Fifty-nine years ago today I had my first sight of television, my first taste of beer, & I knew the words to That Pirate Don Dirk of Dowdee.
The television set sat proudly in the corner of the small front room of the only family in the lane who had found the money to splash out on such a thing. We were, of course, used to seeing ‘moving pictures’ in the cinema, but the ability of the human brain to interpret those pictures, flickering in shades more of grey & blue than black & white, on a screen smaller than that of the average PC, still seems magical, the people more real than those we now see in weird, squashed-flat, high-definition magnification.
Sometime in the afternoon, probably after I had stood on a chair to entertain the company with my recitation of the tale of Don Dirk of Dowdee, I wandered into the kitchen where the men were gathered, drinking beer; one of them (not my father) thought it would be amusing to reward me with a sip from his glass. They got their amusement from my horrified reaction to the taste.
So many personal memories, but it is a little disturbing to be celebrating the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty’s accession to the throne on what is actually only the 59th anniversary of the Coronation. It may not carry the power of shocks such as the death of Kennedy (Where were you when …?) but our own recollections of these events form the threads – loose, small, vital – that bind, & it is disconcerting to have them dis-ordered in this way. Muddled, a small presentiment of what it must be like when memory finally descends into muddle.
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