25 years since John Lennon was shot

So it's twenty five years to the day that John Lennon was shot and there are little acts of remembrance going on all over the place. There were Lennon tributes all over the radio this morning, from the Today programme to Virgin and no doubt beyond. There's been a lot of debate about the personality of the man as well as discussions about his songs and all that. As a whole it's triggered a rather personal memory for me.

Surprisingly enough I remember when Lennon died. I was only two, but I have a vivid recollection of seeing the event on the television news. I was watching with my mum and I think a family friend, Mary, was there. She lived in the house that backed on to our garden and she'd just popped around to give me a knitted soft toy that she'd made. I'm pretty sure it was a piglet (as in Winnie the Pooh's buddy). The bizarre thing about this is that Mary also played a pivotal role in my mum's recollection of when John F. Kennedy was shot. Mum was climbing over the back fence to collect her Avon cosmetics order from Mary. Aside from making me wonder at my mother's youthful athleticism, this clearly provides much evidence for a conspiracy theory. Think the FBI conspired to shoot Kennedy and Lennon? Maybe communists? The mafia perhaps? No, it was bored housewives in suburban England.

I think I remember the shooting because mum found it quite upsetting. She'd seen the Beatles play live in her youth. The came to what is now a faded seaside theatre along the coast from mum's home town. Presumably back then it was a local hub of youth culture. Mum was working in the Co-op and went with her colleagues. She used to talk frequently about this when I was growing up but I think I never quite believed that she would have actually done something as... well, cool, as that. It just so happened that when I went to university the end of term ball one year was held in this old theatre, and as I walked down the stairs there was a poster advertising the Beatles concert that had been held there. There was an odd sort of pride in being able to think "my mum was there".

The passing of time always imparts great significance to events, whether they seemed significant when they occurred or not.