I'm not quite sure how it started, but from the age of about nine
or ten I had this real 'thing' about people from other countries. I
was fascinated – obsessed, even. I loved the way everyone could
look so different, with their unusual sounding names and exotic clothes
and customs. On my bedroom wall, amid the cut-out sellotaped
pictures of kittens and seahorses, was a huge world map I'd been
given as a present. I wanted to visit all those faraway lands, see
feather head-dresses and funny shaped buildings, and meet people with
names like Olayemi and Natsuki.
This advert from 1971 may have had something to do with it.
Originally recorded by the Hillside Singers for the 'Buy The
World A Coke' campaign, the New Seekers took their adaptation of it to No 1 in the UK
charts later that year...
I had a bit of a crush on Marty Kristian, of course.
...not to be confused with this:
The verse was originally so similar that it led to Oasis being
successfully sued by the New Seekers, reportedly for $500,000
I found national costumes especially interesting and had a favourite
book which I loved to look through
and which frequently inspired ideas and drawings of my own
When my Dad came back from European work trips he sometimes
gave my sister and me a traditional doll from his travels like this
one (although more often than not we just got bars of fancily-wrapped foreign chocolate. I'm not complaining).
I kept them - the dolls, that is, not bars of chocolate - lined up
on my window-sill where the bright colours of their dresses quickly
faded in the sunlight.
And in true geek style, my interest in the wider world outside my
window also extended to stamp-collecting. Most of the stamps I enthusiastically saved and stuck down on
those pages came from the 1970s. Some of these British ones might be familiar, if you remember that far back.
I rather like these stark looking German ones with their stern
Health & Safety warnings.
You may have read elsewhere on this blog that the first album I
ever bought was the Clash... but actually, now I come to think of it,
it was this one:
