Soundtrack

There can't be many members of my generation whose musical tastes are all about looking forward and embracing what is new. Most of us look back to earlier times when our musical tastes were just forming. Maybe this is one of the hallmarks of aging - the tendency to be nostalgic - drawn to what once was - when we were young. 

How many of us have even heard of Benson Boone, Noah Kahan, SZA, Fred Again and Baby Akeem? For your information, they all currently appear in the British hit parade of top twenty singles. No doubt such acts are being embraced by the young whose pasts were too recent to dwell upon. They look forward while living in the here and now.

Here are three songs from the soundtrack of my youth that sometimes seems so long ago that I am like a lighthouse keeper looking to some distant horizon for signs of three-masted sailing ships.

Fairport Convention "Meet on The Ledge" (1969)

Lead singers - Ian Matthews and Sandy Denny

Roberta Flack "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"

Released in 1969 but performed here in 1972

 

Jackson Browne "Rock Me On The Water"

Released in 1972 but performed here in 1978

Dear Visitor.... If you were put on the spot and asked to name three songs that captured the spirit of your early musical preferences, which three songs might you pick?

Strike

The last British miners' strike began on this day in 1984. Forty years ago. My heart was with those miners and their communities then and so it remains. We will not forget.

My mother was born in a South Yorkshire coal mining village in 1921.  Her father was a coal miner before World War One and her maternal grandfather was a coal miner all his working life, like his father before him.

You might say that it was  on the backs of British coal miners that The British Empire was built. They dug the coal that powered industry, the railways and the steamships that fanned out across the globe - servicing the greatest empire that the world has ever seen. It was not the landed gentry or  the descendants of Norman invaders  who did it but hard-working men who sweated in darkness and risked their lives for coal. King Coal as they called it.

My first teaching job after leaving university was at Dinnington, a coal mining village here in South Yorkshire. Back then the local pit was in full operation. I could see the slag heap from my classroom window and I could hear the hooters that marked the beginning or the end of shifts.

I introduced a poem called "The Gresford Disaster" to two of my classes and we made a play about it which was performed in the youth centre. I even put the poem to music which some of the cast sang with me. Even though the village of Gresford is in North Wales, the anonymously written poem seemed very close to home for them:-

You've heard of the Gresford disaster,

The terrible price that was paid,

Two hundred and forty-two colliers were lost

And three men of a rescue brigade.

As 1982 began, the polls suggested that Margaret Thatcher, our then Conservative prime minister was about to lose the next general election but then Argentina invaded The Falkland Islands and British military forces fought back to defeat them. This utterly transformed Thatcher's electoral prospects and indeed she won the election of 1983 quite handsomely on the back of that patriotic fervour.

Statue of a coal miner in South Kirkby

Thatcher is still despised in former coal mining communities up and down the kingdom. She called coal miners "The Enemy Within" but the miners were fighting for their communities and for jobs. It was not about wage rises. She was determined to crush them and close the pits.

She paid for planeloads of police officers and soldiers dressed as policemen from the south of England to fly up to Yorkshire to crush the strike. Though much has been written about the lack of a national ballot, most of us who were on the side of the miners believe that she would have stopped at nothing  to  defeat them. Like Conservatives through the ages, she had little respect for trade unionism or indeed the working class as a whole. 

At Orgreave 18th June 1984

Lesley Boulton (Sheffield Women Against Pit Closures) is about to 

be clouted by a policeman on horseback - fortunately he 

missed as she was quickly pulled back by a striking miner.

With hindsight, you can see how reliance upon coal was becoming uneconomic and it had always been dirty and dangerous. Something had to change but not in the way that Thatcher and her gang cruelly devised it. Those brave men and their communities  deserved negotiation, persuasion and time for redevelopment and change. For generations, they had gone down into the bowels of the earth on behalf of our country and this was how the state treated them.

The mines are gone now. In their place there are retail parks or wastelands where ragged plastic bags are caught in thistles or rusty barbed wire. But listen carefully and from the years that have passed by you may still hear a plaintive echo from the bitter 1984-85 strike... "The Miners United Will Never Be Defeated!"

