Birdspeed

Squawk. Vroom. What's the fastest bird in the world? 

That's not the lead in to a joke, by the way. And the answer is not the swift, for that doesn't even make the top five, despite its impressive maximum airspeed of 100 miles per hour (or 160km/h if you prefer). 

When it comes to  birdspeed , the accolade goes to the peregrine, a falcon which is capable of speeds in excess of an astonishing 240mph (or 385 km/h). That's faster than the quickest F1 racing car (233mph or 375 km/h) and only slightly slower than the WWII Hawker Hurricane, the first RAF plane to fly in excess of 300mph (480 km/h). Some physicists have calculated that theoretically the peregrine might be capable of even higher speeds at altitude, of up to 380mph (608 km/h). That's simply mind-boggling. 

As well as being the fastest bird, the peregrine (the falcon part is optional) is also the quickest of all animals on the planet. No wonder then that it was revered by the Ancient Egyptians as the god Horus.

a peregrine soaring

The peregrine (Falco peregrinus) is a raptor, or bird of prey. It is the second most widespread bird species on earth, being found everywhere except in the polar extremities and New Zealand. Before you ask, the most widespread bird is the pigeon - which is good news for the peregrine, because its diet consists almost exclusively of birds, and pigeon makes up the majority of its food, though it will also eat any other medium-sized birds it can get its claws on (waterfowl, game birds, seabirds, songbirds, waders, the lot).

The peregrine has a body length between 12 and 24 inches (34 to 58cm) and a wingspan from  29 to 47 inches (74 to 120cm). The male and female have similar markings and plumage but, as with many birds of prey, the peregrine displays marked sexual dimorphism in size, the female being up to 30% larger and heavier than the male. Peregrines can live for up to twenty years in the wild, though mortality rates are high in the first few years (50 to 75% of birds don't make it to two years old). 

As mentioned, the peregrine subsists mainly on other birds. It catches most of its prey on the wing, which is where its diving skills and incredible airspeed come in. It will hover above and then swoop.  With a force of up to 25g acting on its little body, it's amazing it doesn't black out or get shredded by the buffeting air as it descends. It clips its prey in one wing, to minimise the force of impact.

a peregrine diving

The fact that it remains intact is down to its incredible aerodynamic efficiency, its very powerful beak and the streamlined shape it maintains in the dive. Its nostrils are protected by small bony tubercles which guide the powerful airflow away from the intakes, enabling it to breathe more easily by reducing the change in air pressure. In addition, it uses a third eyelid to spread tears and clear debris from the eyes while maintaining vision. And the peregrine has a flicker fusion frequency of 129 Hz (cycles per second), which is very fast for a bird of its size, and much faster than mammals. All of which makes it the perfect hunting bird. And it is no coincidence that the most modern American stealth fighter plane mimics the peregrine's aerodynamic lines. The B-2 Spirit has an airspeed of 628mph (1010 km/h)

American B-2 'Spirit' stealth fighter

Just for the sake of completeness, the other four birds that have recorded a faster airspeed than the swift are the saker falcon, golden eagle, grey-headed albatross and the gyrfalcon. But bear in mind that all of the above achieve that remarkable velocity while diving. The record for the fastest confirmed level flight by a bird is 69.3 mph (111.5 km/h) and that is held by the common swift.

If you want to read a poem about a falcon, I refer you to Gerard Manley Hopkins' brilliant 'The Windhover', though the "dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon" of his poem was actually a kestrel. 

My new poem takes an altogether different approach to the week's theme, and it comes with the usual caveat about it being a first draft/work in progress. It's a narrative poem based on a true event, the night I didn't get to see Josef K's London debut at a Camden music venue...

Birdspeed

Dim lights,  black walls,  a DJ in thrall

to the high water mark of sixties jangle

as prologue to the new sound  in  town.

There's a buzz in the club for these four

Scottish lads and I stand, beer in hand,

when one of their tribe, by the sound of

her brogue, engages me in conversation

about how your feet stick to this floor 

and do I have their album? do I like it?

She tells me how great they are live, more

potent in  person, loud,  raw and  sexy, and

ready to conquer all. I might smile at her

monologue, don't recall later if I gave

any other sign of encouragement, and

suddenly I'm pinned to the wall as she

presses herself hard against me, hands

either side of my face, kissing with her

tongue probing my mouth. I'm shocked.

Is this Scottish for seduction? She's not

unattractive, but that's not the point. I'm 

locked in an embrace with someone I've 

only just met, don't even know her name 

yet and it feels presumptuous, predatory,

feral, as if I've been swooped on from a

great height by a bright-eyed bird of prey

and it's not at all a turn on, I can tell you.

I squirm out of her clutches, mutter about

just needing to do something, head for the

gents for respite, buy time buying condoms.

She'll have eyes on the door, for sure, and

though |I've never done it before, climbing

out the window seems the best bet, a tight

fit, but I'm out in the yard  breathing hard

in cold night air,  then over a wall and slip 

off into the safety of a Camden night, taste

of her Southern Comfort on my bruised lips.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Speed

I’ve just checked Planefinder as there’s a plane going over Preston at the moment and I’ve looked to check where it’s going and how fast it’s going. It’s on its way to Toronto and it’s going at a speed of 487 kts. As in knots which is a unit of speed, equal to exactly one nautical mile (nm) per hour. Which doesn’t really help. Let me go back a bit.

I was a sucker for Long John Silver and voyages to far-away places like the Coral Island but there was a down side to these long journeys in real life because sailors could soon lose track of where they were and many died due to scurvy and lack of fresh water. Unless they knew their speed they could end up miles away from where they thought they were.

