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22nd November 1963...

22/11/2017

1 Comment

 
It used to be a cliché that one always remembered where one was when the news came through that President Kennedy had been assassinated. I remember exactly where I was…
 
It was a Friday evening, and the band were playing at the British Legion Club in Oldfield Lane in Greenford. Our drummer, Clive, was late arriving, the reason being that the news was just breaking on the radio as he was about to leave the house.
 
It was a considerable shock. With hindsight, I came to realize that Kennedy nearly started the Third World War over the Cuba Missile Crisis and he certainly presided over the start of the Vietnam War. But with all that he was a radical, socially conscious and charismatic leader, and was responsible for mankind getting to the moon.
 
Ironically, both Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis died on the same day; had it not been for the incident in Dallas, surely either of those events would have been headline news.
 
Like the Woody Allen character in Annie Hall, I too became fascinated with the various conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s killing. But the latest high-tech analysis of the evidence suggests that, the grassy knoll notwithstanding, there was after all, just one gunman, and he was positioned in the Texas school-book depository.
 
But the 22 November has further resonances for me… In 1990 on the 22nd November I was sitting in a ponderous budget meeting at EEV, when the MD’s secretary came in with the news that Margaret Thatcher had just resigned. ‘Ah, there is a God!” I exclaimed, and received a poisonous look from the MD for my trouble.
1 Comment
Paul Robertson
5/12/2017 12:25:17 pm

Yes...... Time flies, does it not. In a way, people such as Kennedy who die young, remain forever young. If he were alive today, JFK would be 100 years old. Just a thought.

As for there being a 'god,' it would take more than Thatcher resigning to convince me of that, but I like the sentiment. Her eventually dying was a bit more convincing, but the timing was all wrong.

That, as the saying goes, about wraps it up for 'god.'

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  • Home
  • Books
    • Henry's Trials >
      • Extract from Henry's Trials
    • Smethurst's Luck >
      • Extract from Smethurst's Luck
    • Murder in the Red Barn >
      • Extract from Murder in the Red Barn
    • Reverend Duke and the Amesbury Oliver
  • Talks
    • Talk on Henry's Trials
    • Talk on Smethurst's Luck
    • Talk on Isambard Kingdom Brunel
    • Talk on the Murder in the Red Barn
    • BBC
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    • The Amesbury Union Workhouse
    • The Separate System
    • Anatomy of a Bridge
  • Peter Maggs
  • Shop
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    • Mirli
    • BM Creeper >
      • The Significance of Stonehenge
      • Educating Ealing I: How Lady Byron Did It
      • Educating Ealing II: Church of England Primary in the 1920s
      • All Because of Crystal Palace
      • Innocent in Ealing - Extract
      • Miss McDonald