My earliest memories are of having to sit precariously on a small stool balanced on top of the barber’s chair so that he could reach me properly. The barber, whose name I recall was Sam Browne, was not able to afford electric shears (if that’s what they’re called; I expect the Hairdresser’s Guild or similar would get very upset with me for comparing the implement with something used to shear sheep !), so instead used hand operated ones. As you squeezed the handles together, the ancient, blunt teeth would grab the hair, pull it out by the roots, and drop it down your back where it would be a prickly irritant for the rest of the day.
The shop itself, dark and full of inexplicable things like leather strops and rickety chairs, would be full of old men, mostly sucking noisily on their smelly pipes. Sam himself smoked black plug tobacco, which came in the form of a long strip of what looked like liquorice, from which he would hack pieces with a rusty penknife, rub them together for hours between his hands, and then stuff it into his pipe. It usually took ages to light, and possessed a particularly evil smell.
Sam’s price list was something of a mystery, too. It had an item “Singeing – 1/6d”. I never understood why you had to pay to sing, even if you felt like it, which I seldom did.
I used to enjoy watching him shave a customer, though, especially if the customer wore a beard or a moustache. I would secretly hope that Sam’s hand might slip, and his cutthroat blade might slice off half of his moustache. Never happened, though, unfortunately. And what on earth were those strange transactions at the end of the shave when Sam would murmur “Something for the weekend, Sir?”, and he and the customer would cackle briefly to each other, and Sam would pass the man a mysterious something in a brown paper bag ?
The days of Sam Brown’s shop have long gone. So too, regrettably, have his prices – the most I ever remember paying there was 2/-, and of course no-one ever tipped – Sam would have been insulted !
More recently, I patronised an Italian barber shop in Johannesburg. It wasn’t particularly big, and contained no fewer than 10 Italian (as in from Italy!) barbers squeezed into small cubicles side by side. There was loud music, and occasionally one of the barbers would burst into song. Figaro would have been proud ! There was in any event a constant uproar as they chatted to each other, usually in Italian and usually about horses ! I think one of them was a closet bookie ! However, their prices soared to about $10, which I considered excessive, so I quit going there.
These days I lead a quiet, semi retired life (we keep a small bookshop) in a small village in the Karoo, in South Africa. I travel 50 km or so to the nearest town, Graaff-Reinet, where there is a very kind lady who trims my hair AND my wife’s for a very modest amount. And she NEVER asks me whether I want “something for the weekend” !
I am sitting writing this in the wee small hours before dawn. There appear to be two small men behind my eyes, attacking them with miniature road drills, and as Bruce Springsteen once so elegantly put it, “a freight train running through the middle of my head”. I have already eaten anything vaguely edible lying around in the fridge or in the kitchen, and have determined that there is nothing at all on tv which I have not watched before, except for some infomercials. Nothing else for it but to write this post.
Anyway, I suppose this is as good a time as any to write about insomnia.
Sleep disorders come in many forms to many people for many different reasons. What is more, it is important to know and to understand the reasons for it. Dr William C Dement, a well k nown professor at Stanford University who has for many years specialised in sleep research, says:
“The gap created by the absence of adequate sleep education is causing problems in all components of our society. When a sleep deprived individual falls asleep while driving and is rendered dead or disabled for life, it is rare that anyone fully realizes that such tragic events are preventable on a very basic level. When a 50-year-old executive dies of coronary thrombosis, no one realizes that an undiagnosed sleep disorder may have been the culprit. The educational activities that could begin to reduce and eventually eliminate such tragedies have not yet permeated our society.”
There are a number of simple factors,collectively known as “sleep hygiene”, which are important to observe in order to get a good night’s sleep. Most of these are self-explanatory, such as avoiding caffeine and alcohol, eating a healthy, balanced diet, going to bed later and rising earlier, maintaining a bright, cheerful environment when awake, and a cool, restful darkened one at night, and maintaining a regular “sleep pattern”.