Back in December 2015, I wrote this poem about the

closure of the very last working  pit in Yorkshire:-

⦿

Kellingley

December 18th 2015

All is quiet now

Only darkness remains

Thick black velvet darkness

As black as coal

Pressed into eye sockets

Like thumbs.

Yes

All is quiet now

Yet somewhere

Deep in this awful labyrinth

Voices chant distantly

Please cup your ears

To hear them

Sweet like forgotten birdsong

Resounding in some

Primeval forest long ago:

"The miners united

Will never be defeated!"

Fading...fading

Melting into the darkness

"will never be..."

"defeated..."

It's all over now

Nothing left to say.

All is silent.

Nearby

Above - that may look like a scene deep in the English countryside but those stone gateposts and that wooden gate are on a busy roundabout in an area of Sheffield called Hunter's Bar. It is a twelve minute walk from this house. In fact it is that gate that gave the suburb its name. As long ago as the seventeenth century it was on a turnpike road and it caused travellers on horseback or pulling carts or leading teams of packhorses to stop and pay their tolls. Presumably, at some time the Hunter family or a man called Hunter operated the gate.

Below, on Sharrowvale Road at Hunter's Bar, it really did feel like spring today. Two women are taking their lunch outside a vegan cafe.

Below - a woman is pausing to choose a potted plant from the florist's shop just along from the vegan cafe.

The pub below is "The Porter Cottage". I was a regular there in 1978 when I first came to live in Sheffield. It was just down from the rental house where I stayed with four women. Back then, it was a regular neighbourhood pub for people of all ages but now it very much caters for younger adults and university students. I haven't been in there for years.

Just off Sharrowvale Road  I snapped this wall art specially for Andrew in Melbourne, Australia...

Still on Sharrowvale Road, there's Hunter's Bar Primary School to the right and to the left "The Greedy Greek" restaurant and takeaway..

Below, on the corner of Hickmott Road and Neill Road,I looked over to the "Feline"  tattoo studio and considered what I might request. Perhaps a Hull City tiger on my chest or a fox on my back, pursued by hunters on horseback and the fox "going to earth" to escape them if you see what I mean.

Hunter's Bar s a pretty affluent, buzzing neighbourhood with plenty of independent shops and eateries including takeaways, four pubs and a happy atmosphere. It feels safe and when I count up, I realise that it has been a familiar feature of my life for the past forty five years.

Quiztime

As last week's "Quiztime" proved so popular, here's a second edition with questions taken from "The Hammer and Pincers" Quiz on Sunday night. I had to modify the sculpture question for foreign visitors to this blog.  Answers given in the "Comments" section but no peeping and please, no use of smartphones! Now pull up a seat and what may I get you from the bar?

1. For clothing, what shade of green did Robin Hood and his merry men allegedly favour?
2. Which European city has this airport code - ZRH?
3. Blockbusters. Related to work and getting jobs done what does R.U.Y.S. stand for?
4. What was discovered in Dammam, Saudi Arabia on March 3rd 1938?
5. Which American grunge band released the albums "In Utero" and "Never Mind" in the early 1990's?
6. 50/50 question. Which of these was the god of the sea in Greek mythology - Neptune or Poseidon?
7. In cuisine, which French term means wrapped in pastry?
   
8. What is the name of the iron sculpture by Antony Gormley that stands near the A1 motorway in Gateshead, England? (a) The Angel of Hope  (b) The Angel of Forgiveness (c) The Angel of The North
9. Which actress, singer, choreographer and original judge on "American Idol" once had hits with "Straight Up" and "Opposites Attract"?
10. Which 1990 film starring Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg was the sequel to "Three Men and A Baby"?

Shagging

In the last eighty years, shagging has become pretty popular in South Carolina.  Developed in the Afro-American coastal community around Myrtle Beach, shagging clubs have spread across the state and to other states too. Above you can see that there is even a shagging club in Florence SC, home of the legendary parrot Marco Barlow.

