash With Rome at Folk in a Field

The Baroness and the Bear and friends premiere 'The Clash With Rome' (a Calway-Bones original) at the Folk in a Field festival on 5 July 2015. A film of this exciting performance will be available with 'Doin' Different'- lyrics in collaboration with a galaxy of Norfolk-based musicians - at Christmas. (Published by Poppyland Publishing.) Go Julie go!!!

Watch that performance here



 

Interview on Eastern Counties radio about this and four show in July here ( starts 70 minutes in)

Interview with Breckland radio at the festival itself. here

The Clash With Rome

Boudicca got a lot of Romans
Hanging out in the Styx;
The Woad Goddess goes to school
Where they teach her how to be nix.

She’s the Mother of Britain’s
Biblical kicks
Against the odds,
Against the pricks.


She’s the crazy moon
In a gurly whirl
The finest hour
Of the Norfolk girl!

Ride ride, I wanna ride,
Ride ride, a riot on my horse,
Woad woad, a-whoa woad,
Blow whoa, a riot on my horn!

She’s the fury in Janus’s office
Sown with the wildest oats,
She’s a wild goose-chasing sky,
The whiff of burning boats.

She’s the country queen
With the world in sway
Who blooms and blows
It all away.

She’s the crazy moon
In a gurly whirl
The finest hour
Of the Norfolk girl!

Ride ride, I wanna ride,
Ride ride, a riot on my horse,
Woad woad, a-whoa woad,
Blow whoa, a riot on my horn!

pics by Baz Allan

Beat Music; It Was Fifty years Ago Today: The Complete Story

You are the 600+ reader of this post.

Hear Bob Harris's shout out on national radio here - 2 h and 45 m in

The Last Waltz of 'Beat Music. It Was 50 Years Ago Today' at SHARP (which has a shorter history, but a longer archaeology...)

'Best ever reprise' of our Cinderella 60s fairy tale Beat Music show, I am reliably told. About the (working) class of '63 'I won't be voting for Ted generation' which may just be due a reprise. Bright young diggers and diggers and others who remember the 60s - or not - made it a receptive audience. They got the jokes and the fairy tale and dug the music.

Very Beatley this - it's John's left hand guitar that does it

My other show half taking a photo of me doing this back to him

 

Not the hot summer night anticipated - jolly cold in that marquee after long days of rain, though sunny on the evening itself.

Goodnight night, 'Beat Music', sleep tight. 'Though I know I'll never lose affection for Beatles and things that went before - I know I'll often stop and think about them - in My Life, I love YOU more.' (YOU know who you are.)

Not only is it 50 years ago today that the Beatles film Help was released (July 29, 1965) it's also 20 years ago that SHARP (Sedgeford Archaeological and Historical Research Project) began.

 

Both events will be commemorated at Beat Music: It as 50 Years Ago Today at the Boneyard Field in Sedgeford tonight at 8 pm.

 

Gareth Calway (storytelling) and John William (guitar and vocals) will begin their Beatles show with a specially written version of an old Beatles' hit refashioned thus:

 

It was 20 years ago today

Sedgeford Diggers first came out to play.

Saxon ovens, bits of Ancient Rome;

The Iceni burned from house and home.

So may we introduce to you

The cutting edge of breaking ground:

Sedgeford Diggers bony parts club band!
 

There follows an excavation of 1963-1970 as the real life rags to riches fairy tale of the Beatles meets a magical realist tour of the real Sixties (from Kennedy's assassination to the moon landing.) This is told through the tale of Cindy a factory girl meeting her Beatle Prince at the final Beatle concert tour date on mainland Britain - the Capitol Cinema Cardiff in December 1965.

 

Every episode of the story is brought to vivid life by John's dazzling performances of Beatles songs from She Loves You through Norwegian Wood to Something.

 

The two Wannabeatles performance of Help is one of the highlights of the evening, which includes a Beatles-themed buffet. Tickets £8 from 01485 571828 or via jannineparry@yahoo.co.uk .

 

Fittingly for an archaeological venue, there are frequent references - musical and narrative - to the Beatles Neanderthal alter egos, the Rolling Stones! 

 

Hot rocks, as the Stones might say

 

This the farewell performance of this much-loved show which toured in 2013 - shades of that farewell stunt by the Fabs atop the Apple Building on January 30 1969.
 

After a "Once upon a time there was darkness..." ode to beat music, we plunge straight through the hole in an old 45 rpm single into the middle of the Sixties...