Those most at risk from insomnia and other sleep disorders include the elderly, who perhaps require less sleep anyway, but who frequently doze and take daytime naps. Other groups include the chronically depressed, and those who suffer from sleep apnea or restless legs syndrome. Sleep apnea is a condition in which the patient involuntarily stops breathing, which results in his waking up and thus his nights are perpetually disturbed. Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) affects a large percentage of the population. It is a usually nocturnal condition in which the patient has an irresistable urge to move his or her legs, almost like a twitch, combined with an unpleasant, restless feeling in the lower body. RLS makes sleep a virtual impossibility.
While there are pharmacological solutions for some of these problems, including RLS, it is important that any such solution be regarded as a temporary measure in order to regain a normal sleep pattern.
Was there ever really such a time, a time when men were men and women featured as extras or as golden-hearted whores ?
Certainly, for me as a child in the fifties, the Wild West was a very real place, a place where the Lone Ranger and Tonto got rid of the baddies, where Roy Rogers and Trigger reigned supreme, and where Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd), Gene Autry, Gaby Hayes roamed the range. All, naturally, wore white stetsons, despite the dust and muck ! Black hats were very strictly for the baddies. On the silver screen, there were more famous character actors. William S Hart (1864 -1946), Broncho Billy (Gilbert Maxwell Aronson, 1880 -1971), Gary Cooper (1901 -1961), Randolph Scott (1898 – 1987), and the most famous of all – the “Duke” – John Wayne (1907 – 1979). Who could forget the first Western “talkie”, “Stagecoach” ? or “High Noon” ?
Most of the action in these tv shows and movies purported to take place anywhere in the “Old West”, which was approximately 50% of the North American continent. The plots revolved around land disputes between ranchers and farmers, cattle rustling, dispossession of native Americans, or perhaps historical events such as the Battle of the Alamo, the American Civil War, or even the Mexican Revolution.
It has to be said that the environment portrayed was very much a masculine one, a country where women barely featured and males dominated with a few rare exceptions, such as Calamity Jane. Types such as Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok, Davey Crockett, Wyatt Earp predominate in the stories.. I contrast this with similar events taking place elsewhere in the world at the time, such as the Great Trek in South Africa, where women were very much in evidence. One suspects that the Western genre is merely a fictional concoction celebrating the masculine. The real world of hard labour, blood, tears, and sweat was I am sure nothing like the clean, cosy world of the cowboy western.
It is a fiction put together by a series of relatively well known authors, and perpetuated by Hollywood. These authors include Max Brand, Irving P Beadle, Ivan Doig, Robert E Gard, and perhaps the best known of the lot, Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. There are many others, although, interestingly, I know of no native American authors portraying this period of their history, despite having legendary heroes like Sitting Bull, aand Geronimo.
Hollywood was directly responsible for many of the props of this genre – the dusty town with a single main street, the stagecoach, the six-gun, the hanging tree, the amazing marksmanship of the cowboys, the saloon with its girls and card sharpers.
The “Old West” certainly existed, but not as it is so often portrayed. I believe it was a poverty stricken place of hardworking men (AND women). The settlers and the ranchers alike would have been relatively uneducated, probably for the most part dirty and lacking proper medical and dental care. The numbers of western women and children slaughtered by Indians probably pales into insignificance when compared with the numbers of those dying in childbirth, from wound infections, and from bacterial and viral diseases. The great majority of people were decent, law abiding folk who simply wanted a new life, away from such mid-Victorian horrors as the workhouse and the Irish Potato Famine.
Still, none of that’s much fun, and it wouldn’t gross much at the box office, would it ?
John Betjeman was born on August 28th, 1906, near Highgate, London. His father was Ernest Betjemann, a cabinet maker, a trade which had been in the family for several generations. The family name was Betjemann, with two ‘n’s, but John dropped the second ‘n’ during the First World War, to make the name less German.
John was an only child, and by all accounts had a lonely childhood, taking comfort from his teddy bear, Archibald, later to feature in his children’s story, Archie and the Strict Baptists.
