Cousin Ray and the American

East Cowes, Isle of Wight

1958

Late summer’s lazy afternoons rolled easily into evening, lines of deepening lavender blushing the distant mainland as Fawley’s roman candle flare stack was already beginning to brighten the sky. Children’s swings hung desolate, still as soldiers on their long brown iron chains, dried flakes of green paint curling on a small wooden roundabout that was sitting sad and motionless. The Jubilee Recreation Ground or as it is better known by locals The Rec, the wide-open green space gifted to the town by Lord Gort and bordered by the beautifully mature trees that edge both sides of York Avenue. The top of the Rec was for the sole use of young children, there was a small area for swings, a slide, a small wooden roundabout and my favourite which was the gondola motion American swing. ‘I bet you haven’t heard the latest Everly Brothers record, it’s called Dream’ drawled my cousin Ray, who’s Island accent was slow and rich, as he was leaning motionless on the swing poles over one end of the American.

Ray was a year or so older than me and was everything I wanted to be, self-assured and casually confident and always, or so it seemed to me then, able to demonstrate a wider breadth of knowledge on most things, unlike myself or my immediate peer group. Although always casual his fashion sense was just that little more stylish, he wore a necklace and turned his cuffs back. Instead of plain black plimsoles he would wear American baseball boots, and as though that wasn’t enough, he was good looking with his long dark hair that was combed in an Elvis Presley style.

I feigned a quizzical expression, moreover to give Ray the impression that I was au fait with the latest in pop music and then replied as casually as I could muster ‘no, I don’t think so, is it their latest release?’

‘Yeah nipper, the Everly’s they’re bloody fantastic, yeah, they’re something special.’ Ray was shading his eyes against the low sun with his hands as he looked out from his standing position on the American down across the Rec to the beautiful building that was the Frank James Hospital with its iconic verdigris clock tower, turning back to face me he asked. ‘What do you think about My Baby Loves a Western Movie?’ I had never heard of it would have been the honest answer, instead I said ‘that’s a Buddy Holly song isn’t it?’ ‘That’ll be the day,’ said Ray quietly.

What followed over that beautiful warm summers evening, as we both sat gently swinging into the blue of twilight, was a vilification of pop singers and their bands the breakdown of recent and current releases that both Ray and his older sister Anita had purchased from Harold Bowen at Radio Resco in East Cowes to play on her HMV record player.

It was getting late as Smoke grey clouds floated slowly across the dimming line of burnt orange that was glowing just below the horizon out over Calshot Spit and the distant Southampton Water just as heavenly shades of night were falling.