I Didn’t Go To Lunch That Day

by Christie Healey of Fifty Is The New

1969 is known for Woodstock and “The Summer of Love,” but for Christie Healey, it was a special winter day when she was at the right place at the right time

I was doing a little paintwork touch up around the house the other day, musing about my life and thinking how satisfying it can be to paint over things—chips, scratches, cracks, dust. NPR was playing in the background and I heard a review of Ang Lee’s new movie, Taking Woodstock. I don’t remember much about Woodstock. Not because I was there, I (unlike others of my generation) will emphatically state, I was not there. My defining music moment happened in January of 1969.

I was working in the marketing department of Tyne Tees Television, a commercial TV station that occupied the fifth floor of an office building on Savile Row, London near Regent Street. My boss, Oliver Trigg and his tall, handsome sidekick, John Finch, were off to the boozer for their usual lunch of a pint and some rib-sticking food. They asked if I wanted to join them. I was working on some magical marketing numbers that needed to be presented later that day and, reluctantly, said no. I settled down in Ollie’s office to study the most inventive fiction ever created by humankind, audience demographics, when I noticed some activity on the roof opposite. I opened the window and leaned out.

There was lots of musical equipment being set up, drum kit, amps, guitars on stands and mikes. A door to the roof slowly opened and some women drifted out and settled themselves off to one side. Good Lord, it was the Beatle women. Then the door opened again and the Beatle men appeared. By this time I am hanging out of the window about 30 feet above the opposite roof. The first chords struck and the Beatles launched into their last concert.

It was so loud traffic stopped in Regent Street. People flooded out of offices and filled the street, looking up in wonder. The police arrived on the roof, talked with the Beatles for a couple of minutes then settled themselves down opposite the women, instinctively knowing that this should not be stopped. The music continued, some blues numbers, old rock n’ roll and Crikey, they even played “God Save the Queen.” When they played “Let It Be,” I knew it was over. They were moving on and this was their gift to those who by happenstance were lucky enough to hear, and for some see, their final wave and nod to us. Ollie and John got stuck in the crowds and could not persuade the police to let them back down Savile Row. I could never mention that day in their presence without seeing them wince with regret. Not long afterwards, I left Tyne Tees TV and moved in with John. We had a wonderful couple of years together before time and the tides of our separate desires parted us.

One Christmas afternoon about 10 years ago, I was watching television with my husband and my son, Fred, when we came across a documentary about the Beatles and started to watch. It was a long doc and I got up to make a cup of tea when Fred said, “Mum, look.” The screen showed a grainy black and white image of the Beatles last concert on the roof of Apple Studios, the camera panned around to the building opposite and there’s 21-year-old me, leaning way out of a window.

The memory faded and I sat back in my house in Saint Paul, rested my paintbrush and thought, funny how painting over some things can sometimes help uncover so many other things.