Lawrence:
> I am 53 if you wish to calibrate
>
> 54 next Feb
I'm 55, 56 next March, which makes almost exactly two years' gap, which
shouldn't make a difference, but ...
I occasionally trip up over the age-difference bit with dave bircumshaw.
dave's about five years younger than me, which at our age +shouldn't+ really
figure. But ... I was nineteen when the Beatles brought out "Lucy in the
Sky with Diamonds", when dave would have been fourteen. I used the "Oh, so
you're called Lucy?" line to try (totally unsuccesfully) to chat up a girl
at the Edinburgh Festival, when dave would still have been in short
trousers. My earliest rock memories aren't Elvis but Bill Haley and the
Comets. I could once tell a mod from a rocker on Brighton Beach. Stuff
like that.
Some things are VERY timelocked ...
But to come back to the two-year difference between you and me -- I grew up
with OAS/FLN and the whole French colonial catastrophe -- in the early
sixties, Algeria figured more prominently than Vietnam. Dunno whether that
two-year gap figures here?
It's not that we (I hope) forget history, but that what is immediate can
differ across a very small stretch of years.
> ttfn
As, for instance, that's 'past' history for both of us. I can't use that
particular set of initials unselfconsciously. Indeed the only person, other
than Lawrence, who +can+ do it is Richard Dillon (in his Britannia mode).
But for Richard (who's a few years younger than Lawrence and I) it's not his
+direct+ history, even at second-hand. A middle-aged American signing off
with TTFN is different. Some nuances are lost, but on the other side
there's an extra kick -- any mid-fifties male or female Brit +ought+ to
lock-on to ttfn, but how many Americans ... Staw poll?
Ah, enough -- off to replay my reel-to-real tapes of "Hancock's Half Hour".
(rambling)
Robin
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