Dancin’ the Night Away

Even the most ardently youthful Baby Boomer becomes painfully aware of one fact. You can’t dance like you used to. These days your Twist is a slight wobble, your Mashed Potato is barely crumbled and your Chicken is definitely less funky. But we still love the music! Whenever the first bar of “Land of 1,000 Dances” blasts out, baby boomers leap out onto the floor, clutch their back, groan, and dial their osteopath.

After extensive field research I’m happy to report that there are a number of dance steps currently performed by baby boomers which don’t normally result in injury, at least to the dancer.  They may not be pretty for the viewer, but they feel beautiful inside. They are:

The Flapping Scarecrow   Dangle your arms, keeping your feet still. Now move your body awkwardly from side to side while violently swinging your arms. A slightly dazed, ecstatic look is appropriate.

The Hijacked Airliner   Alternately lifting your feet, raise your arms till they are horizontal, and bend them in at the elbow till your hands brush your ears. Sway from side to side, eyes upwards. Advance threateningly to the other dancers.

The Air Traffic Controller   Raise your arm straight up from the shoulder. Mouth the words to the song. Whenever there’s a guitar lick, make a fist and punch the air.

The Apathy Shuffle  One hand in pocket, the other hanging limp, stay on the spot, treading as if you were walking through a gardenful of slugs. This step is often done by those who have been dragged out by enthusiastic partners.

The Jim Carrey Mince   Elbows in, wrists out, move your body in a barely noticeable pendulum motion. All your effort goes into your face, which makes extreme expressions ranging from beatific ecstasy to contorted anguish.

The Cow in a Tornado   Simply flail wildly, acting as if you had no bones. Stagger round the floor, as if you were out of control. Correction. You are out of control.

The Cringing Teenager  A chance for the younger generation to shine. This one’s easy. Crouch at the back of the room, hiding your eyes either with your iPhone, or, in the unlikely event you haven’t brought it, the curtains. 

Skills We’ve Lost Over the Last 60 Years

DEFROSTING A SPITFIRE

You’re at 40,000 feet and the tanks have frozen. Suddenly you’re set upon by a squadron of Messerschmitts. What do you do? Today’s shiftless, apathetic youth would be at a loss, wouldn’t they, huh? HUH?

I felt ashamed writing the last paragraph. You see, I’m a baby boomer. Buzzing about in Spitfires wasn’t something we did. We caught a bus instead. But we did have some vital, manly skills which are in danger of being lost and which I’m anxious to pass on.

GAUGEING THE NUMBER OF 45 RPM SINGLES TO PUT ON A SPINDLE

Too few, and you keep having to get up and stick another batch onto the turntable. Too many, and the accumulated lack of friction will slow the disc down and make even Dusty Springfield  sound as she’s flaking out on Mandrax.

HOW TO CLEAN AN AFGHAN COAT

Put it in the launderette and it’ll come out like a wet Kleenex but dry into sheet metal. Dab at it and it’ll come up in blisters. The answer is don’t wash it! It’s supposed to smell! In a year’s time you can put it out in the garden and grow carrots on it.

HOW TO CATCH A ROUTEMASTER BUS

These vehicles had an open back with a pole to hang on to. The technique is to wait till the bus is nearly moving then dash up and lunge at the pole. Your arm will nearly be pulled out of its socket, which is very yogic. When the bus speeds, cling to the pole like a teenager to an iPhone. This is pretty well the only exercise we hippies ever get.

GETTING AN OLD-FASHIONED TV TO WORK

Back in the 60s, we TV watchers are real men. If technology goes wrong, no running blubbing to the support line for us. When the picture folds we just get up and kick the box. One kick for BBC , three kicks for ITV.

OPENING A CAN OF WATNEYS PARTY 7 BEER

My generation aren’t called upon to defuse unexploded German bombs in the streets. But we do have to tackle Watneys Party 7 cans. There are no guaranteed safe techniques. It’s a matter of levering up the pointed opener till it pierces the top and running like hell as the geyser spouts. But even that isn’t as dangerous as drinking the beer….

Winter work-outs

Anything's better than painting the ceiling

Baby boomers know that they can’t follow the lifestyle of their twenties. If they did they’d be dead, in prison, or confined to bed all day. OK, that last one seems a pretty attractive option, but some of us are still trying to do stuff.

