When the times they were a-changing

Media release from Grant Dyson Media Consultant

When the times they were a-changing

Once I Was a Teenager: Growing up in the 50s and 60s

If you remember those long-ago days of fatty Sunday roasts, climbing mulberry trees, hula hoops, mini-skirts and rock ‘n’ roll – chances are you were a teenager in the 50s and 60s.

So was writer Jonquil Graham, and she’s produced a fascinating memoir of what growing up in Australia was like back then.

Rebellious adolescents were controlled with threats of “Wait ‘til your father gets home!” and young ladies were instructed to ‘wear clean knickers in case you’re in an accident.’

Mothers worried about their teenager daughter’s pimples, posture and puppy fat. Would she be ‘left on the shelf’ or worse, marry a foreigner? Dads were aghast when long-haired sons challenged their carefully considered opinions. They’d rap out a sharp enquiry: “Are you studying to be a half-wit, son?”

Jonquil Graham tells her story affectionately, peppering it with amusing anecdotes and lively commentary on that ‘new age’ when conservative post-war society, and the attitudes of the older generation, were constantly challenged and eroded by sons and daughters not only in Europe and America but also in the Antipodes.

Jonquil’s family spent those years in a coastal Sydney suburb where the surf dashed a mother’s dreams for her son when he refused to conform to her expectations and become an admiral like his Kiwi uncle, or fight in Vietnam. Surfing was the only way to live, he told her.

Join Jonquil as she recalls that past era: the music, fashion, wild parties and crazy dances and the typical attitude of parents as they struggled to cope with change and tried to sum up proper behaviour with lots of pithy sayings.

She also tells us of sea voyages to U.K. and New Zealand relatives, being a child model and making a movie, Contiki trips and following the hippie trail across Asia and hitch-hiking around Europe.

Little Pattie (Pattie Amphlett) was a teenage singing sensation in Australia then, signed up by EMI. She says in her foreword, “I remember the times with great affection and I know you’ll love this book as much as I did.”

Jonquil now lives in an historic house in Golden Bay, New Zealand, on what was once the kiwifruit orchard she ran with her husband Bryan. The couple have adopted and fostered many children over the years, including two sets of twins from Russia and Romania. She has told this story in her first book, How Many Planes to Get Me? which was published by Cape Catley, 2006 and will soon be re-issued as an eBook with Oceanbooks, which is also publishing Once I Was a Teenager.  

Once I was a Teenager published by Oceanbooks (www.oceanbooks.co.nz) as a paperback, available now. Also in e-pub and mobi available later.

RRP NZ$ 28.00 paperback.

ISBN: 978-1-927215-79-1 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-927215-80-7  (ePub)

ISBN: 978-1-927215-81-4 (mobi)

Also from Jonquil Graham: How Many Planes to Get Me ?

RRP NZ$28.00 paperback

ISBN: 1-877340-03-0

ENDS

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