1966

“The most glorious year to be a Brit: Twiggy, the best Beatles album, a World Cup win - and a nation bathed in optimism. 50 years on, Ray Connolly celebrates the joy of being alive in 1966.”

I have Pauline (wife-number-one) to thank for the link to the Daily Mail story. It reminds me that in 1966 I was the same age as my daughter is today.  

 
“Part of the Sixties legend has, of course, always been Carnaby Street and the fashion industry. Free-thinking attitudes and the teaching of fashion and photography at colleges of art around the country had laid the foundations that would put Twiggy, 'The Face Of 1966', on the front covers of millions of magazines. Simultaneously Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni was attempting to put the era onto film in Blow Up, starring David Hemmings as a groovy young photographer. Vanessa Redgrave was in it, too. She bared her chest and Jane Birkin showed the rest, a first for anyone in a British film.
It was said in America that after the war Britain lost an empire and failed to find a new role for itself. But that wasn't how it felt to be young in 1966. We only looked forward then in that pivotal mid-Sixties year, never back.”

How fervently I hope that Jessica will be able to look back on 2016 with comparable fondness. 

One of these days I must transfer the version I recorded with Twiggy from the acetate disc as a digital file... let that be a New Year's resolution. It's a song I still like a lot.