I had been traveling with two friends. The trip was supposed to have been several weeks of hitch hiking around Europe.

We ride-shared from California to New York, took a ship from New York to Southhampton, England. We traveled to Winchester, then to London, to Oxford through Wales to Ireland and back to London. Somewhere along the way I decided I didn’t want to travel any longer with the two friends — one of my first lessons on the importance of choosing good travel partners.

They continued on to Amsterdam. I had a few days in London until I could catch a plane home so I spent the time wandering around the city by myself.

I caught a performance of “Hair” at the Shaftesbury Theatre. As a native San Franciscan coming from living in the Haight-Ashbury, it seemed kind of silly. There was some audience gasping at the nudity. They obviously had never experienced a be-in in Golden Gate Park. I did like some of the tunes.

On July 5, I was doing more wandering when I saw crowds of people streaming into a park. I wanted to see what was going on. Within minutes of my seeing the stage and realising it was a concert, hundreds of white butterflies were released and filled the air.

It was the memorial for Brian Jones in Hyde Park.

This was the clipping from the Sunday Times that I’ve saved all this time. I came across it this morning while straightening out a shelf in my studio.

Of course, now there is a YouTube:

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