Glad to have sad tidings
QUESTION What are the most depressing
Yuletide songs?
HARD Candy Christmas was written by composer-lyricist Carol Hall for The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, the musical that gave us the song I Will always Love You. It refers to poor families who could only afford to give a penny sweet to their children at Christmas.
Wham!’s Last Christmas is about a love affair that goes awry after George Michael declares his love: ‘ Last Christmas, I gave you my heart/But the very next day, you gave it away.’
East 17’s Stay another day isn’t really a Christmas song yet you’ll find it on all the festive compilations. It must be the bells. It is a very sad song about lead songwriter Tony Mortimer’s brother, Ollie, who had taken his own life.
Other miserable ones are Sufjan Stevens’s That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!, which includes the line ‘ Silent night, nothing feels right’, and LCd Soundsystem’s Christmas Will Break Your Heart: ‘ If your world is feeling small/ There’s no one on the phone/You feel close enough to call.’
The Pogues’ Fairytale Of New York is about two Irish immigrants who have become drunks and addicts.
The final word goes to Oscar the Grouch of Sesame Street for I Hate Christmas: Here comes Santa, girls and boys So, who needs that big red noise? I’ll tell him where to put his toys I hate Christmas!
Kay Thompson, Bath, Somerset.
IN 1950, my parents were sent to a TB sanitorium and the prognosis was not good. Even though I had many aunts and uncles, they had lots of children of their own and were unable to accommodate another one. Eventually, a maiden aunt, who lived many miles away, reluctantly agreed to take me in.
She had a full-time job as a dressmaker in a basement workshop in London’s Oxford Street and instead of sending me to school, took me to work every day. I had to sit there for eight hours each day. I had no contact with other children, being contained in her small flat at all other times. This lasted for six months, with me not knowing if I’d ever see Mum and dad again.
Christmas would have passed unnoticed except that my aunt kept singing an old Vera Lynn song: He’s the little boy that Santa Claus forgot And goodness knows he didn’t want a lot He sent a note to Santa for some soldiers
and a drum It broke his little heart when he found
Santa hadn’t come In the street he envied all those lucky boys Then wandered home to last year’s
broken toys I’m so sorry for that laddie He hasn’t got a daddy.
What was she thinking? Even today I can remember the sadness that song laid over my loneliness 70 years ago.
Keith Wells, Heathfield, E. Sussex.
I’D RECOMMEND I’m Sending a Letter To Santa Claus, a 1939 hit for Vera Lynn and my favourite by Gracie Fields.
It had a wartime theme of a little lad asking Santa to send his father home from the trenches: But I want my soldier daddy He’s better than all the toys And so I’m sending my letter to
Santa Claus To bring daddy safely home to me.
You’d need to have a heart of stone not to be moved by those words.
another sure-fire weepie is from the 1944 film Meet Me In St Louis, where a sad Judy Garland sings Have Yourself a
Very Merry Christmas to her younger sister Margaret O’Brian, who cries and runs off at the end of the song.
Merry Christmas and a fulfilling New Year to you all!
Danny Darcy, Reading, Berks.
QUESTION Has there been a collision between a drone and an aircraft?
ACCORDING to the UK airprox Board, which investigates near misses, there were 405 close encounters between drones and aircraft between 2015 and 2020, compared with just ten between 2010 and 2014.
Mercifully, there has yet to be a major collision in Britain. The closest near miss occurred on december 30, 2018, when a 90-seat Embraer 175 jet came within 3 ft of a suspected drone over Glasgow airport. On March 28, 2019, a drone came within 6 ft of a Boeing 737 as it approached Leeds Bradford airport.
Globally, there have been a f ew collisions. In October 2017, a Beech King air a100 of Skyjet aviation collided with a drone when approaching Jean Lesage airport near Quebec City, Canada. It landed safely.
In december 2018, the crew of an air Mexico Boeing 737-800 heard a loud bang on approach to Tijuana International airport. The nose of the aircraft was f ound to be badly damaged by a suspected drone strike.
From November 30, 2019, under British legislation, operators must hold a licence for drones between 250g and 20kg and pilots of such drones must pass a test.
David Finch, Sheffield.
QUESTION Was the Hyperloop train predicted by Eagle in 1950?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, the Eagle’s 1950 description of the Hyperl oop makes i t clear that f orward propulsion was by means of magnets — an idea that had just become reality.
Professor Eric Laithwaite of Manchester University completed his prototype linear electric motor, which he called Maglev, in 1946 and continued to develop it as a potentially frictionless system for mass transport.
Britain’s only commercial Maglev system was installed at Birmingham airport in 1984 and ran for 11 years. There are Maglevs running in China, Japan and South Korea.