A Birthday is Just Another Day

This coming Friday, June the 18 will be my birthday, and in many ways it will be just another day. One day less, or one day more, depending on how optimistic or pessimistic I feel on the day.

Fifty years ago I was just seventeen. I was a young single lad two years into a job as an apprentice motor mechanic. My weekly wage was five pounds a week and I gave every last penny of it to my struggling mother. In fact I first started work as a paper boy at the tender age of thirteen earning the princely sum of twelve shillings and sixpence.That too went straight to my mum. Those days were hard times for just about everybody, especially a woman with eight children and an out of work husband to support.

For my birthday I bought myself a beautiful pink Ben Sherman shirt which I was going to wear on the following Saturday. No such luck as one of my sister's found it and went out wearing it before I got home from work. When she came home later that night the collar was covered in makeup. I was not a happy Chappy.

From a personal perceptive I was a 6.1, long haired, bell bottom trousered, ten stone introvert with a very narrow view of the world.In fact, I never let much of world events get through to me. My mind was on cars and music. The mechanic job was simply a fill in job whilst I waited to become a rich and famous pop star. I'm still waiting, ha ha.

Looking back I decided to do a roundup of what was happening around the world in 1971 on a month by month basis, taking just one event that happened to catch my eye at that time.

In January Idi Amid staged a coup and seized power from Milton Obote in Uganda.

In February Rolls Royce went bankrupt and was nationalised by the UK Government.

In March Charles Manson was sentenced to death for the infamous killings of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and her friends.

In April Russia successfully launched the very first space station, Salyut 1.

In May Russia sent unmanned explorer spacecraft to Mars to conduct scientific probes.

In June the film 'Charley and the Chocolate Factory' was released.

In July American astronauts took the first ride on the surface of the moon on the Lunar Roving Vehicle.

In August Sir Jackie Stewart became Formula One World Drivers' Champion.

In September Britain expelled 90 officials from the KGB and GRU.

In October the United Kingdom voted to join the European Economic Community.

In November "During a severe storm over Washington State, a man calling himself D. B. Cooper parachutes from the Northwest Orient Airlines plane he had hijacked, with US$200,000 in ransom money, and is never seen again (as of March 2008, this case remains the only unsolved skyjacking in history)." Wikipedia.

In December Juliane Koepcke survived a fall of 10,000 feet following the disintegration of Lansa Flight 508. It has been claimed that her survival was due to a combination of factors like being strapped into a row of three seats, an updraft of air and the cushioning effects of foliage. 

It would seem that there is a great deal of truth in the old saying that the more things change, the more the stay the same. Rolls Royce is owned by BMW, space exploration continues apace, Russian spies were expelled from the UK as recently as 2018, the UK is once again out of Europe and Juliane Koepcke made a made a full recovery and is still alive to this day.

Two more things of note from 1971 are that it was the year that the very first programmable microprocessor was invented and it was the year in which the very first email was sent.

As for me, I am not the first musician songwriter from Liverpool to be married to a Japanese woman. And I also share my birthday with John Lennon's co writer Sir Paul McCartney. It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.

As for being a rich and famous pop star, well I have to accept that I have well and truly missed that particular bus. On the plus side, I now earn a tad more than five English pounds a week and I don't have to get my hands dirty doing it. In reality, I am truly grateful for what I have got and would not have lived my life so far any other way. Here's to many more years to come. Cheers.