Today would have been my late brother Steve's 71st birthday, had he lived. And the other Steve in our family, our American brother-in-law, reminds Lois and me of our Steve's long-haired, or should I say "big-haired" days, back in the day, and how, with that head of hair, he should have been a rock-star. And that would have been entirely appropriate considering how focused our Steve used to get in his teenage years on learning to play guitar like his idols - guitarists like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, "Leadbelly" and others whose names I've forgotten now.
Rest in peace, our Steve - gone but never to be forgotten!!!!
my late sister Kathy and my late brother Steve, back in the day
flashback to 1968 - my late brother Steve, aged 16, on the Isle of Wight
Eight years ago, Lois and I attended a performance by guitarist Remi Harris, who had a similar history, starting to play guitar aged 7. Remi, we thought, looked superficially much like Steve did in his teenage years. Remi's mother must have realised he was going to be a musician, because she apparently named her son after the the 2nd and 3rd notes of the do-re-mi scale.
Well why not? There's no law against it, is there?
[Well, actually there is a law against it in a lot of countries - in a lot of places parents have to choose a name from their governments' "approved lists"! - Ed]
[What madness! - Colin]
Our Steve, like Remi Harris, dedicated himself to learning to play
guitar the way that all his heroes did - Woody Guthrie and others.
Here we see Remi, as I snapped him at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, 2015
09:00 Back to reality!
We leave the house earlier than usual to do food shopping at the Warners-Morrisons supermarket in Upton-on-Severn. We want to get out early because today is the first day of the Malvern Spring Flower Festival, and there'll be a lot of extra traffic as people arrive, either to set up or to view.
We visited the festival ourselves from our home in Cheltenham 13 years ago, with my late sister Kathy and her husband Steve.
Flashback to May 2010: Lois and I visit the Malvern Flower Show
with my brother in law, Steve, and my late sister Kathy (standing at the Pimm's counter)
But back to reality (again) !!! Our ploy of leaving the house early this morning to embark on our shopping trip is partially successful. We run into a lot of traffic on the way, but when we get into the supermarket, we find the aisles pleasantly empty - we arrive too late to be bothered by the lazy commuters grabbing a coffee on their way to work, and too early to be hampered by indecisive old codgers cluttering up the aisles, which is nice: just right!
[You mean "other indecisive old codgers", shurely!!! - Ed]
our early start this morning means that the aisles in the supermarket
are pleasantly free of other indecisive old codgers, which is nice!
I resist buying a box of attractive "Doughnut You Want Me, Baby?" doughnuts
we enjoy a pecan and maple Danish each on the patio
Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord showcasing her book of short-stories
about the tempestuous lives of some passionate Danish weekend-gardeners
The running order which I have pre-determined ensures that it's me who does the so-called "rude bit", which includes a short description of what happens in gay sex, so nobody can complain afterwards that they've been made to feel embarrassed - that's what I hope, anyway! I don't "linger" over the description, and just pass quickly on, and it all seems to pass off peacefully and I just carry calmly on to the next "not-rude bit", which is nice.
An interesting debate arises unexpectedly in the group about our current story, which, like all the other current stories in the book, is about weekend-gardener-couples but is written in the first person by either the man or the woman. Our group has only read the first 3 pages so far, but Jeanette, our only Danish member, is sure that the narrator this time is the man in the couple, whereas all the group's English members have been assuming it's the woman.
How can you tell, I wonder? Well, Jeanette says that after the couple have a fight, it's not the narrator but the other member of the couple who withdraws into their bedroom, closes the blinds and has a sulk, which Jeanette says is a "woman thing", but we English members aren't so sure. Well, we'll find out next time, hopefully, as the story progresses. Intriguing!
who closes the bedroom blinds and sulks after a fight
- is it the man or the woman?
20:00 We wind down on the couch with an interesting documentary about the work of female ad agency creative staff to gradually make ads less sexist over the decades.
The programme starts promisingly with the usual health warning about "ads from the distant past that some viewers may find offensive", followed by a Kellogs Corn Flakes TV ad from the 50's, where a man emerges sleepily from his bed, to be woken up by a bowl of cornflakes, lovingly prepared for him by his wife, who's obviously spent a lot of time already making herself up so as to look glamorous for him - what a crazy world they lived in in those far-off 1950's !!!!!
And how nostalgic to see and relive those ground-breaking iconic ads that marked the progress of these women's fight to revolutionize the culture of laddishness in both the ad agencies, and also in the ads themselves.... including making ads sexually attractive to women:
...the Levi jeans ad where Nick Kamen strips down to his underpants in a laundrette and puts everything into the machine, to the delight of the laundrette's female customers....
...the Diet Coke ad with the female office-workers and the bare-chested window-cleaner...
We see also the ads designed to empower women by showing a woman fixing their car's broken fan belt with her stockings.
And then all the adverts that began showing "real women", rather than skinny models. You know the ones I mean! You can probably fill in the rest of these iconic ads yourself - go on, have a go!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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