Without really knowing it, John was another damaged child being taken care of here...

Strawberry Field grounds was refuge from boyhood troubles

- SUE LEE

MILLIONS of Beatles fans have happily accepted John Lennon's enticing invitation to: "Let me take you down, 'Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.

The dreamy, poetic lyrics to Strawberry Fields Forever, where nothing is real, suggests an imagined place.

But actually it is very real and was deeply personal for Lennon, who would leave his troubled home life behind by climbing the fence of the Strawberry Field children's home and sitting in a tree in the grounds.

Julia Baird, the half-sister of Lennon who would have been 85 tomorrow, said of her skinny older brother: "He had a rough childhood and to come into these grounds was his escape.

"Without really knowing it, he was another damaged child who was being taken care of here."

Beatles fans from all over the world still make pilgrimages to Strawberry Field in Woolton, Liverpool, but Julia admitted she gets fed up with the song, preferring John's Watching the Wheels, released posthumously in 1981.

But she said the place was highly significant to him: "In an interview he was asked if he would consider writing his autobiography. 'Oh no, he sneered.

'I'd never do anything like that, what a stupid thing to do'.

"I was laughing my head off. I thought 'you're writing it all the time through your songs'. Strawberry Fields is his psychoanalytical poem."

Julia, 78, is honorary president of Strawberry Field in south Liverpool, which is owned by the Salvation Army.