50 Years Of The Beatles

5th October 2012 marks 50 years to the day since Love Me Do, the first single by The Beatles was released, starting the Beatlemania craze that not only swept across the UK, but around the world.

Like most people in the UK I loved the music of The Beatles, but with just being a week shy of my 8th birthday when this single was released, I was unfortunately too young to go to any Beatles concerts, even though they did have several sessions in my home town of Bournemouth, as I only found out years later.


The main local connection I have to The Beatles is that in 1965 John Lennon bought a bungalow for his beloved Aunt Mimi at Sandbanks.

This photo is of the flat that my grandmother owned in the early 60's, and it's almost opposite where Aunt Mimi lived.  The photo was taken in 1961, and shows my Grandmother waving out of the window.  the flats are still there, right opposite the entrance to the car ferry at Sandbanks.

Sadly by the time John Lennon's aunt moved in, my Grandmother had passed away, but we held on to a beach hut close their until 1973, and so I frequently drove past my Grandmother's old flat and Aunt Mimi's house, although to my knowledge I never saw or met her.

Only a handful of years later, my school held it's Speech Days at the theatre where The Beatles had their concerts in Bournemouth, and before I left high school I also worked in the Bournemouth Pavilion directly opposite there.

50 years on from those days of my childhood, and I can still remember watching The Beatles on television, as well as television shows where they taught you the latest dance craze - the Twist!

So close, and yet so far away, but good memories nevertheless.