70 Years and Still Humming Along.*
Yep, people, today Fogy celebrates the end of his seventh decade and starts his eighth.
These are those Forrest Gump moments of reflection that hit us all at some stage in our lives.
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were part of my growing up. They had both just started out and featured across most of our days on New Zealand's radio stations. Rod Stewart and Elton John came along a little later, and Yellow Brick Road and Maggie May were played alongside Casey Kasem's American Top 40—the background music to kitchens I worked in during my later years.
My uncle had one of what we now call a vintage car. At the time, it was only about 15 years old and was as ordinary as many of today's cars.
I was one of the many who watched the first releases of the original Star Wars and Jaws. We stood in groups around black-and-white televisions in 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong take those first steps on the lunar surface.
And for a while, we had our own little secluded world down there in New Zealand. Pollution seemed a distant concept. Wars were something that happened somewhere else.
Our peace, of course, was shattered when the UK joined the Common Market and New Zealand suddenly lost the trading relationship that had underpinned so much of our economy. That began long years of economic upheaval and recovery.
But hell—we were still too young to fully understand what was happening.
Even more life-shattering were the nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, and later the bombing and sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour by French secret service agents. The Greenpeace flagship had been preparing to protest French nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll.
The world at large was being brought, helter-skelter, into the lives of an increasingly aware New Zealand population.
The Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the world to the edge of nuclear war.
I didn't even know.
Yep. Somewhat disjointed memories, as memories are. But these are all part of the massive life experience packed inside these 70 years.
Then came six years in Scotland while Margaret was fighting in the Falklands. The musical world tried to feed Africa through the Live Aid concert. Wars started and stopped throughout the rest of the world.
Who knew?
Well, by that time, many more of us did.
The world had suddenly expanded beyond the South Pacific Basin.
And then came Brazil.
Almost 40 years of massive upheaval in a reborn, maturing nation, fraught with the growing pains that seem to accompany every revitalised country throughout history.
If basic education in New Zealand was the beginning, and the intermediate lessons learned in the UK were the sauce, then the university education of actually living and breathing this Brazilian experience has to be the cream on top.
Never—ever—did I imagine being given such wonderful opportunities.
So, congratulations to all of us who have lived through these decades, and to those of us still here to live the decades to come.
Life must be celebrated.
Warts and all.
We are the privileged ones.
Let's face it.
Cheers.
