Life must be filled up

Yet again I’m indebted to Liberal England for a link to a wonderful little transport film. In this one from 1963, Sir John Betjeman travels on the Somerset and Dorset Joint Line, narrating in his inimitable style, defending the usefulness of the old branch lines. I’ve travelled the old Great Western line more times than I can remember but never a mile on the Somerset and Dorset. I was rather disappointed that the film is entirely about Somerset, with Dorset only coming into it because the train has come from Sturminster Newton. When we first moved down here the trains were long gone but the station was still standing and you could walk along the old deserted tracks. Now that too has been swept away and the area turned into an industrial estate. The surrounding streets are known to conservation planners as ‘Railway Town’; I’ve never heard anyone call them that in real life.

Apart from Betjeman’s melancholy tones, the best thing about this film is the sound of the trains. You can almost smell the steam, while the birdsong at Pylle reminds one of Adlestrop. There aren’t many people about but just look at them enjoying the swinging sixties :-). They might have come out of one of Angela Thirkell’s novels, on the line from Waterloo to Skeynes, passing through Winter Overcotes and Worsted.

I can't make the embedded code work here, so you'll have to hop over to Liberal England to see the film.

There’s something on Radio2 almost every evening this week, some programmes timed to be on just as I’m dropping off to sleep. So thank goodness for the iPlayer. Last night’s offering was Nashville Cats: the Making of Blonde on Blonde. It was presented by Bill Nighy. Normally I could listen to him reading anything but here I felt his voice added little. TBH it was a prog for geeks or people who are very keen on Al Kooper (and nothing wrong with that). It was worth hearing just to be reminded what a great album Blonde on Blonde is or, as the script put it, ‘arguably Dylan’s greatest LP’. Singles, EPs and LPs; another world.

As well as these music programmes, there’s short stories on Radio4 in the afternoons and No Direction Home on TV. Sometimes, I’m really glad I was around in 1966.
( poll )

A few weeks ago on Sounds of the Sixties, our old mate Brian Matthew mentioned a CD called C’est Chic!, French Girl Singers of the 1960s. I rushed to Amazon to order a copy and two weeks later it arrived. Apart from Françoise Hardy and a couple of others, the singers were all new to me. I love this record! There’s a nice French version of Goffin and King’s He’s In Town sung by Ria Bartok as Tu La Revois. The revelation for me was A La Fin Tu Gagneras by Jocelyne. According to the accompanying booklet, she was a child star billed as ‘the French Brenda Lee’ and forced by her record company to wear white ankle socks to emphasise her youth. Her first EP came out when she was twelve but her career was short as she died tragically in a motorbike accident, aged only twenty. Everyone knows Brenda Lee and Helen Shapiro, but how come I’d lived so long before hearing of this little French belter? It’s really disgraceful how much our political and cultural news is biased towards America and how little we know of our European neighbours in comparison. End of anti-BBC rant. You can read more about Jocelyne here and see a photograph here. I haven’t been able to find any of her songs online.

When I told ramblingfancy that I was waiting for this CD to arrive, she recommended ZAZ. I’ve been listening to her on Spotify and Cor, what a voice. Judge for yourself.

Girls! Whatever you do, don’t marry a rock star. Even better, don’t marry two. Pattie Boyd,


Getty Images Pattie Boyd in 1964

as recounted in Wonderful Today by Pattie Boyd with Penny Junor, spent first her childhood and then two marriages with controlling people who she felt didn’t love her enough and eventually abandoned her. Naturally what everyone wants to know is, what was it like being married to George Harrison? Great at first, then not so good when he started spending most of his time in his recording studio or chanting for hours on end, is the answer. Poor little lonely rich girl in her great big house! Then Eric Clapton became obsessed with her and she eventually left George for him, a decision she later questioned.

For a person who inspired Something, Layla and Wonderful Tonight, Pattie doesn’t seem very interested in music. She says herself that when she first met the Beatles (on the set of A Hard Day’s Night) she’d never listened to their records. WAGs were not allowed to tour with the Beatles but later she’d stand in the wings at Clapton’s concerts, feeling proud. When she wasn’t worrying about whether he’d be able to stand up, that is. Honestly, it’s a miracle (and jolly unfair) that the self-destructive genius is still alive. I suppose people react differently to wealth and fame and in Eric’s case it seems to have divorced him completely from reality. When Pattie left him and found herself alone for the first time in years, she claims not to have known that she had to buy a television licence, or how to tax her car. Well, duh. Then she felt poor (not too poor to buy a beach in Sri Lanka or travel all over the world when she fancied) and useless, until she turned herself back into being Pattie Boyd rather than Mrs Harrison or Mrs Clapton.

A strange book. The ‘London in the sixties’ pages could have been cut and pasted from any other book about the era. Considering the life she led, it could have been a lot more interesting. The story awaits another writer, preferably one who really appreciates the music.
( A Most Wanted Man, John le Carré )

Yesterday evening I had a date with Steve Winwood on BBC 4. English Soul the programme was called and you can see it here. Paul Jones and others commented that this young white boy ‘sounded black’ (I thought the same thing the first time I heard Paolo Nutini). Say ‘Steve Winwood’ and most people think, ‘Traffic’. I must admit that I’ve still got Dear Mr Fantasy as an earworm but I just don’t like druggy music. My tastes are simple. I like R & B and I like it black and white and mono, so you’d hardly expect me to love Traffic and Blind Faith. I much prefer the music Winwood played with the Spencer Davis Group: Keep On Running, Gimme Some Lovin and I’m A Man. And he did all that before he was twenty. Blimey.

