Today in history ?

Dec 8th 1980 : John Lennon is shot dead.

In slightly less celebrity obsessed times, an era when it was possible for a small handful of fans to hang around outside their home and wait for autographs and for the "celebs" to often be happy to sign and pose for photos whilst gaining no other publicity benefit (do they only ever pose for photos at cinema previews and award shows these days ?), it all changed with a deranged fan at a time in his life when he was apparently making a return to mainstream popular music with the release of Double Fantasy after years in the wilderness as a pop recluse - who knows if that album would have been successful without his death or if he would have got the airplay that he did post Dec 8th 1980...

Anyway, Yoko is still a bit of a wierdo, has anyone ever been to one of her art installations ?

rlMy own little tribute to a timerl that we don't always appreciate was so completely different to the times we live in today, a time when the population could be effectively controlled by government and their violent dispersal of street protest and a time when one millionaire used his position and influence to speak out and was hounded through the courts for three and a half years under the shadow of a 60 day deportation notice until finally the US Appeal Court, under a different administration to that which had started the process and by now aware of the change in public opinion, declared ” … the courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds.”

Those were very interesting times to be a teenager...

As the man himself sang, ''there's Nazis in the bathroom, just below the stairs............strange days indeed.''

It was a natural progression for me to to be stood in a field, with several thousand others, outside a coking plant in 1984 at the age of eighteen, on a balmy summers day.

Jeffrey Archer once wrote in one of his books that the hero had been to Leeds University during the 1960s and in one of the chapters this hero spends a nice Saturday afternoon with his girlfriend rowing on the River Aire.

Thats the point at which I threw the book on the back of the fire.

It convinced me that Archer wrote his books according to a very simple computer program in which all you had to do was change the names and locations with the only research needed being that the city must have a river running through it.

Rowing on the River Aire in the 1960s - ask any resident of Cas what the River Aire looked like in the 1960s by the time it had reached them

Totally agree, honestly could not see what the fuss was all about. Not a patch on Catch 22

Maybe you didn't get it?

You possess quite a vivid imagination so I thought you may have enjoyed it.