Chasing The Years

[peterbirks]

One of my subscribers at Arthur J Gallagher is called Jason King. I always have a quiet chuckle when I get a bounceback with "Jason King is out of the office". "On some kind of secret mission, no doubt", I think.

I showed the bounceback e-mail to a couple of the journalists who sit near to me. Nothing. Utter blank. "Peter Wyngarde?" I said. Blank. "Department S?" Blank.

Now, I would expect this of journalists in their 20s, but not of journalists in their 30s. But, time marches on. The journalists who were in their 20s are now into their 30s. It's a time-gap thing. As soon as someone is near-20 years younger than me, there will be a popular cultural chasm so wide that it is well-nigh unbreachable. I tell you, I felt horribly alone in the world all of a sudden.

A few minutes later I said to one of the guys. "Still, I suppose I should have expected it. When I was talking to Christian (an ex-employee here now at Computer Weekly) he had never heard of Kenneth Wolstenholme".

Another set of blank looks all round.

This cultural chasm is a problem. If you start explaining everything, then people think you are patronising them, but if you explain nothing, then half the time they think that you are either showing off or talking gibberish. How am I meant to know what cultural icons have come down from the 1960s and early 1970s and which ones haven't? I mean, they are actually showing "Department S" on ITV4 at the moment.

+++++

My sensational misreading of Dollar/Sterling continues apace, and has the added downside of meaning that I have to recalculate my sterling-based accounts (currently set to a rate of £1:$1.80) and (theoretically) make myself poorer. My "poker" book is dollar-based, so it makes no difference, but I translate my Schwab account into Sterling for accounting purposes, which I think turns every cent decline into a £50 loss or something.

One of the reasons I don't get into trouble when trading currencies is that I never increase my stakes when things go wrong (and neither do I panic and cut my position). I just leave my original stake, say to myself "that was one that went wrong" and stop trying to second-guess the turning point. The only thing that changes is my eventual target. At the moment, that is probably $1.78 (for a 400 point loss).

One can cheer oneself up by saying "oh well, I'll spend sterling when I go to the US this year rather than use up my dollars...."

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

My American colleague Teresa was saying that she used a Mac at school. I told her I used a slide rule. She said her father used punched cards. So did I (at university).

When I told Ana about slide rules, she'd never heard of them before.

Actually I don't mind this, I get a small kick out of going back further than the people around me. I agree that the musical gap can be a bit of a pain, especially as I go on playing music from the 1960s and 1970s. But if I could get eternal youth and live for hundreds of years, I think I'd accept this sort of thing as a small price to pay.

The trouble with aging is getting physically old and dying. Other incidental effects are trivial by comparison.

-- Jonathan

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Man is not an island, Jonathan. I have no worries about dying, although physically ageing is an irritant. But becoming utterly isolated from everyone else because of your much longer experience. You call that "a small price to pay" in return for eternal youth. I don't think that it is a small price. Could you really cope with seeing everyone else age and die, everyone you know? I suspect that a major reason for a lot of deaths through "old age" is that most people, somewhat logically, get fed up with life on the grounds that everyone they know and everyone they ever had anything in common with is dead. If I had the body of a 20-year-old, that wouldn't mean that I could go out and enjoy myself with 20-year-olds.

Although, I guess if most of your pursuits are solitary, it wouldn't be so bad.

PJ

[(Anonymous)]

Hello, Pete.

"Could you really cope with seeing everyone age and die, everyone you know?"

I believe so, yes. As you say, it would be a rather isolating experience, but then here in Spain there's no-one that I've known for more than eleven years, and they all speak a language that I still understand rather poorly, so I'm isolated already...

People come and go, in my experience. Travelling from country to country as I've always done, I'm accustomed to losing contact with them. In some cases I regret it, but it happens. I've known you for over 30 years, though mostly by correspondence; there's no-one else from that far back that I'm still in regular contact with, except my mother and sister. A couple of school friends that I exchange Christmas cards with.

But, if I had eternal life, it would be very odd if no-one else had it. Why just me?

"If I had the body of a 20-year-old, that wouldn't mean that I could go out and enjoy myself with 20-year-olds."

I'm afraid I never did go out and enjoy myself with 20-year-olds much even when I was 20. I've felt out of place all my life; there would be nothing novel about feeling out of place at the age of 200. Actually, if I still looked young at the age of 200, I suspect I might be able to fake being one of the group more successfully than I could at the age of 20. Whether I'd want to is another matter...

Yes, most of my pursuits are solitary.

-- Jonathan

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

Well IMDB tells me that Department S ran 1969-70, so I would think you needed to be at least mid-40's to have had any interest in it on first run. Just because it's tucked away on ITV4 doesn't really mean that the repeats would be watched by anyone other than cult followers and I wouldn't have expected anyone under the age of 40 to have heard of Kenneth Wolstenholme.

It's interesting now to watch some of these old retreads and see how bad they were. The Avengers is practically unwatchable and The Persuaders is tosh (apart from the still excellent theme music). Some things survive the rose-tinted vision of the past such as The Prisoner. Recently watched a DVD collection of Boys From the Blackstuff (now nearly 25 years old!) and it was as powerful and emotional as ever.

But then how up to speed are you with the OC or One Tree Hill? Are you full of one-liners from Two Pints of Lager...? I'm guessing that there's TV out there that belongs to the younger generation and unless it has a cop/thriller element to it, it passes you by.

