My Auntie Shelia lived in a maisonette on the St. Matthew’s estate in Leicester until she moved nearer to New Parks, which was nearer to us in 1979. In the late sixties and early seventies the St. Matthew’s estate (which was a typical 60s ‘High Rise’ living type of development) was a pleasant place to live and Sheila’s balcony looked down over the communal concrete courtyard where washing blew in the wind on a sunny day.
My mother and her sister were very close and we would often visit her home and on these visits we often switch on the record player and play music from my auntie’s extensive record collection. A life long lover of Jim Reeves she had a number of his LPs but it was her collection of singles that I loved the most.
She probably had over 100 and most of them were by well-known bands of the sixties however she did not have any Beatles records! She had a number of songs by Herman’s Hermits and others by Nancy Sinatra and The Seekers. Most of these singles were in brightly coloured sleeves which bore the names of the records labels (no picture sleeves in those days) and I remember Columbia records being Brilliant Red, PYE – sometimes a deep purple and others bottle green and blue. This song was one that she had in her collection. It was on PYE records and came in a pale blue sleeve. Once played, I loved this song and it became a feature of our visits in that it had to put on the turntable every time I went around. In fact I loved it so much that Santa bought me my own copy and gave it to me at Christmas where it remains in my record collection to this very day.
These days I have it on my ipod and I often listen to this when I want to be reminded of my auntie Sheila and those sunny afternoons on the St. Matthew’s estate in the 1970s
Now listen to the song…..
No comments:
Post a Comment