My earliest memories (apart from an induced memory of being born, accessed through yoga and regression, accurately described to my mother) are of being a baby in my pram, put out in the front garden to have an afternoon nap (Dr Spock's idea!) - staring at the Lilac tree in bloom, and the heavily laden branches bobbing and swaying against the sky...

I remember the diamond shaped lozenge tiles on the front path, and the stained glass windows in the front door; the rounded bay windows over the front garden, and the dark, Victorian interior of our London house where I was born... My mother would take my sister and me to the paddling pool in Camberwell Green, and we walked to visit my Great Aunt Maud on Sundays, playing cards, and listening to her chat about Uncle Charles as if he weren't there...

It just so happens I'm a student of music technology, born in 1951, and raised for the first seven years in London - where the fifties sound was happening. The first inkling I had of Rock and Roll, Musicals and Bop, Rhythm and Blues, Skiffle, and Pop, was the sounds coming out of the 'wireless' as we called it then, on the BBC's 'Light Programme' - more or less what we nowadays call Radio 2.

I remember the Greats of that time - not so much Rock, that came later, but I grew up with my mother's records of Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Bobby Darin, Bobby Vee, Eartha Kitt, Dean Martin, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, so many singers, and their orchestras, Pop, Rock, Jazz; the music was changing as I was, I grew with it, it grew with me, and the style, the language, the fashions, the 'generation thing' began...

My Mum had been divorced from her bullying husband (my father) and we were raised first by my Mum on her own, as a family of three with my sister, from 1953 onwards, and then from 1958 when we went to live with my Grandmother in Kent, one of the 'home counties' bordering London in the South-East UK.

My favourite occupation when my mother was at work (after my parents split up; I was about four or so, before I started school,) was to play with my little toy washing machine, which had a lid and a little handle to rotate the drum. I remember when we went to live with my Grandmother, my sister, my mother and I travelled in the back of the pantechnicon (I resolved to buy one, convert it and live in it when I grew up.) I was then about six or seven, and I was holding the lid from this toy on top of the goldfish bowl, to prevent either Tish and Tosh, or the water, from escaping while we journeyed from Camberwell to Kent.

In London I'd seen the Teddy Boys standing in doorways and on street corners, with their shoestring ties and winkle-picker-toed shoes, their drainpipe trousers and slicked back, Brylcremed hair, with a quiff at the front. They had the comb in the back trouser pocket, flicked through the hair and carefully stroked into place, the long sideburns, and sharp faces. Their girl-friends stood with them, with kiss curls and flick-ups (hair to the shoulders and flicked up), wide belts and full skirted, narrow-waisted knee-length skirts, darted blouses with wide shoulders, fluffy angora cardigans, stilletto heeled shoes, tan nylons, pointy circle-stitched bras, and stiff net petticoats (who wears them these days?) They wore Max Factor pancake make-up, mascara in blocks with little brushes, powder puffs, french perfume in little bottles and atomisers, Goya, Coty, Revlon, Max Factor, Chanel no 5, So many memories!

There were also the beatniks, into Jazz and the avant-garde, the latest answer to the conscientious objectors, who were appalled by the prospect of the Nuclear Arms Race - all we knew, was that they went on 'Ban the Bomb' marches, in protest at Aldermaston, and hung out in folk clubs singing protest songs, dressed in huge oversized sloppy joe sweaters (purple) coming down to the knees, and trousers for the girls as well as the boys..

Youths were the newly - endowed purchasers of purse-power, they bought records and spent the new affluence of equal pay and trade union rights on the ever-expanding opportunities for leisure. Britain had tightened her belt for too long, and it was the next generation who were sufficiently unconditioned to play... In the flat where my little family lived, the kitchen had a geyser (a gas water heater) over the sink; our fridge was a half bucket of water with a wet tea towel over it. Formica had come in to replace wood, and bakelite, a hard, heat-resistant plastic, formed handles for pots and pans, doors, cutlery, and many other structural uses.

J Sainsbury's was a large delicatessen, with glass fronted counters behind which stood salesmen (and women) in overalls and aprons, all in white. I remember the clinic orange juice - Gerber continued to make it, and the distinctive taste nourished my daughter, born in 1970! Jo Lyons' Coffee houses, together with the Wimpy Bars, began to emulate the American Coffee-bar scene, and Juke Boxes were to be found in all the coffee bars, together with expresso machines and other 'flash' Italian influences - loud (colourful or check) sports jackets, sports cars, Alfa Romeo, MG, Aston Martin - along with the little Ford Popular and Ford Prefect cars - more suited to the English climate.

