Britain says "Happy Birthday" to an old jazz musician called Chris Barber

Chris Barber, jazz trombonist is 81 today.
What you possibly didn't know about him was that he :

* had a statistician father and headmistress mother and was educated at St Paul's School in London and the Guildhall School of Music.

* played trombone with Ken Colyer in 1949 and then led his own band in which he played trombone and double bass in 1950.

* helped to create the careers of the blues singer Ottilie Patterson, to whom he was at one time married, and the singer and banjo player, Lonnie Donegan who rose to fame during the 'skiffle' craze of the mid 1950s.

* had his first transatlantic hit during this time with the release of 'Rock Island Line'.

* in 1953, his version of 'Petite Fleur', made it to number 3 in the 'UK Singles Chart', sold over a million copies and was awarded a gold disc :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORFM6YgjalI

* engaged his band in traditional jazz in the New Orleans style and later ragtime, swing, blues and R&B; worked with other artists including Louis Jordan and Dr. John and after 1959 toured the USA many times.

* in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was mainly responsible for arranging the first UK tours of blues artists Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and Muddy Waters.

* with encouragement from enthusiasts such as Alexis Korner and John Mayall, sparked the interest of young musicians such as Peter Green, Eric Clapton and the members of the The Rolling Stones in 'The Blues' which helped the British blues explosion which was, in turn, exported back to the US in the middle to late 1960s.

* in 1963, took part in the biggest trad jazz event to be staged in Britain at Alexandra Palace which featured George Melly, Diz Disley, Acker Bilk, Alex Welsh, Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer, Sunshine, Bob Wallis, Bruce Turner and Mick Mulligan.

* was, in 2008, along with Eric Clapton and others, involved in a new cooperative record company, 'Blues Legacy'.

* played in 2009, at the age of 79, along with Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball, a one-off concert at The O2 in Greenwich.

'Ice Cream' and 'Down By the Riverside':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA0VhsTjKY0&feature=related

'Bourbon Street Parade' :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THObBMgTK2I

Britain is a country where old men can 'have fun' while enjoying their senior moments

Put 'Senior Moments' on a 'Google' search and you are rewarded with the opportunity to buy, from various manufacturers, a tailor-made :

* money box
* T shirt
* mints
* game
* calender
* memory workout
* calender
* coffee mug
* badge
* book






So Old Men of Britain how fortunate you are, that you can....

* pay for
* wear
* suck
* play
* view
* work on
* drink
* advertise
* read about

...... your senior moments

P.S. I'm not sure of the purpose of these 'Senior Moments Bath Bags'. Any ideas ?

Britain is a country whose old men say "Happy Birthday" to Julie Christie

Julie Christie is 71 years old today.
Her films from top to bottom :

Andromeda.
Billy Liar.
Darling.
Dr Zhivago.
Fahrenheit 451.
The Madding Crowd.
Petulia.

Things you probably didn't know about Julie, that she :

* was born in Assam, India where her father ran tea plantations.
* had a mother who was a painter from Hove in Sussex.
* back in England, studied as a boarder at the independent 'Convent of Our Lady School' in St. Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, from which she was later expelled.
* at Wycombe Court School, played the role of the 'Dauphin' in George Bernard Shaw's 'Saint Joan'.

I first remember seeing her in the 1961 science fiction series on BBC television called 'A for Andromeda'. I was 14 and she was 20.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvcC2T2TQOc

Then, when I was 16 she played Liz, the friend and would-be lover of the eponymous 'Billy Liar' who was played by Tom Courtenay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m54NABR2pEw

When I was 18 she played the amoral model, Diana Scott in 'Darling'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beut0h1i7y0
In the same year she appeared as Lara Antipova in David Lean's adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel 'Doctor Zhivago'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=old4K4Tpo8c

When I was 19, she was in Truffaut's 'Fahrenheit 451'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cQ-yGCyjyM

A year later, with me at 20 and she at 26, she played Thomas Hardy's heroine 'Bathsheba Everdene' in Schlesinger's 'Far from the Madding Crowd'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuHlMn1scAI
And that wonderful scene with Terrence Stamp as Sergeant Troy on Maiden Castle :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGWUt0wgHg0

In that same year
From 'The Kinks'rock band, Ray Davies wrote 'Waterloo Sunset'
The story : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_Sunset
The song : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvDoDaCYrEY
The lyrics :

Dirty old river,
must you keep rolling,
flowing into the night.

People so busy,
make me feel dizzy,
taxi light shines so bright.

But I don't feel afraid,
as long as I gaze at Waterloo Sunset,
I am in Paradise.

Every day I look at the world from my window,
chilly, chilly is the evening time,
Waterloo Sunset's fine.