Public-spirited as ever, this blog is now going to share with you a stress-free, easy daily exercise regime, a great way of keeping fit through the freezing winter. It’s a gentle way of working up to half-marathon running (after which you may well be dead, in prison or confined to bed)

First thing in the morning

Get out of bed. Get back into bed. Get out of bed again. Get back into bed. Repeat until your partner groans “For heaven’s sake, I’ll make  the tea.” Now you have the incentive of a nice hot brew, getting up will be easier.

Mental leaps (mid morning)

Sit on your sofa and imagine doing a series of jumps. If this is a bit strenuous, imagine someone else jumping. When I was at Drama School my method acting teacher told me that thinking was doing. Ever since then, I’ve followed her words avidly.

Horizontal Star Jumps (After Lunch)

These are regulation Star Jumps, but you do them lying down on the carpet. If you’re feeling hard-core, do them face-down.  While you’re down there, you can always look for the contact lens you dropped.

Bath Push-ups (evening)

If you run enough water to hold your body weight, this is a breeze. It’s also an excellent breathing exercise as you struggle to avoid gulping down the soapy brine.

Drinking Very Fast (late evening)

Aerobic boozing is a great workout for the arms, the legs (getting up to the fridge for another can) and the lungs as you bellow even louder at the TV.

Good luck. And if these fail, you can always lie in bed till the spring.

Please Please Me…..

They nearly jumped...

So it’s 2013, the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ first LP. By general reckoning this is the year the sixties began, setting the tone for the decade’s notoriously sloppy timekeeping.  But forget all the myths - what really happened during those turbulent years? Here’s another sheet of student pass notes, from someone who swears he was there (well, that’s what my birth certificate tells me)

Things were incredibly cheap in the sixties. A house cost about six pounds twelve shillings and threepence halfpenny. However the pre-decimal currency was so complicated that people were nervous about spending money. The market slumped.

A draconian Government edict of 1967 compelled people to dance on the streets. This gave rise to the famous protest movement, in particular the sit-ins. Anything but dance! The tyrannical law was finally defeated by the lousy weather.

As Philip Larkin said, sexual intercourse was invented in 1963. The inventor was a Middlesborough guy called Darren. He was having too much fun to remember to patent it, and, although the idea caught on like wildfire, he died penniless, ruined by a stack of paternity suits.

Pretty well everything else was invented in the sixties, too. Music, Lycra, Bronco toilet rolls, mumbling and Goldie Hawn. Goldie Hawn has proved very long-lasting and has been kept on, long after anyone can remember what her original purpose was.

The single most significant social development of the sixties was the nylon sock. This led to the invention of the Odoureater and, soon after, the washing machine. The combination of the socks, energetic movement and plastic shoes was toxic. To this day British males hate to dance.

Were we happy then? Decide for yourself but remember: this was the decade when people started landing on the moon….

The 1960s. Everything you wished to forget.

There'd been a run on grey paint during the War

The 1960s are turning into a mere memory. That’s bad news for a decade which no one claims to remember. So here are some Pass Notes for the kids. My recollections, of course, may not be more reliable than anyone else’s…..

SAN FRANCISCO  In 1967 the San Francisco Police Chief had a brainwave to make pedestrians more visible to drivers, urging them on TV to “Be sure to wear a flower in your hair.” No one took much notice.  To make the message punchier he set it to music. The song went global and the city was thronged with people following his suggestion. Traffic incidents went down, but there was a big spike in hay fever fatalities.

PSYCHEDELIA  Delia Farrington was a sociopathic London go-go dancer who would wait outside her club to bludgeon people who hadn’t tipped her. The dazed victims would stagger down Oxford Street, ears ringing and vision blurred, screaming “Man, I’ve been zapped by Psycho Delia”.

LSD  In the 1960s the CIA had a plan to destroy the Soviets: by introducing unpronounceable words into the language they’d drive the natives crazy. Operatives infiltrated the country to introduce the letter combination “lsd” into Russian; “Dlsda”, “Nylsdet”, etc. Of course, Russians have been speaking unpronounceable words for centuries and easily assimilated the phrases, which were exported back to America. Soon Americans were behaving bizarrely and unpredictably, driven mad by “lsd”.

THE BEATLES  As everyone knows, post-Shakespeare England was a cultural desert for centuries. A minor civil servant was ordered to find a UK version of French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The best he could come up with was John Paul George Ringo. On being asked to interpret “L’enfer, c’est les autres” their funny Scouse accents turned it into “I am the Walrus”, which proved much more palatable to the paying public.

