Thursday, March 22, 2012

Of Manual Exchanges and a Green DB6

I have been exploring the rumor that Paul had a car accident near the English town of Milton Keynes.  As I talked about in my post of March 12, 2011, the direct emergency number in England at the time was 999.  In the Beatles 1967 Christmas record, whoever was doing the narrating on the record (you can make out George and Ringos' voices and there are others) does a Paul-Was-Replaced mini-drama where Paul and someone else are calling to get help because of an emergency.  Listen to it on Youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0p7Wfm5KbI  at 4:17-4:30.  They do not dial the 999 number directly, but, instead, go through an operator -- a manual system.  According to the book, The Plan For Milton Keynes (v.2, Milton Keynew Development Corporation, 1970), "A building is in course of erection at Newport Pagnell to house the new automatic exchange replacing the existing manual one . . . ."(p. 345).  So Newport Pagnell in 1966 had a manual exchange-- one that went through an operator.  And the Christmas record is describing an interrupted emergency call made through a rural, manual system.

Paul bought a new Aston Martin DB6 in March, 1966.  The color of the car was Goodwood Green, a leafy green color.  Paul could have had any color car, even a custom color, no doubt.  It could very well be that Paul chose the green color so the car could blend in with a rural, green background--his version of US Army camouflage.

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