Terry meets Julie,
Waterloo Station,
every friday night.
But I'am so lazy,
don't want to wonder,
I stay at home at night.

But I don't feel afraid,
as long as I gaze at Waterloo Sunset,
I am in Paradise.

Every day I look at the world,
from my window,
chilly, chilly is the evening time,
Waterloo sunset's fine.

Millions of people,
swarming like flies round,
Waterloo Underground.

But Terry and Julie,
cross over the river,
where they feel safe and sound.
And they don't feel afraid,
as long as they gaze at Waterloo Sunset,
they are in Paradise.

Waterloo Sunset's fine.

When I reached 21 she played the lead character, Petulia Danner, opposite George C. Scott, in Richard Lester's 'Petulia'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqNNEBK41mU

Warren Beatty described her as "the most beautiful and at the same time the most nervous person I had ever known."

Britain says "Happy Birthday" to an old actor called Edward Fox

The actor Edward Fox is 74 years old today.
What you possibly didn't know about Edward, that he :

* had a father who was a theatrical agent, a mother who was an actress and writer and an elder brother, James Fox the actor.

* was educated at Harrow School and served as a lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards Regiment of the British Army.

* made his first film appearance was as an extra in 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' in 1962 and also had a non speaking part as a waiter in 'This Sporting Life' in 1963.

* in the 1960s he worked mostly on stage, including a turn as 'Hamlet' and then established himself with roles in major British films including 'Oh! What a Lovely War' and 'Battle of Britain' in 1969 and 'The Go-Between' in 1970 and won a BAFTA for 'best supporting actor'.

* came to the attention of director Fred Zinneman who was looking for an actor who wasn't well-known and could be believable as the assassin in his 'The Day of the Jackal' and won the role, beating the other contenders, Roger Moore and Michael Caine.
The trailer :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6xMnTPEzPo
Shooting melons :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enBM3SQwryE&feature=related

* appeared in 'A Bridge Too Far' in 1977 as Lieutenant General Horrocks, a role he has cited as a personal favorite and for which he won the Best Supporting Actor award at the British Academy Film Awards.

* portrayed King Edward VIII in the television drama, 'Edward and Mrs. Simpson' in1978.

* In 'Gandhi' in 1982, portrayed Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, responsible for the Amritsar Massacre in India.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg1U28TYW0I

* has continued to work on the London stage and in 2010 performed in a one-man show, 'An Evening with Anthony Trollope' at the age of 73.

Film tribute :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDCYVGOipiI

Britain is a country whose old men can look forward to enjoy the benefits of 'The Action for Happiness Movement'

Britain's old men "take heart", the 'Action for Happiness Movement' has been launched with free hugs and love and members who pledge to replace self-obsessed materialism with 'caring action groups' at work, home and 'in the community' and that means you !

The Gaurdian newspaper made the following points about the Movement, which has 4,500 members in more than 60 countries, that :

* its members aim to boost the net amount of joy in the world by being kind to others and countering 'an epidemic of loneliness and isolation'.

* at its 'relaunch'? yesterday at Jerwood Hall in the City of London, its members wore badges with slogans such as 'Love more!' and 'I'm up for more happiness!'. individualism".


* its co-founder, Professor Richard Layard, Head of the 'Wellbeing Programme' at the London School of Economics said : "Despite the fact that we are getting richer, after 60 years, we still haven't managed to produce a happier society. We are asking people for an individual commitment to aim to produce more happiness and less misery. The time is right. There is a worldwide hunger for something better, and we believe we can harness it."

* its website yesterday collapsed under the weight of users and declared itself overwhelmed.

The launch of the Movement in January :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12264559

Britain is a country where old men have a 'greying church' to themselves

A research by a team at St Andrews University and the University of East Anglia have just published a report entitled :
The Greying Church : The Impact of Life Expectancy on Religiosity.

It was led by Dr Papyrakis and by applying some of the principles of economics to the 'psychology of churchgoing' has shown that :

* increased life expectancy is to blame for dwindling church attendances because longer lifespans bring with them the temptation to put off making peace with one’s maker.

* cost-benefit analysis leads to the conclusion that as living conditions improve and lives get longer, young people simply have too much to lose by going to church year after year.

* this could explain why old people make up such a large proportion of many church congregations with over-65s accounting for more than a quarter of regular churchgoers.

Dr Elissaios Papyrakis said:
‘We show that higher life expectancy discounts expected benefits in the afterlife and is therefore likely to lead to postponement of religiosity, without necessarily jeopardising benefits in the afterlife."

In Britain, only 15 per cent of people go to church at least once a month.


