The Free Spirit

All-American Girl, 1965 (Part One)

"I don't worry about all the things that I'm not..."

I was still in London in January of 1965, having recorded a new single that would be released the very first week of the month. It was a quick release, but seeing as I had been so ill lately, they wanted to record one and release it as quickly as possible. The A side was a chirpy little song called 'The Boat That I Row' and it's B side was my cover of a song that had been done by Del Shannon and even the Noble Steeds called 'Runaway'. Both were relatively popular and 'The Boat That I Row' climbed to fourth place in the charts, while 'Runaway' reached twenty-six. I would be performing both of those newer hits, as well as last year's, on the tour that I would be going on with the Noble Steeds and even the Everly Brothers. I was a bit nervous about touring with Don, as the only touring I had ever done with him was solely as his wife and nothing more, and it didn't help that tensions between us were strained and I was, indeed, seven months pregnant.

Before the tour, I had offered a helping hand at Nonnatus House - not doing district midwifery, but working in the maternity home. By this time, I was already wearing a girdle to conceal my pregnancy, and I felt the difficulties in my breathing. Trixie and Valerie knew I was expecting, but Lucille and the nuns did not, as I was in no mood to hear them preach to me about how I ought to know better. We celebrated ten years of my working at Nonnatus House that January, as it was unknown whether or not I would be around to celebrate my actual ten year anniversary at Nonnatus House in July, and it was good to know that I had been making a difference in the lives of women of Poplar for so long. And as the second week of January came, Jackie came to collect the children and go back to America, while I went on tour.

It was a good tour, with so many musicians and singers and such bearing so many different kinds of talent. Also on the tour with us were British groups Peter and Gordon, made up of redheaded Peter Asher and his starry-eyed dark-haired companion, Gordon Waller, the Searchers had joined us, as had the Hollies and the Animals, and a young band made up of young kids all between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one called the Who (who later went on to become a very successful late sixties band). Peter and Gordon had jumped onto the tour thanks to Peter Asher's budding relationship with Ginger McAllistor, of which Eccleston Smith greatly disapproved of. But they both seemed happy and they looked quite adorable together, as they were both redheaded. Peter Asher was the older brother of actress Jane Asher, who was the girlfriend of Paul McCartney of the Beatles, so he was the tie between the Noble Steeds and the Beatles that later got the Beatles performing a couple of nights during that tour.

We all had our fun by sitting around playing games, chatting and having our own little parties. Don and I were still separated, but for the sake of flapping lips, we acted as if we were happy together, but I would neither kiss him nor hug him. If we had an argument, it was in private, and we did have separate hotel rooms that were right next to each other. Don shared his hotel room with Phil, while I shared mine with Ginger, who couldn't room with Peter or any members of the Noble Steeds, and we had our fun. Ginger told me all about how much she adored Peter and how kind and sweet and also shy he was, and she asked me if this was how I'd felt when I first started seeing Don. "Well, truth to be told, Don and I didn't really start seeing each other, we just kind of woke up married to each other one day," I told her.

"How do you wake up married to someone? Were you both knackered?" Ginger asked me, and I shook my head.

"We went to a party that blustery hot July evening and there appeared to be something laced in with the punch. We don't know what it was, nor can we remember anything from that night, but we know that it was the punch that did it because getting that punch was the last memory either of us had before we woke up married to each other."

"Do you know what was in it?"

"Not a clue. I just remember feeling almost a little... dizzy, I guess. I remember feeling my vision go all cloudy, and the lights got so bright and started changing colours. Things seemed almost a little distorted, but it was very colourful... Come to think of it, that's all I can remember from that evening, I remember thinking about how beautiful the colours were."