Forty Years on: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive..."

Date: 20 July 2009 17:21:39

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive...
... but to be young was very heaven"

Where's my jetpack?

This isn't about London, but its my blog, and I can cry if I want to.

We're perhaps coming to the end of the generation whose experience of the world and history in the making is mainly mediated through television. But it was my generation. And there are things we all remember seeing live on, or first hearing about from, TV that we will never forget. Lots of them are terrible things, there's not much point in going through them. But some of them were wonderful.

I'll never forget (I hope) seeing those pink rocks on Mars, and not quite understanding why almost no-one else in the crowded Student Union bar I was in was thrilled by it. Or Nelson Mandela walking out of prison.

But the most memorable of them all was Apollo 11, when I was 12 years old. And being allowed to stay up all night (almost) to see them leave the LEM and walk on the Moon. And still being awake in the morning when someone went out to get a copy of the paper, which was about little else, in my eyes anyway (was it the Observer? Was the landing on a Saturday?)

I think I'm off to the shop to get some American beer, if there is such a thing, to drink a toast to the Apollo Crew. Then maybe I'll watch my DVD of Apollo 13 or The Right Stuff and have a good cry.