March is not my favourite month, not because, I am feeling the cold, maybe because of getting older; but I remember studying history at school and the fact that we 'baby boomers', (more about that later), did things like Vikings and Hengist and Horsa. I recall that the Anglo Saxons called March, ‘Hlyd Monath’ meaning loud or stormy and it would appear that after the flash snowfalls of this week, they were right!
March is also the month that I was born and I turn to reflect on the Beatles hit released on the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album back in 1967. I was still at primary school then, (getting bullied see chapter one) and would listen to the radio and my big sister, Christine’s rock and roll records would be playing in what we called 'the parlour' in our house.
So now, this week I am 64, I read that it was in 1942, when James Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool, that the average life expectancy of a British infant boy was 63 years.
Notwithstanding those expectations and the greatly exaggerated rumours decades ago of his son's death, Paul McCartney, one of my heroes, turns 81 on Sunday, around Father's Day, on 18thJune 2023. Those Beatles fans would know that the "Paul is Dead" myth, began in 1969, and alleged that Paul McCartney died in 1966. The Beatles are said to have covered up the death, despite inserting a series of clues into their songs and artwork.
The cover, of the Album "Abbey Road" shows a photograph of the Beatles walking in step across the street away from Abbey Road Studios, and which those who believed the hoax say, resembles a funeral procession. Also, Paul is smoking a cigarette, also known as a “coffin nail“. He is holding the cigarette in his right hand, even though the real Paul McCartney was left handed.
Leading the procession is John wearing white, symbolizing the clergy. Ringo, dressed in black, is a pallbearer or an the undertaker. George, dressed in work clothes, is the gravedigger. Paul, the corpse, is out of step with the other Beatles, leading with his right foot instead of with his left. Also, Paul’s eyes are closed and he is barefoot. Asserting that because people in many areas of the world are buried barefoot.
Behind the Beatles on the left side of the street is a Volkswagen Beetle with a license plate reading “28IF”, suggesting the Paul would have been 28 if he were still alive. The first three letters on the license place, “LMW,” has been interpreted as “Linda McCartney Weeps”.
[However, Paul never met Linda Eastman until May of 1967, when she was a photographer. They married her on March 12 1969, Abbey Road was released in September 1969, so the hoax could have worked!]
Songs on the album also promote the hoax such as “Come Together” which suggests that “an underlying tragedy was hidden beneath the lyrics,” and the cryptic imagery of the song lends itself to imaginative interpretation. The opening line of the song “Here come old flattop” might refer to the injuries to the head Paul sustained in perhaps a fatal crash. “He wear no shoeshine” may refer to the barefoot Paul in the cover photo for the LP. “Got to be good looking ’cause he’s so hard to see” may refer to the absence of the “cute Beatle.” “Got to be a joker/He just do what he please” might refer to the “great hoax,”
He was a teenager when he wrote the tune for "When I'm Sixty-Four," and only 24 when the Beatles recorded it in 1967 for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
Paul’s lyrics were delivered to the self-consciously youthful generation of baby boomers an enduring if satirical definition what their golden age might be like "many years from now."
Today, we have Generation Z, born 1997-2012, the X’s, born between 1965 and 1980 and of course the Millennials born between 1981 and 1996 how they will feel when they get to the ripe old age of Paul’s song. By the way, those born after the Z’s are called Gen Alpha – born 2013 – 2025.
Today, many of those who embraced that quaint vision of enduring love, caring, knitting and puttering in retirement - "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?" - could not have been more wrong. Since 1967, divorce rates have more than doubled (three-quarters of men married in the late 1950s celebrated their 20th wedding anniversaries with their first wife, compared with about half who married in the early 1970s). You can even get "no fault divorces" nowadays.
I was married first in 1978 and divorced in 2006, spending twenty eight years married and twenty eight years in the Royal Navy. I guess I was loved for while at least and fell in love too, but that’s another story.
Today, I am married again to someone who does care for me, love me and will feed me, when I text her the groceries I need for the week. As Bruce Springsteen sang about her on “Queen of the Supermarket”;
At the end of each working day she's waiting there
I'm in love with the Queen of the Supermarket
As the evening sky turns blue
A dream awaits in aisle number two
So where am I today in my life less ordinary?
Left school, Evelyn’s started work in a factory called Air Oil Burner and laboured until I managed to get out of Yiewsley and join "the Andrew".
The Royal Navy continues to be known as the ‘Andrew’, but there is no conclusive answer to the derivation of the nickname.
Some say, including the Admiralty Manual of Seamanship, the nickname ‘Andrew’ derives from a man called Andrew Miller, a zealous officer of the Impress Service (a Royal Navy recruitment service) during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Miller 'recruited' so many men to His Majesty's ships that the navy was said to belong to him.
Earlier 19th-century sources also suggest the origins of the nickname derive from one Andrew Miller, but offer a different explanation. These sources suggest that he supplied provisions to Royal Navy warships with such a monopoly, that Andrew Miller was said to ‘own the Navy’.
Another explanation given for the nickname derives from an enthusiastic 18th-century Press Service officer named Andrew Walker, who was said to have pressed so many seamen, the joke was made that it was not His Majesties Navy, but Andrew’s.
However, the most reliable list of Royal Navy officers does not mention an Andrew Miller or an Andrew Walker. As a result the origin of the Royal Navy's nickname remains obscure. However, we all called it that because of a Jack speak, learnt during our time spent as sailors for the service of our late Queen Elizabeth- God Bless her!
GANGES & DAEDALUS
I have already told my readers where I joined up and where I spent my training days, this baby boomer being in uniform from January 1976 through to the hot summer of that year. You can read that in my earlier blogs.
Poem
Heroes, we all have them, too many to call,
Mine are musicians like Bruce and Paul.
Also my Queen and our Queen too,
Keeping me sane and proud of us few.
Memories abound, as I sit and retire,
Not quite ready though to finally expire.
Its all a hoax, Vince is not dead,
He's alive and well and posting this thread
Stay with me folks, if you desire some more
Or you can just unsubscribe, if I become the bore.
See you next time