Saving Gary McKinnon Read Online Free
Author: Janis Sharp
had, they would invite you to have dinner with them and always made you feel welcome.
From the age of eleven I attended North Kelvinside Secondary School, one of the best in the area. Although I was in the top girls’ class and passed exams with flying colours, every stage of school felt like prison to me. School holidays were a huge relief and it was on one of these holidays I found a new love that would underscore my life.
One summer I went to Butlins with my family and this is where I first heard the song ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles. I had never heard music like this before: it was new and energetic and optimistic and I was in love with this song. My friend Jean and I started going to pop concerts, which is where I first saw and heard another legendary band, the Bee Gees. We started to dress differently from the other girls we knew, trying to look like the girls in The Ronettes, who had the hit record ‘Be My Baby’.
Some of the other girls from school said we looked ‘gallus’ in our black trousers and jackets, but we noticed at the school dance, when our parents made us wear party dresses, that it was girls who seemed prim and as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths who were getting up to things that their parents might have been less than happy about.
Jean and I used to stand on the table using a hairbrush as a microphone and sing our hearts out, pretending we were on stage. Eventually we acquired an old tape recorder with a real microphone and we were able to make our own recordings.
Some of Jean’s brother’s friends formed a band, and one day I asked if I could try their electric guitar. I taught myself to play the riff from ‘Peter Gunn’, an instrumental song by Duane Eddy. The boy took the guitar back from me quite abruptly. At the time I thought it was because I hadn’t played it well but when I got older I realised that it was probably because I had played it too well and too quickly.
Because I loved animals so much I wanted to be a vet and thought I would stay on at school to get the qualifications, but when I found out that part of the job would involve putting healthy animals down, I knew there was no way I could do it. So I left school just a few months before my fifteenth birthday. I decided to go out to work and earn my own money while I figured out what I’d like to do with my life.
It was 1963. Glasgow was bursting with energy and with an eclectic mix of musicians, artists, dancers, singers and writers. In May there had been anti-Vietnam War protests in Britain, and music was changing in line with the mood of the people. The world was changing and there was a sense of freedom in the air. I felt I belonged in this brave new world.
CHAPTER 4
BABY, ITâS THE FIRST TIME
O ne of my first jobs was at a clothes boutique in the centre of Glasgow. It was always busy and the other girls who worked there were full of fun. Occasionally, in a mischievous mood, they would drag their feet along the nylon carpet to build up a static charge in their fingertips and then touch the back of the neck of one of the unsuspecting young male customers, saying, âCan I help you?â The boys would jump at the shock and then join in with our laughter. They never seemed to get annoyed at all.
I had known Charlie McKinnon since I was twelve years old and saw him regularly as he was living with my best friendâs family. We fell in love when I was fourteen years old and got engaged when I was fifteen but I think I loved Charlie from the first moment I saw him. He was and is one of the kindest and most caring people Iâve ever known. He was a huge Elvis fan and an excellent singer, performing in pubs and always working hard at whatever job he was doing.
I saved up all my wages, as did he, and we bought a flat when I was fifteen years old, which was as unusual at that time as it is now.
We were planning to get married four days after my sixteenth birthday, and visited the man from
From the age of eleven I attended North Kelvinside Secondary School, one of the best in the area. Although I was in the top girls’ class and passed exams with flying colours, every stage of school felt like prison to me. School holidays were a huge relief and it was on one of these holidays I found a new love that would underscore my life.
One summer I went to Butlins with my family and this is where I first heard the song ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles. I had never heard music like this before: it was new and energetic and optimistic and I was in love with this song. My friend Jean and I started going to pop concerts, which is where I first saw and heard another legendary band, the Bee Gees. We started to dress differently from the other girls we knew, trying to look like the girls in The Ronettes, who had the hit record ‘Be My Baby’.
Some of the other girls from school said we looked ‘gallus’ in our black trousers and jackets, but we noticed at the school dance, when our parents made us wear party dresses, that it was girls who seemed prim and as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths who were getting up to things that their parents might have been less than happy about.
Jean and I used to stand on the table using a hairbrush as a microphone and sing our hearts out, pretending we were on stage. Eventually we acquired an old tape recorder with a real microphone and we were able to make our own recordings.
Some of Jean’s brother’s friends formed a band, and one day I asked if I could try their electric guitar. I taught myself to play the riff from ‘Peter Gunn’, an instrumental song by Duane Eddy. The boy took the guitar back from me quite abruptly. At the time I thought it was because I hadn’t played it well but when I got older I realised that it was probably because I had played it too well and too quickly.
Because I loved animals so much I wanted to be a vet and thought I would stay on at school to get the qualifications, but when I found out that part of the job would involve putting healthy animals down, I knew there was no way I could do it. So I left school just a few months before my fifteenth birthday. I decided to go out to work and earn my own money while I figured out what I’d like to do with my life.
It was 1963. Glasgow was bursting with energy and with an eclectic mix of musicians, artists, dancers, singers and writers. In May there had been anti-Vietnam War protests in Britain, and music was changing in line with the mood of the people. The world was changing and there was a sense of freedom in the air. I felt I belonged in this brave new world.
CHAPTER 4
BABY, ITâS THE FIRST TIME
O ne of my first jobs was at a clothes boutique in the centre of Glasgow. It was always busy and the other girls who worked there were full of fun. Occasionally, in a mischievous mood, they would drag their feet along the nylon carpet to build up a static charge in their fingertips and then touch the back of the neck of one of the unsuspecting young male customers, saying, âCan I help you?â The boys would jump at the shock and then join in with our laughter. They never seemed to get annoyed at all.
I had known Charlie McKinnon since I was twelve years old and saw him regularly as he was living with my best friendâs family. We fell in love when I was fourteen years old and got engaged when I was fifteen but I think I loved Charlie from the first moment I saw him. He was and is one of the kindest and most caring people Iâve ever known. He was a huge Elvis fan and an excellent singer, performing in pubs and always working hard at whatever job he was doing.
I saved up all my wages, as did he, and we bought a flat when I was fifteen years old, which was as unusual at that time as it is now.
We were planning to get married four days after my sixteenth birthday, and visited the man from
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