Nowadays, Steve Winwood lives in the country, walks his dogs, spends hours in his studio. Oh, and every now and then he does a concert with Eric Clapton. Fascinating documentary, highly recommended, and it was followed by film of him playing Madison Square Gardens with Clapton. It sat strangely with the previous programme, which I caught the end of; a concert given by the Vienna Philharmonic in the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace. To celebrate Schumann’s 200th birthday they played Träumerei from Kinderszenen. Lovely. Träumerei, Schwärmerei. Very appropriate after my little Eva Ibbotson fest.

Many thanks to Crying all the Way to the Chip Shop via Liberal England for all that mighty heart. This is a wonderful little production by British Transport Films, showing work and play on a day in London in 1962. Most people must have been unwitting participants but I recognised one of the women in the supermarket scene as quite a well known actress whose name I’ve forgotten. It reminds me of the old Look at Life films you always saw with a main feature way back when; full of optimism and all's right with the world.

Thanks to a link from reelmolesworth on Twitter, I’ve been mesmerized by this wonderful slideshow on Flickr. It's so great that someone recorded these images, to make an archive of daily life on the streets. When the photos were taken, who knew that one day I’d be saying, 'Look out for the Woodbines ad and the Green Shield Stamps, J Lyons and the man with the barrow. And the scooters!' As for the shots of the docks, I was nearly swooning with nostalgia. There’s *lots* of it, so give yourself time. I’d like Battersea Power Station for my desktop.

Recession? Swap a frock! Yesterday evening BBC2 brought us TV swishing with Twiggy’s Frock Exchange. This failed on several counts. Twiggy, however delightful, has a weak voice and is not a natural presenter. There were bizarre attempts at suspense: who will get the Manolos? Who cares? I do find this sort of programme fun, though, and always resolve to make more of an effort with my clothes the next day. It’s interesting to see Twiggy everywhere since she became the face of M & S. Hard to exaggerate just how ubiquitous she was in the sixties. Here, the face behind the keyhole, 1967.



And here on a knitting pattern.



In those days she was a waif and I was a lump but now I think I’m thinner than she is! Who’d 'a’ thought it?

Then I relived my youth watching British Style Genius (more Twiggy). This was slightly schizophrenic as it argued on the one hand that fashion in Britain comes from the street; on the other that true class comes from top stylists and master cutters like Ossie Clark. I really enjoyed seeing all the Mary Quant designs which were just a Honey dream to me at school but so influential.

I’ve always loved this picture



Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy by David Hockney

Really, what started as a mostly books and gardens blog is turning into a TV one. A couple of days ago I recorded Verdict on Pop: the Sixties and watched it a chunk at a time. Stuart Maconie chatted to Neil Innes, Tony Blackburn and Eddie Hiller (who?) about whether sixties music was any good, whether music could change the world and other knotty questions. First up they pointed out what I am always banging on about: that the best selling artists of the sixties were not the Beatles and the Stones but Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and ahem, Ken Dodd. Hiller had never even heard of The Seekers, whose The Carnival is Over was one of the best sellers of the decade.

Some of the chat was rather plodding: Bob Dylan was influential, they opined. Wow, that took some working out. I was slightly dashed to find that I have so much in common with Tony Blackburn, notably a dislike of long, boring guitar solos. At the end of the programme I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe they’re not going to mention The Kinks!’ when Maconie announced that they would finish with another classic track and on came Ray Davies, with that enchanting, naughty smile of his, singing Days.

BTW if you want a real glimpse into life in the allegedly swinging sixties, watch this clip from Juke Box Jury (all right, it's 1959) and check out the suits (and David McCallum). As far as the BBC was concerned, nothing much had changed ten years later.

Yesterday I watched our video recording of the South Bank Show programme about Dusty Springfield. Once, I would listen to Dusty’s records and feel happy; now, I listen with tears in my eyes but this is not mere nostalgia. The programme showed a number of changing images of Dusty over the years: she was a woman who needed disguises. Camille Paglia (whom I seldom agree with) was right to point out the contrast between the way Dusty looked and the way she sang. It was especially noticeable when she was belting out Nowhere to Run wearing a babyish sparkly dress. In an early interview – blonde hair, head down, huge eyes not looking at the camera, little-girl voice – she reminded one very much of Diana, Princess of Wales. Like Diana, she later took to self-harm. Two women adored by millions yet who never felt they were quite good enough.

The programme touched on the problems of being a girl singer in the sixties, with fleeting glimpses of Sandie Shaw, Lulu and Cilla Black. Compare these women with the great style icons of the time: Twiggy, Julie Christie, Marianne Faithful. They all look vulnerable, as do the model girls of the day with their white tights, turned in toes and crocheted baby bonnets. What was it all about? Even the names for girls were demeaning: dolly birds, chicks. Yet middle aged women appear today in documentaries and say that the sixties were liberating and that wearing mini skirts ‘we felt we could do anything!’ C**p. They wore these things to be fashionable, to look like everyone else, perhaps to look like Dusty. Girls’ comics of the time included features like ‘Dusty’s hair tips’ (“Get a wig!”, suggested cybersofa when I told him this). Women still did the same boring jobs for the same low wages; wearing mini skirts did not change their circumstances at all.

But all this is a digression from the real point: Dusty’s fantastic voice and all those great songs. At the time they were just part of the soundtrack of life: it takes the perspective of years for one to appreciate her great artistry. I can truly say that I admire Dusty more now than I did back then. A few years ago we went to see Dusty the Musical. It was dreadful. The South Bank Show, OTOH, was well worth watching.