These boots are made for walking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2fPkzJsMU8

I have a love - hate relationship with shoes. Give the choice I will go barefoot or wear leather flip flops all of the time, but of course in the winter that is really not a practical option. I do have two pairs of shoes that I actually wear, and both of these are really coming to the end of their periods of usefulness, which means that I'll have to replace at least one pair.   That means a. going to shoe shops and b. trying things on. The former I do not enjoy and the latter I find quite hard as it it difficult to reach my feet.

Nowadays people have shoes for every purpose.  Trainers costing a small fortune have replaced pumps which didn't, and it seems that every activity has its own specially designed footwear.

As a child we may have had one pair of shoes for school/best, and a pair of slippers. Outdoors we wore wellington boots most of the year round, not the green ones, just plain black wellies. Buying shoes as fashion statements was not even a dream and even my sister had a very limited selection to choose  from.  There was no money for shoes and no storage space either and so we contented ourselves with  what we had.

Then came the sixties and it seemed that all changed. For many of us that was when we began to care about how we looked. Haircuts, for example, became battle grounds with fathers. I was sent every two weeks for a short back and sides, until one day I decided that I was going to have a "Boston". That began the transition. Baggy denims changed to skin tight pale blue jeans and normal footwear became winkle pickers, long pointed toes that were derided by the parental generation.  Having said that, I never really had the shoes that I wanted; mostly they were beyond my budget and so I have always settled for what I could afford.

At school, we were forced into membership of the Army Cadet Force, which I didn't much care for, and hd to wear a dreadful uniform that included gigantic and inflexible hobnailed boots. This had to be kept rigorously clean and were also a  centre of conflict on a regular basis. I kept them for years afterwards and used them for pot holing.  

It doesn't bother me anymore. few things do, but I do look forward to warmer days when I can manage without having to  put on socks.

Home thoughts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW5M5xljdCI

My first bid for freedom came in 1965. I applied for the RAF. I n those days, if you were not considered good enough for university, you were bundled off into nursing, the police force or the services. Opting for the latter I found myself being offered an interview at RAF Biggin Hill, which is strangely just down the road from where I am now. It was however a long way from my home and not just geographically. They sent travel warrants and directions and so I set off on what for me was a huge adventure.  The outcome of the interview I have talked about before, but the feeling of being away from home, despite my desire to escape, was ambivalent to say the least.

I know that I need a base, I need home comfort and the familiarity of things around me. I like to know where things are and where I am.  Unlike many people these days I do not have a wanderlust. It seems that there are many who are always going somewhere and who never really arrive.  I do feel bad though that my wife feels very differently and that I hold her back. 

We have travelled a little in the past, but never in a truly adventurous way. I wish sometimes that I could be different but I know that I can't. My heart is just not in it.  Car travel was ok but now I cannot drive, that pleasure has gone, and so I am limited really to being driven or taking public transport, which is either unreliable or uncomfortable or both.

Travelling around is a fairly modern phenomenon; in the past it was limited to the wealthy and those with nothing much else to do. Now relatively cheap air fairs and package tours make that possible for so many, and the skies are filled with metal tubes, polluting the air and consuming huge amounts of fossil fuels.  People thrust together by choice in glob trotting pseudo adventures, dragging themselves out of their daily routines, only to recreate those routines in a different location.

I wonder how many people fly out to exotic places and spend the days lying on the beach, or sitting by the pool reading a book?  Ok it is nice to experience a different culture but you can do that wandering around any big city in this country.

I have yet to visit anywhere that did not have flaws. There is no paradise, everywhere has advantages and disadvantages and on balance I think that this country is not so bad.

ps - the track above was filmed in 1969 at the great Woodstock festival.

The end of the world as we know it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODqj9Mq39FM

An historic day in an historic era. The most powerful nation in the world has become a dangerous joke in the eyes of the world. For years the west has been mocking the leader of Both Korea but now we have clowns in charge of both the UK and the USA and neither of them is at all funny. Both we and the USA are hitting the brakes on black ice with no one in charge who has any idea how to control what is happening.  Both countries are being led by people with minority support and yet who have emerged from the democratic process like frogs from a pond.

