A la Mode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA5gJ0hZpCc

Oh the Kinks, bring back the  Kinks.
Fashions come and go all of the time and have always done so. Mainly the purpose is to keep designers in work, and partly to keep the markets alive. It is also a reflection of the zeitgeist of the time.  I grew up in the sixties and seventies and was just as conscious of the trends and fashions of the time, even if I could not really afford to indulge in them.

Typically I would wear my hair long, flared cotton trousers called Loons, which were very cheap at the time, a shirt and waistcoat with a cravat, and in the cold weather an a naval trench coat.  We all thought we looked wonderful, and at the time most of us thought the same. That was how it was even though we gave no real thought to it. We read the IN things of the time, the International Times, Private Eye, and anything else that could be described as subversive. They were subversive times where the new music and ideas replaced those of our parent's generation. They of course disapproved of all of the changes, and many people at that time left home to be with others who they imagined understood.

The language underwent changes too and many words and expressions remain today. Though calling someone "man" seems to have lost it's impact.

The Hippie culture probably reached a peak in 1968 withe the groundbreaking Woodstock festival and later by the Isle of Wight Festival which probably tripled the population of the Island for a long weekend. Drugs abounded, and transcental experiences were the thing along with psychadelic music and even more outrageous clothes Then many of our generation found that they had to get jobs and begin careers thus the hippie hordes gradually declined.

The punk era was reaction against the music scene at the time. Big stadium bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis and Queen were making a lot of money and leaving up and coming bands behind. Punk was a rejection of this and along with their primitive and not very good music came fashions the included mohican hair cuts, safety pins, zips, leather and a general disregard for any sort of respect. Punk was a revolution, in the same way that Hippie culture was; the main difference being that the former was about peace.

Since then we have had Goths, EMOs and other minor trends but elements of the previous fashions still exist in pockets.

Raves were another rebellion and house music and the like grew and still exists in pockets

Among the young these days we have a huge influence  from the Afro Caribbean culture.  Rap music,  trousers with waistlines hallway down the thigh,  gang warfare in the big cities and the carrying of offensive weapons are a cause for some concern.

Not all fashions bring about major shifts in population behaviour, and some are inconsequential. Language is evolving all the time as are trends in its use.  It is currently popular to begin a sentence with  "So"  and to end a sentence with a slight rise in pitch. My guess is that these came from the American culture which seems to export all of its bad trends, almost as a weapon of subversion.

Music seems to have become very bland. Though good bands still exist, much of the pop music is spawned by the reality shows and is designed to make some people wealth in the short time that these acts last. It is the way - instant fame, instant gratification and fast failure.

All of this was prompted by colour supplement views of current "High" fashions which to my eyes anyway, seem rather ridiculous. I cannot imagine any that appear on catwalks today being worn by ordinary people.

Looking back at the Kinks; both their music and their dress seems very old fashioned but I still admire them after all these years.

Koyaanisqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi

• "If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster." • "Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky." • "A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.”

Hopi are a North American nation that call themselves the peaceful people.  They and their philosophy provided a background for Godfrey  Reggio’s film Koyaanisqatsi which literally translated means Life out of balance. The soundtrack, composed by Philip Glass compliments and enhances the visual images that carry such an important message.

You lie in bed reading the sunday papers. It is cool outside and there is something nice about a lazy sunday.  After a long week at work you deserve it. You sip your tea and turn on your radio which is tuned to radio three. Sunday morning at this time on radio four is focussed on religion, and that is the last thing you need on a sunday.  Bach plays quietly in the background as you browse the summary of the week’s news.  Mostly you find the news depressing and you wonder why you bother with the papers.  

Most of the front page is devoted to the continuing story of conflict between America and North Korea, and how like confused adolescents, the two leaders have continued to hurl insults at each other. You sigh deeply at the announcement that Kim Jon-Un’s regime had exploded a hydrogen bomb over a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.  This of course had been met with outrage by the International community, while the Korean leader continued his diatribe against Trump and the USA in general.

Tired of this ongoing saga of pessimism you turn the page to find an article that postulates a link between the current abundance of Earthquakes, to mining and extraction of oil by fracking. Cavities in the earth’s crust have caused in imbalance and imposed  stresses that the earth has to equilibrate.

It is only a working hypothesis but the evidence seems overwhelming.

