The British Invasion Take 1

June 1963

Thursday morning in Montreal (6/6/63)
7 amk

Annie, 12, tall for her age, wakes up, has breakfast, dresses for her sixth grade track and field day.

Dad is reading the Gazette at the kitchen table as she leaves for school.

Dad dresses for work and heads out the door but not to work: he parks the car and takes the bus to the hospital where he is now a mental patient.

Annie arrives at her elementary school where kids are boarding the bus with their teacher the vivacious Miss MacKinnon.

At  9 am as the bus leaves school heading north, the overcast sky turns to rain.

The bus pulls into Shawbridge Boys Farm at 10:30 am in pouring rain. The kids go inside the building to wait while the teachers talk.

The kids eat their lunches as the rain pounds down. They are told the track meet has been canceled. Moans go up. Their big day canceled.

As the kids line up to leave, Annie is called into the director's office. Two soldiers are waiting for her.

Miss MacKinnon does roll call as the children file onto the bus. Annie's name is called three times, then ticked off the list.

Annie is carried out, wrapped in a blanket, put in a car and driven to a nearby airport. Her unconscious body is folded into a crate for the baggage handlers.

Back at home the phone rings and her mother answers.

"Your daughter's gone to London to visit the Queen."

Dad comes home and as usual goes straight to his bedroom to rest. It's 5 pm in Canada, 10 pm in London where the Air Force plane has landed.

Her mother has made dinner: steak, mashed potatoes and peas. "Where's Annie?" asks her father.

Picked up at the airport by Andrew, Annie arrives at the flat still semi-unconscious and is dropped on a bed where she sleeps until next morning. When she opens her eyes she sees strange young men staggering around getting dressed and banging out the door.

The radio announces a heat wave in London. There is nowhere to bathe, and the sink is full of dirty dishes. Andrew arrives. Seeing Annie in her track suit, he shakes his head. She has a big day ahead of her and cant go around looking like that.

He takes her around the corner to Mary Quant where they choose a pink cotton baby doll set off the rack. He used to work there and will pay for it later. He ties a scarf around Annie's hair which hasn't been washed for two days.

On the street in her new pink outfit they run into Mick coming from his girlfriend's. He kisses Annie on her forehead, commenting how much she's grown since the last time.

They set off on foot for his last class of the semester. A 90 minute walk on the King's Road and through Mayfair. On the way they pass acquaintances, sharply dressed with London accents. Because she is so tall she passes for older until she opens her mouth and sounds hopelessly Canadian.

In the large auditorium classroom they rejoin Andrew. Mick has no paper to hand in and must go see the Registrar about dropping out. Today he becomes a fulltime Rolling Stone. Andrew his manager gives him a copy of the new record to show as proof.

Annie watches the students dropping off their papers - the professor has not yet shown up. She feels Andrew's hot shoulder pressing on hers.

Its noon in London while back home it's 7 am on Friday June 7. Her dad is at breakfast reading the paper. Her brother asks  "When's Annie coming back?"

Like every weekday, Dad goes out the door with his briefcase and drives down to the Day Hospital where he has been an outpatient for 6 months while pretending to his kids to still be teaching high school music.

Anxious patients are pacing and smoking and gesturing at thin air. "Who am I? What am I doing here?"

There for group therapy, he demands to see Dr Cameron. The nurse asks if he has an appointment.

Dr Cameron happens to be passing by so Annie's dad accosts him: “Where's my daughter?”

”Aye, Donald. I'll see you next week. Nurse, make him an appointment for Monday morning.”

“What have you done to her?” Two orderlies walk him back to the therapy circle and sit him down.

Over in England, the band is meeting at the pub. Mick's girlfriend arrives in her secretarial clothes. Who is this? Its Annie from Canada. Canada?

The band are drinking and popping pills.

Mick and his girlfriend get into a fight.

Drunk for the first time in her life Annie tries to walk away. Without money, clothes or someone to drive her, she wont get far. She vomits on the sidewalk and passes out.

She wakes up the next day in her baby dolls in the same filthy flat with snores coming from the next room. Some man is lying on the mattress next to her. She looks around for her track clothes - where have they hidden them? Andrew drives her to the airport in her pajamas.

Her father gets a phone call to her up at the airport. Home at last, Annie gets undressed and goes to bed, while her parents argue in the living room.

The next day she and her dad go to see Dr Cameron at the hospital. A nurse takes Annie down the hall to a room and locks her in. They put electrodes on her head and turn on the juice. Her body goes stiff and then relaxes.

Pussycat pussycat where have you been?

That night her mother knocks on the door with the pink outfit laundered and folded. "I made you these baby doll pajamas."  Annie thanks her, tries them on, and falls back to sleep.

The next week at school she writes her Canadian History exam with Dr Cameron's voice in her head repeating

You're no good
You will fail
You will never succeed at anything

She passes History and Grade Six with flying colors, finishing top of her class as usual and collects her book prize: All Kinds of Courage.

Summer vacation and the Beach Boys on the radio.

At church a young man asks her out on a date. "But I'm only 12."

She hasn't even hit puberty yet.  In the car she tells her dad - he explodes:"You're not going out with boys!"

Her father has now officially retired with a boxed set of Verdi's Requiem as a retirement present. Annie listens to the sad music on the record player downstairs in the basement.

Over in England the Rolling Stones are hitting the shops buying up copies of their own record and nudging it up the charts to Number 20 on the hit parade. That summer Mick asks his girlfriend to marry him.

They're playing in clubs on their way to becoming a household word but in Canada Annie has still never heard of them.

There is no one to hold her hand. In her bed at night she communes with an imaginary boyfriend based on a comic book hero. Her brother hides in her closet eavesdropping  then falls out on the floor, laughing. She kicks him out and goes back to making out with her pillow.

A week later she helps pack up the station wagon-- they've decided to move out west and start a new life three thousand miles across Canada. The dry climate will be good for her mother's arthritis.

There is no radio in their car. She reads The Diary of Anne Frank. She has brought along her little pink diary but there's nothing to write about so she gazes out the window at the landscape, playing I Spy With My Little Eye with her twin brother.

…