The Report :
http://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.149400!WP21%20Final%20version.pdf

Britain says "Happy Birthday" to Whispering Bob Harris and old men remember his 'Old Grey Whistle Test'

Bob Harris, is 65 years old today. Like many of my generation I remember Bob hosting 'The Old Grey Whistle Test' on tv in the 1970's where his velvety voice and quiet delivery earned him his enduring nickname, 'Whispering Bob Harris'.
According to Bob, the programme derived its name from a 'tin pan alley' phrase where the first pressing of a record would be played to doormen in grey suits and the tunes they could remember and 'whistle' having heard them just once or twice were deemed to have passed 'the old grey whistle test'.

Old Grey Whistle Test 1974 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkurvMVVgso

What you may not have known about Bob, that he :

* was born in Northampton and after leaving school,followed in his father's footsteps and joined the police force serving as a cadet for 2 years.



* left the police and helped found and served as co-editor on 'Time Out' magazine and still refers to himself as 'a journalist who can broadcast'.

* started at BBC Radio 1 in 1970 where he hosted 'Sounds of the 70s' until 1975.

* presented 'The Old Grey Whistle Test' rock music show on BBC television from 1971 until 1978 where his hippie-style beard and laid-back presentation became a distinctive feature of the show.

* has worked for a number of redio stations in the years since OGWT.

Britain, a country with an old journalist called Hunter Davies, an idea called 'The Big Society' and many 'Banks of Mum and Dad'

I said "Happy Birthday" to the he 75 year old journalist, Hunter Davies, in January :
http://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.com/2011/01/britain-says-happy-birthday-to-hunter.html



Hunter is an old man after my own heart. This is how he describes his writing room :

'Photos lie, for this makes my room look neater, more organised. I always feel I live in chaos, with all my collections, too many projects on the go at the same time, a book a year for 40 years, plus columns, no gaps, no time to breathe or clear up in between. Yet it looks sort of civilised.'

Apparently :

* to the right, unseen, on another desk, he has a real computer, dust covered, unused
and once a year, his children show him how to use it, then he forgets.

* he loves his ancient 'Amstrad PCW 9512', which 'does for him' and when it packs up, it's going to the 'Victoria and Albert Museum', probably with him as well.

* the fire is real and he lights it in the Christmas Holidays and toasts marshmallows and chestnuts with his grandchildren.

* his telly is hidden behind the desk and all he watches is football.

* the crumpled rug hides little red stains and he watches the football drinking Beaujolais and denies there's any connection.

* the shelves to the right are all football books, the boots are Alex James's - not his actual ones, but a genuine 1930s pair - stamped with his name, proving that star players lending their name did not begin with Becks; the modern football is signed by Gazza; the left shelves are all Beatles books.

All this brings me to Hunter's article in his 'Mean With Money' column in 'The Sunday Times Newspaper' today, entitled :
The Big Society? Look no further

As usual, his points which made a lot of sense, when he said that :

* he had helped his children and grandchildren financially and that 'it had been a pleasure to help. In fact, I see it as a duty, when you get old, to spread it around if you can.'

* 'if I look round at most of my contemporaries, or read the papers, most of my generation is doing much the same, to a lesser or greater extent.'

* 'The Bank of Mum and Dad is the country's most solid, most active, most generous lender. As a provider of beds, we make the Hilton Chain look titchy. The Sally Army has nowhere near as many free food kitchens.'

* 'politicians are always going on that oldies are going to be a burden, living ten years longer than before, how selfish can you get, cluttering up the hospitals - but this is not quite the case'.

* 'we are older but also fitter, healthier and happier, if you believe all the surveys. And also many of us, better off. And of course, terribly kind and generous.'

* 'The country needs us, not just our grandchildren. The state is not going to help the next generation. We are the Big Society. Thank you.'

P.S. David Cameron, floating his idea of 'The Big Society' before the last election :

Britain is still a land of beauty and wonder for old men in the spring

After a long and cold winter I, like other old men in Britain, am enjoying the warmth of the spring sunshine and in my case the sight of daffodils and flowering shrubs in my garden.








I thought of poems about spring to match my mood and considered, T.S.Eliot's :

'April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain'.

From 'Burial of the Dead' in 'The Wasteland' and rejected it for the anonymous American :


Ode to Spring
'Spring has sprung,

The Grass has riz,

I wonder where the birdies is ?

The little bird is on the wing,

But that’s absurd!

Because the wing is on the bird!'

P.S. :
Charlie Chaplin's 'take' on spring in 'Limelight' made when I was 5 years old in 1952 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIverh3y7GU

Britain is a country with a garden called Wakehurst Place, chainsaw sculptures by Walter Bailey and David Lucas and Regulations tailor-made for old men

The Bishopstone artist Walter Bailey and David Lucas of the Woodland Centre in West Sussex have both created wood sculptures for Wakehurst Place in Ardingly in East Sussex, the latter using a chainsaw and hickory wood.




