I spent the summer of 1967 working in a Wimpy Bar in Minehead as a waiter, having abandoned any plans for university etc after a bout of glandular fever laid me low for six months.
As a Londoner, aged 19, and pop-obsessed, and working in the job I had, I came to know a lot of the local girls, although I was held back by natural reticence and the fact I'd been to a single sex school then still run on Edwardian if not Victorian lines.
Every week that summer concerts took place at a local venue, always with a group which was, or had been, in the Top 10, so all were well-known names, although obviously not the Beatles or Stones. I went to almost all of them, but unfortunately I could not always afford to go in, so listened from the outside.
It was all locals that attended, plus 'squaddies' that got lorried in on occasion, the Butlins' holidaymakers seemingly preferring their own 'entertainment', so one saw the same people week in, week out, probably only 50 to 100 in number, Amongst them was a girl well known locally, aged 13. She came from a rather troubled background, and was living with her grandmother and brother and, frankly, was rather out of control. She always wore her school uniform, I'm sure the only reason for this being that these were the only clothes she had, and she probably had the same skirt she'd had at 11. Now. the Summer of Love hadn't got as far down as Minehead then, so miniskirts were mostly the just-above-knee length as pioneered by Jean Shrimpton, so this microskirt certainly set her apart. Anyway, getting to the point, at every gig she would make herself available to members of the visiting band, and often be taken quite openly to their van by one such. She then regaled everybody with her exploits afterwards: only once was she denied, by the Pretty Things, whose members were in the main a bit older than in the other groups, and she complained loudly about that! She did, by the way, look her age, so none of those band members could have said they were taken in!
