Please, Please, Me! (Inspiration Point.)

Please, Please, Me!

Marilyn is braying out her horsy laugh again, competing with the strains of my Jethro Tull album. I have to listen to music to get me into the mood to go out for a night on the town.
‘Pass me a “Pony”,’ I ask her and she opens the bottle laughing at my choice of tipple.
(If alchopops had been around then we would have been swigging ‘em back.) She has her own cola bottle with mostly neat Barcardi in it. I have to be careful, my mother is a dragon and hates drink. She thinks a “Pony” is a soft drink, not knowing it’s a fortified wine, thank God for small mercies! Still, she’s finally given up on the loud music. I don’t think she had much choice after my elder brother bought his first gramophone and the records of Frank Ifield. God, I hated that yodelling freak. Then my older sister found the joys of Cliff Richard, Elvis and Billy Fury. By the time the Beatles came along she was already behind the times.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Beatles, but it just wasn’t cool right then.
I was going out with Malcolm then and he was heavily into bands like “Cream,” John Mayall and Clapton. I tell you it was a delicate balancing act with the girls where I worked with more into Motown and me hanging around with a gang of teenagers that thought they were the bee’s knees.
Tonight the gang is going to a local pub where there’s a singer. He’s pretty crap but it beats feeding the juke-box all night. We’ll probably leave after a few drinks and buy some cheap cider going back to John’s place. He’s older than us and shares a flat with his sister. They moved out after his dad got too handy with his fists. I think there might have been some bother with his sister, but we don’t talk about things like that. I’m seventeen and I’m still a virgin, though I have plans to change that soon. It’s the late “Swinging Sixties” and everyone is supposed to be doing “it.” Marilyn says there’s not much to it. You either like it or you put up with it. I thought it would all be different, like the books I’d read where women weren’t supposed to enjoy sex, let alone know anything about it. I thought our generation were supposed to be different, but I guess we still needed instruction manuals.
I’m on my second Pony now and Marilyn is nearly out of her Bacardi mix. My pulse is speeding up a bit now and I’m swaying my hips in time to the music. I don’t need drink to get into the mood, but I don’t want to be thought a wimp. I pull on my skirt, smoothing it down so it passes my mother’s inspection. Next I put on a vest and cover it with a cardigan, I’m not being grounded tonight.

We all meet up outside the Queen’s hotel, it’s easier to make our own way there. Malcolm doesn’t kiss me in front of his mates, it’s not done. David grabs Marilyn’s arse and she slaps his face, though it’s only a token gesture. John arrives with Shirley, he’s not bothered about looking soft…but then he is almost a generation older. Last of all Mike arrives with Carla. Her family are upper class and it’s hard for her to get out. Mike’s lugging her guitar, she can’t play for toffee but she tells her parents she’s going to a folk club. We’ll all have a play on it later, now we’re going inside for a drink.
We all pile into the back bar where Gary will play in a while. We pull some tables together so we are all together. Sometimes we’ll allow a friend to join us, but mostly we stay on our own. The boys have their pints, us girls stay on weak rum and coke. We aren’t that much different from the last generation after all. “Teddy Boys,” Mod’s and Rockers”, we are rebelling against the old order and nothing will ever be quite the same. I read somewhere that the “Teenage Movement” was born out of the general slump after the Second World War. ‘Jesus, pleaseus, who could ever make such a lopsided observation?
What were the sixties about, except a whole new generation of kids not wanting to die in a war they could never understand? Sod the philosophers, the doom merchants that said our generation were completely immoral. We never stuck bayonets into a person or fired a gun in anger.
Anyway. We are sipping out drinks ‘cos we can’t afford too many rounds. Gary is playing some really crappy songs tonight. Perhaps there are some old fogies in?
Shirley looks around and giggles. ‘Guess what? There’s a bloody big group of men in, old buggers.’ I guess they are sales reps, this is a fucking Hotel after all. We listen for a while, until we’ve had enough. Oh the songs, they are ancient and still the old farts cheer.
The lads start to drum their feet on the table, demanding modern music. We sorta get carried away and soon us girls are on our feet and dancing kind of suggestively to the crap music.
Well the manager comes in and we get banished for the sixth or seventh time. What the hell, we go into the bar and start drinking with Frankie. He’ a poof but none of us care, in fact he’s great company except when his boyfriend cheats on him. Then I could spit on the bastard who takes his money and then dumps him.
Hell we are really fizzing tonight. We drag Frankie along with us and end up in John’s place as usual. There’s plenty of cheap cider going around and then Frankie shows us some Pot.
Go on, laugh, but it wasn’t that plentiful as people think.
A few joints are passed around and I feel a bit dizzy but nothing else. Malcolm is out of it and Mike is about to take Carla home. I want to kiss everyone and that’s when I think I might be stoned. I pick the guitar up and strum a few chords before passing it back to Mike.

I stayed the night, but I slept on my own. It was a turning point and things were never the same after. Oh we did all the usual things. Trips to the cinema to watch things like “Winnie the Pooh”. Going to the seaside and freezing while we tried to be cool with our ponchos and our spliffs. Building fires and searing half-cooked hot dogs and burgers. Playing Donovan on our recorders and pretending we were still the same.
I surrendered my virginity just before I was 18. It was a disaster and nearly put me off sex for life. I was with Frankie the night he tried to commit suicide because his boyfriend had left him once again. Our group struggled on for a while but never really recovered.
Maybe it just wasn’t the time for us, though I prefer to believe that maybe there is never a right time.
For a few more years I played my Jethro Tull records and knotted my scarf around my neck like a gipsy queen. I refused to be what was expected of me and I still do to this day.
When my music became popular I would find another and so I learnt to love all kinds of music. But did I really belong to what people thought of as the “Swinging Sixties” and later on the emancipation of women’s traditional roles?
I loved being a mother, even though I was a single parent by the time my daughter was eighteen months old. I enjoyed cooking and cleaning, though I carried on working full-time.
My home was always full of the sound of children’s laughter and as my daughter grew up she became my best friend and confidante.

I often wonder if I missed out on what was expected of my generation. I never went to Rock concerts or indulged in the permissive society. I missed Glastonbury and Woodstock. But, in my own way I carried out my own little struggle against what was expected of me, because I never conformed. And while I sometimes thought that I had lost out, then doesn’t every generation feel this at times?
Maybe the next time I venture out I might get into the mood by playing a record. Whatever I choose I will be asking the question, ‘Please, please, me? Surely now it’s my turn to shine?

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