1962

SPED-WEB

Simon Spedding From 1962 to 1972

I was born in February 1962 at Worksop hospital in Nottinghamshire; my parents Shelagh and Gordon had met in London in the late 50’s and married in Essex in 1960 on a Wednesday. I mention this, as the reason was that my Mum’s parents ran a small pet shop and Wednesday was half day closing. They had set up home in Woodbeck, near Retford, which is just off the A1 south east of Sheffield. Nearby is Rampton (in) famous for the secure institution there.

Music is just a noise or a pretty tune to a two or three year old, something to jump up and down to on the settee, something to drone on in the background and send you to sleep (Genesis took it one step further in the 70’s and applied this logic and fed it to the students of the world who tried to get their kid brothers to dig “squonk” or freak to “suppers ready”, yaaaawwwnnn).

To the tiny Spedding there was only one three tunes apparently. The three most important tune sin the world were “She loves you (yeah, yeah, yeah), Barbara Ann and an obscure ditty by Herb Alpert called Tijuana Taxi. All of these were used for jumping up and down on the settee. Whether made for teenage girls to scream and wet their knickers to, or for bouncing babies to test the ironwork and springs of the latest settee, these songs (well, maybe not Herb) and the songs that followed from the top bans of this side of the Atlantic and the other shaped the music of the sixties. Alas it also degenerated into the mutant hippy waffle of the flower children too boring to sing of love, and they thought of the bass guitar solo as ART.

Sometime before 1966 went left Nottinghamshire and headed south where my Dad was working with the DHSS in Fishponds in north Bristol. We moved into a brand new house in Yate just north of Bristol.

I started school in 1966 in Yate, a moderate sized town just north of Bristol. Yate was a small town until the early sixties but from then on grew and grew and become a Bristol dormitory town. I managed to have some classic haircuts during this period thanks to a combination of my daft growing fringe and my mother’s lack of hair styling technique. Not to be outdone Jeff managed to look equally silly but this was an even greater achievement, as his hair was normal before mother started work!

The memories of She loves you had drifted. My subconscious was now being subjected to the music of my parents. Elvis, Guy Mitchell, Little Richard, Frankie Laine, and songs of praise. Hmmm. Kids will listen to anything so “Feet up pat him on the po-po” was OK by me but “She wears red feathers and a huly huly skirt” was king. A reason why to never condemn the taste of the four year old, taste is nothing it’s the tune that works and if there’s humour, then why not! From here on the songs I recall with the fondest memories all conjure up images of life as a baby boomer in the late sixties or a child prankster in the playground giggling to the chartbound sounds that fired up the brainless wonders they call DJ’s that communicate so well with the kids. I remember the train journey from Temple Meads, Bristol to Harwich, the clickety clack, clickety clack and drone of the train as it sped through the Cotswolds, through the heart of Middlesex, across the flatlands of Essex to it’s destination, all to the accompaniment in the tiny mid of The seekers “ Rockin’ rollin, riding, all along the bay, all bound for Morningtown many miles away”. Zzzzzzzzzzzz

School initially was a Stanshawes West CP school. My school report for July 1967 mentioned that I had a good knowledge of numbers 1 to 10, was writing sentences in my news book, enjoyed painting and crayoning, and most interestingly liked providing specimens for the nature table. I think this re-occurred at a later school when I would bring in my collection of bird wings and a selection of skulls. Not a bad hobby for an under 10!

TV in the 60's gave us top of the pops and the same minds that turned on to the Woodentops tuned into the likes of ester and Abi Ofarim, Sandie Shaw, 1910 Fruitgum company and the far out sounds of the heady sixties. I remember nothing much at from this era, excepting the image of Dave Dee cracking his whip and singing to the backing of mock Spanish guitars of the Legend of Xanadu. I left the sixties at the age of eight; apart from bouncing along in ’63 the Beatles had passed me by, what was the fuss about with Sgt Pepper? I eventually bought the album in the early eighties and promptly sold it a few years later; it was OK but only, OK. Oh alright then “you had to be there”. I wasn’t though, but I did keep Revolver.

