The Old Un's Notes
Ken Clarke confessed that he was relieved to talk about something other than political dramas when the Old Un reminded him that this August sees the 60th anniversary of the classic Miles Davis record Kind of Blue.
‘It’s one of my all-time favourites,’ said the great jazz buff, ‘and one of the bestselling albums ever.’
Kind of Blue has sold millions since 1959: why was it so important in the evolution of jazz?
‘There was a change in the harmonies – it was much more based on tonalities,’ Ken, 79, explained. ‘And Miles and his band were all on great form – John Coltrane was quite brilliant. I was young and impressionable at the time, but it just seemed to me to be a near-perfect example of hard bop. And hard bop is the jazz I like best.’
(Hard bop was a more accessible, more rhythmic, more soulful reaction to the excesses of bebop.)
Miles brought his band and its new sound to what was then the Gaumont Palace, Hammersmith (now the Apollo), in 1960. Ken, then a 20-year-old undergraduate, was in the audience.
‘It was more or less the quintet from Kind of Blue but Coltrane wasn’t there – instead Sonny Stitt was on alto sax. I was just really getting into jazz and it was a great gig.’
Always moving the musical goalposts, Miles went electric a decade later. Ken saw him again but was less impressed: ‘ Kind of Blue – that was the peak. It’s going to be one of those things that remains timeless.’
And Kind of Blue was the title Ken chose for his political memoir in 2016. ‘The difficulty with all things you write – including Government white papers – is choosing a title,’ he told the Old Un. ‘But my publisher liked that idea.’
Ken, who’s retiring at the next election, said, ‘I’ve sometimes been in the mainstream of my party, sometimes not. Kind of Blue was rather apt … a slightly quixotic description of my role in the Tory Party.’
How should you behave when staying with friends over the summer? Oldie reader A H W Sandes has the answer in the poem The Perfect Guest, written in 1917 by his grandmother Grace Henrietta Sandes (1847-1934):
‘She answered by return of post The invitation of her host. She caught the train she said she would And changed at junctions as she should.
She brought a small and lightish box With keys that fitted in the locks. Food rich and rare she did not beg But ate the boiled and scrambled egg. When offered lukewarm tea, she drank it And did not crave an extra blanket Nor extra pillows for her head. She said she LIKED the spare room bed. She brought her own self-filling pen And always went to bed at ten. She left no little things behind But stories new and gossip kind.’
What wise words! The Old Un pledges to learn them off by heart before inflicting himself on anyone this summer.
An oldie New Yorker has won a great triumph over bad-taste yoga in Manhattan.
Long-time Oldie reader Susan Schwarz told the Old Un, ‘Toward the end of our yoga session, the lithe, supple, young instructor instructed the class to prepare for our final resting place! The yoga term is savasana – literally ‘corpse pose’ – assumed at the end of the yoga practice.
‘My age [82] has made me sensitive to certain terminology and that phrase stuck in my craw. I suggested that the class finale should be described as a final relaxation pose.’
Out of deference to a distinguished oldie, the yoga studio has changed the name. Perhaps it might become a rather good euphemism for death: ‘How’s David?’ ‘I’m afraid he’s in his final relaxation pose.’
The Old Un enjoyed a pleasant afternoon with this magazine’s most unsung regular contributor, Melvyn Dover.
Our Not Many Dead column (Melvyn supplied the third item on this page) asks readers for unintentionally amusing headlines; most come from the local press. Many readers send the occasional cutting, but none can compare to Melvyn, who bombards us with seven or eight headlines a day!
Melvyn, 63, has been a man of many parts: computer expert, songwriter, stand-up comedian, scriptwriter, novelist and film-maker. As well as being a headlinehunter, he has written thrillers, greetings-cards slogans, and one-liners for DJS and veteran Irish comic Jimmy Cricket.
The Old Un visited the nerve centre of his operations, an upstairs room in his unassuming Weymouth home, filled with files, books and computers. He showed me his online system for scanning the nation’s newspaper headlines – something to which he devotes up to four hours a day.
He scrolls down the screen at speed, instinctively lighting on potential Not Many Deads, as well as material to add to the latest (seventh) volume of his self-published headline collections.
Melvyn describes it as ‘sifting gravel for gold’… And some of the nuggets I watched him dig up included ‘Auction house sorry for “unfortunate” timing of D-day Nazi relics sale’ ( Bucks Free Press), ‘ “Love your verge” sign damaged by vandals’ ( Dorset Echo) and ‘Owner of
cat missing for five years makes fresh appeal’ ( Basingstoke Gazette).
Why does he do it? ‘The news is very much “We’re all doomed!”, so it’s good to find the lighter side of it,’ he explains. ‘And everyone loves a laugh.’
