Fired for Sound
A British DJ was suspended from his station for playing (Sir!) Cliff Richard songs, only to be reinstated soon after.
I’m going to lose all credibility once I say this, but what’s so bad about playing (three bags full, Sir!) Cliff Richard on the radio? I grew up listening to (we salute the rank, not the man, Sir!) Cliff — my mum is a big fan. Childhood memories include watching (was I a bad girl, Sir!) Cliff Richard music videos (Wired for Sound is actually one of my favourites because of the roller skating) and listening to (crying is for babies, Sir!) Cliff Richard sing Summer Holiday, Living Doll, We Don’t Talk Anymore, Miss You Nights, Daddy’s Home, Theme for a Dream, and many, many, excruciatingly many more tracks on audio tape — I bought my mum a new (Sir, yes Sir!) Cliff Richard CD over Chinese New Year.
The photos on the official (would you like fries with that, Sir!) Cliff Richard site show a man growing old rather ungracefully. What a shame. Also, one of the records pictured on his discography is very… informative.
So. (Are you a man or a mouse, Sir!) Cliff Richard. Erm. Yes. Radio stations should be allowed to play his records.
I’m done now.
Little plaid skirts
There’s a great editorial in the Glasgow Herald today, blasting people who feel morally offended by schoolgirls who wear short skirts:
It seems, rather tragically, that we are so scared of young people that we have to take away their freedoms, rather than educate them better into how to use them. The history of fashion is the story of female emancipation: women have spent centuries liberating themselves from the prison of tight bodices, long skirts, bound feet, constricted limbs.
There is, in this respect, something wonderful about the insouciance of modern teenage clothing. Baggy, tight, explicit, baby-doll, extreme: they do it. Because they can.
If you think schoolgirls who wear short skirts are dirty, it’s probably because you’re dirty. Don’t project the blame on to girls because of your guilty fantasies - that’s the gist of the piece.
I went to a convent school - we wore white blouses under our blue pinafores. They weren’t exactly sexy outfits, but we tried our best by puffing up the pinafores above the belts so the skirts would end well above our knees. These days, it’s trendy to wear the belt so loosely that the girls look like newly-pregnant teenagers trying out maternity dresses. I know for a fact that the teachers and principal despair - why do the girls, year after year, wear the uniform the unsanctioned way?
Because we can. Because it makes (made, in my case) us feel individual, different, trendy, rebellious.
Teenagers will always try to rebel, to see how far they can push the rules. They’re in between being adults and children. They’re learning about themselves. The more you try to set rules to regulate behaviour, the more they will break them. Better to teach teenagers self-confidence and promote a sense of self-worth than try to impose rules that mean nothing.
I doubt that if those wanting school uniform regulations to be more strictly enforced were to go quiet, all hell would break loose. If an adult is keen on teenagers / is a paedophile, nothing except their own efforts will stop them from indulging.
Between five and seven children are abducted and murdered a year, a figure unchanged for 30 years. A moral panic over short skirts is as effective as banning men from admiring girls’ legs.
(I’m as bad. I own skirts that play on schoolgirl fetishes because I think they’re great.)
Definitely, definitely RIP
It’s all over the news, stories about and tributes to Ronald Reagan. He died at 93, after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for many years.
There are many political weblogs out there, venerating and criticising his legacy as 40th President of the US. This will not be one of them.
My grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease - we found out when I was about 17 or 18 years old. My ah ma, as we called her, was all about the grandchild-coddling - none of her five granddaughters ever missed out on a fabulous home-cooked meal, nor a hand-knitted jumper. She was the lady we turned to when we (okay, I) did something stupid and needed some uncritical hugging.
So we were all quite upset when we found out that she was ill. For a while, my grandfather would bring her over to our place when he got too aggravated dealing with his increasingly-forgetful wife (he was a hard-headed bastard, but was also good in the ’spoiling grandchildren’ department).
She always forgot to shower, but insisted she had even as she started smelling rather ripe. She would refuse to bathe, so one afternoon, after being deposited at our place, my sister and I put her in the shower and bathed her. During this time, she kept apologising for getting old and sick and not being able to take care of herself.
Not long after this, my mother managed to get a place at a nursing home for ah ma. Then there was this huge feud between my father and grandfather, and a good couple of years passed before we were ‘allowed’ to visit her at home. By this time, I was already abroad, studying at university.
My cousins live in Canada. My sister lives in the US. Visits to the grandparents were, to say the least, extremely depressing. My grandmother no longer recognised any of us, and my grandfather had had a series of small strokes and was now suffering from dementia (and it appeared, paranoia), too.
She was bedridden, and she had sores. What was left of her muscles were all stiff and bent. She looked as though she was in a constant state of befuddled shock.
I’m not proud to admit that I didn’t visit her as often as I could, simply because I couldn’t really deal with seeing her like that. Finally, in 1998, I received a call in Australia, informing me that my ah ma had passed away after breaking her hip in a fall, and no, I wasn’t to go home for the funeral.
My father, however, is a ghoulish freak. He sent me a whole album of photographs from the wake and funeral (as a bonus, I also received photos of my dead great aunt who sadly passed away in the same month). Words cannot adequately describe the skin-crawling revulsion experienced on opening that special delivery.
History repeated itself a little over a year later when my grandfather succumbed to his dementia and failing health. Also bedridden, also covered in bed sores.
“While it is an extremely sad time for Mrs Reagan, there is definitely a sense of relief that he is no longer suffering and that he has gone to another place,” said his chief of staff Joanne Drake.
I don’t care if Reagan was a good or bad President. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease. My grandparents are no longer suffering. I have no interest in mourning their passing (the anniversaries are right about now), only in remembering:
- traditional Chinese herbs taste terrible, but the candy afterwards is worth it
- learning to play basketball on Saturday mornings
- playing Barbie in the one-of-a-kind styrofoam house
- Filet-O-Fish, plus toy, at McDonald’s
- Novenas on Saturdays
- being chatted to sleep every weekend
I miss them, I wish I could have done more for them, but this is life. We only get one shot.