They wonder why they are mocked and derided, they get away with aiding their own, but for how long can either continue. Trump has a huge swell of middle America set against him, mainly the educated, and yet these are the very same people that he claims to represent. Nobody seems to want to align themselves with him today, and he has found it hard to find any acts to help celebrate his inauguration, and that should be a warning sign. Many of the big celebrity bands are high earners and probably Republicans and yes they are keeping so far away, they might as well be in Moscow. 

I cannot bear to watch today's events as they unfold. It is bad enough watching our own prime minister who has even less dress sense than I do, drowning in the Brexit swamp and promising things that she and her patty have no intention of delivering.

The growing nations, China for example, must be rubbing their hands in glee as the west degenerates into a pathetically chaotic state, and maybe it is their turn. Unfortunately I cannot imagine that the USA would go down without a fight, Armageddon seems like a possibility once more.

Fashion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj3bkqhUQM0

I have never been accused of being a dedicated follower of fashion. Those who know me, generally see me wearing Jeans and tee shirt or a top designed for comfort.  My own take on fashion was to a great extent imposed upon me by never having enough money to do otherwise, and thus my attitude was formed.

I know that fashions drive the consumer market and thus keep certain industries afloat and alive, and for that reason they are justifiable, but look into any  women's magazine or sunday supplement and you will see the most ludicrous things being sported by androgynous models; items that no sane person would ever be seen in public are held up as haute couture, stretching credibility well beyond breaking point.

Of course it is not just clothes that are subject to the pressures of fashion.  Recently it has become fashionable in some circles to support right wing politics. This of course is driven by the highly dumbed down dailies that have appeal to many. In this country we have Brexit, in the USA they suffer Trump and in France they have Marine LaPenn. Inevitably these will go out of fashion but probably not until they have caused a great deal of damage.

Tattoos used to be the province of sailors, stevedores and prostitutes. Not any more.  Look at the bodies of many professional football players or second tier actors, their bodies adorned with ink. That of course has trickled along to ordinary people and tattoo  parlours are everywhere; some producing tasteful and artistic work, though many do not.

Recently, or so it seems, we have available all sorts of body adjustments available.  Liposuction, boob jobs, belly tucks, botox treatments, hair implants and so on, all designed to promote the illusion of a body beautiful as described by the fashion industry.  What a tragedy that people cannot be satisfied with what they have. 

Next week I am booked in to have my nipples resized.

No Man's Land

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWhOO9Q323Y

No Man's Land is a work by Harold Pinter, first performed in 1975. We saw it last night, not up close and personal as it were but a live relay from a London theatre to screens all over.  We went to the theatre at Tonbridge School, a wonderful and rather plush theatre, the province of the school drama department.  Tonbridge is a high ranking public school and serves the needs of the wealthy, keeping their offspring in an opulence that state school students cannot even imagine.  I am sure that they have huge expectations of the students, after all they pay enough for the privilege.

Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan were superb in this rather strange play; a mix of comedy, mystery and tragedy. There were moments of hilarity and also sadness, and the hole production was wonderful.  They of course received a standing ovation, though not in our theatre, and although forty years old, the play seemed timeless.

No man's land would seem to be a zone, somewhere between life and death. Maybe it is a metaphor for retirement in a way, or perhaps he intended a more spiritual element to it. There seemed echoes of the Caretaker and similarities to Beckett's Waiting For Godot.  I don't claim to have fully understood any of Pinter's plays and this was no exception. Maybe that is a good thing, after all we cannot hope to understand everything.

The sound of silence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Dg-g7t2l4

One of the sad parts about getting older, is that one's ability to interact with the world diminishes. We slow down, we become more susceptible to everything. Our senses dim and abilities, both physical and mental wane and fade.

I struggle with short term memory at the moment, though it seems that long term memories are still intact,  I struggle to walk any distance,  I already have a plastic lens in one eye, an artificial hip, and have lost the hearing in one ear.  