Camila Caballero, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains thus:
‘With no landmarks to gauge their progress across the open sea, sailors couldn’t tell how fast or how far they were travelling,’ But when the nautical mile — 1.852 kilometres — was introduced in the 15th century, they had a handy standard against which to measure speed and created out of necessity the log, the world’s first maritime speedometer. ‘They used materials they had on hand, she explains. ‘A wedge-shaped piece of wood, a small glass timer, and a really long rope.’ The rope was knotted at intervals of 47 feet and 3 inches.

measuring a ship's speed

John Prescott, Cutty Sark volunteer, tells us:
To determine distance, early navigators recorded the ship’s speed regularly, once every half an hour or more. To do this, they dropped a measuring device known as a log into the sea from the stern of the ship. All ships, including Cutty Sark, used a similar method until more advanced mechanical instruments were introduced in the twentieth century.

The log is made up of a wooden, weighted, triangular drag device that stays stationary in the sea, known as the ‘ship’ or ‘chip’, and a line on a spool that is unwound as the ship sails away from the chip. The officer of the watch, with sandglass in hand, times the log as the line runs out and shouts ‘Belay!’ at a specified interval.

‘Hand the log!’ is then shouted and the sailors start hauling the log in. The line is divided by evenly spaced knots which act as markers. On hearing the order, the seaman watching at the stern checks how many knots in the rope have passed into the sea in the given time, thereby providing a reading of the ship’s speed in knots.

If the speed measured by logline is 9 knots and the wind has stayed constant in strength and direction for the half hour since the log was last streamed to measure the speed, then, as 1 knot is equal to 1 nm/hour, the distance travelled in that time is 4.5 nm.

constituent parts of the 'log'

Speed is equal to distance divided by time. If you know the distance travelled (by measuring the amount of logline that has been dropped into the sea) and the time elapsed (from the officer of the watch’s sandglass), the calculation is relatively easy.

The top recorded speed of Cutty Sark, for instance, was more than 17 knots a speed many power-driven merchant ships today cannot achieve (although remember, Cutty Sark needed a favourable and constant breeze to sail at that speed, such as the Trade winds).

To convert use this: 1 knot = 1.15078 miles per hour

Interestingly the knot is an almost universal term, with identical or similar sounding words in many languages, such as knoten (German), nudo (Spanish) and notto (Japanese).

I do have a poem that mentions knots.

Au Revoir
(for Julie)

I’ve waited until
the tracker tells me
you’re over Moulin Huet Bay
09.27hrs
278.9 knots
32,520 feet
17,108 kilometres
to go home

but far too cloudy today
to see last Thursday
strolling its Bailiwick heart
down Ruettes Tranquilles
grateful for the shade
you gliding your hand
along moss ridden walls
telling me they’re capillaries
furred with curiosity
slowing us down

down to a Tea Room
that deserves its capital letters
where a tuna salad took you
less time to demolish
than a wave crashing on rocks
from our perfect view
of Renoir’s blues browns greens
and Guernsey’s sparse white clouds
without a single contrail
to break the spell.

First published in the French Literary Review, March 2019

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Picnic On The Grass

The latest Penguin Classics newsletter dropped into my mailbox this week, reminding me that "Picnic season has arrived. The countryside is alive with creaking hampers, popping Tupperware and clanking bottles. The usual rules of etiquette relax at a picnic, which allows for childish fun, young love and sometimes exquisite embarrassment."

It goes on to cite a series of literary picnics through the ages from Goldsmith's 'The Vicar of Wakefield', Jane Austen's 'Emma',  Tolstoy's 'Childhood' and Lewis Carroll's 'Alice...', to Joyce's 'Ulysses', even Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty Four' and Nabokov's 'Lolita'. 

I've read all of the above, and I must say those picnic episodes are not particularly firmly embedded in memory. So thank you, Penguin Classics, but I will be pursuing a more visual approach to the week's theme, taking Edouard Manet's famous 1863 composition 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' (Luncheon on the grass) as a starting point to examine, in pastiche art representations, how the world and picnicking have changed through the years.

the original Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, painting by Edouard Manet, 1863

Manet's painting was rejected by the Paris Salon which refused to show it at their annual summer exhibition at the Académie des Beaux-Arts on the grounds of poor taste. They called it "scandalous", a ruling that merely served to generate interest in the painter and his painting, which considerably enhanced Manet's reputation. 

Originally titled 'Le Bain' (The Bath), Manet's provocative composition went on to become both critically acclaimed and world famous among the ranks of impressionist paintings. Some even see it as the beginning of Modern Art. He rendered several copies of it. The original is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris but there is also a version in London's Courtauld Gallery if you're interested.

Of course, cars didn't exist when Manet painted his picnic tableau. In those days, journeys to the Bois de Boulogne, supposedly where his scene was set, would have been by horse-drawn carriage (not shown). The first automobiles didn't materialise until the tail-end of the 19th century. However, by the 1930s they were a fairly common sight and so Robert Doisneau who, along with Henri Cartier-Bresson) was one of the leading photographers of the inter-war years, was happy to feature a couple of cars in his witty 1936 photo-homage.

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, photograph by Robert Doisneau, 1936

No nudity this time, no lake and not a trace of bohemianism. Instead, a couple of happy and wholesome bourgeois families (with child) enjoying seemingly affluent times and a picnic of good wine, cheeses, bread and quiche on the grass in the woods near Paris. It is no coincidence that the car most obviously featured is a Renault, for among his other portfolio clients, Doisneau was the in-house photographer for the Renault car company. 

In hindsight, that image of peaceful prosperity and contentment gains a degree of ironic resonance for its naive innocence, given that within three years France and Europe would be plunged into the most destructive and terrible war. Doisneau unwittingly captured the calm before that storm.

