Unfortunate Memorials
This made me laugh:
Telegraph - Only teenagers have teenage dreams, by Michael Henderson
There is something embarrassing, to be frank, unmanning, about the inscription on the memorial to John Peel, the broadcaster, who passed away four years ago. Freshly carved in a Suffolk graveyard, the stone reads: “Teenage dreams so hard to beat”.
Strictly speaking, there should be a comma after “dreams”, those phantoms that are, apparently, “so hard to beat”. But, whatever else he did in his 65 years, before his unfortunate death on holiday in Peru, Mr Peel did not speak strictly. On this occasion, therefore, and making further allowance for the fact that the line is borrowed from a pop song, it is permissible to overlook that solecism.
All the same, it is embarrassing. The man lived 65 years, and in that time he must have had the kind of experiences that bring a few drops of wisdom; at the very least, a smattering of self-knowledge. Yet he chose to be remembered by the words of a song that, like the adolescent dreams they are supposed to evoke, are thoroughly wet.
At which point, I was already sniggering, thinking, “I wonder if Rueful Red saw this…” But then, a few paragraphs later:
But no sentient being who has absorbed the lessons of life would ever submit to the sovereignty of “teenage dreams”. Child-like visions, by all means. Had Peel chosen to inscribe Winnie the Pooh on his memorial, or summoned the spirit of Ratty and Toad, that would have been all right. Innocence always trumps self-deception.
Heh heh heh.
Red has a Winnie the Pooh At a Wedding story that’s really quite entertaining. I think I’ll let him tell it when he gets back into work. Meanwhile, this article is awfully good:
One doesn’t necessarily expect a Wordsworthian invocation to see into “the life of things” from a man who spent his working life among the sharpies and ne’er-do-wells of the most venal industry in the world. A man who taught me was at Shrewsbury with Peel (or Ravenscroft, as he was known in those days), and remembered him as “the dimmest boy in school”.
…Yet, like so many young people who found their voice in the 1960s, and were indulged thereafter, he never really grew up.
A man who tells a television audience, as Peel did, “I wish I had the courage to be a terrorist”, to milk the applause of the credulous, forfeits the right to be taken seriously on any matter under the Sun. Worse, he presents himself to the world in the colours of a buffoon.
There is going to be a lot more buffoonery in the next few months, as the BBC pulls out all manner of expensive stops to mark the 40th anniversary of les événements. They will all be wheeled out again, the well-heeled Trots from Trottington Hall, to tell us how we got things so badly wrong back then, and how, if only we had got the revolution groove, baby, life would now be much sweeter. …
And self-deception is exactly what is wrong with that memorial. Its banal sentiment is not child-like, merely childish. Pop music speaks to teenagers because, green in judgment, they lack the emotional resources to respond to anything deeper. With helpful instruction, and a bit of curiosity, that should come with age, though in this case it didn’t.
And:
Funeral directors across the land have spoken with sadness in recent years of the lack of respect shown to the dead. The passing of loved ones used to release feelings of love, loss and reflection. Now they are just excuses to have a bit of a larf. Death: just one more reason to roll out the barrel.
It’s unusual to see The Telegraph, of all newspapers, speak so ill of the dead. But I guess in this case it’s appropriate for the topic.
February 16th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Forward all to: 1908 3rd Universe On Your Up
February 18th, 2008 at 2:05 am
John Peel spent his entire adult life listnening to pop music, almost all of it rubbish. (There’s a Radio 2 programme called “Sounds of the Sixties” which plays some of the less well-known stuff, some of which I half remember, and golly there was a load of rubbish about in those days!) It put me in mind of an article called “The Weasels of Pop” by Anthony (Clockwork Orange) Burgess in “Punch” in autumn 1967 in which he observed that disc jockeys suffered the terrible fate of having to be enthusiastic about any old pile of steaming wossname that turned up. In John Peel’s case the bloke took a perverse pride in this.
There’s a world of difference between the ghastly Winnie the Pooh (I’d have prosecuted AA Milne for child abuse) and the sublime “Wind in the Willows” which was written by a chap who was born 150 yards up the street from where I’m writing this. (He was born in the same house that had been lived in by Captain Duff of HMS Mars who was one of two ships’ captains killed at Trafalgar and who’s buried at Nelson’s feet in the crypt of St Paul’s.)
AA Milne seems to be favoured by people having “humanist” wedding ceremonies - it cropped up at two I was at last year. Gut-churningly annoying. Since ninme raised the subject, here’s what I wrote about it at the time:
Before the ceremony we foregathered in what had been the upper floor of the staple block, a long narrow room newly converted for the celebration of “civil ceremonies” ie register-office weddings that no longer have to take place in the register office (Thanks, Our Tone!). The “celebrant” was a middle-aged woman in a turquoise suit who welcomed us to the hotel and hoped we ‘d take the opportunity to make full use of the hotel’s extensive leisure facilities during our stay. Seated to one side like Mabel at the table was a large bespectacled woman who was introduced as something like an assistant registration officer or such like and who came with a big book to write in. Anyway, the bride arrived up the narrow stairs and then by way of introduction the happy couple were given a brief little chat by Turquoise Suit about how important marriage is and how it should ideally be for ever. Then a friend was invited from the audience - definitely not the congregation - and gave us this:
US TWO by A. A. Milne Wherever I am, there’s always Pooh, There’s always Pooh and Me. Whatever I do, he wants to do, “Where are you going today?” says Pooh: “Well, that’s very odd ‘cos I was too. Let’s go together,” says Pooh, says he. “Let’s go together,” says Pooh.
“What’s twice eleven?” I said to Pooh. (”Twice what?” said Pooh to Me.) “I think it ought to be twenty-two.” “Just what I think myself,” said Pooh. “It wasn’t an easy sum to do, But that’s what it is,” said Pooh, said he. “That’s what it is,” said Pooh.
“Let’s look for dragons,” I said to Pooh. “Yes, let’s,” said Pooh to Me. We crossed the river and found a few – “Yes, those are dragons all right,” said Pooh. “As soon as I saw their beaks I knew. That’s what they,” said Pooh, said he. “That’s what they are,” said Pooh.
“Let’s frighten the dragons,” I said to Pooh. “That’s right,” said Pooh to Me. “I’m not afraid,” I said to Pooh, And I held his paw and I shouted “Shoo! Silly old dragons!” — and off they flew. “I wasn’t afraid,” said Pooh, said he, “I’m never afraid with you.”
So wherever I am, there’s always Pooh, There’s always Pooh and Me. “What would I do?” I said to Pooh, “If it wasn’t for you,” and Pooh said: “True, It isn’t much fun for One, but Two Can stick together,” say Pooh, says he. “That’s how it is,” says Pooh.
Well, as you’ll imagine, internally at least, I was in full Simon Callow mode from “Four Weddings”. OK, maybe it was too much to have expected “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” (though on reflection, no, it bloody well wasn’t), but this piece of inanity by the world’s worst English bourgeois nursery writer was really just too much. I fell into a kind of daze, frankly, missing the next reading but catching more than enough to know it was an extended exercise in greeting card verse. I mean, how can you use such an inanity as AA Milne at a wedding? Make-believe adventure as a metaphor for marriage? OK, you can describe marriage as an adventure but I’ll tell you, Missus, make-believe it most definitely ain’t. Or if ever it is, it ain’t for long.
February 18th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Hehehehe