Things that happened during my lifetime...

As I spend more and more of my time thinking about what has happened during my lifetime, I thought it would be a good idea to list the events that occasionally run through my head - thus not always chronological.

Being a cat lover, I have wonderful memories of Spotty, who spent much of her time hanging out in the back lane:

Spotty............who lived with us in Gwavas Street, Penzance.

This post will be edited frequently as I remember more and more events (a mental activity, I must add,  that usually begins at 3 in the morning!)

I was born in 1942, right in the middle of WW2, but in a fishing village far, far away from the bombing of England's major cities.

I remember......

• End of the war and sweets going off ration.....buying  some sugary delights on the promenade
• Seeing and tasting my first banana...
• Finding my wishing rock and my amber....
• Sucking OXO cubes at school
• Listening to Workers' Playtime and boxing on the wireless
• My first visit with my mum to the library
• Drinking Corona and Ginger Beer
• Sucking and crunching tasty sherbert lemons
• Learning to ride a bike
• Getting my first bike, second hand from Roger Roach
• Listening to Dick Barton, Special Agent, Letter from America with Alistair Cooke on the wireless
• Cutting my ankle wide open when riding down hill in brother Charles' pram
• Digging lugs and going fishing off the pier
• Catching my first flounder off the rocks
• Playing with a knife with Roger Roach when wearing my brother's rugby scarf - got it covered with blood when, accidentally, the knife got stuck in the back of my head
• Taking the 11+
• Passing the 11+
• Getting my first school uniform and cap
• Playing table tennis at the YMCA - world stars I remember include Johnny Leach and Victor Barna, local stars, Bob Charlesworth, Joe Denley....and, of course, I remember eventually winning the county championship
• Passing O levels (English Language and Art) at the age of 14
• My first pair of long pants at 15
• Driving the milk truck every morning before school (from, I think, the age of around 13)
• Smoking my first ciggie at 13
• Having my first pair of long trousers at 14
• Dad telling me about the big bomb that was dropped on two Japanese cities during the war
• Seeing my first TV program (Muffin the Mule)
• Watching Lew Hoad on TV win Wimbledon, then me smashing the front room fancy lampshade as I practiced my serve!
• Others tennis stars from yesteryear ithat I watched and admired nclude Tony Trabert, Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Tony Roache, Jimmie Connors, Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, and the Brits, Mike Sangster, Roger Taylor - I played both these guys, by the way -  Ann Haydn Jones, Virginia Wade
• Drinking my first pint of beer at 17
• Mum's dinner of ever-so-tasty Cornish pasties drowned in HP sauce - her chips and her egg and bacon and fried bread breakfasts
• Going to the annual Whitsuntide Fair at the local reccy - spending pennies from my Grandparent's pub toilets (cost a penny to go and Granddad shared them between me, my brothers and my two cousins), going on the Helter Skelter, flying high on the Big Wheel, driving the dodgems (my favorite) and watching the boxing in the boxing booth
• Watching Jimmie's friend, John Helson, boxing at the fair, and thus getting enough money for his train ticket to London, prior to his emigration to Canada
• Up in the big wheel with my friend Dick Hendry
• Prime Ministers Winston Churchill, Alec Douglas-Home, Harold MacMillan, Harold Wilson (Labour)  Callaghan, Ted Heath, Maggie Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Brown, and the current Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron
• Seeing Cliff Richard and The Shadows at De Montfort Hall in 1960 - much later seeing Mick Jagger
• Reading about the Holocaust
• Running my first science workshop for teachers in the USA (my first time ever in a plane)
• I so remember what I was doing when I heard about the assassination of the President Kennedy - and, sadly, later, his brother.
• Watching TV as man landed on the moon - what an incredible moment!
• Being absorbed by Watergate and President Nixon's eventual impeachment
• Likewise, President Clinton's entanglement with Monica L
• The Vietnam War and its social impact in the USA - the bad feeling about the returning soldiers
• I can recall my experience, nasty as it was, with The Black Panthers
• The Beatles were just beginning their claim to fame during the early years of my college career (1960-1963)
• Meeting David Hawkins and his scientists colleagues from Los Alamos Manhattan Atomic Bomb who now devoted some of their time to helping teachers engage kids in science
• Spending so much time with David Hawkins
• Meeting Frank Oppenheimer, brother of Robert, in SF when he had just opened The Exploratorium
• Planes flying into the World Trade Center
• The tsunami
• Pussycats in my life - Joseph, Spotty, Tiger, Twitch, Daisy, The Fella, Theodore, Matilda, and, currently, Bertie and Fiona