After the war, Alain Jacquet (who had been born months before the outbreak of hostilities) emerged in the 1960s as a leading artist of the Nouvelle Figuration school in France, a movement that was allied to the US Pop Art brigade. Jacquet divided his time between New York and Paris and taught at the latter's École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. He was married to Sophie Matisse, great-granddaughter of the artist Henri Matisse.

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, painting by Alain Jacquet, 1964

Jacquet was well-known for using motifs from older, famous paintings as a starting point for his subversive creations. He is perhaps most famous for his 'camouflage' series of pop art depictions of Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus', but he also chose to paint a mid-20th century take on Manet's famous outdoor luncheon party. 

It is much more precisely mannered than many of his paintings, closely reproducing Manet's posing of the three figures in the foreground. Of course, they are by a swimming pool, a fake lake, and any trees are relegated to the background, for this industrial-era American Dream is an altogether more sterile pastoral. Does it help to know that the two men featured are the Italian painter Mario Schifano and the French art critic Pierre Restany? Possibly not. Just for the record, the woman is Restany's wife, Jeannine de Goldschmidt, and the girl on the far side of the pool is her sister. For the picnic there is fruit, a knife and bread, but no wine. That loaf of sliced bread is in a packet bearing Jacquet's name.

The artist was an habitué of the bohemian Chelsea Hotel during his early stays in New York and left the owner a copy of the painting as settlement for his hotel bill.

Manet's painting continued to intrigue and inspire artists well into the 21st century. There are many picnic parodies and pastiches out there, cartoons, collages, film clips, paintings, photographs, even sculpted recreations. It's probably the second most re-invented image after the Mona Lisa. 

What is the abiding attraction? Is it the incongruity of the clothed and the undressed? That's possibly the strongest trigger. As for what the various depictions tell us about how civilisation progresses, I found this final image, a photographic representation from the covid years, quite a telling and rather depressing take.

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, photograph by Le Tondeuse, 2020

It's almost a composite of 'Le déjeuner sur l'herbe' and the 'Birth of Venus' as Le Tondeuse (the lawnmower) presents a rather trashy take on theme. That's not much of a luncheon or picnic, mostly beer and coca cola and some cuts of cold meat. Two of the company are smoking and look bored, and two others are looking slightly uncomfortable, as if they are all trying to ignore the naked Venus posed behind them. Is this a picture of 21st century ennui and disconnection? At least there are trees. Thank goodness for the trees.

I really wanted to write a new poem to accompany today's blog but I'm down in London celebrating my oldest daughter's 40th birthday. We went to Vauxhall Park, though we didn't take a picnic. The ground is baked hard and the grass is a dried beige. So in lieu of something by me, here's another picnic poem by renowned American poet Amy Clampitt.  

A Hermit Thrush

Nothing's certain. Crossing, on this longest day,

the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up 

 the scree-slope of what at high tide 

will be again an island, 

 to where, a decade since well-being staked 

 the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us 

 back, year after year, lugging the 

 makings of another picnic— 

the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctified 

fig newtons—there's no knowing what the slamming 

seas, the gales of yet another winter 

may have done. Still there, 

 the gust-beleaguered single spruce tree, 

 the ant-thronged, root-snelled moss, grass 

 and clover tuffet underneath it, 

 edges frazzled raw 

but, like our own prolonged attachment, holding. 

Whatever moral lesson might commend itself, 

there's no use drawing one, 

there's nothing here 

to seize on as exemplifying any so-called virtue 

(holding on despite adversity, perhaps) or 

any no-more-than-human tendency— 

stubborn adherence, say, 

to a wholly wrongheaded tenet. Though to 

hold on in any case means taking less and less 

for granted, some few things seem nearly 

certain, as that the longest day 

will come again, will seem to hold its breath, 

the months-long exhalation of diminishment 

again begin. Last night you woke me 

for a look at Jupiter, 

that vast cinder wheeled unblinking 

in a bath of galaxies. Watching, we traveled 

toward an apprehension all but impossible 

to be held onto— 

that no point is fixed, that there's no foothold 

but roams untethered save by such snells, 

such sailor's knots, such stays 

and guy wires as are 

mainly of our own devising. From such an 

empyrean, aloof seraphic mentors urge us 

to look down on all attachment, 

on any bonding, as 

in the end untenable. Base as it is, from 

year to year the earth's sore surface 

mends and rebinds itself, however 

and as best it can, with 

thread of cinquefoil, tendril of the magenta 

beach pea, trammel of bramble; with easings, 

mulchings, fragrances, the gray-green 

bayberry's cool poultice— 

and what can't finally be mended, the salt air 

proceeds to buff and rarefy: the lopped carnage 

of the seaward spruce clump weathers 

lustrous, to wood-silver. 

Little is certain, other than the tide that 

circumscribes us that still sets its term 

to every picnic—today we stayed too long 

again, and got our feet wet— 

and all attachment may prove at best, perhaps, 

a broken, a much-mended thing. Watching 

the longest day take cover under 

a monk's-cowl overcast, 

with thunder, rain and wind, then waiting, 

we drop everything to listen as a 

hermit thrush distills its fragmentary, 

hesitant, in the end 

unbroken music. From what source (beyond us, or 

the wells within?) such links perceived arrive— 

diminished sequences so uninsistingly 

not even human—there's 

hardly a vocabulary left to wonder, uncertain 

as we are of so much in this 

existence, this botched, cumbersome, much-mended,

not unsatisfactory thing.

                                                          Amy Clampitt (1920-1994(

a detail from Raphael's Judgement of Paris, 1510

By the way, even Manet's composition for 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' is based on a section in the bottom right hand quadrant of Raphael's 'Judgement Of Paris'. 

