And why not ...this stuff?

1968-70  There was a completely different musical subculture running at the same time. Soul and especially Motown had always been there but many kids had now embraced reggae and ska. Why didn't I?

Peer groups, I suppose. The skinhead fashion had - for reasons I've never fully understood - embraced reggae, but my parents had moved to a more affluent part of my London suburb, and the school they had sent me to was "posh". Hardly anybody there adopted skinhead culture. But this was London, of course it touched me. You had to go to discos to meet girls, and with the exception of the odd one up at Falconwood, they were playing Desmond Dekker and not The Nice. 

Of course if I'd lived in a more racially mixed suburb such as Brixton, I'd have been more into such music because of the peer group. But reggae and ska is more physical music; its for dancing to rather than listening to. It was already clear that a lack of co-ordination and extreme self -consciousness meant I would never be a natural dancer. So I'd never be getting up offa that thing. But I understand why people do, and I'm quite envious of them.