As a follow-up to last week's post about there not being a lot of boys named Gary anymore, I promised to tackle girls' names next. And Sam was once again very helpful, particularly when this song popped up on an in-car mixtape...
Still one of Paul Heaton's finest hours, that - and I love the guest appearance by George Michael in the video.
Anyway, as the song played, Sam told me, "there's none of those girls in my school."
(I had to search for that one. Not enough songs about girls called Philippa. There was a Pippa in my 6th form. I fancied her. No chance. She went out with my mate Simon.)
So then, I hear you ask, if Sam doesn't go to school with any of the girls above... what are his female schoolmates called? Well, he knows at least five girls called...
As with the boys' names then, there's been another major shift in what parents are choosing to call their kids these days... and the most popular names are ones that would mostly have belonged to old people when I was a kid.
It's also highly unlikely that Marie will be the name of anyone's latest flame in Gen A... making all these old songs sound even more out of date.
Due to failing eyesight, my mum stopped driving more than twenty years ago. However, the stories about when she was a driver are the stuff of family legend.
And the time she almost drove me and my grandma (her mum) off a cliff. (They were arguing about which way to go. I was in the backseat, clinging on for deer life.)
Perhaps most famous of all is the time that she stalled in the middle of roadworks and the policeman who was directing traffic got down on his knees in front of her car and put his hands together in prayer, begging her to move.
We remember all these stories with good humour, even though our lives may have been at risk on one or more occasion... let's face it, none of us were wearing safety belts back then.
What it's easy to forget though, is how much mum (and dad) drove me around, wherever I wanted to go, when I was a kid. Music lessons, band practice, comic marts in Leeds... we were reminiscing about the latter recently, about the time my mate Liam (who was notoriously car-sick) came with us, and when Liam started looking a bit queasy, Mum just handed him a paper bag and said, "do it in there". Or the time she went to pay for parking and the ticket machine started spitting out money. She shared it out between the two of us and we bought a few extra comics that day.
Then, when I started working in radio, Mum would get up early on a Saturday morning to drive me to Bradford in time for the 9am show I worked on... at least until I'd passed my driving test, which wasn't until I was 18, so she must have done it every Saturday for at least two years. One Saturday, I had a piano exam at the same time. I'd told the presenter I was working with that I was going to be half an hour late, but he'd forgotten, and in the pre-mobile phone era, there was no way of reminding him. Driving in, listening to the radio, we kept hearing him saying, "Where's Rol this morning? I've got nobody to answer my phones." Mum remembered that when she finally dropped me off and I sprinted into the studio, the first link she heard on her way home was, "Oh look, Rol's arrived... still wearing his pyjamas."
These days, when I spent many of my weeknights and weekends ferrying Sam to a variety of sporting activities and pre-teen social engagements, I like to remind myself that I'm paying it forwards. Thanks, Mum.
There's an obvious song to close today, but one that was over-played to the point that most people are sick to the back teeth of it. Never fear - Aimee Mann to the rescue!
King Cnut could not hold back the tide, and I cannot hold back society's full-throttle descent into dystopia. All I can do is watch helplessly from the sidelines, and nod my head sagely when others hold a mirror up to the madness. Which is why I've been using this space over the past few weeks to quote excerpts from Dave Eggers' novel, The Every. Because everyone should read it and face up to the horror...
In this extract, Delaney has to organise a Welcome2Me event in which she invites a
random selection of her colleagues (“Everyones”) to participate in a “get to
know you”-type social event. She chooses to take them to a local beach where a
colony of elephant seals have gathered to mate… but from the moment she
announces the event, she’s prepared for resistance.
Delaney wrote a three-paragraph description of the day’s
plan, including six links to basic and concise information about the seals,
their history on the Pacific coast, their mating cycles, Point Reyes in general
and Playa 36 specifically. “If you haven’t seen Pt. Reyes, be prepared,”
Delaney wrote. “It will be spectacular.” Not that anyone living in Northern
California needed to be told to bring layers, but she mentioned this, and she
mentioned sunscreen, and comfortable shoes, and a warm hat if one’s ears were
prone to chill. She sent a draft to Kiki, who, in a distracted moment, wrote only
“Food”. Delaney took this to mean that the Everyones could not be expected to
bring their own lunches, so Delaney arranged with a deli around the corner from
The Sea Shed to create eighty sandwiches for the day, for vegans and
vegetarians, pescatarians and carnivores, at least two options for every
attendee, and a bounty of side salads and drinks – all to be brought on the bus
in reusable containers.
A group of forty-two Everyones were selected by algorithm.
It was to be a cross-campus smorgasbord, a sampling rich in variety of
departments and interests. And because there would be photos and possibly group
photos, a representative and perhaps augmented display of the company’s
diversity was essential. Once the forty-two attendees had been chosen, a message
list was created, and Delaney’s now-three-page description of the event –
elucidating what would be available to drink and eat, and enumerating all that
need be brought – was sent to the forty-two on the Tuesday before the
excursion.
