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Triggering memories
Jul. 13th, 2015 04:28 pm A couple of celebrity deaths this week have had me thinking because I first encountered the deceased almost exactly forty years ago in each case The first was Jon Vickers, who I saw 40 years ago this month sing the title role in Peter Grimes at Covent Garden. I wrote a whole piece at the other place about connections from that. The other was Omar Sharif, who I played bridge against in the Guardian Europa that summer. Only four boards or so but still.
Forty years is quite a long time. Forty years ago Harold Wilson was prime minister of the UK and there were still coal miners. Hell, there was still a trawler fleet based on the Humber. Greece, Portugal and Spain had only recently returned to democracy. Ian Smith was in power in Rhodesia with the more or less active collaboration of the British Establishment. Large parts of Wales (and all of Ontario) were still dry (for some value of "dry") on Sundays. Manchester United were in the second division. I had been behind the goal at Maine Road the season before when Dennis Law, of all people, had scored the goal for City that saw them relegated. CEOs earned maybe twenty times the average wagerather than multiples of hundreds. The likes of Sussex, Bath and Lancaster were "new universities" and considered rather infra dig by those with any real academic ambition. You could smoke just about anywhere. I remember playing bridge in Chelsea Town Hall and the entire, hangar like, room looked like Cleveland on a bad day in the 1890s.
While I don't see smoking or coal mining making a come back I do wonder about the political situation. Greece seems set to return to dictatorship one way or another, though with the Germans pulling the strings rather than the Americans. Who knows whether Spain and Portugal will follow? And, of course, the Labour Party will never have another unelectable left wing extremist like Wislon as leader.
Forty years is quite a long time. Forty years ago Harold Wilson was prime minister of the UK and there were still coal miners. Hell, there was still a trawler fleet based on the Humber. Greece, Portugal and Spain had only recently returned to democracy. Ian Smith was in power in Rhodesia with the more or less active collaboration of the British Establishment. Large parts of Wales (and all of Ontario) were still dry (for some value of "dry") on Sundays. Manchester United were in the second division. I had been behind the goal at Maine Road the season before when Dennis Law, of all people, had scored the goal for City that saw them relegated. CEOs earned maybe twenty times the average wagerather than multiples of hundreds. The likes of Sussex, Bath and Lancaster were "new universities" and considered rather infra dig by those with any real academic ambition. You could smoke just about anywhere. I remember playing bridge in Chelsea Town Hall and the entire, hangar like, room looked like Cleveland on a bad day in the 1890s.
While I don't see smoking or coal mining making a come back I do wonder about the political situation. Greece seems set to return to dictatorship one way or another, though with the Germans pulling the strings rather than the Americans. Who knows whether Spain and Portugal will follow? And, of course, the Labour Party will never have another unelectable left wing extremist like Wislon as leader.
