Thursday, April 10, 2008

1968


There seems to be an awful lot of talk about 1968 at the moment (see this Radio 4 link) - Paris riots; Martin Luther King; Vietnam; Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech; Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; Robert Kennedy etc. A key memory for me (I started at School of Architecture in Oxford in September 1967) included this:
During the second year of my course, we were due to make a study trip abroad but in May 1968 (when I was still in my first year), a group of second year architectural students had gone to Paris… and got themselves arrested! The authorities at College were so appalled that they cancelled our international study trip for the following year and, instead, sent us to Pontin’s Holiday Camp at Southport (this is absolutely true, I swear!). The good news was that we were so well behaved(!), that they reintroduced the international study tour the following year (ie. we missed out completely) and sent that year’s students to Athens!
I bet this doesn’t make the BBC archives!
PS: of course, the REALLY concerning fact is that it’s over 40 years since I started at College!!

2 comments:

alan broadway said...

well thats a coincidence...on www.southbankcentre.co.uk they are advertising the hayward touring exhibition 'no such thing as society - photography in britain 1967-1987' and the picture with it happens to be "beauty contest southport 1968". i'm sure its you in the background! even spookier is that the other picture is "boy & window bars handsworth dhss"...the area where young steve was raised!

bigdaddystevieB said...

my agent has advised me not to comment....spookie indeed!
x