Having attended his first schools in Highgate, John became a boarder at Dragon School, Oxford, aged eleven. Three years later, he went to Marlborough College, again as a boarder.
Throughout John’s childhood, his family went for holidays to Trebetherick in Cornwall, where his father owned a number of properties. These seemed to have been the happiest times for JB, and are remembered in many of his poems.
In 1925, JB went to Magdalen College, Oxford. However, the many distractions of college life meant that he did not complete his degree, having failed a Divinity exam. He became a teacher at Thorpe House School, Gerrard’s Cross, before working as a private secretary, and then at another prep school.
In 1930, JB became an assistant editor of The Architectural Review. In 1931, his first book of poems, Mount Zion, was published by an old Oxford friend, Edward James. Soon afterwards, JB met and married Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of Field Marshal Lord Chetwode, a former Commander-in-Chief in India. It was clear that he did not approve of JB.
His second book was Ghastly Good Taste, a commentary on architecture, published in 1934.
JB and Penelope moved to Uffington in Berkshire, and John was given the job of film critic for the Evening Standard, but he continued to write poetry, and his next book, Continual Dew, appeared in 1937. He also began work on the series of Shell Guides to the counties of England.
His prolific writing output continued throughout the 30s and 40s, with books and magazine articles appearing regularly. In 1941, JB went to Dublin, as the Press Officer to the British Representative. Many years later, it was revealed that the IRA thought he was a spy, and considered assassinating him. However, on reading his poetry, they decided otherwise. His daughter Candida was born in 1942.
Returning to England in 1943, JB worked in the Ministry of Information, and continued to write for a number of publications. The family eventually settled in Wantage in 1951. A Few Late Chrysanthemums was published in 1952, and by the mid 1950′s, JB was a well-known figure, making both radio and television appearances, commenting on architecture and campaigning for many threatened buildings. Collected Poems and his verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells, were both best sellers. His broadcasting career continued during the 1960′s and 70′s, with documentaries such as Metroland and A Passion for Churches.
In 1969, he was knighted, and when Cecil Day Lewis died in 1972, JB was made Poet Laureate.
His last book of new poems, A Nip in The Air, was published in 1974. After that, he began to suffer from Parkinson’s Disease, and a series of strokes reduced his mobility.
John Betjeman died on May 19th 1984, at his home in Trebetherick. He was buried in the nearby church of St.Endoc.
Diary of a Church Mouse by John Betjeman
Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.
For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn’s Harvest Festival
A Subaltern’s Love Song by John Betjeman
Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament – you against me!
Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.
Her father’s euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin.
The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.
On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
The Hillman is waiting, the light’s in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing’s the light on your hair.
By roads “not adopted”, by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o’clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surry twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl’s hand!
Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.
And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
Middlesex by John Betjeman
Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train,
With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s
Daintily alights Elaine;
Hurries down the concrete station
With a frown of concentration,
Out into the outskirt’s edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium – rural Middlesex again.
Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly,
Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green
Hiding hair which, Friday nightly,
Delicately drowns in Dreen;
Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer,
Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa,
Gains the garden – father’s hobby -
Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby,
Settles down to sandwich supper and the television screen.
Gentle Brent, I used to know you
Wandering Wembley-wards at will,
Now what change your waters show you
In the meadowlands you fill!
Recollect the elm-trees misty
And the footpaths climbing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings
Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.
Parish of enormous hayfields
Perivale stood all alone,
And from Greenford scent of mayfields
Most enticingly was blown
Over market gardens tidy,
Taverns for the bona fide,
Cockney singers, cockney shooters,
Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters,
Long in Kelsal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone.
After stringing a wire clothes line across the back garden to act as an aerial, I still couldn’t get anything other than a very faint sound completely submerged in external noise, no matter how
patient I was in “tickling” the crystal. I strongly suspect that my uncle, who gave me the set in the very early fifties, had had the same trouble – after all it was already ancient by then ! My parents had by then even purchased a “table model” television set to go with the highly polished Murphy radio set in the living room.