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Picnic Time For Teddy Bears

Back in December 2024 I wrote about the film ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ as my contribution to the ‘Disappearing Act’ theme. I mostly remembered the atmosphere it conjured up when I first saw it back in around 1976. Here’s the link: Disappearing Act

And today is the 10th July 2026 and I was surprised and very delighted to find that when I looked up information to get a start on this week’s theme of Picnic I found that it is actually ‘National Teddy Bear Picnic Day’. Apparently it is celebrated all round the world and especially in the woods near you and me.

The Teddy Bears' Picnic

I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here but if I asked you what sound would the BBC Radio Engineers have used in 1932 to test equipment? Well, they used a sound produced by a Henry Hall recording of especially good quality with a large tonal range. It was used for more than 30 years by BBC audio engineers (up until the early 1960s) to aurally assess the frequency response of audio equipment.

Well done to anyone who answers ‘The Teddy Bear’s Picnic’. I didn’t know.

But why are they Teddy Bears? It turns out that when U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt, was on a hunting trip in 1902 he refused to shoot a bear cub that had been tied up for him, deeming it unsportsmanlike. This act of compassion was widely publicized and inspired toy makers to create our first toy bears, naming them 'Teddy's bears' in his honour.

'Teddy' Roosevelt spares the bear

Anyway, back to the picnic bit. Not long after the above, in 1907, ‘The Teddy Bears' Picnic’ was composed as a melody by composer John Walter Bratton, and then lyrics were added in 1932 by songwriter Jimmy Kennedy. Kennedy lived at Staplegrove Elm and is buried in Staplegrove Church, in Taunton, Somerset. Local folklore has it that the small wooded area between the church and Staplegrove Scout Hut was the inspiration for his lyrics.

You would not believe the number of artists who have recorded both the melodic version and the vocal version. That first vocal version had Val Rosing singing Kennedy's lyrics. The song has been subsequently recorded by Bing Crosby, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Rosemary Clooney, Jerry Garcia, John Inman, Anne Murray, Bad Manners and Drastic Measures.

And that’s without references to it in popular culture. It appears briefly in the musical score by Robert Israel to accompany Buster Keaton's 1926 silent film The General, used as background music in the Looney Tunes cartoons, the song appears in the movie adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The song can be briefly heard in the 1968 Doctor Who episode The Invasion, Dad's Army uses the song in an episode from 1970 called The Big Parade. The Henry Hall version was featured in the Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective from 1986. It features in Peter Greenaway's 1986 film A Zed & Two Noughts and it is mentioned in Peaky Blinders.

Enough of lists.

I’ve had my bear since I don’t know when, his name is Stephen. He has just given me a bit of a rocket for suggesting earlier that he is a toy.

Not much of a choice for the poem of the week.

Jimmy Kennedy

The Teddy Bears’ Picnic

If you go down to the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise.
If you go down to the woods today
You'd better go in disguise.
For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain,
Because today's the day
The teddy bears have their picnic.

Picnic time for teddy bears,
The little teddy bears
Are having a lovely time today.
Watch them, catch them unawares
And see them picnic on their holiday.
See them gaily gad about,
They love to play and shout,
They never have any cares.
At six o'clock their mummies and daddies
Will take them home to bed,
Because they're tired little teddy bears.

If you go down to the woods today
You'd better not go alone.
It's lovely down in the woods today
But safer to stay at home.
For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain,
Because today's the day
The teddy bears have their picnic.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q (and Stephen).

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Picnic - Special Memories

This is it, that perfect summer picnic weather is here, and what are we doing? Complaining about the heat and how draining it is to feel constantly clammy. Yes, I’m guilty of moaning, too, but I’m trying to be positive and enjoy the sunshine that we spend more than half the year waiting for. Soon, the schools will break up and there will be a promised trip to the zoo for a certain grandson’s birthday treat and that will include a picnic.

I have fond memories of glorious Sunday afternoons as a child, on picnics with my family and their friends. We were all in the licenced trade and pubs closed on Sundays between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. in those days. Most of us lived around the Morecambe and Lancaster area. Heysham was a popular place for us, or Crook ‘o Lune, Littledale, Glasson Dock. We would all meet up, men comparing cars while women set the food out. Sandwiches galore, potted meat, chicken paste, tinned salmon or cheese. Cake, biscuits and what we still call picky bits. Everyone brought something to share, and Nanna’s tablecloth would be used for the food. We sat on tartan car rugs, spread out round the tablecloth. Flasks of tea were poured into cups that were also lids. 

I had a bottle of diluted squash or cordial. Living in a pub, you’d expect me to have the choice of any soft drink, but that isn’t how it worked. I was rarely allowed anything fizzy, just the occasional blackcurrant and lemonade in a Babycham glass, with a cherry. I couldn’t have carried that in the car, not that it would last very long. At this point in my life, younger than seven, I was the only child and I’m sure everyone loved me. I’d share my time and affection between grandparents, and relatives. Aunty Beryl allowed me to explore her gold charm bracelet for hours on end – it would take so long to get round all the tiny charms. I would have books with me, colouring things and probably a couple of dolls. I was well-behaved. I don’t remember ever getting told off. Believe me, I would remember if I’d been in trouble. I was brought up with boundaries, and my mother had a look I wouldn’t want to see.

I don’t remember being bored, either. We lived in different times, but very happy ones. Just one thing, though; the horrible smell of tea or coffee in a flask was enough to put me off. A flask of hot water and sachets of ‘2in1’ Nescafe, these days.

Sometimes, I make a buffet on a summer’s day when the grandchildren are here. They call it ‘picnic tea’ which is an excellent description. They gather whatever they want to eat and take it to wherever they’d like to eat it, inside or outside and keep coming back for more. Children tucking into good food. It’s all this nanna needs.

