Lost touch

I was doing some cleaning in the house earlier this week to while away the boredom of recovering from my bout of food poisoning when I came across old letters from a pen pal from days long gone by. In the days without emails and the Internet, it was still possible to know people from across the globe and that was through air-mail correspondence. It was slow but every time a letter arrives, I'd open it with a lot of anticipation. We took the time and trouble to really put pen to paper. We thought before we wrote. And we discussed matters of the day frankly. For me, it was a window to the world. For several years, letters flew between us but sadly we lost touch decades ago.

Brian Philip Walters of Wavell Street, Adelaide, Australia, if you happen to read this somehow, thank you for your friendship during those years of the late 60s and early 70s.

On and off, he would send me a list of the Top 40 songs on Radio 5AD which I would presume was the top radio station there. I still have the collection. For the week ending 18 July 1969, the Top 40 songs comprised this whole lot below. How many have you heard of and what do you remember?

Bad Moon Rising (CCR), The Ballad Of John And Yoko (Beatles), Dear Prudence (Doug Parkinson In Focus), Hair (Cowsills), My Sentimental Friend (Herman's Hermits), Special Delivery (1910 Fruitgum Company), Where's The Playground Suzie? (Glen Campbell), In The Ghetto (Elvis Presley), Come Back And Shake Me (Clodagh Rodgers), Spinning Wheel (Blood, Sweat and Tears), I Threw It All Away (Bob Dylan), Big Ship (Cliff Richard), Ragamuffin Man (Manfred Mann), The Walls Fell Down (Marbles), Heather Honey (Tommy Roe), Friend Lover Woman Wife (OC Smith), Without Her (Herb Alpert), Gitarzan (Ray Stevens), Frozen Orange Juice (Peter Sarstedt), Marley Purt Drive (Jose Feliciano), My Way (Frank Sinatra), Get Back (Beatles), The Windmills Of Your Mind (Noel Harrison), Baby Driver/The Boxer (Simon and Garfunkel), Bazza Razza/Have A Giggle-Go (Barry Ion), The Day They Freed The Noise (Doug Ashdown), Yesterday When I Was Young (Roy Clark), Israelites (Desmond Dekker), Tomorrow Tomorrw (Bee Gees), Please Don't Go (Barry Crocker), Little Yellow Aeroplane (Leapy Lee), Funny Man (Ross D Wylie), Love Me Tonight (Tom Jones), Give Peace A Chance (Plastic Ono Band), Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In (5th Dimension), The Real Thing (Russell Morris), Snake In The Grass (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich), Think It's All Over (Sandie Shaw), Conversations (Cilla Black), One (Johnny Farnham).