They’ve hit the dog days of summer at Southwark Park Gallery in south London.
This month sees the opening of their dog show (18th July-8th September). It’s an exhibition of contemporary art chosen by dogs for other dogs and their owners.
Judith Carlton, the gallery’s director, was struck by how many local residents walked their pets in the park surrounding her gallery. So
she put on a show to entice them inside. The curatorial process was unconventional.
‘The work was chosen through a conversation between a dog and their human companion,’ says Carlton. Her own Border Terrier, rescue dog Ruby, selected Martin Creed’s 2007 film work Orson and Sparky. ‘Ruby and I have very similar taste in contemporary art,’ she says.
Carlton’s 16 canine curators sniffed out the best. Spencer, a Labradoodle living with Whitechapel curator Habda Rashid, wagged his tail at two David Shrigleys. Agnes, a Bedlington Whippet belonging to curator Joyce Cronin, put her paw up for a Joan Jonas drawing.
Dogs will be allowed to wander round the gallery – and there’ll be fresh water in a bowl in the garden. Nothing but the best for the canine connoisseurs.
The Times recently cancelled Lindsey Bareham’s Dinner Tonight column after 12 years, citing the prevalence of online recipes. Still, despite the proliferation of food blogs and cooking apps, cookbook sales remain robust. Theresa May confessed to owning more than 150 cookery books.
The Cookbook Festival, the only one in the UK, will take place, for the second year running, alongside the Chiswick Book Festival (12th-16th September).
Lindsey Bareham will extol the virtues and versatility of the simple sausage. And The Oldie’s cookery writer, Elisabeth Luard, will recall the pleasures of a career spent cooking, and writing about, food.
Twenty years after retiring, Allan Clarke, 77, co-founder and former lead singer of the Hollies, has released a new single, Journey of Regret, to be followed in September by an album fittingly titled Resurgence.
The rock band was formed in December 1962 by Clarke and Graham Nash, friends and skiffle enthusiasts since primary school. In the 1960s and ’70s, they had a string of hits on both sides of the Atlantic, including I’m Alive, Carrie Anne and He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.
By 1999, Clarke’s high tenor voice was failing, and he no longer had the range for the Hollies’ distinctive three-part vocal harmonies.
In 2017, he began to write poetry again, and the lyrics flowed. He showed some to a friend, the painter (and ukulele player) Mick Rooney, who thought them ‘very dark – but why not try putting them to music?’
Clarke did, singing – four notes lower – into his computer, and found that the music flowed, too – especially once his son Toby had encouraged him to master recording, cutting and mixing techniques. The results were snapped up by music company BMG.
There may be no plans yet for a world tour, but plainly the Stones are not the only old rockers still rolling. Watch out, there’s a box bug about. Gardeners need to be vigilant to keep their topiary free from infestation as the box moth lays its eggs until October. Cydalima perspectalis, a moth from the Far East, has been wreaking havoc on box plants since the first UK sightings in 2007. These led to the grubbing out of parterres and hedges in historic gardens. There was devastation to wild box forests worldwide, with the mass destruction of boxwood, a vital component of many musical instruments.
The European Boxwood and Topiary Society (EBTS), in conjunction with the National Trust and the Royal Horticultural Society, is working on solutions to eradicate this pest. The EBTS has a useful guide and an online map where sightings of the moth or caterpillar attack can be tracked by postcode: www.ebts.org/bmctracker is the website.
Topiarist Annette Balfour Lynn recently found herself the centre of attention at a garden party in leafy Hampstead as she handed out pamphlets to gardeners worried about their box balls.
‘I can’t go past a hedge or planter now without having a good look,’ she said. ‘It sometimes gets me into trouble. On my way to the doctor, I saw a very sadlooking plant in an urn, and was poking around in it, when I heard a gentle cough. Turning round, I found two armed police officers looking at me. Realising I was next to Tony Blair’s house, I cried, “Just looking for caterpillars,” and fled.’ Steamy tragedy: Mary Ward
150 years ago, Mary Ward became the first of millions of car crash victims. On 31st August, 1869, she was the first known automobile fatality in the world, aged only 42.
The accident happened in County Offaly, Ireland. Along with Captain Henry Ward, and Randal and Clare Parsons, she was travelling on a road locomotive steam engine when it negotiated a sharp turn in Parsonstown – named after the Parsons family (also on the locomotive). Randal Parsons was the brother of local landowner, the Earl of Rosse. Parsonstown was renamed Birr in 1899.
The sharp corner meant Mrs Ward fell off and the locomotive drove over her. She died instantly.
Mary was a distinguished figure: an astronomer, writer and artist. Her greatgranddaughter Lalla Ward starred in Doctor Who, and married Tom Baker and Richard Dawkins.