You close the paper and turn instead to the colour supplement and flick through the pages, mostly devoted to celebrity and fashion. You finish your tea, by now quite cold, sigh and get out of bed to look at the day. It is another beautiful autumnal day, the trees ablaze with colour, the sound already covered with leaves. You think that you must start raking them up. Perhaps this morning as you have nothing planned. You stretch, and half heartedly go through some morning exercises that are supposed to increase your chances of living a long life and smile, knowing that your fate  will probably be determined by others.

You turn on the shower and step in, enjoying the hot water and the caresses of water on your skin. You stay there longer than usual, it is sunday after all. You step out and grab a towel, wrapping it around your waist, and you return to the bedroom. The radio is now playing Monteverdi and you smile and turn up the volume. You towel yourself down and again gaze out of the window.  The blue sky is criss crossed with vapour trails as it so often is.  You wonder what all of this air travel is doing to the atmosphere and realise that whatever that may be, we are all complicit.

The music stops suddenly and an announcer apologises for the break but states that there is important breaking news.  North Korea have shot down an American bomber that was operating just outside their territorial waters.  The USA have responded by launching an attack on Pyongyang. Missiles carrying conventional warheads have been targeted at last known locations of the Korean leader.

In return the Koreans have exploded a nuclear device over Guam and the North American military bases have been wiped out.

The American response is awaited by the rest of the world.

The radio is silent.

You realise that raking up leaves  is of no importance whatsoever, and like so many others throughout the world you wait for the inevitable.

Originality

Most of us have never had an original thought and probably never will. Having said that, it is possible that we may have them all of the time, but because our minds are not prepared, we don't recognise them. This makes the distinction between ordinary people and this with genuine talent or the ability to make a difference.

Every time I think I have had an original idea, I find that someone beat me to it, thus negating the originality that I was hoping for. Maybe I am the wrong environment for such a thing. perhaps I need to be in a working environment along with colleagues with which ideas can be exchanged. In such situations at least people can tell you if you are barking up the wrong tree or simply talking complete rubbish.

I do like to see the sorts of changes that improve things for most of us, but deplore change for the sake of change. In the art world it must be very hard to come up with something new. I my lifetime we have had so many changes and ideas, some of them good, some less so.  I am probably talking rubbish, but it seems that the bottom of the barrel has been reached and now we are drilling through it.

Modern art seems to be graffiti, any surface can be victim to spray cans and random offerings, some of which are clever and attractive, and some like Banksy who produces images with political messages behind them. Unmade beds and diamond encrusted skulls leave me cold; it looks as if ideas have just run out.

Music seems to have hit a low. Not just pop music but what some call classical music. Tunes seem to be absent and atonal noise has taken the place of music.  There are some who think that this is a good idea, but then they would.

There is good pop music out there, but you have to look for it. The whole pop scene is based around the stuff that is promoted by TV reality programs and what will fit into the mould. There is no more anger or protest in the scene and that is sad.

Redneck America has bucked the trend of establishment  I guess, in their electing an orange megalomaniac as president. That is pretty original, and we see to be going along the same lines in allowing  a few lying sped politicians to persuade our equivalent of rednecks to force us out of the European Union. The world has, in recent times begun to divide.

An idea, though not original, is that we should focus on uniting, that might deter the likes of North Korea fro feeling isolated and threatened by the man with the orange face.

Equinox

We have reached that point in the year where day length and night length are the same. It heralds the time of year that I like least. There is something about autumn that I find depressing. the falling leaves mean that the trees will soon be bare and skeletal. Fungi will appear in abundance, feeding on decay and recycling death.  Within a few weeks the clocks will go back an hour and the nights will be longer and the days shorter.  Temperatures will plummet and so the heating has to be turned on, and then there are the bleak days when it never really gets light. Spring is far away and we have winter to look forward to.

Apart from all of this we have to put up with the Americanised halloween fiasco and the highly commercialised Christmas, that simply serves to indoctrinate children to become consumers, and to encourage the greed and acquisitiveness that powers the capitalist system. thousand of tons of plastic crap is already here or on its way from China, and millions of pounds are on their way back.

Gone are the days of seasonality, We have access to the same foods all the year round and so there is no real benefit to the change in the year. Diets will remain equally unhealthy and supermarket profits will go up along with prices.

I heard someone talking about all the things that they were looking forward to. This include a range of reality TV shows, which I despise, and the aforementioned festivals of stupidity. I look forward to it all being over and we can begin the drudgery of winter. At least then we can look forward to spring again.