What I liked even more were 'The Statutory Regulation' which had been framed to govern behaviour in The Gardens :




1. No child under the age of 10 years shall enter or remain in the gardens, unless under the effective control of an adult.

4. No person shall bring into or use in in the Gardens any cycle or any vehicle except an invalid chair or carriage.

5. No person shall bring any animal into the Gardens except a guide dog and any dog shall be restrained on a leash.

6.. No person shall play any game or engage in any form of sport, drill, gymnastics, athletics or similar activity.

7. No person shall bring into, carry or use in the Garden any radio, musical instrument or apparatus of any kind for the transmission of sound by electrical or mechanical means.

8. No intoxicated person shall enter or remain in the Garden.

10. No person shall solicit or collect any alms, donation, contributions or subscriptions.

22. No person shall light any fire or firework.

26. No person shall enter, use or skate over the ornamental waters in the Gardens.

19. No person shall behave or be clothed in a manner reasonably likely to offend against public decency.

20. No person shall wilfully and unreasonably interfere with the comfort or convenience of or cause annoyance to any other person.

21. No person shall throw or discharge any stone or missile.

33. Any person who a park constable reasonably suspects of having contravened any of these regulations shall, on the demand of the park constable give his name address and if so required by the park constable, leave the Gardens.

Britain is a country where old men can sharpen their memories by visiting Joshua Foer's 'Memory Palace'

In his book,'Moonwalking With Einstein', a young American, Joshua Foer, has written about his experience in the U.S. Memory Championship. To begin with his memory was 'nothing special', yet after a year he was able to memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards in less than two minutes and the names of 99 people he'd just met.

Apparently, the art of memory is credited to the ancient Greek poet, Simonides of Ceos, Σιμωνίδης ὁ Κεῖος, who was able to perfectly recall the scene in a banquet hall moments before the roof collapsed, simply by reviewing it in his mind’s eye.

Using this 'method of loci', you assign distinctive images to anything you want to remember, placing them in familiar rooms or buildings and recalling them becomes a matter of traveling through those locations, or 'memory palaces' and noting the images assembled there.
This seeming sleight of hand : memorize X in order to remember Y, takes advantage of a simple fact of human cognition that we naturally remember visual images.

So old men of Britain, many of you art in need of this, so how does it work ?

Step 1 :
Choose various locations in your mind, Joshua uses friends’ houses and his old high school.

Step 2 :
Mentally, collect a population of images, often lewd or ridiculous, which you assign to numbers, playing cards or whatever else you need to memorize.

Step 3 :
In this way, a long string of numbers becomes a farcical tour of fantastical images, distributed in a memory location.

Joshua's title cover represents the combination of images he uses to remember the 'four of spades', the 'king of hearts' and the 'three of diamonds'. He has been discovered by 'Columbia Pictures' which is set to make a film about his book and whose President, has said:

“This is a very special book which transcends the already fascinating subject of memory. By explaining in personal and entertaining fashion a great deal about how our brains work, Joshua has written a book that sheds light on how memory is connected to humanity.”

Joshua, in his own words :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kor0wFR72xc

Chester Santos, US 'Memory Champion' demonstrating the same technique :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voAYXOO_dgI&feature=related
So, Tom Rush, with Joshua's help, your 'Remember Song' will become a thing of the past :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yN-6PbqAPM

Britain is a country where old men need Dr Madan Kataria and his 'laughter clubs'

Old men of Britain, many of whom have much to be miserable about are in need of Dr Madan Kataria who has :

* ten years ago, burst out laughing for no reason.

* helped form over 3000 'laughter clubs' throughout India.

* the goal of creating a million clubs around the world.

* said : "When you laugh, you change, and when you change, the whole world changes around you."

* a fan in the British actor, John Cleese :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEfjVnYkqM

* one leader of a laughter club in the USA is Howard Leslie, who has said :

"I am ninety three years of age I may be the oldest active certified laughter yoga leader. My health is good, play tennis four times weekly and am the primary caregiver for my dear wife Gladys who is in a nursing home for the past fifteen months. I spend my days with her from after breakfast until sometime after dinner. My outlook is good, I am not stressed and no matter what I am happy and fortunate to still have her."



In the meantime given the infectious nature of laughter, try the therapy of :

* An old chap on an American Quiz Show :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG1hxwkjg38

* Baby Morgan :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG5rQ3D_Zrw

The 'Laughter Yoga International' website :
http://www.laughteryoga.org/