1962

[jean]

Wasn't the great freeze 1962 - 1963, rather than the beginning of 1962? It was in London. My student house didn't have running water for ages. It was pretty grim, I suppose, but we were young and thought it rather exciting.

It was, I think. My 2nd year at university and I was in hall of residence experiencing central heating for the first time in my life, and so (indoors at any rate) I was warmer than I had ever been.

My little sister was sending me despatches from Liverpool about this great band called the Beatles which I duly passed on, but my university friends were very scathing until, suddenly, it was Beatles everywhere. I was never that impressed, though.

[Resurrection Man]

A struggle to remember anything of significance that year. I was 12/13 years old. Did I have an Airfix motor racing set then? All a bit of a blur that period. I remember trying to impress my childhood sweetheart by running and jumping onto the platform of a moving bus, slipping off the platform, my hand sliding down the handle, being dragged along the road but was it that year?

So to clues from music....I remember Telstar but not much else...Carol King..It might as well rain until September...Nut Rocker...B Bumble and the Stingers..the execrable 'Sun Arise' by Rolf Harris...nothing triggered and then...Wonderful Land by the Shadows....I had glandular fever that year.

[Northender]

I remember the shock and outrage that greeted the news that UK unemployment had risen above 800,000.

[Petrushka]

1962 was the first year that I can remember as a year even though I was, as I said upthread, only 7/8. It was the first year that had definite markers there in both family and national and international news. For very strong family reasons I can actually remember this very day in 1962 which I bet no-one else on here can do!

If there is one piece of music that I associate with 1962 it's 'Standing on the Corner Watching All the Girls Go By'. Dean Martin, I think.

There is a photo of my father, brother and me standing in the town that summer waiting for the band to pass by one Civic Sunday.

And, yes, the big freeze was 1962/3. I remember that too.

[decantor]

Wasn't the great freeze 1962 - 1963, rather than the beginning of 1962? It was in London. My student house didn't have running water for ages. It was pretty grim, I suppose, but we were young and thought it rather exciting.

Absolutely right, Lady Mary: I got the right rooms but the wrong term.

So here's another memory, definitely '62. I had a Latin Verse supervision with elderly Alan Ker (a Euripides specialist). We did no Latin and no Greek; Alan Ker danced around the room as John Glenn orbited above and the wireless delivered a commentary; Alan just kept repeating, "I never thought I'd live to see the day". It was quite moving in its way. We toasted Glenn in sherry before I left.

[marthe]

In 1962, I was 12 and in 7th grade at an RC school in Massachusetts. The Cuban Missile Crisis scared the wits out of us and the problems in Vietnam were everyday conversation. The Beatles were unknown to us at that point. The British Invasion began the following year. My husband, who grew up near Wigan, remembers the terrible winter of 1962-1963. Later, I read a short story by Sylvia Plath called "The Snow Blitz" (from a collection of short stories entitled Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams) that describes life in London during that terrible winter. I found the story both amusing and moving. Plath had grown up in my town and gone to my high school, though 18 years earlier.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

St james Park in '62/3

[kernelbogey]

....I well remember the alarming news report that suggested we were on some brink of nuclear annihilation - one of those events when you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing, as they say. It was a warm, sunny day; I walked out into our back garden and looked up at a sky filled with innocuous cirrus cloud.

Yes, I was 17, in the second year of sixth form, hearing the eight o'clock news on the Home Service: the Russian ships carrying the missiles just continued, seemingly inexorably, towards Cuba as Kennedy played chicken with Kruschev.

'Mr K' blinked first, and later turned his ships around.... It's now 'history' - but I, too, remember, as SA vivdly describes, getting dressed for school and thinking 'This really could be it'.

[Pabmusic]

This is actually 1963, but it has always struck me just how happy we all seemed:



Just before the picture was taken, the teacher told us all not to look at the camera. The two kids in the centre were obviously very attentive (the boy is Pabmusic, naturally).

[gurnemanz]

St james Park in '62/3

An awful of of snow had fallen and it didn't thaw for weeks. There was a six inch thick crust of hard packed snow on the pavements. When it finally melted, most of the curbstones were out of kilter and had to be reset. We had no central heating and relied on an open coal fire and gas fires (the "good" old days). My bedroom had no gas and I was provided with a quite inadequate electric heater. I can remember ice forming on the inside of the window. It was quite fun to write graffiti in it with my finger. I remember writing "I love Heather" with a heart in teenage admiration of the girl next door.

[Mary Chambers]

The park-keepers in Regent's Park came every day to break the ice on the lake, so the ducks had a bit of space to swim. Breaking it wasn't easy.

[eighthobstruction]

We all seem to have very similar feeling/observations/recollections of this time (for obvious reasons)....I am finding it/ I have found it very difficult to use this time while writing, due to it being an over-ploughed field....Only a few weeks ago I was trying to pull something original out of this time (61/62/63) using Robert Frost (1874-63) + read poem at JFK's inauguration....and Marilyn M dying 62 +Berlin Wall 61....+ Vietnam gradually being ramped up....Jimi Hendrix was in the US Army at this time....Cassius Clay (sic) was failed at his first 'qualifying' for US Army due to his Reading and Writing being below min' standards....Gary Power (U2 fame) released 62....in England Profumo which finishes McMillan 63....Barack Obama born 61, Kim Philby goes to Moscow 63....Fidel and Che getting their feet under the desks in Cuba....Yuri Gargain 61, John Glenn 62....and many interesting things happening in class 2K at Bishop Road Primary, and in the head of a small boy listening to the news on a crystal set....and of course snow providing a scramble course on the way to school everyday for 3 months....
ED....Malcolm X beginning prominence and Martin Luther K placed in jail for first time in Georgia, Pope Paul VI (63) The Pill [GB 61]

[Serial_Apologist]

An awful of of snow had fallen and it didn't thaw for weeks. There was a six inch thick crust of hard packed snow on the pavements. When it finally melted, most of the curbstones were out of kilter and had to be reset. We had no central heating and relied on an open coal fire and gas fires (the "good" old days). My bedroom had no gas and I was provided with a quite inadequate electric heater. I can remember ice forming on the inside of the window. It was quite fun to write graffiti in it with my finger. I remember writing "I love Heather" with a heart in teenage admiration of the girl next door.

Did it occur to write it backwards?

[gurnemanz]

Did it occur to write it backwards?

Nice idea, but top floor, so it wouldn't have been visible and the love remained unspoken. She is one of my sister's best friends so I do still see her quite often 50 years on.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

one consequence of 62 i thunk was that the USA, whilst the centre of power, lost its cultural hold and London especially became a central cultural locus in the mid sixties .... in retrospect far more importance should be given to the advertising industry in London than has been the case .... it was not just the great visual arts, music, and scene .... the ads were plastering it all everywhere ... it was a very turbulent year and period ... making choices involved parents and harking back to older certainties and the feeling that they were gone forever and the challenge was truly daunting ... a real freedom to explore ... in a fast changing and actually rather nasty world ...