So those of you that love Autumn, or fall as the Americans like to call it, find in it what you can and enjoy it. Just remember that not everyone does.

What's it all about?

We have a Tory government that appoints ministers that know nothing about their departments but are ready to confront and divide those who work in them. Each new minister has to make their mark in order to appease the hard line Tory supporters who by and large live in the world of the colonial past.

I can only talk about Education, and that with a limited knowledge, but is does seem that each time there is a chance of minister, there is a major change in the system. It is no wonder that recruitment is failing and that so many are choosing to leave their profession in order to seek new and better opportunities.

I remember the catastrophic days of Keith Joseph and Kenneth Baker, the  latter who introduce Baker days, for in service training. Of course they took away a day's holiday in order to make them happen and as a result, most of those days were met with resentment and had no real value at all.

There is of course plenty of room for improvement is the educational system, but so many babies have been thrown out with the bathwater. There was a time when children had access to a wide variety of courses that were suitable for them. I remember that  we offered woodwork, metal work, boat building, drama, music, arts well as the normal academic courses.

Academia is not for everyone and yet the government believe,  in their infinite wisdom, that it is, and so children are forced along a route that ignores the needs of this with practical abilities and cranes them into a system that is inappropriate.  Practical work is all but gone in many schools, partly because the curriculum is overcrowded, bu also because it is expensive and it is hard to attract people to teach those subjects.  More students than ever are driven into university courses that have little real value and land the students with huge debts, from which private companies make profits. There was a time when around twenty percent of students went to university  because courses were demanding and were a route into professions.

The system is in dire need of many changes. I maintain that schools should, as they were, give students choices and opportunities that match their abilities and skills. The academic courses should be available to those that are suited. Perhaps subject barriers could be lowered and the weekly program made more relevant,  Of course literacy and numeracy should be focussed on and perhaps information technology should be given a high profile, but maybe citizenship and life skills in general should be emphasised.

I am no longer teaching, but I remember most of my career being both rewarding and enjoyable. Mostly students were happy and were not assessed at every turn, Some were very successful in academia but many went on to become successful  in other ways.

So here we are again with a system unfit for purpose and a bunch of sycophants being urged into support for a division  between Grammar Schools and the rest. The idea being that some deserve privilege whilst others do not. My grandchildren go to a private school and I find it hard to accept that they have such a wonderful experience of school that so many do not have. Let us get rid of the noxious political dogma and produce a working system that does not divide. I doubt if that will happen whatever government is in power, but under the conservatives there is no hope at all.

Reading and writing

I don't remember not being able to read, and then again I don't remember being read to as a child. Learning to read is a valuable and long process that we rightly put our children through at an early age.  I was hospitalised at three, and my the time I was transferred to the special school at six, I could read very well. I am guessing that it was nurses that taught me to read but I don't recall.

I know that I was taught to show respect for books. I was told to turn pages from the top corner, not o fold pages, not to bend the books far enough to damage the spine, not to deface them and to handle them carefully.  I found out from an early age that in books there were escapes and they helped me through long years of lying in a bed. I read everything that Enid Blyton had written and was deeply ensconced into the world of both the famous five and the secret seven.

I must have read thousands of books in my life and the sad thing is, that very few of them have lodged in my mind. Each book is an experience, a vicarious journey through the mind of an author, Each one carries us away to far off places or into experiences that we may never have nor want to have. I still love to read although I tend to read in bed. Only then can I stay awake long enough to manage several chapters. Reading during the day puts me to sleep.

Many of us who read a lot, would like to write a novel. They say that there is at least one novel inside everyone. I am not convinced that it is true, though we all have  stories that may well be worth telling.

I have  joined a book club. There must be thousands of them; they seem to be growing as people live longer and have more time on their hands. This is my second book club, I left the first because it was rather stilted and disciplined. There was discussion about the books and that was it. There was never any real social interaction and for many it was an intellectual exercise and a chance to show off their superior intelligence.  My current group is far more entertaining. We do discuss the book of course but that is not the sole point. We drink a glass of wine and talk about all sorts of things other than that.

