I sat down last night, and had nothing to say. Not often that happens…
The phrase reminded me of a Beatles line “Nothing to say // but it’s OK” – we happened to be listening to the track last night.   In some ways, it’s quite nice to think that there’s lots of times when others are stumped for words too. It’s quite reassuring, not to have to fire on all cylinders all the time.
This song, “Good Morning”, is part of the album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  2007 saw the 40th anniversary of that ‘radically different’ album. Beatles tracks are so well known, and, like the best songs, continue to speak to us. But what struck me last night was how some of it is also now dated – not just language, but concepts too.
“Good morning” has a line “It’s time for tea and meet the wife”. How many people would now refer to the ‘wife’, let alone have the mechanism of bringing someone home to meet her? And is she at home now, in any case, to be met?
Another of the lines refers to a “bit of skirt”. There’s no lack of put down terms for women nowadays, despite women’s lib – rap music has added its own collection in recent years. But in the days of women, and, increasingly, men, being more varied in what they wear, and when, this phrase seems to belong to a rather different world.
It’s funny – the 60s is billed as this time of great sexual liberation, and the Beatles were seen as part of that whole scene. It’s interesting then to catch a more conservative tone in this, their great experimental album.
The song that struck me the most, for attitudes that have almost vanished, is “When I’m 64”. For starters, increased life expectancy, and expectations of an active life for much longer, mean that the age of 64 has less impact than it did at the time of writing.
The throw away line about grandchildren’s names has a different ring – “Vera, Chuck and Dave”, where one of our main politicians likes to be known as Dave, and Vera is sure to be recycled as a name, along with Agnes, Ruby, and various others. (Chuck…? Perhaps its time has not yet come as a name.)
But just before this line, there’s another that speaks of an era that has almost gone.  Renting “a cottage on the Isle of Wight” may have gone out with the era of cheap flights, though with eco tourism on the up, it’ll maybe gain favour again.
But the truly telling part is “We will scrimp and save.” Governments have enough difficulty encouraging people to save, let alone to scrimp…and other experts still will tell you that we have to keep spending in order to keep the economy afloat.
Scrimping. Maybe, like make do and mend, it’ll come back in the eco backlash. Maybe we will long for simpler times. But I do think that our collective spirits have moved a long long way away from scrimping. We are too used to getting our own way, having it now, and having it bigger and better.
Maybe Dave (Cameron) will save us from ourselves, but perhaps we have to look to Chuck and Vera to help us sort ourselves out.