Donald's Blog

  This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there.

«Jul 2015»
SMTWTFS
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031 
 

In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever, and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc. to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.

 

July 4, 2015

And another Fourth of July

Thirty-five years ago today, our pals Leonard Joseph and Sue Carter tied the knot, and had their wedding party in our back yard in Teddington. They had had their first date on the night our David was born, so there were already shared memories; we serenaded the neighbors with Sousa marches on the record player, and Leonard took charge of the fireworks. Tonight they are in Spain celebrating their anniversary, and our thoughts are with them.

 

July 4, 2015

Independence Day

Well, it was forty years ago today
The band at last began to play.

Forty years ago, on Friday, the 4th of July, 1975, I had been living in England for nearly two years. They had been tumultuous years for me. I will not go into any personal details unless some foolish publisher offers me a contract for an autobiography, but I had somehow escaped from the self-imposed limitations of flyover country.

The summer of 1974 had been dreadful in England, either so chilly I had to wear a jacket or so humid and close that I could hardly breathe, but suddenly in June of 1975 the weather had turned gloriously beautiful. My job in publishing (starting with "How It Works") is still the only real job I have ever had, except for the car factory. I belonged to the National Union of Journalists (another story), and in late June we went on strike, the only time I have ever been on strike in my life, because we were all broke and living on overdrafts while Marshall Cavendish was coining it: their excuse for not paying us more was the government's "social contract", which was a load of tosh. Inflation was raging and Prime Minister Harold Wislon (to use Private Eye's spelling) was a helpless hack.

So we picketed in Soho. ("It won't get better if you picket," we joked. It was a neighborhood where Japanese businessmen looked for hookers, and accosted some of our distaff colleagues: our gag line was "He's got a yen for you.") The strike was actually going well, the company beginning to move, until a cabal of the firm's crawlers took over a union meeting on a Friday and voted us back to work.

Some of us were disappointed, but we got together at our usual watering hole in Wardour Street on that 4th of July after work (the cabal conspicuous by their absence), and the acerbic barman made me laugh: "Today's the day we celebrate our independence from you." I was coming up to my 35th birthday, no longer a kid but not yet old, and I was alone, but free, it seemed, for the first time in my life.

In the pub I hoped to find someone I had met on the picket line, and she wasn't there, so I met someone else. I was still hoping to find a life partner, and it took another couple of years, but I found her.

That 4th of July was a special Independence Day.