My Haiku poem of long-gone days,

We knew how to spend
A lovely, sunny Sunday
All together, then.

With food a-plenty,
A family gathering,
Sitting on car rugs.

Salmon sandwiches,
Potted meat or chicken paste?
Sausage roll, pork pie?

Let’s see, who would like
An ice-cream at Glasson Dock?
And a look at boats?

The gang is all here,
Fun and laughter fills the air.
Making memories.

PMW 2026

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Moustaches

By the summer of 1966, the Beatles had grown weary of the worldwide phenomenon they had become, the claims that such unprecedented levels of fame made upon them, and the dehumanising effects of touring in particular. They played their last live concert on 29th August 1966 in San Francisco and vowed never again.

Tired of being four fresh-faced mop-top caricatures to be screamed at, chased, mauled and treated like public property everywhere they went, following their return to England they decided to disappear for a while, distance themselves from the maelstrom of Beatlemania, and reset.

Step one was to grow moustaches (see below). Acquiring facial hair was a straightforward and symbolic move away from their cute boyband image. They were all in their mid-twenties by now anyway, and the current interest in and vogue for Edwardiana clothes and styling made the adoption of this more mature look an obvious one. 

moustaches on parade

It's telling that all four of them made the same move, as did many in their close support group, and then many of their male fans. It became a badge of Beatle brotherhood for a period of a few months in 1966 going into 1967.

Step two was to pretend - at least to themselves - that they weren't The Beatles anymore but an entity that became known as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, based on the brass bands that had played at weekends and on special national occasions in those municipal bandstands that had sprung up in Britain's parks through Victorian and Edwardian times.

The new LP was to be a concept  album of sorts, a very loose one in musical terms, allowing Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starkey to adopt personae, literary and musical masks that freed them to an extent from what had gone before. In reality, only the title track, its reprise and a few connecting snippets lived up to that initial vision. 

They were photographed for the album artwork in March 1967 decked out in band regalia and sporting moustaches just as their Edwardian musical predecessors may have done (though The Beatles had longer hair). They appeared on the front cover of the LP not as The Beatles but as members of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, clutching a variety of appropriate brass and woodwind instruments. There was even a sheet of cardboard cut-outs included with the LP that fans could snip round and put on, including badges, epaulettes and a moustache. (Its tabs got rather soggy after a couple of wears.)

part of a photoshoot for the Sergeant Pepper LP cover

The LP was released at the beginning of June. For a brief, shining moment in the summer of 1967 we could all play along with the game. It was the Summer Of Love and happiness reigned all around. 'Sgt. Pepper...' was hailed as a revelation and a revolution. It was proclaimed a masterpiece. It went on to become one of the most famous and iconic records of all time. It certainly freed The Beatles from their past - though I still prefer its predecessor 'Revolver' for sheer ground-breaking genius.

What is interesting to me is that by the time of the press launch party for the album, at Brian Epstein's London mews flat in May, weeks before the LP hit the shops, Paul McCartney had already shaved his moustache off (see below). He had been the first to grow one (ostensibly to hide a scar from a riding accident he had in1966) and then to encourage the others, for reasons explained above. But why to jettison it so soon while the other three retained theirs for months? Maybe Jane Asher held the key.

May 1967 Pepper press launch party

John was the next to shed his and by the time of filming Magical Mystery Tour that autumn, only George and Ringo were still sporting the moustaches to which they'd obviously become very attached.

After the four of them went to India in 1968, then there was stubble and beards - but that's another story.

While I've been working on this blog, my lovely eight year old Dell Inspiron laptop has been encountering problems: no space left on the C drive even after I've moved all my pictures and documents to detachable pen drives and run disk clean-up and space optimisation software. I put it down to all the increasingly complex functionality that has been arriving in recent Windows updates.

Anyway, long story short (and nothing to do with moustaches), I decided to turn to the wisdom of the interweb to see if there were any other tricks to identify and then uninstall unnecessary files. I typed into Google 'How to get rid of...' and before I'd got any further it bounced straight back with what are clearly the top two searches, in a kind endeavour to save me typing anything more.

Those top two searches?  1. How to get rid of cellulite and 2. How to get rid of your wife.

I thought wow! There's a poem in that. And here it is. I nearly called it 'Trouble And Strife' but it's now:

Meet The Googles*

Want to know the main concerns

of modern married folk in their forties?

Same as always, it seems.

I typed 'How to get rid of...'

into my trusty search engine and presto...

the top two most frequent requests are:

'How to get rid of cellulite'

and 

'How to get rid of your wife'

If ever there was a contemporary 

encapsulation

of that age old divide

the battle of the sexes

and how it's plied,

you have it right there.

* in the honourable tradition of Meet The Beatles, Meet The Fokkers etc.

As a musical bonus, here's a link to a Beatles song that might have been on the Pepper LP except it got released as a single. Of course it references barbers and shaving and the video has those moustaches. . Just click on the song title: Penny Lane

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Turkish Moustaches

The curious case of the disappearing Turkish military moustache

I was recently passing a hot afternoon on a guided tour of the museum at Selimiye Barracks in Istanbul. (No one has ever accused me of being normal.)

I was a kind of support worker on a medical tour. We were from a small cruise boat exploring the eastern Mediterranean. Most of the participants were over seventy and some were octogenarians or even nonagenarians. My role was, in part, to help them on their trip, which was primarily designed to visit museums and the ruined sites of archaeological interest, such as asclepieia (healing centres in the ancient world), and it wasn’t the sort of experience I’m likely to forget.

