The main feature at The Imperial, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, the World Service News, the danceclub and the church hall coffee bar should all help to place us in the mid 1960s, a timezone clearly marked out when Sarah runs through the song titles (the first three tracks on Help!). That album was released in August 1965, and Rubber Soul came out in time for Christmas that same year, so by calling it the new Beatles LP, Sarah firmly places us in late 65. We're so close to the age of psychedelics and swirly-print shirts that you can almost smell the patchouli oil. The next 5 years will change Sarah (and so much of her world) in so many ways that the echoes are already shaking her from her little Northern world. She can almost feel it, just around the corner, a world where people live real lives... Obviously, she has a serious thing about musicians, and the magical powers of the humble pop song, which ties in with xxxxxxx. Over on the other side of the world, Blue's mum has just gone into a bookshop to look for a nice poetry collection to read during her upcoming holiday...
So, in my head, when I plotted this little fragment of madness, Sarah was going to catch a glimpse of Cyn on the other side of the road and that was it. Bill would then turn up and they would go off to a party in a dodgy basement where all manner of wierdness would ensue. The best laid plans... Cyn likes to talk, and she wanted to defend herself from the rather unflattering view I had of her, so she just walked in and took over.
Freddy And The Peacemakers, John Lemon - Cyn is a drunk and a tart, apparently, but is she really that dumb? She confuses Freddy and the Dreamers (whose lead singer did bear an odd resemblance to Buddy Holly) and Gerry and the Pacemakers, which is fair enough, but to be a teenage girl in 65 and get the name of John Lennon wrong? I think she puts a lot of this on, just to seem harmless. And knowing a girl at The Cavern puts us in the Northwest, one of those forgotten little towns like Widnes (where The Beatles played support to Rory Storm & The Hurricanes and Paul Simon wrote Homeward Bound).
It's a shame, what happened... And here's the proof. Cyn is resolutely NOT talking about her relationship with Sarah, although you could see it that way if you wanted to. She's talking about the breakup of the Beatles, the strained Lennon/McCartney partnership, Lennon's move to New York and his eventual death on the doorstep of the Dakota Building in 1980. This is a girl who knows more than she ever lets on. But she does give Sarah a very good piece of advice - Whatever gets you through the night, it's alright. That also happens to be a Lennon song from 1974, while "you can't get back to where you used to be" paraphrases Get Back, from 69, coincidentally the last track on the last album before the split.
(And more bizarre synchronicity - I had two thirds of this finished when I remembered the name of John's first wife... This isn't her. In terms of names, it was chosen because it fits with the main characters' penchant for shortening (Felicity/Fliss, Arihaily/Ari, Imogen/Midge), which might lead some people to conclude a maternal link with one of the girls, and because of its similarity to sin, which works with her being such a bad girl at times.)
Give it a few years and it will start to make a whole different kind of sense... Cyn knows where Sarah is going.
I'll see you later - Ditto.
So, here we are in Widnes, 1965, reading about a young woman who dreams of the future and understands the power of a classic pop record. But for all of her importance, for all the sorrow and pain she will experience in the coming years, this story isn't really about her at all; It's about Another Girl altogether.
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