Sophia Satchell-Baeza

‘I was born in India during WWII. My father was in the RAF and after the war ended, he and some fellow officers formed an airline. I spent my early childhood in Buenos Aires. When I was 12, my father lost all his money, my parents got divorced and my mum and I moved to London. I quickly became a north London boy, living between my aunt’s in Edgware and my mum’s in Stanmore. At school I was part of a high-spirited bunch of sixth formers: if we weren’t protesting politically, we would be visiting exhibitions, theatre productions or jazz clubs. Living in north London really shaped my taste in music. I met the singer Long John Baldry at Dino’s Café by Edgware station, and stayed talking to him for hours about the blues. ‘Our shop was a magnet for anybody with creative leanings’ At the start of the ’60s I was studying at UCL and getting into freelance journalism. My girlfriend at the time had a large collection of vintage clothes, and regularly scoured secondhand markets like Portobello or Caledonian Road. When the building on King’s Road where I worked as a journalist went belly-up, the landlord asked if I’d like to take it on to sell the clothes. I and my two partners, Sheila Cohen and John Pearse, opened the Granny Takes a Trip boutique in 1966. These were the days of the so-called “alternative culture”. London was at the epicentre, and we wanted to be part of that revolution. Our shop was a magnet for anybody with creative leanings. We didn’t want to be seen in a sharp unifor