The Beatles Generation

The Beatles Generation are the post-war baby boomers whose secondary education coincided with the rise of the Fab Four, and the widespread cultural changes that ran in parallel throughout the 1960s. Colin Anscombe is one of that generation; his recurring dreams of schooldays and his infatuation with classmate Katy Simmons, have played on his mind for many years. Through the opportunities provided by social networking and the Internet, Colin has made contact with a number of his old classmates and when the reader joins him, he is looking forward to meeting a small group of them for a reunion later in the day. Born and bred New Zealander, Brian Jacko Jackson, attended the same school as Colin for a brief period during the mid-1960s, and by coincidence finds himself back in England for the first time in nearly forty years. He is en-route to meet up with Colin in the town where they both lived as boys, before they travel to see former classmate Ian Harrison who is hosting the reunion. As the day unfolds the narrative switches between the 1960s and the early twenty first century as the group discuss their memories from those schooldays and the intervening years. All of the group have their own stories; whether they choose to share them or not is largely down to the flow of conversation. Jacko in particular carries a heavy weight and there is an air of mystery that shrouds him; never revealing much and invariably diverting attention away from himself by spinning a yarn or two. For the group, the order of the day is nostalgia, nostalgia, nostalgia.