HELP!!!!

 

BBC Eastern Counties radio interview (90 minutes into the programme) -here

beatles revival- JULY 29. 7.30. 2015  sound promo - https://soundcloud.com/gaz29-1/hendrix-and-beatles-sound-bites

THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE REVIVED FOR THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF HELP IN A BONEYARD IN SEDGEFORD. DIGGING WITH THE DIGGERS

 as featured in The Lynn News

Picture the scene a Wednesday night on 29th July, an archeological research dig in it's 20th year, a field full of tents and archaeologists. Nestled within this a Marquee with a stage, with 2 men waiting to tell you a story.................. Welcome to a magical realist romp through the Sixties. Was there ever a more magical decade than this – a helter-skelter ride from black and white post-war austerity to kaleidoscopic flower-powered social revolution? This novel tells a Sixties fairytale charting the journey of Cindy Spectre from factory girl to hippie chick, kitchen sink drama to bedsit romance, Dusty Springfield to Janis Joplin. At the heart of this revolution is the music of the Beatles who undertake their own magical mystery tour from cheeky choirboy moptops of Love Me Do to the bearded sages of Let It Be.

The music is woven into the narrative style and every stage of the plot. In the form of the composite character ‘Beatle’, the Beatles become the magical Prince who shows Cindy the way out of her workaday drudgery and onto a journey that ends in a question mark in India. The show ends with an emotional assessment of the Beatles’ enduring gift, that ‘Something’.

All this and a Beatles themed buffet
For the fantastic  price of £8 a person
Refreshments will be available
All profits going to the Minor John Bursery fund to help give people better access to Archaeology

Beat Music: It Was Fifty Years Ago Today by Gareth Calway

You don't have to be 50 to enjoy this show. My generation escaped O levels and CSEs with Sergeant Pepper. The next will study it!

Click here for the full show, Room at the Gin's finest hour and a half, as performed by Gareth and John to a packed house at Great Massingham Social Club, Norfolk, on 10 November 2013 and streamed live to the world on Folkspot Radio.

Welcome to a magical realist romp through the Sixties. Was there ever a more magical decade than this – a helter-skelter ride from black and white post-war austerity to kaleidoscopic flower-powered social revolution? This novel tells a Sixties fairytale charting the journey of Cindy Spectre from factory girl to hippie chick, kitchen sink drama to bedsit romance, Dusty Springfield to Janis Joplin. At the heart of this revolution is the music of the Beatles who undertake their own magical mystery tour from cheeky choirboy moptops of Love Me Do to the bearded sages of Let It Be.

The music is woven into the narrative style and every stage of the plot. In the form of the composite character ‘Beatle’, the Beatles become the magical Prince who shows Cindy the way out of her workaday drudgery and onto a journey that ends in a question mark in India. The show ends with an emotional assessment of the Beatles’ enduring gift, that ‘Something’.


17 May (Grosvenor Rooms, Prince of Wales Rd, Norwich), 30 June and 28 July (ABC Cinema, Great Yarmouth) : Beatles concert dates in Norfolk in 1963

1963...

23 August She Loves You is released.

12 September 1963, She Loves You tops the charts and Britain says Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Factory Girl Cindy meets her Prince at the Beatle ball.

2013...

Fifty years on, Gareth Calway (spoken word) and John William (guitar) conjure up a real-life fairytale.

sponsored by Fine City Sounds.

Sunday 30 June preview at Meet The Hedge, The Feathers Inn, Wymondham (the 50th anniversary of the night Beatlemania came to Norfolk for the second time in 1963 at the ABC Cinema, Great Yarmouth and the nearest I could get!)

YEAH YEAH YEAH! NEVER MIND ALAN PARTRIDGE, I'M ON RADIO NORFOLK ABOUT THE BEATLES' SHOW
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01df9rt/Stephen_Bumfrey_Thomas_McGuinness/ 2 hours and 10 minutes in

Thurs 22 August, The Wolf Folk Club, Wolferton, successful premiere of the William and Calway combo in two extracts (the 50 year anniversary of the release of She Loves You)

Sunday 25 August, Folkspot radio, part of a packed bill at Great Massingham (with Mike Prior standing in for John on guitar)

Tuesday 27 August, a preview at the Gin, Ringstead (with Alan Timms standing in for John on guitar)

Thurs 29 August, Fine City Sounds, Norwich, 8 pm.

