Yesterday, Saturday, did not start off particularly well. Meg had been very restless after she had been put to bed the evening beforehand and did not properly get off to sleep until nearly three hours later at about 10.15. She needs a fair amount of supervision when she is in this restless state as she throws off her bedclothes and I have to restore a semblance of order. Consequently, we were somewhat tired this morning and got up an hour later than we normally do and after this restless night, there was a fair amount of attention that Meg needed. The two carers though, were very good and I was relieved to see them as they took over at 8.00am. Today we make one of our bi-weekly trips down to Waitrose where we meet up with the 'granny gang' as I call our little gathering but I also take the opportunity to get one or two things from the store when I buy only some of the things that I know the store sells. On one occasion when I saw a male employee checking the stock on the shelves with his hand-held computer and asked him if they still sold 'Extract of Unicorn Hoof Oil Essence' because they used to stock it in their section on exotic goods in a little brown bottle. Half way through searching the database for the product, which he thought he remembered, his brain registered the fact that unicorns do not exist, then neither does 'Extract of Unicorn Hoof Oil Essence' and so he stopped his search forthwith.
After we had lunched, I consulted yesterday's TV schedules to see if there was anything good that we might have missed that we could view on catch-up TV. There was an historic 'Peter, Paul and Mary' broadcast (mainly 60's and 70's folk group) and although this was tolerable, it was not absolutely to Meg's taste. So whilst on the i-player.I did a search for our favourite folk singer, Joan Baez and found an early 60's concert that she had played to a British audience. The track of 'Plaisir d'Amour' was so poignant it actually brought tears to my eyes. But thinking about a British audience and, no doubt, their dark sense of humour, Jan Baez sang the old folk-singing standby of 'Airn't it Grand to be Blooming well dead' I thought I would run off the lyrics to this and relay it the 'grandiloquent granny gang' when next we meet on Tuesday next. The i-player then went on to play a concert by Pete Seeger and this was interesting as there was a radical slant to each of his songs. He explained, between tracks, that folk music was not meant to be played in concert halls but was music 'that had never gone away' and so often reflected the tribulations and the concerns of the underclass and underprivileged in American society. Afterwards, we decided to search YouTube for a Joan Baez concert and found one recorded in London in 19655. This was doubly interesting because the audience members looked like Meg and I when we first met in 1965 and there was a preponderance of sweaters, hair parted down the middle like Joan Baez (and Meg herself) and 'designer clothes' were a thing of the future. One of the tracks from this is such a powerful statement of liberal values ('There but for fortune - go you or I') that I noted its position in the track of the concert and then played it to the two young carers who give Meg her tea time call. I would normally do this but these two young people get on exceptionally well with Meg and myself and are have a very sympathetic nature so I thought they would appreciate the sentiments. Needless to say, they are never heard anything like it with Joan Baez's amazingly clear diction and emotional import so the two of them sat on our new settee absolutely transfixed as I hope that they would be. After this tea time call, we often to see what YouTube available on our FireStick in the main lounge has to offer - and sometimes we vacillate between comedy such as 'Yes Minister' or an orchestral concert of which there are many. But whilst we were in the mood for Jan Baez's music I did a search for Violetta Parra (an outstanding Chilean folk singer) who performed an exquisite rendition of 'Gracias a la Vida' ('Thank you for life') after which she committed suicide by firing a pistol into her skull. We also searched for Mercedes Sosa who perhaps has an even finer voice and rendition of 'Gracias por la Vida' than either Joan Baez or Violetta Parra. Then we were amazed to find a crossover concert which Sosa and Pavarotti had recorded together and their songs were full, as you might imagine, of Latin passion and emotion. We finished off the day by watching a gala performance in front of invited celebrities of Dame Edna Everage which really was tremendously witty and amusing. The most amusing parts of the Barry Humphries routines were when he played the part of 'Sir Les Patterson' the Australian Cultural Attache. By Humphries' own account, the character of Patterson first appeared in a one-man show that he performed at the St. George leagues club in Sydney in January 1974. Appearing in the guise of the boorish, loud-mouthed and uncultured Patterson, Humphries claimed to be that club's own entertainments officer as he introduced the next act, Dame Edna Everage. As Humphries recalled, 'I understood later that many members of the audience thought Les was genuinely a club official, which says a lot for his charm and sincerity'
It looks as though the whole notion of accepting hospitality donations for one's own clothing is starting to hit home with the PM, Keir Starmer. As the political class are wont to say 'the optics of this are terrible' and this is now reluctantly recognised. Sky News reports today that Ministers now acknowledge that the past few days have seen constant distraction, whether about free clothes, gifted football hospitality and how Downing Street itself is operating. Criticism of Sir Keir Starmer's decision to take £16,000 of clothes from a Labour donor, and donations for his wife's wardrobe, has been raging in the newspapers. After digging in for days to defend it, the leader's team bowed to pressure, announcing that neither the prime minister, nor his deputy Angela Rayner or chancellor Rachel Reeves - both also revealed to have taken donations for clothes - will do so in future.
© Mike Hart [2024]