“No info here for the lactose-free…” said the first message,
and Delaney cursed herself for this easy oversight. “Ignore that event
description!” she wrote, “Better one to come!” She went through the entire
three pages again, editing an adding two pages more, this time anticipating
every allergy and preference. She covered gluten, eggs, nuts, nightshades and
cinnamon – recent but fast-spreading intolerances and de-preferences,
respectively – and this time, in a stroke of what she considered brilliance,
she mentioned the particular deli she’d engaged, Emil’s on Pacheco, in case
anyone wanted to pre-order and get the precise sandwich they wished.
“Emil’s? Have you seen this?” This message linked to a photo
of Emil, the young proprietor, posing with an Israeli flag, on what appeared to
be a Tel Aviv beach. This was followed by seventy-six messages from a fourth of
the forty-two Point Reyes attendees, most with links to bombastic articles and
messages about the rightness or wrongness of Israel vis a vis Palestine and
what any given Everyone would be saying by eating sandwiches made by a man (and
his staff) who were so proud of Israel and its misdeeds that he so
jingoistically would pose with its flag on a luxurious beach of oppression.
“Is the bus using plant-based fuel?” one attendee asked.
It’s a standard bus, so I assume so, Delaney wrote. “Do I need hiking boots?”
No, Delaney wrote, we’ll just be standing on sand, or in the parking lot near
the beach. “I don’t see a packing list. Usually there’s a packing list for such
an outdoor activity.” I provided a packing list, Delaney answered, though you
might have missed it because it’s embedded and short. You really only need
yourselves and, like I said, layers, and maybe a hat. I’m even bringing
sunscreen, so you can take that off the list! “What kind of sunscreen are you
bringing, Delaney?” Delaney had not actually bought the sunscreen yet, so she
looked online and found an organic brand, Sensible Dawn. This triggered an
avalanche. “Wait, now we’re supporting Scientology?” an Everyone wrote, and
Delaney soon found that Dawn Unger, the sunscreen’s founder, had been a
Scientologist, though she didn’t appear to be one now, and had posted no
content anywhere in support of Scientology. “Delaney, seeing elephant seals
shouldn’t involve cult-complicity,” one helpful Everyone wrote, in the most
measured of the messages. After four hours of screeds and ululations, totalling
413 messages covering the sins and virtues of every company that had or still
did provide sunscreen to the world, the group settled on an organic maker based
in the Antilles. That the product had travelled a few thousand miles seemed
likely to provoke a reaction of some kind, but at the end of Day Two, had not
yet done so.
The Welcome2Me event
inevitably proves disastrous, and soon after Delaney is invited to participate
in two restorative events in which the “survivors of the Playa 36 Debacle” are
invited to vent their emotions on the trauma they have endured.
The solutions to the beach, the bus, and the uncomfortable
proximity to wildlife were, again, direct and increasingly extreme. “Don’t
visit that beach,” was the first, and was followed by, “Close the beach,” then
“Don’t exploit animals for our gawking pleasure,” and finally it was agreed
that, “Humans should not be permitted near any animals in any context,” and
that, “Large groups of humans travelling together in fifteen-ton fuel-burning
vehicles are so obviously environmentally offensive and metaphorically obvious
that we cannot, ever, be part of the problem again.”
And that’s just the
beginning of the fall-out…
Speaking of the world going to hell in a handbasket, it's a sign of the times when Shakin' Stevens turns into a protest singer...
As I mentioned last week, things are particularly fraught here as we prepare to move house. Again. I'd hoped to stay in our current home a little longer as it's the best home I've ever paid a mortgage on, but circumstances conspired to make us realise that if we could move now, we might save some money in the long-term. (The move is inevitable at some point in the next 4-5 years in order to get Sam into the High School we want him to go to... not the one I went to!)
Our house sold very quickly, which has meant there's been a mad rush over the past few weeks to find a suitable new home. We've had some pretty outrageous experiences viewing properties over the years (scarily, this will be the FOURTH house Louise and I have bought together over the last 11 years), and often that's been down to the estate agents selling them.. or the owners still residing in them.
There have been houses with dripping dungeons in the basement, houses with dead squirrels in the garden, one hi-tech Jetson's House with a bright orange shower room and the computer system from War Games in its garage... and our personal favourite, the house that was owned by Keef Richards' hippy brother, who told us: "You can't go upstairs, man - Rosie's in the bath!"
Here's ten songs that remind me of looking for a new house... and the estate agents lies that try to sell you homes you don't want.
Just in case you didn't get the message first time. Most of our moves have involved this kind of thing, one way or another. "L'enfer c'est les autres."
I was woken up at four a.m. by your screams and anguished cries Your mother was singing in the bathroom, she will never be my child Oh baby talks in her sleep so loud We're living four flights up but I swear right now it feels like underground!
Love to meet the estate agent that sold Lloyd this one!
1. The Four Tops - 7 Rooms of Gloom
I see a house, a house of stone A lonely house, 'cos now you're gone Seven rooms, that's all it is, seven rooms of gloom I live with emptiness, without your tenderness
"But, on the plus side, there is an en-suite..."
Any songs in your collection the estate agents must have lied about?