‘Keith, hold on. I can’t find my hat. I can’t go out in the sun without it.’

‘You’re wearing it, Michael.’

‘Ah, yes, good. That’s a relief... Oh, no, it’s not that! I meant my stick. I need my stick.’

‘I’ll get it for you. When did you last have it, Michael?’

‘I’m not sure. It might be with my passport...’

‘Ok, Where’s your passport?’

‘I’ve no idea. I can’t find my passport either.’

Since we visited Istanbul, Gallipoli, Troy, Pergamum, Ephesus, Bodrum, Kos, Rhodes, Syros, Nafplion, Epidauros, Mycenae and Athens in just a couple of weeks, it was all educational and great fun but pretty exhausting. The trip ended in Athens and I remember 87-year-old Rachel leaning, conspiratorially, towards me and saying, ‘I’m so disappointed I couldn’t make it right to the top of the Acropolis. But I’ve been before, many years ago: and that ouzo bar you took me to last night was much better!’

Back to the plot. When we all leapt from the coach at the barracks – you can picture the scene – we were herded into a waiting area, because Selimiye is an active military headquarters and administrative establishment and under strict army rules. You can only get in with special permission.

(As an aside: everyone has to do military service in Türkiye. For six months. Unless you can afford to pay the equivalent of £5,200, in which case you only have to do 28 days. George Orwell was right, of course. As ever. Some are more equal, everywhere you go.)

Anyway, a very smart-looking soldier was to be our guide. He told us to line up, in ranks of four: we were to proceed, in a militarily precise formation, to the museum building. I wonder if anyone reading this has ever attempted to harness the myriad disabilities of forty aged former medical consultants and dentists along two hundred yards of scorched pathways, keeping them in lines, up slopes and round obstructions? No, thought not - but the image of them scattered like disorientated First World War casualties along what seemed a vast expanse of roadway will linger long in my memory.

Finally inside the museum, we stood respectfully in wide corridors where hundreds of injured British soldiers had lain during the Crimean War (1853 -1856), when the Turks were our allies against the Russians. It used to be called the Scutari Barracks Hospital and was where Florence Nightingale began to establish her reputation, having previously run the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Harley Street in London.

I’d visited the place before and knew we ended up climbing a short spiral staircase to the room in which the Lady with the Lamp used to work. It is now much as it was then. Her actual carpet and chair are there, as well as her desk, with her notes upon it; and there are extracts from her handwritten writings, framed, on the walls. The view from the window, right to the Bosphorus, is stunning. She would have been able to look down and see, in the distance, wounded soldiers being unloaded from transports at the wharf.

However, it was the room from which you climb to Nightingale’s study that particularly held my attention on this occasion. It serves as a memorial to Turkish soldiers who died in the Crimean War, the First World War and the War of Independence (1919 – 1923), which was fought in a confusing scenario against the UK, Greece, Armenia, France, Italy and the collapsed Ottoman Empire and which established the Republic of Türkiye. Around two of the walls runs a floor-to-ceiling metal frieze of very human moments from the conflicts, and there are free-standing life-size tableaux, including cannons and the men firing them, and Nightingale is there too.

Florence Nightingale and wounded soldier tableau

One moving representation is of a Turkish soldier carrying an injured British enemy from the battlefield in WW1.

In that war, the man who became the greatest Turkish hero, Mustafa Kamal, known as ‘Ataturk’, made his reputation by repulsing the allied forces at Gallipoli, out-marshalling Churchill and his commanders and, after thousands of casualties on both sides, forcing the invaders to withdraw. The remaining British and Empire forces might well have been massacred during the evacuation, but it’s believed the Turks, who had held the heights throughout eight months of fighting, simply allowed them to retreat.

That is credible, because Ataturk was an unusual and special man.

To slightly mis-quote Shakespeare, ‘he bestrid his world like a Colossus’

When independence was achieved in 1923, he founded the Republic and served as its president until his death in 1938. He was forward-thinking and probably as ‘woke’ as it was possible to be back then. He modernised the country, shifting it into the twentieth century and making it westward-looking. Türkiye became a secular state and he introduced equal rights for women. He was revered and still is today. On the anniversary of his death, the country comes to a halt for two minutes at the time he died. Traffic stops and people stand in silent tribute.

As you stare at the frieze and tableaux in the museum, it is instantly apparent you are looking at Turkish soldiers. Some wear the fez – which Ataturk sensibly decided was no way to protect your head in modern warfare, and banned – and all of them, each soldier, sports a luxuriant and mightily impressive moustache, thicker than a ‘Freddie Mercury’ in every case, better harnessed than a ‘Dave Bedford’ (for those who remember the great runner) and perhaps akin to a ‘Graeme Souness’, so they might all have played for Liverpool FC in the late 1970s.

However, in 1923 Ataturk also banned the wearing of moustaches in the armed forces. It was one very small part of his plan to leave the past behind and focus the state on being part of the new world. As a consequence, all the soldiers we saw at the barracks were immaculately clean-shaven. Traditionally, the Turks had believed that his moustache gave a soldier courage and strength; the more prolific the growth, the greater the resilience of the man wearing it. Ataturk told them that when times get tough what really matters is mental attitude and professionalism. You can’t rely on facial hair to bring you victories; especially, I suppose, when the enemy’s armed with machine guns and tanks...

We left Selimiye and Istanbul and all its glories and sailed south through the Dardanelles and away. Our daily trips from the boat continued, of course, and our brilliantly lucid but extremely antique cruisers coped incredibly well and on a daily basis with the difficulties they encountered on the sites we visited: miles of often extremely rough ground and steps and obstacles, as well as intense heat.

