The long chain of gold that binds me.

Wie geht's in your lockdown bubble?

These are memorable days! Or are they?

I'm going to riff on this for a few posts (probably, or it could just be this one - that's the way I roll).

This idea was prompted by a great passage in, erm, Great Expectations. Here's Pip:

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Pause.

Iron or gold, thorns or flowers: I have so many memorable day examples to draw upon it's not funny, but I'm going to narrow it down to three major gold links in the chain, without which my life would have been much different:

1 The day I watched the Ed Sullivan Show and a group called The Beatles came on and blew my socks off (not literally but they rocked my world for evermore). 

Place and time - our lounge at 18 Korma Ave., Royal Oak, NZ. Although the show happened originally in February 1964, it didn't reach NZBC until many months later.

Picture me - age 7, alone in front of our black and white set. Mesmerised by John Lennon.

Without that seminal experience my obsession with music in general, and The Beatles in particular wouldn't have happened.

2 The day I attended an interview at Mt Albert Grammar in late 1970, and answered Mr Hall's question, "Do you have a career in mind for when you leave school?" by saying, "Yes, I want to become a teacher'. 

Picture me, as an out-of-zone applicant from Manukau Intermediate - age 12.

Without that response, and if I'd failed at that interview - no teaching career, and consequently no number 3 below. 

Luckily, my dad was a MAGS old boy so I got an out-of-zone place and no one there ever tried to dissuade me from my goal - even though I failed everything!

3 The day in December 1982 when the Headmaster at New Plymouth Boys' High School, Tom Ryder, rang me at home (4 Ramelton Rd., Mt Roskill South) and asked me a few questions and then said a telegram was coming offering me a job!

Picture me - age 25, off and running in my first teaching job.

Without this day I would never have met Jacky, our four children and one grandchild wouldn't exist and the world wouldn't be spinning correctly on its axis.

Love and peace - Wozza