A core audience of connoisseurs et dames, plus some street folk 'floating' at a door opened out on a City summer night - the entire first half done in 45 minutes at 45 rpm. She Loves You first charted 50 years ago. We celebrated in a Lennon's Cave of vinyl.

Thurs 12 September, The Gin Trap Inn, Ringstead, 8 pm

Preview in the LYNN NEWS! http://www.lynnnews.co.uk/what-s-on/lifestyle-and-leisure/it-s-back-to-the-fab-old-days-of-the-beatles-in-ringstead-1-5460482

Room at the Gin moved into its third and biggest room to date - le conservatoire! - and filled it for Beat Music. Photos by Zariah Wood-Davies. Audience drawn from the guests at the pub, Ringstead (including a guy who'd met the Beatles, been at Cambridge with the Pythons and wrote Spinal Tap) and surrounding villages as far as one the other side of Dereham. Also in attendance, via the Wolf Folk Club, Mr John (and Mrs Jill) McLennan. How about that? Just get the Harristarkeys in for the next one and that's a full set. Alan Timms and Dave Fisher (pictured in audience and Dave performing below)

gave A Little Help From My Friends (4 great Beatles songs from different periods) and Steve Knowles and I closed the show with my valediction over his moving Yesterday.

But John and I did the main business of the evening with our musical fairy tale of Factory Girl meeting Beatle Prince and a splendid time was had. 'He can make the guitar talk and I can make the words sing' as someone said after the show. Nice.

Sunday 10 November, Great Massingham Social Club and Live Folkspot Radio Broadcast, 8 pm

WOW Lynn News cover story of the show  and a great pic of the Fabs here

Saturday EDP story and pic rushed out like a Stones single after we got the Friday Lynn News cover here

WHO AND WHAT HAPPENED

ONLINE AT http://www.folkspot.co.uk/ AND ON EARTH IN GREAT MASSINGHAM - LIVE.

This was my debut as a radio presenter and it went like a song - and I mean one of the longer ones from the later 60s because it went on for four hours. You can always tell when a party is going well when the landlord extends the evening for an extra hour.

A great end of tour performance from John 'Jimi' William and myself (I was told) in good voice and with a rapt audience - a big one - hanging on the story, applauding the songs and joining in the choruses. There was also a short introduction from me on the Beatles' place in history, some historic reviews of the Peterborough concerts of Dec 1962 and 1963 (one of the more perceptive reviewers present in the audience 50 years on) a fairytale-ending not heard before and a streaming waterfall of Beatle-only floorspots from Martin Hopp, Dave Fisher, The Fried Pirates, Cary Outis and Charley, Rich Pickins, Lynn Wykes and Terry Smith, Tim Chipping, Beatle spots from resident folk-spot performers Dave and Mike Prior and Beatle CDs from Jane.

A combined arts performance of story, poetry, theatre and beat music conceived last year, announced last epiphany on Folkspot and brought to fruition in the time it took the Beatles to launch a legend. (the best part of a year but with a lot of prep)

AS FEATURED ON RADIO 2 SOUND OF THE SIXTIES!

50 MINUTES IN http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio/bbc_radio_two/listenlive

ALSO FEATURED ON ABSOLUTE RADIO, (BBC) FOUR COUNTIES RADIO, BBC RADIO NORFOLK, IN THE EDP AND THE LYNN NEWS

Me and Jane, the presenters, both once teachers - a profession I gave up to devote more time to education. 'Anyone who doesn't think there is a connection between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.'

PRESS RELEASE

When the Beatles made their final LP Abbey Road in 1969, they referred to the then unnamed medley on Side 2 as The Big One.
Well, here’s our Big One: a 3 hour gala of non-stop Beatles music on Folkspot Radio. www.folkspot.co.uk performed free and broadcast live to a studio audience by Norfolk-based musicians at Great Massingham Social Club, Station Road, Massingham on Sunday November 10, beginning at 7 pm.
About 40 of the Beatles 186 songs will feature during the three hour live performance, half of them in a special live broadcast performance of Gareth Calway’s touring Beatles show: Beat Music; It Was 50 Years Ago Today, the centre piece of the evening, which combines Gareth’s magical-realist storytelling with John William’s excellent guitar. This begins at 7.45 and runs until 9.15.

Includes:
In My Life
Norwegian Wood
She Loves You
I Feel Fine
Rain
Girl
Drive My Car
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
Eight Days A Week ...



The rest of the evening features guest musicians performing their favourite Beatles songs. A list of these and the performers is available on Folkspot’s Facebook web page.

Includes

Strawberry Fields, Get Back, Hey You’ve Got To Hide your Love Away, I’m So Tired, Ask Me Why, Here There and Everywhere, Yesterday, Blackbird, We Can Work It Out, With A Little Help From My Friends, Revolution.

There will also be some rare treats, like hearing the reviews of the Beatles 1962 and 1963 Peterborough concerts written by a then cub Wisbech Advertiser reporter who 50 years on will be in our audience. And learned disquisitions about the Beatles’ place in musical history written by a Radio 3 scholar.
The performance/broadcast marks the 50th anniversary of the day the Fab Force learned they had sold 1 million advance copies of I Want To Hold Your Hand, the record that made them in America.

There’s plenty of room at this warm and welcoming club – so come and join in the 3 hours of Beatle fun. Or if you can’t get there, tune in from 7 pm.
Press release enquiries 01485 571828

All other enquiries janeknights008@btinternet.com or see www.folkspot.co.uk


The show is an extract from a novel called It was Fifty years Ago Today - whose blurb and synopsis are copied below.

Welcome to a magical realist romp through the Sixties. Was there ever a more magical decade than this – a helter-skelter ride from black and white post-war austerity to kaleidoscopic flower-powered social revolution? This novel tells a Sixties fairytale charting the journey of Cindy Spectre from factory girl to hippie chick, kitchen sink drama to bedsit romance, Dusty Springfield to Janis Joplin. At the heart of this revolution is the music of the Beatles who undertake their own magical mystery tour from cheeky choirboy moptops of Love Me Do to the bearded sages of Let It Be.

The music is woven into the narrative style and every stage of the plot: each of the fourteen chapter titles is the name of a track on the Rubber Soul album. In the form of the composite character ‘Beatle’, the Beatles become the magical Prince who shows Cindy the way out of her workaday drudgery and onto a journey that ends in a question mark in India. Her younger brother follows her there twenty years later, too young to have experienced the Sixties himself, the Spectre of a feast he hippy-trails to the end. What does he find – the Answer or a Question? The meaning of his empty life or the elusive butterfly of a dream?

Fifty years on, as ‘When I’m 64’ comes back to haunt the love generation , the issues remain: is love all you need? Is revolution in the road or in your head? Mystery and magical realist fairy tale combine to provide a rich and funny commentary on the sixties.

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today Synopsis of the novel

The novel is based opens in on the day Kennedy is shot and 16 year old Cindy Spectre is at Wally Pratt’s biscuit factory in Somertown, stacking biscuit tins and longing as usual for the weekend. When the assassination is announced over the wireless, a month after Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech, Cindy is devastated by the death of this symbol of young hope. Her older generation working class parents attempt to repress her but the Beatles prove a growing magical and liberating influence. ‘Beatle’ – the Fab Four in one - is the weekend fairy tale Prince of her council estate week. Her moody boyfriend, Johnny, performs this role less effectively. After a motorbike ride to Wales, she actually meets ‘Beatle’ before the Beatles’ farewell concert at the Capitol Cinema Cardiff on December 12 1965. This encounter feeds her dissatisfaction with her humdrum life. Through politics (perhaps the most liberalising government in history), education and pill-fuelled sexual liberation she emerges from her ‘Factory Girl’ chrysalis towards the ‘butterfly’ fantasy flower child of the later Sixties, her intelligence revealed in a radical hippy edge.
Johnny loses Cindy after a crisis in Cardiff on the day of the Beatles concert, where the ‘doll’ love-object of the early songs comes to life as a real woman with aspirations of her own, the Girl of Rubber Soul. Heartbroken, he begins to pursue her instead of the other way round. They are reconciled. Inspired by the Beatles’ musical progress through artistic and spiritual revolutions, Cindy now leads Johnny through mind-expansion, the anti -Vietnam student demos of Grosvenor Square and finally the hippy trail to India. The Sixties reach midnight, the princes revert to frogs and Cindy flees the ball.
The story is told by Cindy’s younger brother haunted by the mystery of her disappearance and damaged by the well meaning but dysfunctional Spectre family, in which Christmas angel/Fifties Fairygodmother Mary is mostly Stepmother and Dad is mostly Absent. As he tries to make sense of it all the tale hurtles to an explosive end.

Read the whole novel here