Most winter weekends during the fifties would find me glued to a small Ferranti valve radio, with a circular dial by which one could receive foreign staations as well as British ones. My favourite was always Radio Luxemburg (208 m medium wave). In addition to the pre Rock n’ Roll pop music of the day, like Doris Day, Slim Whitman etc, it also carried singularly mindless advertisements. All former “208″ devotees must remember that king of racing tipsters, Horace Bachelor, of Keynsham – spelt K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M – Bristol. Horace must have died years ago, I suppose. Or those ever popular headache (or was it indigestion ?) pills – Dodo, spelt, in case you weren’t sure, D-O-D-O ! Not to mention Carter’s Little Liver Pills !
Then, of course, on BBC Light Programme, after “Forces Favourites” (a record request programme), came on Sunday afternoons the truly immortal “Goon Show”, starring Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine, and a jazzy band called Ray Ellington and his Quartet. I rather think they have all passed away now, but Neddy Seagoon, Major Bloodnock and Eccles will live on forever in my heart ! Then there was “Hancock’s Half Hour” which starred the very funny and late lamented Tony Hancock and the South African Sid James, who also starred in several of the hilarious “Carry On” series of films from Ealing Studios in London.
Other programmes spring to mind. Interestingly, as late as 1975 when I emigrated from Britain to South Africa, very similar programmes were still being broadcast by the SABC on its “Springbok Radio”, defunct for years now. Programmes like “Inspector Carr Investigates”, “Twenty Questions”, “Three Wise Men”, and “Men From the Ministry” were all on the air, catering more or less exclusively in those days to a white audience. They were all based on successful BBC programmes.
My father bought our first television set in about 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain. It was made by Cossor, and had a 10″ screen – tiny by today’s standards of gigantic screens. It wasn’t particularly reliable – I seem to remember the technician coming to the house to replace valves on a very regular basis – and periodically the screen would go blank, when you had to flick the tube at a particular spot, when the screen would burst forth into glorious black an white again.
And think of the programmes ! There was “What’s My Line”, a quiz show hosted by Eamonn Andrews and a panel with Lady Barnett, Barbara Kelly, Bernard Braden, and that dreadful old curmudgeon Gilbert Harding. It ran for ages – don’t somehow think it would survive a week today ! There was “Friends and Neighbours”, which was a kind of early television version of radio’s popular “Mrs Dale’s Diary” or “The Archers”. In the very early post war days, Lord Reith prevailed at the BBC and as a result, presenters such as Sylvia Peters, Mary Malcolm and Leslie Mitchell were obliged to wear evening dress – at least on their visible top halves ! As an aside, Lord John Reith, the founding Director General of the BBC, was widely thought of as a pillar of moral rectitude and sobriety. That was his public image. After his death in 1971, his daughter wrote a book revealing him as a serial adulterer and spendthrift, who led his loyal wife and family the most dreadful lives.
The Sixties and Seventies were perhaps the heyday of classic BBC comedy programmes. Who could forget Harold Steptoe or his awful father, Wilfred ? Or that caricature of the British cockney, Alf Garnett ? I’m afraid Alf would be considered miles too politically incorrect today !
Programmes like this started a proud tradition of BBC television comedies which carries on today. One thinks of Hyacinth Bouquet of “Keeping Up Appearances”, or Captain Mainwaring of “Dad’s Army”, or Del Boy of “Only Fool’s and Horses” (incidentally, I think the episode where they accidentally drop the priceless chandelier has to be the funniest thing I have ever seen !).
I sometimes wonder whether our Maker didn’t exhaust the world supply of talent during the mid to late 20th Century !
I used to enjoy watching him shave a customer, though, especially if the customer wore a beard or a moustache. I would secretly hope that Sam’s hand might slip, and his cutthroat blade might slice off half of his moustache. Never happened, though, unfortunately. And what on earth were those strange transactions at the end of the shave when Sam would murmur “Something for the weekend, Sir?”, and he and the customer would cackle briefly to each other, and Sam would pass the man a mysterious something in a brown paper bag ?
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