I have also joined a creative writing group, and am on the cusp of joining another. Each session we are given a choice of topics and are restricted to one side of paper. The following session we all read out what we have produced, though there is rarely any real feedback. Everyone makes polite noises and so therein no learning.  The group itself is made up of elderly people, some of whom no longer produce anything new, but regurgitate stuff that they wrote years ago. Some write about their lives and some about their careers. One is an accountant; enough said.  I do enjoy writing and having a topic set is ideal as that give a starting platform, which is not always easy to find. It struck me today that the number of entries into this blog would be sufficient to fill a book but it would have no coherence and certainly no audience, so I won't go there.

I have difficulty parting with books. I have shelf after shelf filled with books. They are like treasures and each one begs to be read again. I doubt that I will read any of them for a second time but giving them away is almost unthinkable and I find it hard to resist adding to that collection.

I pity those who do not read or cannot read. From my point of view they miss out on so much, but of course the counter argument is that so much time is devoted to fantasy worlds that could be better employed focussing on reality. It is a valid point.

Annoyances

The people, it is said, wanted us to leave the European Union. The word Brexit was coined during the noxious  and dishonest campaign that did more to divide the country that even Margaret Thatcher managed to do.  As in any election or referendum, the bulk of voters do not know what they are voting for and tend to go along with what their tabloid newspaper tells them to. As a result we get the result that some of us deserve. Annoying as it is, we have to accept that Nigel Farage has got his way and that Boris Johnson is manipulating his way into deposing Teresa May,

In the US we had the surprise election of Donald Trump, who, only an idiot would think that he is presidential material.

There we have it, the world is swinging in favour of the unthinking and blinkered. Ruled bu the will of the tabloid press, which of course is run by the right wing.

The media provide a diet of crap for us to escape our own miserable lives. Celebrity and reality TV seem to be the norm and so many are absorbed by these banal TV programs. North Korea could invade us at peak TV times and no-one would notice, or care.

It is the age of blandness and lack of talent. Only those who are promoted by the likes of Simon Cowell are likely to find success, while those with any real talent tend to be ignored and are destined to stay in the background. There is nothing new anymore, just a revamp of things that have gone before. The present day make the Punk scene of the eighties seem pretty good; they were original if not particularly talented.

Kids today are often victimised by peers if they show any sign of wanting to learn, and gang culture, another vile import from America is on the rise.  We are in a sorry state and yet we hear about a need to protect our culture, the theme song of Brexiteers. I suggest that we have little culture that is worth preserving as anything of real value is no longer respected.

I am reminded of a one liner from someone on the fringe who said. "I went to a tough inner city school, where your chances of being beaten up increased exponentially every time you used the word exponentially."

On that note I will stop ranting.

Absence

If I have any readers left, I apologise for my extended absence. I have no excuse really other than a spell in hospital to have a knee replaced.

As we get older, some of us begin to fall apart, just like an old car. Cars can last a long time if they are taken care of, and humans too can evade some of the wear and tear through careful use of their bodies and healthy diets and exercise.

My knee had been failing for quite a while and the pain of walking, or even sleeping was getting unbearable. X-rays showed that there was very little cartilage left and what there was, was torn and not doing anything must at all. So I was put on a waiting list for a replacement. having been told that the waiting list was six months long, we looked into the private option. We visited the private hospital and were given the sales pitch and told that a three day stay, with the operation would cost more than ten thousand pounds.  

We saw the surgeon again and told him that we were investigating the private route. He looked surprised and told us that we did not need to do that, and that we could get it done on the NHS. Within two weeks we had a call from the hospital to invite me for a pre operative examination and so I complied, and was told that I had been booked in for the op the following week. I suspect that the surgeon had pulled a few strings.

Most people dread surgery and I am no different. I checked into the ward and was given a bed. I lay there for what seems a very short while and barely took in my surroundings and found that I was first on the list. I walked, hobbled from the ward to the theatre and sat on the table. I was given an epidural and within second I was paralysed from the waist down. A Cannula was put in my hand and a sedative pumped into me. Darkness descended and I woke up in the ward, still paralysed from the waist down.  It was only when the epidural wore off that the pain became obvious. and it grew and grew. The pain killers seemed to have little effect but I wasn't going to risk not taking them.

Anyway, after that came the slow recovery process, beginning the following day when I was forced out of bed by a physiotherapist. I hadn't imagined that the pain could get worse, but it did. The agony of that first step out of bed is still stuck in my mind.

the worst was almost over. Because I hadn't peed in two days, I had the pleasure of  having a catheter inserted. That is also an experience best avoided, as is having it removed.