The basic step for this upbeat, quick and smooth dance is a six-count, eight-step pattern danced in a slot. The Shag, specifically the Carolina Shag, has been erroneously called the "swing dance of the South" but occupies a class of its own. It was once described as a "cold beer on a warm night with a hot date and no plans for tomorrow." 

Below we see two skilled exponents of the dance shagging expertly back in 2008. It's quite mesmerising...

Lifeguards, waitresses and other young adults are the ones who are credited with popularising The Shag in Myrtle Beach. Dino Thompson, author of "Boogie Woogie Beats" and one of South Carolina's original shaggers, explained the dance's origins: "We started dancing like we talked to girls at the beach - laid back, slow and easy."

One thing that makes The Shag such a popular dance is that anyone with two legs can do it - whether you're six years old or 66 years old. It breaks barriers and brings everyone together with one common purpose: to have fun and enjoy the music. Dino further explained  that it was the music that changed everything for the young dancers back in the day. "The sheer power and emotional appeal of the music brought the races together. Black and white, rich and poor, they jumped the rope and came down from the balconies to share the music and memories." All that mattered was the dance floor and this school of thought still rings true for shaggers today.

When it comes to the best shagging spots in North Myrtle Beach, "The Spanish Galleon" night club and "Fat Harold's Beach Club" are two noteworthy venues. And if you stop by, you're almost guaranteed to see a few experienced shaggers doing their thing on the dance floor. They won't mind you watching or even snapping a few pictures.

I am surprised that shagging isn't part of the regular repertoire of the BBC dance show "Strictly Come Dancing". Including it would surely boost the popularity of shagging in Great Britain and additionally  I would probably lose my aversion to the show.

(Acknowledgement of source material: "Discover South Carolina" website)

Buns

I don't know what the point of a man bun is but I think I am going to have one anyway. The thing about them is that they are very cool and if a man doesn't have one, he is deemed to be an old-fashioned fuddy duddy. It is a little known fact that many of the great stone heads on Easter Island used to have what are known as "top knots" - carved from red volcanic  "tufa" stone. Perhaps that is where the idea of the man bun came from.

It is possible to buy false man buns that you attach to the back of your scalp with hidden hair clips but I want a real one. Apart from Pope Francis, shown above, several other mass media celebrities have been experimenting with man buns. They are all trendsetters in the world of male grooming. See below...

Rishi Sunak - bunning around

Ginger Californian beach bun

Trump tower bun

Many men lose their hair as they grow older. For example, 39% of British men are bald, 38% of American men and 33% of Australian men. That's an awful lot of men and why should they be denied the opportunity to follow the man bun fashion? That would be discriminatory and hurtful. Fortunately, knitters over at "Etsy" have found a solution - the man bun hat. It allows bald men to  mingle unnoticed with the hip man bun crowd...

1.3.24

Alexei Navalny was buried today at Borisovskoye Cemetery, Moscow.  Up to ten thousand people marked the occasion. Earlier, at his memorial service, his mother and father sat to the left of his open casket in The Church of the Icon of Our Lady Quench My Sorrows. Some foreign diplomats were at the funeral. However, there were no representatives of The Russian State which is not very surprising as it was The Russian State, under the instructions of Putin, that killed Alexei Navalny.

Three people who loved him deeply could only be there in spirit - not in person - his wife Yulia and his children Darya and Zakhar. This speaks volumes about the fearsome nature of The Russian State - having to choose to stay away from your husband or your father's funeral for fear of arrest.

In the circumstances, with so much smothering of information and so many citizens in fear of the autocratic government that rules them, a turn-out of ten thousand mourners and supporters was, in my view, pretty good. They will have all been photographed and identified by agents of The Russian State and some will suffer in the months that follow. It might have been a good time to wear Navalny masks.

After all, there is a sense in which they are all Alexei Navalny - desperate for a better future, a free Russia devoid of their dangerous megalomaniacal leader. There was some brave chanting before the crowd dispersed. Even if Navalny's people had had an opportunity to fully examine his body, I suspect they would have found no trace of the wicked Kremlin-endorsed practices that killed him.