The balmy before the snowstorm...
Temperatures plummet this week
SUMMER is finally over and it is time to swap T- shirts and shorts for raincoats and thermals.
It is officially the first day of autumn tomorrow and the new season will bring rain and gales of up to 50mph.
Weekend temperatures of 77F ( 25C) will be swept away by colder air and possibly the first September snow for 100 years.
Marco Petagna, of the Met Office, said: “We could have snow on the tops of the mountains in Scotland but it is unlikely anywhere else. Monday will be the last warm day generally.
“We will start to see more rain coming from the far north- west of Scotland and it is the first sign of the more unsettled and colder weather heading south- eastwards during the week.”
Gusts of up to 50mph are expected later in the week, but the long- term outlook is likely to be more settled.
Day trippers flocked to the coast over the weekend to enjoy the last of the sunshine.
Crowds packed onto the promenade at Blackpool, Lancs, despite fears over the spread of Covid- 19.
Gem Concannon, 36, from Northwich, Cheshire, said: “It was heaving. Hardly anyone was wearing masks or social distancing. It was shocking.”
HEN Serge Gainsbourg slipped Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus, his newly- recorded masterpiece of erotic French pop, onto the turntable in a Parisian restaurant in 1969, diners suddenly stopped eating, their cutlery suspended mid- air.
“I think we’ve got a hit record,” he whispered to his 22- year- old lover and duet partner, Jane Birkin.
Birkin’s breathy, suggestive vocal, set against the 40- year- old Gainsbourg’s lascivious Gallic croon, guaranteed Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus ( French for, “I love you… me neither”) would produce few neutral reactions. The BBC banned it and it still shot to number one in the UK. Then when the Pope denounced it Gainsbourg called him “our press officer”, as the single also rocketed up the charts in Catholic countries.
But what about the poor parents of this seemingly virginal London girl – already in fact a divorced mother- of- one – in her moment of global success and notoriety?
In her new memoir, Munkey Diaries, Birkin, now 73, recalls repeatedly lifting the needle when she played it to them, to obscure the steamier parts of her performance – while being wholly grateful they could not grasp the explicit French words.
“My father defended me in front of all his friends and my mother continued to say that it was the prettiest tune in the world,” writes Birkin in one of the present- day recollections that mingle with diary entries from 1957 to 1982. Newly translated into English from her adopted French, Munkey Diaries follows Birkin from the age of 11 to 36, starting with schoolgirl jottings (“Everybody is horrid in my dorm”) addressed to Munkey, the cuddly toy she can later be seen clutching on the front of Gainsbourg’s classic 1971 album, Histoire de Melody Nelson.
The book takes in Jane’s miserable teenage marriage to James Bond composer John Barry in swinging London, followed by decadence, family and stardom in the company of Gainsbourg, whose uncontrollable drinking eventually drove her away.
“Did I destroy you? Did I drive you to drink?” Birkin ponders, much later in the book. The evidence here is that Serge was already going strong
RADIANT: Jane Birkin today. Right, performing a duet with lover Gainsbourg in 1969
London, the singer disappeared upstairs and returned with a gory gesture. “Serge came downstairs bleeding – he had cut an A in his wrist with a razor blade so that Andrew could see how much he had wounded him. In the end we all cried and kissed one another better. Oh, the children when they saw the blood and the tears!” writes Jane in a diary entry.
The incorrigible Gainsbourg suffered a heart attack in 1973 but secretly got through ten packets of Gitanes cigarettes in hospital, stubbing them out in pill bottles and stashing them in his bedside cabinet.
He also tipped off the press, disappointed that they had not realised he was ill.
In the couple’s dramatic world, even Munkey was accident- prone. On one occasion, Jane left him in a rented Spanish villa before a flight, and Serge decided it would be unlucky to fly without him, sending Kate and Charlotte on a two- hour round- trip in a taxi to rescue him. They found him on a conveyor belt heading for the incinerator. Famous faces including Mick Jagger, David Niven, Bardot, Yul Brynner, Maggie Smith and Sir Laurence Olivier wander in and out of Munkey Diaries. With Bardot, Birkin shared a scene in bed in a 1973 film of Don Juan, when they were asked to sing Je T’Aime… to each other but settled for My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean.
“Bardot was a darling,” writes Birkin. “When we were in bed, I looked at her from top to toe to try to find a little fault. There were none – even her feet were beautiful.” Gainsbourg also remained attached. After Birkin left him in 1980 for younger actor Jacques Doillon, Serge filled his living room with huge photos of Bardot. But he still became godfather to Lou, Jane’s daughter by Doillon.
By the time Gainsbourg died of a second heart attack in 1991, he and Birkin had managed a decade of postromantic friendship.
John Barry, the other tricky musical genius in Birkin’s life, was 30 in 1964 when he met the 17- year- old Jane, who was already gathering attention as an actress. Yorkshire- born Barry