Do you know what you were doing on 5th July 1971? I do. I was moving house.
Forty years in the same house is a very long time. I was young then, with three small children and a mortgage of course. I say it’s the same house but actually it isn’t the same. During our time here it has grown; the kitchen has doubled and sprouted a utility room, the loft space became two bedrooms, a patio has become an orangery with under floor heating, and the double garage has become a self contained office. While the house has got better, the garden has definitely degenerated. It still looks OK, but the people we bought the house from back in 1971 were fanatical gardeners. They had created a fussy garden with half-moon rose beds, an arbour, a large vegetable patch with an area set aside for strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries. It even had its own asparagus bed.
I appreciate that none of this could possibly be of interest to you, but you might, just might, be interested in other things that happened in July 1971.
- Two astronauts, David Scott and James Irwin, went for the first drive on the moon in a ‘moon buggy’.
- Three sailors were rescued from a submarine, HMS Artemis, after it had sunk in Portsmouth harbour.
- John Newcombe beat Stan Smith in the Wimbledon men’s final and Evonne Goolagong had a surprise victory over the women’s number one seed, Margaret Court.
- Lee Travino won the British Open Golf Championship.
- A mini-budget slashed purchase tax and abolished all hire-purchase controls.
- Belfast was rocked by numerous bomb explosions.
- Christian Barnard made the first combined heart and lung transplant.
- On the French Riviera, riot police ordered hundreds of woman to put their bikini tops back on.
- Yugoslavia elected Tito for another five-year term as president.
- Louis Armstrong died aged 71.
1971 was a long time ago.
