Enter John Lennon (not that he knew anything about it). One day, quite by chance, between chapel service and choir practice, I heard "Sgt. Pepper." An older boy was trying to sell his copy to raise money for a birthday present for his girlfriend. After one listen, I was hooked. I paid 17 shillings and sixpence for it which was almost my whole term's allowance. It was the first record I had bought and it changed the course of my life.

I don't need to describe to IK! readers the hundreds of hours that followed lying beside the record player as if wired to it for an energy transfusion from the apparently mystic power somewhere in the music. I thought it must be something to do with the chord changes, so I would sneak into the music rooms and sit at a piano for hours trying to work out the chords from my head and my gut.

The hunger for more of this music was accompanied by a thirst for information about the people who made it. My first newspaper cutting was not about screaming fans at a concert. It was about John and Yoko's drug bust. Every new piece of information led to discarding old prejudices. I sometimes wonder if American readers can fully understand the claustrophobia of Englishness. Not just "the class system" but the business of trying to live your life in an emotional straightjacket. In the interviews and solo albums, John seemed to be saying, "Think for yourself. However physically imprisoned you might feel, they can't control what goes on inside your head."

One of the first things to go was national pride. As a young child, I would glow when I looked up at the world map on the classroom wall which had the British Empire sprawling across it in pink. Everytime I read the "Declaration of Nutopia" on the "Mind Games" sleeve, it makes me chuckle...but it's how I live my life. Not because "John told me to" but because it so obviously makes sense. My fiancee is Chinese and we've had lots of trouble with visas and wading through mountains of hostile immigration law, but we view it as immaturity and insecurity on the part of the government. It has nothing to do with how we are..

"Woman is the Nigger of the World" came as a revelation to me. It was part of my education. I remember hearing it the first time it was played on British radio after John, on the phone from New York, had "explained" it. I had ordered "JL/Plastic Ono Band" through the post because I couldn't afford to buy it from a shop. When it arrived, I sat in bed and listened to it four times from beginning to end without moving except to turn the record over. I was in shock for a week. That intensity of raw emotion was like a foreign language in England at the time.

Over the years, I bought all the records and books and taped all the interviews to deepen my understanding of what John and Yoko were about. We had a shared interest in trying to learn how to be fully alive.

Critics and biographers miss the point when they try to dissect and analyze John. They end up with disembodied parts and no soul. The music, words, ideas, sense of humor, cutting edge, sentimentality, ruthless honesty...and all the other bits you can think of were all part of the same thing and are complementary rather than contradictory.

John explored many areas of human existence and he shared his findings. To label some areas nice and others nasty and then selectively praise and criticize seems to me to be a futile exercise. An explorer covers the whole territory. As an "armchair traveler" I have supplemented my own travels by reading and listening to what John found. I don't imitate John..for example, I don't take drugs and I don't want to be famous, but I have learned from John's experience in both those areas of life.

John is not my hero or leader. I don't live in his shadow. I have a great affection and respect for him. I see him primarily as a fellow traveler through life - an unusally generous one who allowed unprecedented access to his thoughts and feelings. And of course, there's all that music - which still takes me by surprise when I listen to a track I haven't heard for some time. His voice has a hotline to my soul!

What of the past ten years? After the sadness, more great music and interviews emerged. Some of those "Milk and Honey" tracks are my all-time favorites. I now teach in a boarding school where I am responsible for setting in the newcomers. Only I make sure it's different this time. I have a picture of 9-year-old John on my wall to remind me not to cramp their style. And in two weeks, Bo and I get married and set sail to Nutopia together! I think John would manage a smile if he knew. Perhaps he does.