Two days later I was kicked out, to make room for the next batch. And the rest is just a slow process of getting used to the new knee and the exercises that I have to do. I walked a couple of miles today so I hope that I will soon be able to play golf again. I don't suppose I will play any better though.

Common people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_fCELuMsAs

I was at Hogwarts last night; well that is how it seemed. Tonbridge School is quite something and a mere glimpse into how the other half live. Other half is probably more like one percent now as most people have, over the past years seen their own incomes fall whilst those at the high end have all benefitted enormously. Fees at the school are thirty seven and a half thousand a year, for which I assume that you get a good education and plenty of contacts to keep the old boy network alive and well. The school seems to occupy quite a lot of the centre of town, with huge houses for those who board. I have no idea of numbers but the chapel that we attended last night has seats for over 500 and is in itself a magnificent building.

Everything is in pristine condition, and there is no sign of graffiti or other rebellion; even the hymn books looked barely used. They grounds of this school are enormous, there are rugby pitches and cricket squares in abundance and there seem to be no plans to sell any of them off. The drama department has its own theatre name after E M Forster, who, I assume was an old boy. A lovely theatre it is too, full equipped and able to accommodate audiences of more than a  hundred.

Students who attend the school are very very privileged and have come from families who expect that.  They have probably come from long lines of privilege and to them, school fees a written off against tax.  I can only imagine that students there have a number off motivations, one of which being fear of losing that privilege.  The boys in the town are always well turned out and well behaved, and that you would expect. What goes on behind the closed doors though is anyone's guess, though I am pretty sure that is doesn't involve wizards.

Money makes the world go around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8P80A8vy9I

The economy seems to be largely concerned with manufacturing stuff that people can buy whether they need it or not. Thus the money goes around and around and with each rotation the fat bastards who own the world take out their bit, putting every country in the world into a spiral of inescapable debt. As they own the countries, they control the laws and so have made themselves pretty much untouchable.

Looking around the house, there is so much clutter; so much stuff that we simply do not need, and yet getting rid of things can prove to be very difficult. Take books for example, I have books in every room of the house, most of which I will never read again and some of which I never read at all. I could be ruthless and bundle all those memories into boxes and take them to the charity shops but they seem to have plenty and besides if I have empty shelves I will just buy more books to fill the space. The same applies to almost everything I can imagine. We seem to have more music outlets than rooms and so some lie unwanted and unused along with stuff that is rapidly becoming outdated junk that no-one will ever want.  I have disk drives and other extensions for old outmoded computers and boxes filled with leads of every description. I dare not go into the loft these days as I know that we have stuff there that I have completely forgotten about.

In the basement we are storing stuff that does not even belong to us along with piles and piles of stuff that I see just in case.  I must have hundreds of plastic plant pots down there. I think I have three sets of golf clubs and yet I don't play any more, I keep them in case I do, but  three sets?
I confess that I am a hoarder by nature and I do find it hard to throw away anything that looks like it might be useful.

I have hundreds of CDs on shelves in the dining room and yet I almost never play CDs any more as their contents are stored on hard drives and are more easily accessed. Again I could take them to charity shops but they get very little for them as they are dying out with people accessing music online. I even have shelves filled with vinyl albums and audio cassettes.

My wardrobe has stuff in it that I will never wear again, largely because it will no longer fit, and so it goes on.

If we all had a really good clear out, the charity shops would be inundated as would landfill sites. Maybe we should do that and start again, rebooting the economy at the same time. I am sure that the likes of the Rothschild family would be delighted. On the other hand if their fortunes were put to good use we'd have a wonderful health service and  quality education free for all.

Electric Avenue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtPk5IUbdH0

I had an electric shock this morning. The pull light switch in my study failed and so I set about replacing it. Things are never as easy as they should be are they? This time the fitting was smaller than the original- anyway that is irrelevant really. So I armed myself with the necessary tools and bits and headed for the consumer unit. I switched off the lighting circuits for downstairs and also the garage as I knew that there are overlaps there and I set to.

It is a one way switch so the wiring is simple and the old one came off very easily.  The new one as I said was slightly smaller, but after some fiddling I manage to fit the new base in place and started to attach the three leads. It was at the point when I was wiring in the earth lead that I must have touched one of the others and was rewarded with a jolt that I did not enjoy very much and sent me scurrying down to the consumer unit  it with the rest of the lighting circuits off.