FLOWER POWER Hippies were notoriously aggressive. They would attack passers-by with clubs disguised by wreaths of marigolds. In those days “Pow” meant “To strike” or “To impress”. Hence, “Hey punk, get a taste of my flower pow-er.”

BOB DYLAN  For years this obnoxious untalented wannabe scoured Greenwich Village folk clubs for open mic spots. Embittered by constant failure, he flung open the doors of the Village Vanguard to the icy January blast, shouting to the punters as he stomped out, “Your asses, my friends, are blowin’ in the wind”. Both phrase and Dylan soon faded into obscurity.

Old folks - no sex jokes please

Wait till you see what they get up to when the car's gone past....

I went to a comedy club this week to watch a friend do his act. It was in a packed South London basement: it felt like going steerage on the “Titanic”. I was the oldest by about 30 years. The compere wanted to warm us up, even though it was about 45° down there. “Hug the person next to you!” he yelled.

I’m a Brit. I don’t really do hugs unless you’re Mrs K or the Kirwood sister or you’re rescuing me from a fire. The two girls on either side of me wrapped themselves round their blokes. “Hey – don’t leave him out!” screamed the compere. All eyes swivelled to me. Thanks, mate. One of the girls gave me a peremptory shoulder pat. I thought of screaming “Fire!” but it would have disrupted the evening.

The first act was in her 40s and her routine was about “fanny farts”. To the uninitiated, these are nothing to do with breaking wind. They involve a female sexual organ, an intimate act, and suction. Yep, you’re right. She wasn’t subtle. But her impressions of how ageing affects these noises - a twenty-five year old (like balloon air escaping) and then a thirty-five year old (imagine quicksand) - raised a lot of cackles.

She said “Now for a forty-five year old…” and someone shouted “Please – not that!” Then she “did” a fifty-five year old and was drowned out with groans of disgust. To these kids, jokes about older people having sex were about as off-limits as ones about strangling babies.

I was the only person laughing. All eyes flipped back to me. I touched volume control: maybe an older person actually chuckling in public is disgusting, too. I lifted my beer to my lips… NO! the sight of a sexuagenarian physically ingesting liquid would start a riot…

Luckily my friend was on next. He has a great routine about the difficulties of keeping your sex life going when you’re married. How we all roared. Mind you, he’s only 32.

History – what’s the point of having been there?

The Fender Stratocaster. It didn't  reach  England  until  '58.  Along with  the wheel. 

I had an acting job last week - a commercial for a Games Console. I played Klutzy Granddad. In a gap between filming I was sitting around with the young actor playing Cheeky but Clever Son. To kill time I asked the kid, “Who’s your favourite band?”  I expected his answer to be some dreary modern bunch I’d never heard of and that our exchange would go something like:

“It’s got to be the Wet Paint Watchers.”

“Oh. The Wet Pant Washers….good, are they?”

“Well, duh – they are my favourite band.”

His reply was “The Shadows.” What - my favourite band when I was his age?  Then he said, “Hank Marvin, the coolest pre-Clapton guitarist. You know ‘F.B.I’? Du du derrrr, du du du derr, du du derrrrr du du durrrrr….” as he meticulously air-picked the tune. “I got it off Youtube,” he said blithely.

“The Shadows!” I cried, “Wow, Daddy-oh!” Fifty years had slipped away faster than the fizz in a pint of Harp lager. “Hank, Bruce, Jet Harris, and I’m still getting over Tony Meehan having to quit the drum stool in ‘62”.

He looked at me coolly.  “I think you’ll find if was ‘61” he said.

“Whatever,” I said hurriedly, “But he was great in ‘The Rumble’, eh?”

“‘The Rumble’ featured Brian Bennett. Meehan’s replacement.…Don’t you ever look at the internet?”

“Anyway” I gulped, “What pioneers! Marvin, the first UK guy to own a Telecaster.”

He looked at me as if he’d just caught me chewing a bar of soap. “Stratocaster,” he said. I now began to notice his slightly pointy ears.

This kid knew more about my youth than I did. Soon he’d tell me what the attractive brunette in the Carlisle Dance Hall had said in 1964 after she’d laughed out my chat up line. And then give me the Youtube link to it.

All we had to refer to in our day was “Juke Box Jury”, and your mate’s grubby copy of “Melody Maker” which had been passed round the class. How the hell were we supposed to about the music that was going on?