At times it became positively gruelling. How did they manage to cope? Well, a coach carried us to the right location, then it was all down to their mental fortitude, I guess. They certainly didn’t rely on moustaches. There wasn’t one to be seen. Michael didn’t have one. Neither did Rachel. And neither did anyone else.

That Ataturk guy knew stuff.

          A moustache, neither bushy nor trim,

          doesn’t add to your valour or vim:
          so Ataturk said -
          sharp focus instead
          was essential, according to him...

Keith Brindle
www.keithbrindlewriter.com

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Moustaches

It was during the Covid lockdown when I began to question why on earth I was shaving when I wasn’t going anywhere other than along the river path in the early morning and late at night. I’d had a beard for most of my life but ten years before had been encouraged by my girlfriend at the time to get rid of it. Fair enough.

Anyway, I decided to let it grow again as shaving is/was a nuisance. What I’m trying to say is do one thing or the other but growing a moustache is completely bonkers. You have the inconvenience of shaving but still need to control what’s left.

But from the records we can see that moustaches have been fashionable from way back to the Ancient Egypt old kingdom era 2649–2130 BCE.

One of the earliest documents of the usage of moustaches can be traced to Iron Age Celts. According to Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian wrote that: ‘.... the nobles shave their cheeks but they let the moustache grow until it covers the mouth.’

In early medieval art the Sutton Hoo helmet, an elaborately decorated helmet sporting a faceplate depicts the style on its upper lip.

I could go on about the various fashions for the moustache and the reasons for them and the people who had them but there would be no point as there is only really one moustache that has counted since 1920 when it appeared for the first time in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

At this time, Hercule Poirot was a refugee, newly arrived from Belgium and nearly penniless, so had not much money to create his incredible moustache. Indeed, it was described as ‘very stiff and military.’

However as his fame as a detective grew so did his bank balance and by the early 1930s it had evolved from being stiff and military into a magnificent, luxurious asset which gained much comment from himself, narrators and other characters within each story. Throughout Christie’s stories, his moustache was described as ‘gigantic’, ‘immense’ and ‘amazing’, pointing to the importance of this physical asset. By 1934 Poirot himself was described as ‘a little man with enormous moustaches’ in Murder on the Orient Express.

Here are a few other references:

“If only, Hastings, you would part your hair in the middle instead of at the side! What a difference it would make to the symmetry of your appearance. And your moustache. If you must have a moustache, let it be a real moustache– a thing of beauty such as mine.”

- Peril at End House 1932 (UK)

“I assure you, I am really a very humble person.”

I laughed.

“You– humble!”

“It is so. Except– I confess it– that I am a little proud of my moustaches. Nowhere in London have I observed anything to compare with them.”

“You are quite safe,” I said dryly, “you won’t.”
- Lord Edgware Dies 1933

While the Lovely Young Thing made a suitable reply, Poirot allowed himself a good study of the hirsute adornment on Mr. Shaitana’s upper lip.

A fine moustache– a very fine moustache– the only moustache in London, perhaps, that could compete with that of M. Hercule Poirot.

“But it is not so luxuriant,” he murmured to himself. “No, decidedly it is inferior in every respect. Tout de meme, it catches the eye.”

-Cards on the Table

What was even more humiliating was that he had no real ideas, even now, as to what had actually happened. It was ignominious. And tomorrow he must return to London defeated. His ego was seriously deflated– even his moustaches drooped.

-Dead Man’s Folly

“There’s no doubt at all about what the man’s profession has been. He’s a retired hairdresser. Look at that moustache of his.” 

- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

One of the benefits of becoming a famous detective was that with every case, Poirot became more affluent. As the years went by, Poirot earnt a large fortune from his detective work; which he invested a significant portion into the care and maintenance of his favourite personal feature. In The ABC Murders, Poirot reveals that he frequently visits an expensive hairdresser and in Murder on the Orient Express we learn that he uses a little pair of curling tongs on his moustache to give it the ‘upward-curled’ shape. Poirot’s groomed moustache leads Dr. Sheppard to assume that he’s a retired hairdresser, exclaiming “look at that moustache of his” to his sister.

Poirot’s moustache is his trademark. It’s often the first thing people notice about him, and it’s his pride and joy. Poirot takes great care with his appearance from the tip of his shoes to the top of his egg-shaped head, and his moustache is no exception. He believes he has both the finest moustache and the finest brain in Britain – a claim many of his fans around the world would no doubt agree with. Throughout the six decades that his mysteries were documented by Agatha Christie, Poirot’s moustache was described in a number of ways, and was often the focus defining his appearance…

“A little man with enormous moustaches” 

– Murder on the Orient Express

The more Poirot became an established private detective, the bigger his trademark moustache became. By the early 1930s his famous facial hair had evolved from being stiff and military into a magnificent, luxurious asset which gained much comment from himself, narrators and other characters within each story. Throughout Christie’s stories, his moustache was described as ‘gigantic’, ‘immense’ and ‘amazing’, pointing to the importance of this physical asset. By 1934 Poirot himself was described as ‘a little man with enormous moustaches’ in Murder on the Orient Express. By this point and beyond it was clearly his greatest physical attribute, being described as ‘an immense moustache’ in The Labours of Hercules in 1947.

I had to use a few little grey cells myself to get a poem about moustaches. I couldn’t find any decent poems so decided to choose poets with a moustache and it came to a choice between Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve gone with Kipling as my friend C showed me his house in Rottingdean and the poem was written there as part of An Almanac of Twelve Sports. Each month has its own sport and poem. July is about Archery (apparently).

The child of the Nineties considers with laughter
The maid whom his Sire in the Sixties ran after,
While careering himself in pursuit of a girl whom
The Twenties will dub a "last century heir-loom.”

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Moustaches

 

“A kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt.”

