Deodorant

 

I am sure you have heard of  "Old Spice" for men. The range includes aftershave, shaving cream, soap and deodorant. They are products that  go way back in time and are mostly favoured by the older generation

Old men like me, Andrew in Melbourne, Red in Alberta and Cro Magnon in Brighton really do not want body products that are aimed at the younger generation. We actively spurn "Lynx" and Jean-Paul Gautier. What we need is sprays and roll-ons that are specifically tailored for the senior male market.

This is why I decided to invest all my pension lump sum in a new start up business that aims to fill this potentially profitable gap in the market. Rather than getting cunning and creative with fancy brand names, the company intend to call all of their products quite simply - "Old Man". There's no deception in such a name.

Parisian perfumers have skilfully concocted four possible deodorant fragrances for the "Old Man" deodorant range and I suspect that they will prove really popular with the over sixties. It's nice to have choices...

1) "Granddad" - Pipe tobacco, halitosis and "Dettol"

2) "Care Home" - Stale urine, armpits and smelly socks

3) "Salle de Bain" - Lingering farts  mingling with  medicated soap.

4) "Rose and Crown" - the authentic odour of a traditional pub with 

hints of stale beer, cigarette smoke and sports changing rooms.

If the "Old Man" range sells well - as it is surely bound to do - then the company hope to create  similar products for the fairer sex called "Old Woman" but as yet no fragrances have been devised. Perhaps you can think of some suitable combinations.

Earworm

I know that I not alone in  this. Sometimes I will be simply trucking along in this rutted furrow that I am ploughing for myself when a song from long ago will pop into my head  uninvited. It may stay for a few days, resurfacing every so often. And there's not a damned thing I can do about it. It's just there like somebody else's choice on a juke box.

Currently, I keep hearing a song by The Who. It was written in 1967 by the band's lead guitarist and main songwriter - Pete Townshend. I was never a great fan of The Who but I did see them twice in their heyday - including their headlining gig at Hull City Hall in February 1970. I loved them that night.

They were a tight four piece band - Townshend, Keith Moon on drums, John  Entwistle on bass and singer - Roger Daltrey - who by the way is now eighty four years old. Yep - they could really rock and recorded many distinct and characterful songs like "Who Are You?", "Pinball Wizard", "Substitute" and the iconic "My Generation".

But the song that has been buzzing in my head like a bluebottle in a glass jar is "Pictures of Lily". It is an odd kind of song. The Lily in question  may be Lillie Langtrey -  the once famous British actress and socialite and the song may or may not have had something to do with teenage masturbation for that is one oft-repeated theory about it. Of course masturbation was never something that interested me... honest!

I used to wake up in the morning
I used to feel so bad
I got so sick of having sleepless nights
I went and told my dad
He said, "Son, now here's some little somethings"
And stuck them on my wall
And now my nights ain't quite so lonely
In fact, I, I don't feel bad at all
I don't feel bad at all
Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful
Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night
Pictures of Lily solved my childhood problems
Pictures of Lily helped me feel alright
Pictures of Lily
Lily, oh, Lily
Lily, oh, Lily
Pictures of Lily

And then one day, things weren't quite so fine
I fell in love with Lily
I asked my dad where Lily I could find
He said, "Son, now don't be silly
She's been dead since 1929"
Oh, how I cried that night
If only I'd been born in Lily's time
It would have been alright
Pictures of Lily made my life so wonderful
Pictures of Lily helped me sleep at night
For me and Lily are together in my dreams
And I ask you, "Hey, mister, have you ever seen
Pictures of Lily?"

Food

I am very glad that I picked up "The Stones Diaries" in a charity shop a month ago. Over the course of the past few days, I consumed it like good food. It really held me and I admired several things about the writer - Carol Shields.

I appreciated her humanity,  wisdom and keen understanding of the human condition. Furthermore, I enjoyed the novel's quirky, clever and varied construction. In addition, I admired her use of language. Words being used to make telling points like daggers or smoothing like a gentle balm. And there was plenty of humour too. How can I say it - this book was very much "alive". Filled with joy and sorrow and misunderstanding and eccentricity and kindness and stupidity and hope.

Of course, I could go on explaining the plot, describing the central character - Daisy Goodwill and the eighty years of life she experienced before dying - as so many aged and financially stable North Americans do - in Florida. Instead, I am just going to leave you with a flavour of the book through these four quotations...

⦿

“When we think of the past we tend to assume that people were simpler in their functions, and shaped by forces that were primary and irreducible. We take for granted that our forbears were imbued with a deeper purity of purpose than we possess nowadays, and a more singular set of mind, believing, for example, that early scientists pursued their ends with unbroken „dedication“ and that artists worked in the flame of some perpetual „inspiration“. But none of this is true. Those who went before us were every bit as wayward and unaccountable and unsteady in their longings as people are today. The least breeze, whether it be sexual or psychological – or even a real breeze, carrying with it the refreshment of oxygen and energy – has the power to turn us from our path.”