The first bike I remember riding was a blue three-wheeler, which my Dad had to put wooden blocks on the pedals so my little legs could comfortably peddle. It was fitted with a saddle bag, a flag and also a battery operated “engine” that sat neatly on the down tube and when switched on made a rather noisy simulation of an engine, probably similar to an electric shaver. Once I had mastered the bike I was soon racing around our road with the kids who lived in the area. Within a couple of years I had progressed to two wheels and was soon the fasted kid on the block on my red bike.

Whilst at Yate, my footballing skills soon developed. Along with my friend Stephen we would play on the small green area at the front of the house. After we moved to Kidlington, we did come back and visit once or twice, I remember meeting Stephen again, and my skills had developed so much that he could not get the ball off of me. Perhaps I was destined for a career in football. The trouble is that just about every boy between the ages of 6 and 10 has the same dream, regardless of skill level.

1969 saw the Speddings move away from Yate to Kidlington a very large (rumoured at school to be the biggest village in Britain) village just north of Oxford, at the time teaming with hippy type students with long hair and no sandals. Or at least that’s what I remember of it. The other fashion big in Britain at the time was the Skinheads. Kidlington had its very own junior skinhead bully who went by the name of “Bonehead”. All of us 9 and 10 year olds stayed well clear of Bonehead who was a couple of years older than us. He was rumoured to frequently beat up young kids like us so any mention of him and we would scarper.

I started west Kidlington school and soon made new friends who lived on our estate: Garden City. I have no idea where it got its name, as it was certainly not a garden or a city. It did have the attraction of a canal nearby plus large fields in which to explore and play. They would however succumb to the builders with hundreds of new houses being built.

While the area was being prepared for housing developments the fields took on a new purpose. Formally just grassy areas in which to run and hide they were quickly reduced to large areas of mud with huge mounds of topsoil and spoil. The geology of the area meant plenty of clay, and within the clay, once exposed by the excavators fossils. Every boy at school soon had a vast array of Belemites and ammonites. The other purpose the heaps of soil had was to provide “stations” for child warfare! The kids would divide into gangs and each gang would use one of the mounds as a base. The object of the game was to take over the other gangs mound by whatever means. There was only one way to secure the other gangs mound, stone fights. Boys huh! The gang would plan the attack the all of a sudden with handfuls of stones, start to bombard the other gang. Whichever team had the best throwers and had co-ordinated their team well would quickly see the opponents cower away under a shower of falling stones. Despite this I can recall very few casualties, usually the retreat started as soon as the stones got close enough to threaten injury, although Jeffrey was hit on the head once and I bravely went and attacked the culprit on my own in a 10 year olds rage.

We lived at Lock Crescent, as the name would suggest a canal was nearby, a canal that offered an outlet for adventure. Adventure to the young boy usually means mischief and there was plenty to be had. On one occasion an agency or Authority had been along the towpath that ran alongside the canal and cut the grass. Anticipating the children of the areas sense of mischief the grass cutter had carefully placed all the grass in tidy little piles at regular intervals. Somehow we got hold of some matches “et voila” loads of little fires all along the towpath.

Kidlington was where I really got quite good at football. I played at school in the playground; I played for a club outside school too. Five a side on Saturdays meant that Dad had to record the football results on our reel-to-reel tape player so I could hear them upon my return. I was a striker, more of an inside forward than a centre forward and was all set to go for trials with Oxford United. Before this could happen though it was time for my Dad to change jobs again and this time we were heading north into Lincolnshire. The day we moved we hopped into the car and drove up to Newark we stayed in a hotel overnight before resuming the journey in the morning. As a footnote, when our belongings had been dropped off the removal men were heading off to move the great British golfer Tony Jacklin.

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