This saying dates back to Victorian times. The origin is unknown but has been cited to various authors, Rudyard Kipling, Rose Wilder Lane and Jean-Paul Sartre, who is thought to have added “and it is like Good without Evil”.

I remember my dad saying it a lot, when he grew a moustache in his later years. It was just ordinary, nothing stylish. I didn’t like it. Not one bit. He had new glasses at the same time and his whole appearance changed from the happy looking man with a kind face I adored, into someone I felt like I needed to be very wary of. He looked like a cross between the horrid piano teacher I used to have and the equally horrid landlord of a flat I used to rent. Fortunately, my father didn’t stink of stale cigars and his moustache wasn’t stained dirty yellow with nicotine like my piano teacher. Dad disliked the landlord as much as I did and I would tease him about being a copycat. It was a relief when that moustache was shaved off, though the glasses remained.

Each to their own, of course, but isn’t a high maintenance styled moustache over the top and time consuming? Personally, I like a beard attached, but I’m only seeing the results, not looking after it.

The music I favoured in the ‘60s and ‘70s, was progressive rock and symphonic rock. Band members with long hair and often moustaches and beards. I found this poem that took me back to those young, impressionable times. And the music is the same and always there, with a few new bands collected along the way. The poem is by American poet, Gershon Wolf.

Freaky and Weird

We grew our hair down to our shoulders
Hirsute, we were, moustaches and beards,
Turned up our noses at those who were older
‘Cos we were so hip, so freaky, so weird.

Revved up our stereos, going stone-deaf,
Dropped pill after pill, of common sense bereft,
Wore psychedelic threads to match our psychedelic brains.
We thought ourselves ‘free’, but we were really in chains.

Don’t ask me if the Sixties were ‘wonderful years!’
- Just leave me alone with my cigars and my beer.

                                                                    Gershon Wolf

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Dad Jokes

Oh dear, has it come to this? My own dad didn't really do jokes. He wasn't exactly humourless, for he loved the films of Norman Wisdom which had him laughing out loud, but he rarely told jokes. Maybe his sense of humour was more visual than verbal - not something I've considered before -but joke telling wasn't his forté. 

I can only recall one joke that he ever told (and I must have been about ten at the time). It went like this: A trio of West Indian brothers opened a fish & chip shop in south-east London. When they applied to the GPO for a telephone number they were assigned BLAckfriars 123. That made him fair hoot. 

For younger readers I should explain that prior to the mid-1960s introduction of automated Standard Trunk Dialling (with all digit phone numbers), callers would dial a manned telephone exchange using the numerical equivalent of the three-letter id of the exchange and then ask the operator to connect them with the local customer number. A ghostly remnant of the time when telephone dials carried letters equivalent to numbers can still be seen on smartphones today. BLA would have been represented by the digits 252 (should you care to check). By the way, the joke falls down on a technicality because the customer part of the number was always four digits, not three. WHItehall 1212 (the original number for Scotland Yard) is perhaps the most famous example.

What then is the essence of a Dad Joke? It's usually quite short. often in the form of a question and answer, and is frequently based around aa bad  pun or similar dubious play on words, the whole delivery being a tease designed to elicit groans from the hearer for it being 'corny', rather than any appreciation for its wit. 

One thing that did surprise me was to learn that the label Dad Joke is relatively recent (1987 - happy 40th birthday), though the style clearly goes way back to a time when hippos ruled the world.

a hippo dad

At which point, let me regale you with twenty of the  worst 'hippo' dad jokes (though some are not half bad):

01. What do you call a hippo with one leg? - A hoppo.

02. What do you call  hippo with no hips? A potamus.

03. What do you call a lame hippo? A limpo.

04. What do you call a lame hippo who inhabits the Limpopo river? A limpopotamus or limpopopopotamus
05. What do you call a hippo with no legs? It doesn't matter, as he can't come when you call him.

06. What do you call a hippo with a cold? A hipposnotamus.

07. What do you call a hippo that can rap? A hiphopotomus.

08. What role do you give to a hippo that can act? Hippolyta (in A Midsummer Night's Dream).

09. What do you call a hippo with Tourettes? A hippopottymouth.

10. What do you call a hippo who never follows his own advice? A hippocrite.

11. What do you call a non-existent hippo? Hippothetical.

12. What do you call a hippo with no legs swimming in a river? Bob (or clever Dick)...think about it.

13. Why is a hippo wearing speedos like an elephant? They both have large trunks.

14. Hippos can run and swim faster than human beings. Your best chance in the triathlon is the bicycle race.

15. What do you get if you cross a hippo with Snoop Dogg? A smokealotapotamus. 
16. What's the difference between a hippo and a zippo? One's heavy, the other's a little lighter.

17. Where do hippos go for a grand night out? To a hippodrome. 

18. Where do brainy hippos go to university? The hippocampus. 

19. Why do hippos hate the cold? Because of hippothermia.

20. Why don't you ever see hippos hiding in trees? Because they're really good at it.

Or course I've written a bit of a fun poem for today's blog. When reading it, you'll need to put the stress on the fourth syllable of hippopotamus, making it either a short ä (first verse) or a long ā (pronounced like an r, last verse), hence the diacritic marks. Don't worry, the rhymes in the poem will keep you on track.

Hippopotämus <> Hippopotāmus

Hippopotämus

Don't try to frame us

Defame or fat shame us

Certainly don't blame us

Sad ignoramus

It's Greek of course, for river horse

And we're much better sports

Than any phoney water polo pony

<>

OK, we understand that reprimand

Dismiss what we've been taught

Take this chance to change our stance

He don't alarm us

Delights to charm us

Won't never harm us

No one's as calm as

Hippopotāmus

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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