＆

“My mother is a middle-aged woman, a middle-class woman, a woman of moderate intelligence and medium-sized ego and average good luck, so that you would expect her to land somewhere near the middle of the world. Instead she’s over there at the edge. The least vibration could knock her off.”

＆

“He was discomfited to see how easily men (and women as well) stepped from the train to station platform, from platform to train – with ease, with levity, laughing and talking and greeting each other as though oblivious to the abrupt geographical shifts they were making, and disrespectful of the distance and differences they entered. Many were hatless, their clothes brightly coloured. The cases they carried appeared, from the way they handled them, to be feather-light.”

＆

“Dreaming her way backward in time, resurrecting images, the young girl realized, with wonder, that the absent are always present, that you don't make them go away simply because you get on a train and head off in a particular direction.”

Carol Shields (1935 - 2003)

Incantations

Drill baby drill!

Shoot baby shoot!

Fake news baby fake news!

Grab baby grab!

America first baby America first!

Me first baby me... first!

Grift baby grift!

Lotta gold baby lotta gold!

Lie baby lie baby lie!

Deny baby deny baby deny!

You're fired baby you're fired!

Me  first baby. Me!

Hyperbole baby hyperbole!

Repeat baby repeat!

Accuse baby accuse!

Excuse baby excuse!

Bomb baby bomb!

Drill baby drill!

Kill babies kill!

Me baby me! Me baby me! Me baby me! Me!

Baby baby baby baby...

Images from "The Times of India" & "The Guardian"

Zen

Today...A five mile walk in the nearby Peak District. The weather was as perfect as weather can be and the air was crystal clear. I slogged up Parkin Clough and then a flatter path that later descended to the tiny village of Aston. On to the slightly larger village of Thornhill before following the bed of an old railway that led back to Yorkshire Bridge where Butch was parked. I felt very calm in a Zen kind of way and took several rests along the route - sometimes just to pause and appreciate the beauty around me. A day like this one - it seemed like a reward for enduring the short grey days of January and February. There was light and greenery and new born lambs and it felt very good to be alive.

Retirement blooms in Aston - specially for fellow blogger Mr Steve Reed.

Bark

For no particular reason, I saved a piece of bark from Ian's horse chestnut tree. That tree had grown from a conker that he picked up when he was three years old. Over thirty six years, it grew to the height of about forty feet and was clearly bothering one of our next door neighbours. Following heart-wrenching considerations, we decided to have it chopped down.

Back in 2024, I took two or three of the resulting logs I had saved to a skilled woodturner south of Chesterfield and he created two lovely bowls for me which I later presented to Ian on the occasion of his fortieth birthday. That had been my intention all along. I blogged about this here.

Getting back to the piece of bark. It  had sat on one of the book shelves in my study for several months. It had vaguely crossed my mind that I could paint something on it.

I had never shown Ian the bark before. 

At lunchtime today he was preparing to return to London with Zachary when I showed him the bark which had entirely dried out and also stood up stably  on my shelf. I told him of my vague idea about painting something on it and immediately he said, "You could paint a tree!"

Yes! I thought to myself. Yes I could! In fact I could paint something resembling our lost horse chestnut tree. Not a realistic, photographic kind of picture but something more naive than that - as might befit a curled piece of bark.

Late this afternoon, I got out my oil paints and within ninety minutes, I had created this...

And what is more, I am pretty happy with it. It was nice to paint on a natural surface that is not flat. Now I am wishing that I had saved more pieces of bark. But this was the only one and if he wants it  another gift for Ian whose flat in London is, by the way, almost clutter-free. In that respect, he certainly does not take after his father.

Easter

Stewart prepared a special Easter Sunday dinner. The Lamb of God was on the menu with roasted potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, leeks, carrots, parsnips and peas. For dessert, Shirley had followed the vegan sticky toffee pudding recipe in the first "Bosh!" cook book  and all was good.

Earlier there had been an Easter egg hunt for the little ones and then we all went off to a Sheffield museum that I had not visited in many years - The Emergency Services Museum at West Bar.

Greatly improved and still run by volunteers, it was a perfect excursion for all of us and we finished up in the museum's little cafe enjoying a light lunch. We had seen police cars, ambulances, fire engines and even a redundant lifeboat called "City of Sheffield". We all enjoyed the visit. As you might imagine, I will be coming back to this museum in a future post.

On the way there,  the roads had been blocked off near Sheffield Children's Hospital as 750 motorcyclists arrived at Weston Park on what has become an annual charity parade - raising funds for that wonderful  hospital's amazing work. Many of the bikers were in fancy dress.

The pictures that accompany this blogpost were all snapped  on this rather happy family  day. I have much to be grateful for and the best thing is - I know it.