It was late afternoon on a perfect English summer’s day, 30 June 1968. Paul was in his Rolls-Royce, being driven back to London from Yorkshire, where he had been recording ‘Thingumybob’ with the Black Dyke Mills Band. Derek Taylor, Peter Asher and a journalist from the NME were also in the car. As they travelled down the M1 they decided to stop off somewhere. But where? Derek, high on LSD, suggested that Peter should take a look at the AA map of Bedfordshire, and pick the village with the most beautiful name.
After a very long time, Peter made an unlikely choice: Harrold. The chauffeur obediently wended his way along minor roads until they arrived at the village of that name. For Derek, it was like a dream come true: ‘Thrushes and blackbirds sang and swallows dived into thatches and a little old mower wheezed as we walked down the only street there was.’
In the garden of Mulberry Lodge, his home on the High Street, Gordon Mitchell, a mustachioed dentist, was out in his shorts, clipping a hedge. He looked up to see three men led by Paul McCartney, who asked him the way to the river. Mitchell gave him the directions, and they went on their way. Mitchell nipped inside to tell his wife Pat what had happened: Paul McCartney had just asked him the way to the river. Together, they beetled off in the same direction, hoping to bump into Paul and his friends.
Sure enough, they found them in the Magpie pub, and fell into conversation with them. Soon they were all feeling peckish, and Pat suggested that if they came back to Mulberry Lodge she could rustle something up. ‘Paul showed his humanity by visiting Pat’s father, at that time an invalid in bed, and had a long chat with him,’ recalled Gordon Mitchell forty years later.
They tucked into ham and rice. Gordon told Paul of the raffle he was organising for the Playing Fields Association the following weekend. Mitchell’s daughter Shuna brought out a child-sized guitar and handed it to Paul, who immediately started tuning it, putting two coins under the bridge. Paul wondered if they’d care to hear a song he had just composed, and they all said yes. ‘Hey Jude, don’t make it bad,’ he began.
‘Why can’t life always be like this?’ sighed Pat Mitchell.
According to Gordon Mitchell, ‘They were all the nicest people one could wish to meet, and great fun, and it was a very special evening.’
Around 11 p.m. someone arrived to say that though the Oakley Arms was officially closed, the landlord had agreed to reopen it, ‘in your honour, Paul’. So off they went to the Oakley Arms, which, according to Derek, was packed: ‘The whole village was there. Paul played the piano, including another rendition of “Hey Jude”, until at three o’clock a woman stood and sang “The Fool on the Hill” and he left the piano to dance with her and kiss her on the cheek.’
In the early hours of the morning Paul and his gang set off back to London in his Rolls-Royce. A few days later, Gordon and Pat Mitchell received a thank-you letter, along with two bottles of champagne for the raffle.