The post-war enthusiasm and idealism, working for a better future, all pulling together, coping with rationing, living with simple pleasures, was such an idyllic interlude between the rigours of war and the frenetic hedonism of the sixties, the backlash looking for 'the next big thing.'

People in the fifties enjoyed a walk in the countryside and a picnic, a game of cards or chess, reading a library book, doing a jigsaw, going out for a drive on a Sunday afternoon, or a trip to the seaside... Their yearly break consisted of going on holiday to a caravan, a chalet, or a holiday camp, where the most exciting entertainments were like school sports days...

Gradually after the early part of the decade, there was a readjustment of values; women had become an indispensable part of the workforce, and families with two working parents looked for a new affluence, and hoped for a life of luxury and ease, leisure and love. Since the bleak losses of the war years, life was infinitely more precious; as the tradition of a nation tuning into the 'wireless' had become common, so music, particularly from the USA, became more of a popular medium of expression for youth, and the beginnings of 'pop' culture were born...

The fifties were the age of innocence waiting for the flower-power and free-love groove of the sixties. The fifties were about niceness, not in front of the children, law and order, 'lend a hand' (scouts and guides and brownies and cubs.) Enid Blyton was a byword for children's books. There was the aim to build a better world, a better society. Life became not just about living, but due to the mix and influx of cultural and national differences, Style evolved again, as people wearied of the functionality of poverty.

Furniture took on 'the logo,' the image - curtains, wallpaper, fabric for differing purposes - a repeating design against a plain background. The pictures were of fruit and kitchenware, sea themes or chic little Italian bistros, daintily poised in a neverland of formica, steel, shiny metal legs and plain, wood-effect veneer, boxed shapes with spindly bases.

This Italianate theme was again imported from the US, and particularly from the Hollywood culture and New Orleans Jazz, and the indestructible ol' blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, along with Dean Martin, Louis Armstrong, ('Satchmo) and of course 'Bing' Crosby, the ol crooner, and his side-kick and movie co-star Bob Hope - they all had a faintly Mafia flair, a gangster appeal that has endured today, only the gangsters have changed - from Italian to Triad, to Black, and to 'Gladiator' or whatever the latest fighting hero craze is - full circle from the war years, when fighting was 'the real thing' (husbands, brothers, sons and lovers - didn't come back...) and people, particularly women, filled with death, mutilation, and dying, wanted fantasy and distraction, 'The King and I,' 'Gigi,' 'Fantasia' - and film scores were simple, emotive, string-driven-things - a drum (a kettle drum) used to convey thunder and lightning!

It was the age of Hire purchase, when every young couple could furnish their home on the never-never (HP), and department stores came up like mushrooms as the longed-for domestic dream of the war years began to become a reality - but the youngsters found such materialism (even though it was a manifestation of a hitherto unreal dream for their parents) to be far too concrete a goal to fulfill their indulged, uneventful hearts, and looked for more excitement.

Out of the safe, dull world of Peace restored, the desire for excitement, for radical change, for the 'New' began; With the advent of advertising and the media, we were told we needed and wanted things we had never heard of. Unprepared for the onslaught upon our senses, or for the concept of exploitation, we lapped up the new affluence, the new Artiness, and the Sixties, age of experiment and mass media, mass marketing, was born...

The easy sex of the war years (and in some cases, the years of waiting for disappeared spouses) had heightened the desire of each sex for the other; the songs were about love, whether being in, looking for, losing, unrequited or giving.

Valentine - Then and Now:

Now we have arrived half a century away,
And there isn't such a focus on Valentine's day -
we're not so taken in by gifts and cards any more
Maybe now we have an inkling of what it's all for -
Once our highest aim for fulfilment was
to marry, find God or career -
But now the personal growth ethic
means we've our own path to steer -
Jules Verne put it succinctly
when he made our intentions plain -
A Journey to the Centre -
of the earth, ourselves, our pain
In hopes that we might find ourselves
and start over again (At least that's how it looks from here -
perspective of Jane) Yet for now, just for a day,
even if not a year or more,
May you find the Love in your heart,
- richer, deeper than before!
(A little poem of love sent to my sister, Fran)