A Somerset Lad

A musician by conviction and a teacher by necessity, he is eclectic in his tastes and complimentary in an unexpected directions, including towards The Sweet. I had never met a serious music enthusiast who was enthusiastic about the music of the Glam rock pop bands of fifty years ago.

Mention of The Sweet evokes a vivid recollection of the last day of the 1973 summer term at Elmhurst County Grammar School in Street. It was the very last day of the school’s existence, and there was a disco in the school hall. Afraid at such events, I lingered at the doorway and watched my more confident peers enjoying the music. Blockbuster by The Sweet was being played by the DJ, the band were probably not the sort of thing of which the headmaster would have approved, but the adolescent throng seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The Glam Rock movement, musicians with painted faces and outrageous clothes, was the sort of thing to sustain the mood of disapproval by more traditional members of society, it reflected a mood that had set them tut-tutting since the emergence of the teddy boys in the 1950s. Glam Rock set out to be outrageous, to shock, to challenge perceptions.  The gender-bending use of make-up and flamboyant clothes had the desired effect among commentators in the mainstream media.

Of course, the Glam Rockers did not subvert society, anymore than had the hippies who preceded them, or the punks who would follow them, but they had created ripples, caused people to ask questions.

Popular outrage at music has become a thing of the past.

Perhaps it is because those who are now of an age where disapproval of new trends might have been common in the past are still among the audiences of current bands. Music that has been assimilated by older generations loses its capacity to shock.

Perhaps it is because audiences are much more fragmented, there is no single dominant forum comparable to BBC Radio 1 in the 1970s.

Perhaps it is because artists are much more savvy about how to achieve commercial success; alienating people is often not good for sales, being anodyne in attitudes and nice to everyone you meet is a much easier route to riches.

There is nothing now on the radio that feels threatening or subversive. It is hard to imagine that a twelve year old might stand at the doorway of a school hall and think that a disco was frightening, or think that fifty years later a song played that day might be discussed in a school staffroom.

The half-time whistle was blown and the two teams walked from the pitch. Many of the spectators left the stand to go to the catering stalls.

The fifteen minute break gave an opportunity for the junior teams to come onto the field for their games. Each club had one-quarter of the pitch and training poles were pushed into the grass to serve as goalposts.

The nearest club were dressed in green and white. Their coach divided the fourteen players into two teams. One team put on blue bibs over their shirts to differentiate them from the other.

The team with the blue bibs clearly included the regular goalkeeper. His shirt was yellow and he wore a large pair of goalkeeping gloves and was confident in his play.

The opponents included the team captain wearing a red armband with “C” on it. A tall girl whose ball control skills enabled her to beat numerous players, she must have felt considerable frustration at losing 3-0 to the blue-bibbed team.

The problem with the captain’s team was their goalkeeper, who demonstrated clearly that he had neither the desire nor the ability to stand in the goalmouth, whether it be between orange training poles or white goalposts.

A short boy with glasses, he wore a black regular pair of gloves and looked as ill at ease in being asked to play in the position as the yellow-shirted boy looked comfortable.  Perhaps the gloves were for appearance’s sake, for he made no attempt to either pick up the ball nor to stop shots.

How had he come to be playing in goal?

Does the tradition still exist of those wishing to play a game of football lining up against a wall or fence while the two captains take alternate turns to pick players for their team? Are the captains still the two best players? Or, sometimes, are they the owner of the ball for one team and the toughest among the boys for the other?

And the players like the bespectacled wearer of the black winter gloves, are they still treated as they were fifty years ago? Are they the last to be chosen for the team and are they always the ones who have to play where they are told because everyone else thinks themselves a better player? Are there still moments when teams in jumpers for goalposts games sometimes play with no goalkeeper because no-one wants to play in goal?

Football does not seem to have changed so much.

At the end of the evening of 5th November, there was always a certain note of melancholy.

In the morning, the bonfire that had burned brilliantly the night before would be no more than a pile of grey ashes.  If the night had been dry, a few embers might remain that would glow orange if you blew on them.  It being November, there had probably been rain, or at least a heavy dewfall, and the powdery wood ash would stick to your shoes if you trod on it.    The odd remnant of the Standard Fireworks would be found in the garden. The bright colours that had filled the box that had been bought in a Somerton newsagent’s would have been scorched black.

Bonfire Night was never a big deal. The fire was built from the dead cuttings from trimmed hedges and the pyrotechnics came one item at a time: one Roman candle, one Catherine wheel, one rocket, each of them was savoured.

However ordinary in retrospect, the occasion was special at the time.  Perhaps we were easily pleased.

Special moments in the year weren’t too frequent – Christmas; the annual village outing to Weymouth; going camping in Devon, the next county.  But every one of them was remembered and pondered for long afterwards.

Perhaps the inflationary principles that apply to money, apply also to experiences.  The more the money supply is increased, the less worth each banknote has.  In a similar way, perhaps the more the supply of experiences is increased, the less memorable each of those experiences has.

On the other hand, perhaps the passing of the years has magnified memories, perhaps they did not occupy then the place they now occupy in the landscape of reminiscence.  Maybe the memories remain clearly, but the moments themselves – with the exception of Christmas – were approached without a great sense of anticipation and were marked without a significant awareness they might be of the stuff that would be recalled decades later.

There would have been no consciousness that the bonfires and fireworks might ever be worth being recalled. If an onlooker had to discern what it was that would be remembered, could they have done so?

As there are moments in those distant decades that remain as vivid as a rocket bursting in the night sky, so there will be moments as significant and intense for children today as were the special moments of the past. Perhaps the landscapes of their memories are dotted with many more moments than enjoyed by schoolboys fifty years ago, but in fifty years’ time, there will be someone remembering vividly Bonfire Night of 2021.