It was a reminder of shocks in the past. I grew up in a rural environment. Electric fences were all over the place; they are used to keep livestock from wandering and make effective, temporary barriers as long at they are on. They are powered by vehicle batteries which need to be periodically refreshed or recharged. I can still hear the  periodic clunk that they make as they release surges of current. Mostly fences were recognisable from their insulation even if you couldn't hear the clunks. Animals would occasionally brush past and receive a small shock, this deters them from going that way again.

As boys these fences were one of the fascinations of farm life and wherever there was a hint of danger, there would always be dares. It would start with touching the wire with a stick - don't.  Then we'd progress to actually touching it; not recommended, and then holding it for the longest - Oh boys can be so silly. One day we went too far - there was a boy in the group; we were a disparate band, probably dissolute too; anyway this boy - I'll call him Eric, though that wasn't his name, was not very bright. He lived in a different reality from the rest of us - maybe he was just exceptional, I don't know, but we dared him to pee on the fence. Now should anyone feel the need to copy him, I can still recall his scream as he leapt backwards still holding his boyhood and ending up flat on his back. I think that puts this mornings episode into a context.

Heroes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCt0x98Y2SY

As a boy I grew up imagining that characters portrayed in comics were heroes. Dan Dare was there to protect the Earth from the Mekon, Roy of the Rovers was a hero on the football pitch and then along came the Marvel superheroes like Superman and Marvel man. Almost exclusively the heroes were men and they were there to inspire. I guess they did and like the newspapers, they manipulated those young minds.

So what is a hero?  I think that we can all recognise real acts of heroism; a fire fighter risking his own life to rescue someone from a burning building for example but there are many uses of the word hero that seem much overused and out of place.   Let me be controversial and take the armed services. Mostly people go into the services as a career move and a way to see the world. Some may go in wanting to kill other people, but there are psychopaths in all walks of life.  Today most troops who are sent to fight do so in middle eastern countries defending the interests of big business and yet whilst everything is done to keep them safe, some do get killed. Does being killed defending oil interests make someone a hero?

The propaganda machines in 1913 and in 1939 convinced many young men to enlist in the forces and go to war defending the interests of the rich, and later in both campaigns huge numbers were conscripted and had no choice in meeting the butchery that they were led to. Wars are inevitably futile and the carnage on both sides serves to make rich people even wealthier. 

Conscientious objectors who refused to go along with things were branded as cowards and imprisoned or shot, they suffered and died for their convictions, maybe they were heroes.  

Women who became the Suffragettes refused to endure the status quo any longer and made personal sacrifices in order to bring about change. Maybe that is an act of heroism.  

When I see footage of football teams returning after a successful campaign being referred to as heroes, or even those who have been maimed in action; serving not their country but those who own it; I cannot see them as real heroes at all. The former are overblown, overvalued athletes while the latter are just victims of propaganda.

Old friends

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPTOY8FrvN

We grow up taking so much for granted. As we get taken over by careers and families, ambitions  and disappointments, we do lose track of things that are important, and often we do not realise that until it is too late.  This year it is fifty years since I left home and started college in Portsmouth, an event which sometime this year will probably be marked by a small and simple reunion. I know that when I left home, I did leave behind a lot of friends almost completely. I was never a writer of letters and of course we had no mobile phones and no computers in those days, so maintaining relationships was not easy. Moving on meant making new friends, and that was pretty easy in those days with all those young bodies oozing hormones were thrust together into a quickly declining regime of partial retriction. The sixties were a time of teenage rebellion as we all know and were a time when respect for established authority was changing somewhat.

Hall rules were paid lips service to and by the time we left they had almost vanished except in the small print of the college handbook.  So people could spend a lot of time together, in groups of in pairs or whatever you chose to do. Many deep relationships were forged in those days and many couples were drawn together into lasting relationships. My wife and I met in my last year at college and apart from her my links with college are now very few and far between.

Thanks to social media, a dear friend from 1967 recently made contact and we have been in communication on a more or less daily basis, sharing memories and histories. We of course took different paths and our stories are very very different. It has been lovely recalling some of those shred memories and it makes me struggle to remember others that mattered at the time, even if it was only for a short time.

There are phases to our lives as we grow up, one phase is weddings, then christenings then a long hiatus, followed by funerals. It is the saddest of phases in that we slowly lose those people that we once held dear.  I seem to have lost all but one of my original family and many of my old friends, so finding some that still are there is a wonderful thing.  

