Fragment 12: The Life & Times of a Social Experiment

Some of the trials and tribulations of teenagehood, 1960s-style.

Image: Shutterstock.

So, where were we? Oh yes, a Monday morning in March 1960 when, for the very first time, I was walking up the hill to Market Harborough Grammar School (MHGS). It was, in fact, the Monday just after Johnny Preston’s song Running Bear went to No.1 in the UK pop charts. I know this because I’d listened to that week’s Top of the Pops on my bedroom radio (an old, metre-tall, floor-standing, valve-driven monster that I had rescued from a scrap heap). When I was half-way up the hill, a boy passing on a bike asked me, “What’s Number 1 in the charts?” “Running Bear” I replied. The boy pedalled on. A tiny incident but I took it to be a good omen.

Not that I was ever a great pop music fan but, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s perhaps worth noting that this was a strange period in the evolution of the soundtrack that accompanied the emergence of the new teenage demographic.

After the Second World War people understandably wanted to put the horrors behind them. No surprise, then, that June and Moon and Croon ruled the airwaves. Top of the earliest UK charts were, Here in My Heart (Al Martino, Nov 1952), You Belong To Me (Jo Stafford, Jan ’53), Comes A-Long A-Love (Kay Starr, Jan ’53), Outside of Heaven (Eddie Fisher, Jan ’53), Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes (Perry Como, Feb ’53) and on and on and on until in November 1955, following a string of schmaltz, a high-explosive missile came out of nowhere.

This unlikely looking device had the appearance of a pervy uncle, but, boy, what an explosion! Rock Around The Clock from Bill Haley & His Comets, in the forms of a movie and a record, seemed to cause consternation for anyone over the age of 25 as a newly-emergent army of sharp-suited ‘teddy boys’ slashed cinema seats (Why did they do that?) and generally responded aggressively to the rhythm of:

We're gonna rock around the clock tonight
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight
We're gonna rock, gonna rock around the clock tonight¹

Hardly great poetry but even I, an earnest ten-year-old at the time, caught the excitement. After that, the driving rhythm was carried forward by skiffle, most prominently in the UK in the person of Lonnie Donegan whose Cumberland Gap topped the charts in April 1957.

But, if Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock was high explosive, Elvis Presley’s All Shook Up (a UK No.1 in July 1957) was the no-holds-barred thermonuclear device that really confirmed teenagehood as a fact of life. And to prove the point, Elvis’s  Jailhouse Rock followed just six months later.  

And yet, in 1960 at the time of my first day at MHGS there was something of a hiatus. Running Bear was followed, at the top of the UK chart, by the funny but hardly cool My Old Man’s A Dustman from Lonnie Donegan. Mind you, as ever, something else was in the offing: just five months after my arrival at MHGS, on the 17th August 1960, a group opened a 48-night run at the Indra Club in Hamburg. The Beatles.

That first day at the new school I took my seat in Form 3P alongside John, who would become a good friend, and embarked on what was to prove a really happy period of my life.

Which is not to say that it was all easy-going. In junior school everything had seemed effortless, but the ease was not to last. By the time I reached the 4th form I was running out of road in maths, physics and chemistry. Which is to say, I really did have to put in the effort to keep pace, whereas the aforementioned John seemed to glide effortlessly through these subjects.

Truth to tell, I was confused. Although I say it myself, I enjoyed and was good at English (language and literature) and was deeply interested in History. But, I felt that maths and the sciences were ‘real’ subjects. So I tried to keep up with them. To augment my knowledge, I started buying Scientific American magazine, monthly, from around the middle of 1960 to try to be in the know about new developments.

One consequence of this was that, some years later, when I embarked on my first marriage, my personal possessions included a large stack of these magazines. In my wife’s eyes they were just ‘clutter’ and I ended up binning them, save only for a few of the September ‘single topic specials’.

Finally, in this subject review, I seemed to do quite well in Art, to the extent that, by the 5th form, I had a handful of buyers for some of my paintings which were mostly attempts at surrealism and peinture métaphysique, trying to channel the spirit of Giorgio di Chirico. God, that sounds pretentious, doesn’t it, but it’s a fact that the modest income from the sale of paintings did help fund the purchase of SciAm, records and other essentials that, from 1961, included cigarettes and, not long after that, an alcoholic drink or two or three.

However, in 1960, I was confused about which subjects to focus upon. I couldn’t make sense of it all. And, most unhelpfully at the time, I didn’t want to admit the problem. George and Nellie were of little help. Although they were generally supportive of my endeavours, they had such little knowledge of, or connection with, the education system that they really could not provide any counsel. I just muddled on.

I was around 14½ years old when I made that first appearance at MHGS and, even if I was mentally confused, I was physically maturing, if you know what I mean. But I knew full well that George and Nellie – Nellie in particular – regarded anything to do with sex as, at best, distasteful and, at worst, downright disgusting. So the subject was never mentioned at home, although I do remember having some conversations with friends at school and at Air Training Corps meetings. As I recall, these involved inaccurate or wildly bizarre opinions being thrown around as though irrefutable facts.

However, one Sunday evening in the spring of 1961, when I was around fifteen and a half, something startling happened. The congregation had debouched from the Congregational chapel after the evening service – George, Nellie and I among them. George and Nellie were talking to a couple and, as far as I remember, I was idly minding my own business.  

Also present was the couple’s daughter. I knew she was in the year above mine at school, but we had never previously spoken to one another. With her back towards the adults and without a word being said, she grabbed my hand, pulled it under her skirt and rubbed it against herself. It was damp and I became conscious of a tantalising musky scent. Reflexively, I pulled my hand away, and instantaneously wished that I had not done so. For the first time in my life, my senses were flooded with a mix of pheromones, ecstasy and fear.

It so happened that, at that time, a group of us had committed to repaint a room within the Congregational chapel: I think it was intended to be the new base for the Youth Club. She and I agreed to meet there on the following Saturday afternoon. How the tryst was negotiated I don’t recall but I do remember that the ensuing school week was, for me at least, full of anticipation. The incident had clearly carried an implied promise, hadn’t it? After all, she had made the move. I felt that something real was going to happen but had no real understanding of how it might play out.

Came the day, I went to the room in good time. Did I realize that it was not a good location for a romantic encounter? I tell you, categorically, it was not. In common with most of the church rooms, the floor was bare boards. I think some other rooms may have featured lino, but this one wasn’t even that luxurious. And, preparatory to the cleaning down and repainting, the room had been cleared of all furniture. All furniture. Not a table. Not a chair. Nothing. The sole contents of the room were a stepladder, a bucket and a pile of old cloths to protect the floor from paint drips. And this was the exotic boudoir in which I hoped to achieve the longed-for consummation that would supposedly make a man of me.

She arrived, but the fact that she did at least turn up is the high point of this tale. She scanned the room and her reaction was clear. She was distinctly unimpressed. She turned tail and left. That was that.

Thanks for reading.

1. Rock Around the Clock written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers (1952)