I was born too late. I was only 3 years old at the time John and Yoko created their alternative story to war. Only 3 years old but my senses absorbed their message somehow and I filed it in my unconscious until December 9 1980. I was 14 by then and rather unfashionably but proudly had just 'discovered' the Beatles.

For some reason I did not listen to the radio that morning. I left the house at the usual time to go to school and met my friend, Sharon Buckley, across the road. Grim faced, she broke the news to me that John Lennon had been murdered the night before. I had never experienced grief before. No one close to me in our family had yet died. I could barely walk the ten minute path to school. My friends who had a preference for more lightweight music (in my view), although sad, could neither empathise with me nor console me.

I raced home at lunchtime to tune into 'Newsbeat' on Radio 1, who I knew would be covering the story. My grief just got a whole lot deeper. My head was flooded by this one song they kept returning to... 'Give Peace A Chance'. "But I didn't know that was John and Yoko!" I wanted to scream. The opening lines and the thump of the back beat was so familiar to me. I loved that song yet, as I had been too young to appreciate who had created it at the time of its conception and I had only recently been awakened to the vast continent of Beatles' and ex-Beatles' music waiting to be discovered, I had not appreciated its significance until that moment. Lightheaded with the enormity of pain, I wrestled with the ugly reality that it had taken John's death for me to be reaquainted with this long line from early childhood.

From that point I soaked up everything I could that would help me to get under the skin of John and Yoko, to know what they stood for. I bought every album I could, not out of morbid sympathy but out of hunger to learn the message.

I am now 38 years old, married with a family of my own. The simple innocence of the bed-in message is as necessary now as it was then. My children have grown from babies, watching video clips of John and Yoko and listen to their music. What better example could there be of 2 people opening their souls and showing us that there is a third way? In a world of hate, war and poverty and no sign of it relenting, I'm not leaving it to fate... my children are growing up with 'Give Peace A Chance' on their lips and in their hearts.

Kathryn Ansley

© Wilhelm Gockner