But you can at least buy Snow Patrol alubms when they come out, even if it is a bit same-as-the-last-one-ish.

[(Anonymous)]

Although I'm slightly older than Pete, I have no idea who Kenneth Wolstenholme was, and I never saw Department S -- though I vaguely remember that Wyngarde was an actor; I may have seen him in something else.

No mystery to this. Until late 1972, when I went to university, I rarely had access to a television. My parents lived in Africa and didn't usually have a television. I never saw The Prisoner either.

-- Jonathan

[(Anonymous)]

P.S. Wikipedia tells that Wolstenholme was a football commentator. That explains that: even when I had access to a television, I would never have chosen to watch football anyway. Just another game that some people happen to play, like curling or tiddlywinks. It never seemed relevant to me.

-- Jonathan

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Wyngarde not only played Jason King in Department S (1969 to 1970, inspirer of group of the same name, singers of the seminal single "Is Vic There?") but also played Jason King in the follow-up series "Jason King" (there's original for you) in series that ran from 1971 to 1972, so I guess that the youngest group who would remember this contemporaneously would be 40 or thereabouts.

Jonathan may remember him from The Avengers, since I think he appeared in series five (1967 to 1968) playing, as far as I recall, a Jason King-like character.

He was also, said Birks, heading off into realms of irrelevant popular culture, a major inspiration for Mike Myers in his creation of Austin Powers. Then again, Mike Myers is, well, in his mid-40s.

Now, as for Kenneth Wolstenholme, he wasn't "a" football commentator. I wouldn't expect people to remember Peter Lorenzo, or Gerald Sinstadt, or even, mayhap, Brian Moore. Wolstenholme was "the" football commentator for the 1966 World Cup Final, an event which I would imagine even the most non-footy-fan would vaguely recall as a significant event in the annals of post-war England (albeit perhaps not so much in Nigeria, which I suspect, well, know, did not qualify for said cup). Wolstenholme it was who said, "They think it's all over. ... It is now!", a pair of sentences that have just about entered the cultural iconography of the land. Football may, indeed, be as relevant/irrelevant as curling (although the latter always reminded me of housework -- which perhaps should be an Olympic sport instead - at least something useful would get done), but Wolstenholme's comment went beyond football and touched the soul of the land.

End of heartwarming patriotism. Normal service will now be resumed.

PJ

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, Pete -- I'm vaguely aware that football seems akin to religion in many European countries, but I've never understood it any more than I understand any other religion.

Checking up, I see that the 1966 World Cup was at the end of July, at which time I seem to have been in England. My parents were evidently on leave between postings. However, despite the fact that there must have been quite a to-do about the World Cup, I have no memory of it at all.

To be fair, at the time I don't think I took any notice of anything going on outside my own little world.

-- Jonathan

[andy-ward-uk.livejournal.com]

You do know that every Olympics, the host nation can introduce a new sport. I think we'd have a great chance in the Mixed Pairs Ironing.

Andy.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I have no complaint at people being unaware of 1970s TV series. I'm merely observing that it is (a) a cause of isolation when you are an older person amongst younger people, because so much common ground is not there, and (b) a fault in me for assuming something which I should not have assumed.

As you say, there are realms of TV of which I am blissfully unaware, having stopped deliberately keeping up with crap when I realized that I was only doing so in order to win pub quiz nights and get money out of quiz machines. I hagve heard of the OC and I am actually aware of its subject matter and geographical location. I suspect that One Tree Hill is some kind of UK derivation, where the youngsters show their wealth by having a mobile phone and trainers, rather than a BMW and a personal beach hut, which appears to be the mode in The OC.

Needless to say, I don't expect anyone to be watching ITV4 (apart from me, when Homicide and Larry Sanders is on). I just thought that I would mention it in passing, perhaps just to prove to myself that I hadn't imagined it all.

I think that The Avengers holds up rather well (from Diana Rigg onwards) since it was clearly into self-aware irony before we, the original youthful watchers, were. On top of that, it had some of the best actors in the country queueing up to take part (apart from those who were on Morecambe & Wise). Last week's episode turned up Colin Blakely (oh, ok, don't tell me, no-one's heard of him, either). I don't think I need to point out that John Cleese and Ronnie Barker were both in episodes of The Avengers. Or maybe I do.

The Persuaders, however, is definitely tosh, and also seriously aged-bound. But you have to admire Tony Curtis's hair, which at times seems to out-act Curtis.

And, if you want obscure discussions, I was able to rustle up the name of the film where James Coburn played a James Bond-like character. Hell, now, even I knew that was obscure (it was "Our Man Flint", by the way).

PJ

[(Anonymous)]

Although the only Avengers episode I've seen for decades was very disappointing, I do have a feeling that some particular episodes might still be watchable.

Oddly enough, I remember seeing "Our man Flint", many years ago. I rather liked it. I think I rather like Coburn in general, though I haven't seen a lot of him.

I was reminded of John Cleese today. Our son Marc was given a very small live turtle as a present recently, so Ana bought him another one to keep it company. Today we both concluded that the second one was sufficiently immobile to be, well, dead. Ana took it back to the shop and bullied them into giving her a free replacement -- although the first reaction was, "Well, there's no warranty on animals that small, y'know..."

-- Jonathan