We were lucky that Sam and I had misaligned holidays this Easter, so while he's back at school this week, I'm still off... allowing Louise and I the rare luxury of getting away to the Peak District for a couple of days peace and quiet. (Sam is being looked after by appropriate adults, in case you're on the phone to Child Services.)
So this is what passes for our Honeymoon. Appropriate (and inappropriate) tunes will follow...
This post was inspired by a new song from Stephen Wilson
Jr., an Americana artist I’ve only recently discovered. He’s worthy of further
investigation if this sort of thing is your bag.
Anyway, the chorus informs us, “There ain't a
lot of boys named Gary these days”, a reminder of how birth names fall in and
out of fashion. (Amusingly, they’ve got the actor Gary Sinise to star in the
video… although it doesn’t end well for him.) This got me thinking about
the names of the kids Sam goes to school with… versus the ones I went to school
with.
I have a nephew called Gary. He’s about ten or twelve years
younger than me. But there are no Garys in Sam’s school. Neither is there a
Neil or a Sean, the names of my other nephews.
I started to think about the most common names of kids I
grew up with.
Sam doesn’t know any Richards. No Ricks or Rickys either.
And while he probably knows a few dicks… there are definitely no Dicks.
The weird thing is, I didn’t go to school with a single one
of those. In fact, if you’d asked me when I was a kid, I would have told you
they were all old men names. Harry Bamforth was an old farmer who lived across
the fields from us. So was Arthur Lockwood. And Frank Shaw. Albert Tatlock and
Alf Roberts were old blokes on Coronation Street. Eli and Isaac were names I
only read about in Old Testament RE lessons.
I wonder if, in another 20 years’ time, the classrooms will be full of Garys, Darrens and Daves again? There probably won't be many Donalds... but I could be wrong.
A final word today from Nigel (no Nigels in Sam's school either)...
A woman who described herself as "a little bit 'Bridget', A little bit 'Ally', a little bit 'Sex and the City'" And chose to call her baby boy Fred As a childishly rebellious attempt at a clever reaction To those who might have expected her to call him Julian or Rupert Bit of advice, call him Rupert, it fits, and besides it's a good name Don't be calling him Fred or Archie With all its cheeky but lovable working class scamp connotations Unless you really do have plans for him To spend his life in William Hills waiting For them to weigh in at Newton Abbot
In case you're wondering - yes, there will be a follow-up to this post about girl's names.
The Warrington Times, from 1966, featuring Alan Taylor, Gordon Struthers, Kenneth Crank and Malcolm Unsworth. Proper rock star names, all of them. This was their second, and presumably last, single. Where did all the good Times go?
Dennis Burlage and his two brothers (plus a couple of mates) came from Norfolk, Virginia in 1967 and produced this "psychedelic masterpiece" / ripped off The Byrds.
I first became aware of Edward Philip Albert Tome Ball when he released the solo track The Mill Hill Self Hate Club, a Brit pop favourite from the glorious year of 1996. It was only later that I realised Ed Ball had been at this pop music lark for quite a while, starting in 1977 when he was a member of Television Personalities. As the 80s arrived, he formed his own band called The Times, featuring a rotating membership of musicians from the Wham! Records label (run by Ed and his mate Dan Treacy). The Times continued to release records on and off for the next 20 years. This tribute to The Prisoner is probably their most fondly-remembered tune...
Post-punk electronic band Venus In Furs hailed from Sussex in the early 80s. They started out as a four piece, then came back as a two piece, before eventually becoming a one man solo project. The man behind all these ventures occasionally called himself Jeremy Christ, but most of the time he went simply by the name: Times.