Luckily the two of us were then called back on set to film the second scene in which Cheeky but Clever Son finally showed Klutzy Granddad how to work the console. How he loved it.

Is you is or is you ain’t a baby boomer?

That's what you get for dropping the marker pen in the laundry  

It's come to my notice lately that all kinds of people are claiming to be Baby Boomers. Some of them have even been born in the 60s! Out of pure public spiritedness, I have decided that, once and for all, there is absolute clarity on this crucial social issue. Answer the following questionnaire and your generational uncertainties will be sorted once and for all.

Your mobile battery runs out in the middle of a call to your stockbroker. Do you:

A.    Plug in your laptop and Skype her?

B.     Swear loudly – and borrow your wife/husband’s mobile?

C.     Wait till you get home and use your land line?

D.    Throw the phone into the canal and say “Hey man, I’m quitting this breadhead rat race”, drive your car over a cliff and join a commune?

You’re having difficulties entertaining your daughter’s moronic, monosyllabic boyfriend whom you’ve invited round for dinner. Do you:

A.    Try to bring him out of his shell by talking about the latest hip hop music?

B.     Recommend him to a social skills counsellor?

C.     Put on the telly and ignore him?

D.     Dust off your ancient Stratocaster and tell him “You’re going to love this Eric Clapton number, man”?

You’re in the pub and suddenly can’t remember the name of a 1963 pop band. Do you:

A.    Look it up on your iPhone?

B.     Think “It doesn’t matter, I never heard their stuff anyway”

C.     Bore everyone else in the pub by describing the band to them and saying “Go on, you know who they are”?

D.    Go very quiet, and when you get home, google “Alzheimers”?

At work a young female colleague strolls in dressed in totally inappropriate “slut” gear. Do you:

A.    Post racy banter about her on your Facebook page?

B.     Complain to your Line Manager?

C.     Ignore her. Women these days are all crazy.

D.    Stare at her, slack-jawed, thinking “I’d forgotten what it looked like”?

If you score mainly As: You’re under 35. You think a baby boomer’s some kind of music app on your phone. What in friggin’ heck made you do the questionnaire?

Mainly Bs: You’re a 90s person, so you’re in between the “Me” generation and the techno crowd. You don’t know who the hell you are and I can’t help you.

Mainly Cs: You’re a Thatcher/Reagan child. You’re still sulking because you’ve looked so skinny since shoulder pads went out of fashion.

Mainly Ds: You’re the real thing and I love you! Come round to my house whenever you want, as long as you have a boot full of beer.

Are you a bona fide baby boomer?

The three at the back are genuine kids. The thing on the  girl's knee is  Caspar.

I’m a pretty inclusive person (I’ve even been known to talk to teenagers) but I have a strict definition of “Baby Boomer”. We are people born during late World War 11 and up to the mid 1950s. For five years our Dads had been fighting Hitler and our Mums chucking hay around. They needed a break and for the next five years they were at it like rabbits. Hence, us.

If you’re not sure whether you’re a genuine Boomer or not, take the following test:

1)      Do you say “Cooooooooool” or do you pronounce it as “Kule?”

2)      Do you still instinctively jump up when the CD ends in case the needle has got stuck in the groove?

3)      Do you regard “Reality” as something you wake up to, rather than a mind-numbing TV show that puts you to sleep?

4)      Do you still automatically upend your trousers before cleaning in case a coin has fallen into the turnups?

5)      Do you know what turnups are?

6)      Do you intersperse your conversation with inadvertent Bob Dylan quotes?

7)      If someone says “Bieber” to you, do you envisage an exotic feathery boutique (and not a pimply underage singer)?

8)      Do you still sometimes wake up in the middle of the night pondering what “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds” really means?

9)      Do you moan that modern music has no tunes, then realise that it’s just what your Dad used to say?

10)  Can you whistle?

If you have 9-10 “Yes’es” then you’re an authentic Baby Boomer. A big peace sign to you and can I call you “Man”, man (or ma’am)?

If you have 7-8 “Yes’es”: You’re trying hard and are quite convincing. But I bet you can’t name every track on the Beatles’ first LP. Still, I’ll wave a friendly joss stick at you when I see you.

If you have 6 “Yes’es”: Mmmm. More work needed. Learn all the words to “Desolation Row” and come back to me next week and quote it in full.

Below 6: Sorry, you’re not a Baby Boomer. You’re a baby.