Memories of 1976?

Over the last couple of months I've been labouring over a new literary project with the working title Memories of 1976.

As it implies on the tin, the idea has been to solicit memories via Facebook nostalgia groups from people of a certain age who have some kind of affinity to 1976 - the year of that never-ending summer when the old met the new in music and in popular culture, while an unstable world seemed to totter on the brink of economic meltdown tinged with a worrying if still remote prospect of nuclear conflagration.

If the intention was to use content from others as an easy means of filling pages for my own work then things haven't quite gone to plan. Expecting maybe two to three dozen responses, instead I received nearly 1600, which now need to be ploughed through and placed into some kind of logical context which leaves nothing out and yet somehow retains its freshness through to the final page. Honour obliges me to include every sensible contribution, as I promised all those who engaged with the project that I would. And so what began as an idea for an easy win for a new booklet has morphed into something which threatens to resemble a sequel to War And Peace.

No matter, it is what it is. I will announce the new masterpiece to an eagerly awaiting world just as soon as it is available. To be truthful I'm rather looking forward to it as I'm confident it will be a work worthy of a place in the burgeoning archives of retro, as well as a useful reminder that things don't always go to plan.

Read a Free Sample of The Best Year Of Our Lives

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Your Memories of 1976 Wanted

I am presently researching for a new booklet featuring memories and experiences of the wonderful year that was 1976 from those who were there, and I am hoping that as a visitor to this blog you may wish to help by lending me some of your own?

What were you doing during that long hot summer? What memories does that year have for you in particular? The music? The drought and the ladybirds? A memorable holiday perhaps? Some special event in your life? Recollections from your youth?

If you'd like to contribute a few lines for the booklet, a few keepsakes, please just add them under Comments at the foot of this post or send me a PM. I'll need the name you'd like to be identified by (it can be initials, first name, or whatever you like) and a location - nothing too detailed or which gives too much information please.

Typos and bad grammar will be corrected, profanities will be deleted (as will anything which identifies anyone), but beyond that the floor is yours. Remember, it's about 1976 so please try to focus on that year if you can.

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For a limited time only The Best Year Of Our Lives is available in ebook format completely free of charge.

Simply click here and download the Kindle reader if you don't already have one (that's free too!). Then click where it says "£0.00 to buy" and follow the instructions to get the book.

There no catch, but if you enjoy the read please take a few moments to write me a review on the site.

Guest Posts Welcome

I am always grateful for on-topic contributions from visitors to this blog.

Do you have an interesting story to tell relating to 1976? Some memories from school perhaps, from your neighbourhood, or just some thoughts in general about the fashions, the music scene, television programmes or popular culture?

Please send me a message at info@phil-andrews.co.uk and we can discuss featuring it as a stand-alone blog story. I will be happy to include a byline and a discreet link back to your own blog or website, just so long as it isn't spammy.

This is your resource, please feel free to use it as well as to read it.

The Best Year Of Our Lives: The Characters - Paul Adams

For obvious reasons, Paul Adams was at the same time both the easiest and the most difficult character for me to portray.

Easiest, because I had a personal insight into his psyche. I know what makes him tick, even if some of those who share this story with him are not so sure. I share his musical enthusiasms, his anxieties, his yearnings, and his sense of longing for a past that is uncertain, undefined, and in equal part mystical and mythical. Such over-familiarity also made it the most difficult.

The various observations I have received from readers about the character of Paul Adams are noted. He was never going to be wholly the good guy or the bad, he is not a character to be reduced to such binary simplicities. He is a complex subject for analysis, even for me. In varying proportions he is vain, delusional, manipulative, devious, indecisive, sometimes cowardly and most times obsessive. In his defence he is also protective, loyal, romantic, resourceful, pragmatic, aspirational and, in his own mind at least, even visionary. His destination is formless but the path that leads him, and others, to it is forever clear.

CONFUSED BY TIME

Paul is a character confused by time, to the extent that he simply refuses to accept the transient nature of his existence. If it happened at some point in the past and lingers within his soul then as far as he is concerned it is still happening. He cocks a snook at impermanence and plants his flag defiantly upon the hill of his apogee, challenging life to do its worst. The best year of his life is, for Paul, a transcendent experience.

Whatever inspiration I may have drawn from literary greats such as Tolkein or C.S. Lewis, the story which loomed large in my subconscious, particularly in the later chapters, was Quadrophenia. The story of Jimmy the mod, albeit a character slightly older and meaner than Paul Adams, was one with which there were obvious parallels, although I did not consciously plan it that way and the fact only really occurred to me after publication. All the same the idea of Paul riding off a cliff on a stolen scooter to his death once the euphoria of the big event had faded, and everything he had lived for had crumbled so quickly and so completely into dust, seemed to me to be inappropriate and overstated.

ANTICLIMACTIC

Instead I chose to bring him back to Earth with a bump, in an Epilogue so anticlimactic that it would disorient the reader every bit as much as had any of the chapters charting Paul’s ascent to imagined greatness. Or that was the intention anyway. Once the story had been told and the magic had been fulfilled Paul Adams alighted from the wardrobe. Alone.

I feel there are many chapters left in Paul Adams, but what tale they will tell I truly do not know. The best year of anybody’s life cannot, by definition, be bettered.

Where the Title Came From...

This was the song which inspired the title of my novel. It seemed so apt on so many levels, and there could be no more fitting tribute to all those people who made 1976 and that whole period such a wonderful and special time for me. Thank you my friends, and thank you Mr. Harley for putting it all into words for me so masterfully.