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If I could ask those of you who can remember to cast your mind back to September 1966. "Sunshine Superman" by Donovan was on the radio and" Revolver "having been released in August had reached the number one spot on 13th August. It was a formative month for me personally because I was about to start a new school. We returned from a family holiday in North Wales to find this magazine sitting on the mantelpiece with my photo on the front.

My grandmother Hilda was from a generation of women who had survived two world wars and the great depression. People of that generation  who weren't shell shocked were completely bomb proof, nothing could faze them. She had a music  shop just off The Portobello Rd in London and she sold guitars and sheet music etc and once a week she would go into the West End of London (on a bus!) to pick up stock.

As if she didn’t already have enough on her plate she would sometimes take me with her. I can remember the music publisher Frances - I think it was in Gerrard St - and I remember vividly the musty smell and sparsely furnished office with bare wooden floor. A purposeful but friendly atmosphere, very different from today, not at all "cool" but pleasantly  professional. One day Hilda announced that she was taking me to meet someone at a different office called Clifford Essex in Earlham St and she said that she wanted me to play the guitar to the boss there. And

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It was in that September that we started the new school and it was then that I first met a colourful and engaging character formerly known as Stuart Goddard, prominent in the school playground because of  his dancing and making funny noises, who was to become a good friend. I also met a whole group of friends who I still see to this day.  It was also that month, in fact 24 September,  that Jimi  Hendrix got on a plane to come to the UK with nothing to his name but a fender Stratocaster and a change of clothes.  Again for my generation, not to mention absolutely anyone who played electric guitar, this single event turned out to be a massive thing.  Apparently it was touch and go whether immigration would let him in and then who knows the story might have been quite different?

For all this the world was a troubled place there were  nuclear tests going on all over the globe and black and white televisions filtered pictures from Vietnam to our living rooms. Despite that Portobello Rd was a place bursting with colour and energy. The big money was yet to arrive so everything was still a bit scruffy and  I think there was still the odd bomb site due to damage from ww2. But there was the feeling that anything was possible in this ramshackle place that had somehow survived the traumas of the forties and emerged weakened economically but enriched creatively. You somehow felt that anything could be done as long as you had a garden shed. You could build anything you needed from a hoover to a space ship but you would have to wait sometime for the parts to arrive.