Old friends are the best friends - they have stood the test of time.      

Jean Genie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGQo6zpVzt8

Futility is arguing with fundamentalists, or should I say that arguing with fundamentalists is futile, either way I have spent too much time arguing against the creationist idea, largely because I find it entertaining.  Recently they have been citing the existence of DNA as evidence for a creator. The argument being that something as beautiful and amazing could not possibly have arisen by chance alone, therefore it must have been created.

DNA is of course the mechanism of inheritance, it is in essence who we are and much of what we will ever be. Even the means of our demise is possibly coded in our DNA.  Family traits, strengths and weaknesses are transmitted through DNA and yes, it is amazing.

I read the other day that intelligence is inherited from your mother, suggesting a link with the X chromosome but it was a newspaper article and I skimmed it so cannot really comment.  We are, of course much more than the product of our genes, we are capable of making decisions and choosing the way we live. Thus if you have a genetic propensity towards certain diseases, you can, by choice, avoid the conditions that favour the development of that disease.

Talents and skills may be to some extent genetically determined, but most great skills are learned through sheer hard work as much as by innate ability. We would not wish for our doctors, dentists or any other professionals to inherit their positions, even from their mothers, neither would we expect them to be inbred so as to maintain a family line, and yet many people think that Royalty is a good thing.  We as a nation support a growing band of inbreds that have simply inherited their positions because they have been allowed to do so. They serve no real purpose and surely they have become an embarrassing anachronism as well as a huge expense.  I know that there are vested interests in maintaining them as a symbol of the ruling class but in the interests of unification, can we not grow up and realise that they are not needed.

Napolean Bonaparte said that religion was the only thing that stopped the poor from murdering the rich; I think that ignorance has a role there too.

The sound of silence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7RVw3I8eg

If  you have never heard this cover version, then I strongly suggest that you try it to the end. Rarely does a cover version change the meaning off a song in  quite the way that this one does. I suppose that Joe Cocker's  With a little help from my friends had the same sort of impact, but that one never reduced me to tears in the way that this one does.

Cover versions are interesting and I do like to  compare  originals and covers. In the days of Napster, I once downloaded 20 different covers of The House of the Rising Sun, a traditional song arranged by Bob Dylan and made famous by the Animals in the sixties. No two recordings are the same and they vary in length too. The longest is by Santa Esmeralda and is a sort of disco version that I actually like. 

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

Most bands at some time in their careers have done covers of music that went before them, I am sure that there are exceptions to that but I can't think of any apart from Maybe Jethro Tull.  Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery after all.

If you listened to Santa Esmerelda I told you it was long :-)  I love it though.

Does anyone ever listen to the songs by the way? or am I wasting my time? Anyhow in the interest of symmetry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4oInT79CUk

Je t'aime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Fa4lOQfbA

I was reading today about a man who has been banned from a Weatherspoons pub. Allegedly he complained too much about the food. Now look, if you want cordon bleu you don't go to a Weatherspoons pub and expect to get it for less than a tenner. This got me thinking about bans and of course these things are becoming topical again. Some of us hope that the Trump creature will be barred from his state visit, though that could have consequences further down the road, while in his turn Trump is banning some peoples from entering his country on the grounds that he hs no business connections with them.

There was a time when the BBC would ban the playing of certain songs on the basis that they were rude or risqué or in some way insulted the status quo. I remember the above song being banned and then we all heard it on pirate stations and bought the record anyway. There is nothing like a ban to persuade people to buy it.  I once bought a book - Spy Catcher - only because Margaret Thatcher said I couldn't. It wasn't even a good read but I was in New York and they were on sale.

I was banned from the cinema once. We were watching a movie called The Trap, Oliver Reed and Rita Tushingham. There was a very tense and dramatic scene where she has to cut off his gangrenous leg with an axe, as she did so, the thought that came into my mind and out of my mouth was "Wrong Leg" at which all within hearing range fell bout laughing.  I guess we had been nuisances before because I was singled out and escorted from the premises.   It didn't last though as staff constantly changed and no one really recognised me anyway.

I think being banned from a Weatherspoons pub must deserve some sort of accolade though. It takes some doing, not that I have tried.

Women

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

Now before I get controversial, let me just say that I love women. Not all women of course but the  group as a whole. I have total respect for those that I know and see most as equals, some as superiors and none as inferiors.  I also believe firmly that women should enjoy the same rights and freedoms as men, including equal pay etc etc.