We have had many discussions about mortality and approaching infirmity and I know that there are some things that I cannot and will not tolerate.  I could not cope with losing my sight or my hearing. I could not tolerate a life without music or books, and I will not go into a home of any description. I started my life in an institution and will not end it in that way.

There are so many people out there living lives that are intolerable to them. Some live for years trapped inside shells and asking for escape; the law of course will not allow assisted suicide and for some they do not have the ability to end their own lives, and need release from their intolerable situations.  The facility for dignified exits is not allowed in this country, largely due to the protests of groups with a strong religious leaning, most of whom are young and fit and able. None of them can possibly empathise with those trapped.

We should all be able to decide when we have had enough. The able bodied can make that choice, so why not everyone. Having an organisation like Dignitas would prevent so many botched attempts at suicide that leave people in a worse state than they were before.  I have an escape plan in place but I don't know if it will work; I guess that time will tell.

Substance abuse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxaOItEmu3U

Many people think of the sixties as a time of rebellion, exploration and rejection of the status quo, fuelled by a plethora of substances designed to enhance one's state of mind. They say that if you can remember the sixties you were not there.  

Escaping from home in 1967 was life changing for me and I confess to over indulging in alcohol on many occasions. I am not sure how I managed that on a very meagre income but we definitely had our moments. Beer was affordable in those days, wine less so.  Drugs at college were not obviously in use, at least not to me. I lived in hall and as such we were under more scrutiny than those who lived in other accommodations.  There was some pot around but for many of us it was best avoided as being caught would have led to the end of your place at college and the idea of going home again was not one to consider.

I first tried pot at my sister's place in Notting Hill. I remember sitting around in her flat listening to the Incredible String Band and sharing a joint.  It was a pretty good experience - the stuff was very strong and all four of us were pretty stoned by the end of it.  I did enjoy it but afterwards felt no need to try it again, though I did once or twice in later life, and on neither occasion did I enjoy it as much as that first time.

Harder drugs scared me, and I was never tempted to try anything, not that it ever came my way. I suppose in that sense I was lucky. Lives change on random meetings as we know, and i was fortunate to have met mostly good people.

Of course going into teaching is a good incentive to avoid anything illegal and so from 1970, alcohol became my only drug of choice. It remains so and I sometimes think that I drink too much or at least too often, and then I think what the hell and carry on anyway. I know that my body is falling apart and that sooner or later it will fail completely - it happens to us all.  I can't remember where the story came from but it goes like this - Someone was told, eat less, give up drink, give up smoking and you will live longer." The reply was "Why?"

Who knows where the time goes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sNPorNyME0

Much to my delight, I have reestablished contact with a dear friend from the past. We met at college in 1967 and have not had any contact site that time. The first year of college is a strange time I guess and it is one in which a transition takes place. The majority of us were straight from school, so eighteen years old and for many away from home for the first time. The reins were off and the new freedom gave us all scope to explore our own boundaries, or as they would say today, to find ourselves.

For many that year has become a gap year. We could not afford that luxury, but on the other had we did not have to pay huge sums for the time in college and therefore accrue huge debts. Rather like life, I arrived at college with nothing and left with nothing; having said that I met some wonderful people and thanks to them learned a lot about myself.

That year introduced me to many experiences. Until then I had not been to an orchestral concert, an opera or eaten a curry. My eyes and ears were opened to so much it seems impossible from where I sit now.  I'd like to say that I was educated in the official sense of the word, but I was never a good student; I like many of those that I gravitated to were more interested in the other things that college had to offer. Most of us passed of course, but it wasn't about exam success, it was about your competence to run a classroom or to impart a curriculum to children and to be mindful of their safety. A few were weeded out along the way, they just didn't appear again after a teaching practice and they probably found other more lucrative pathways and met other groups of people.

For me that group of people will always be with me. I hadn't thought of my friend for a very long time, but now her memory is crystal clear. I can recall her 18 yr old face, her voice and so much more. Memory is a strange thing and it seems a shame that when we die, those memories will die with us. I think that is why I write this blog; maybe some of my memories will be read buy others in time to come.  Who knows?