 Ok got that out of the way, and if you start to get angry just let me refer you back to the first paragraph.

What I wanted to say goes along the lines of - do women make good leaders?  My own view is that they on the whole do not.  I know that is is just an opinion but I can only name it upon my own experiences and what has happened in my lifetime.  Some people believe that Margaret Thatcher was a good leader.  They are entitled to that belief of course but she presided over a government that divided the nation like no leader ever had before. It was also a deliberate act, divide and rule seemed her mantra. She promoted hatred that still endures in many parts of the country and never before have I seen a death celebrated in the way that hers was.

Our current leader seems little better. I do not envy her job but she seems to ebb and flow like the tide, pushed this way and that buy her own party and again continuing the divisive processes of her previous heroine.  Perhaps she is incapable of standing up against those that really wield the power, and maybe like Thatcher she will eventually be stabbed in the back by her supporters.

I worked under five head teachers in my career, and the only one who managed to divide the staff was a woman. I won't name her, obviously, but she seemed to feel the need to wield power and make people tow whatever line she threw them. She was not a good negotiator and insisted always on having things done her way.  She probably was the cause of a number of nervous breakdowns among staff, people that she did not like were victimised and fell by the wayside.  She eventually fell herself and was not missed by many.

Ok I am sure that there have been good women leaders.  I can think of none off the top of my head apart from Helen Clark in New Zealand, though I am sure that is the fault of my limited education and some people out there will come up with good examples. Marine Le Penn could be the next leader of France - personally I hope not.

Rat Trap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=024UcB1m7Do

I cannot begin to describe how much I loathe rats. Even the tame little buggers with pink eyes and noses are anathema to me.  A few years ago, when I was able to do such things, I was turning over my compost heap when a rat shot out; I say a rat but it looked as big as  a cat and was probably as scared as I was because it just ran in circles around me while I tried in vain to prong it with my fork. I panicked I admit and eventually gave in to my fear and scarpered.

Another time at an open university summer school I found myself in a cubicle with a woman who smelled of cigarettes, having to condition a rat. Admittedly there were bars between us but even so....

Anyway the point of this is that we have a leaky toilet once again.  The waste pipe that is is leaking behind the tiled and boxed structure that hides those pipes. The smell gave it away and so again we wrecked the structure that took so long to rebuild last time in order to determine the cause of the problem. The pipe is leaking again and why? Because bits of it have been nibbled away by rodents.  I lifted an inspection hatch and sure enough there are plenty of fresh droppings, though they look big enough to have come from an elephant. So not only do we need a plumber, we also need a rat man or woman to exterminate the creatures that are causing me so much irritation and expense.

The plumber is coming tomorrow and the rat man/woman next tuesday.  I just hope that the pipes can hold out until the rat man/woman, gets here or the plumbers work will be pointless.  Fortunately we do have an alternative wc but I, like the little bastards in question like my own territory.

Video killed the radio star

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ

If ever I feel the need to watch daytime TV, feel free to shoot me.  TV has become utterly banal; maybe it always was but today it seems that the programming has been designed for those in care homes.
My first experience of TV was at my grandparents house when I was very small. memories are very  thin but I do recall a tiny black and white screen that took an age to warm up and when switched off, the picture diminished slowly to a small bright dot that gradually faded.  The only think I remember seeing was a program called What's my line? in which a group of posh people were required to guess the occupation of someone from the  real world.    Much later, when we were teens probably, my parents rented a TV and we began our absorption of whatever garbage was pumped into the house.

We are all influenced by what we see and hear, the news is carefully edited and filtered so as to make us think what we are meant to think and do as we are meant to do. In the meantime we sit on our sofas and get fat and unfit, consuming more and more garbage.

Radio is more stimulating in many ways and  with digital systems there is so much to choose from.  We recently  bought a SONOS sound system and can now access digital radio stations or the music stored on my computer from all over the house.  Listening to music means that I can forget about Brexit and Trump for a while and remember better times.

There is a petition around that is calling for the government to sell the BBC on the grounds that it has lost its independence, the right think that it is biased to the left and the left think that it is biased towards the right. Maybe they are both right and that it lies somewhere in the middle. We do need an information system that provides truth, though for many people the truth is what they want to believe, and I believe that daytime TV is the beginning of the end.

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.