My day starts with a routine dentist visit. I'm expecting to see Adriana, the terrifying and brilliantly brutal Lithuanian hygienist. Half an hour with her and you're cast back out onto the street - shriven, sandblasted and mute, with singing gums and ears. But she's on leave and her replacement is NO SUBSTITUTE. She informs me that she likes to evaluate how her patients 'approach brushing their teeth'. To this end, I'm furnished with an electric toothbrush and a set of plaster teeth, and told to demonstrate. I point out that normally I brush my teeth IN MY HEAD so cannot accurately replicate my 'approach'. My idiocy is managed by a patient explanation of WHY she wants me to introduce Tina Toothbrush to Tommy Tooth. I start to feel the excess gamma radiation building, but I stop in time, and come back from the green, getting out of the chair as I calmly explain why I will be calling a halt to the appointment. Given my previous, this is progress.
The highlight of my day is a visit to St Albans Museum (I know how to rock out). I keep walking past it and I've never been in. At the moment they have a special 1960s exhibition. This has finally drawn me, because for the last few weeks my ear worm has been The Byrds - 'Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There is A Season)'. Until I looked for some Byrds artwork just now, I didn't realise that, in the title of this song, 'Turn' is a triple exhortation followed by exclamation marks. I envisaged commas. Nowhere near the urgency! Urgency! Urgency! (Or is it just an echo? Cho? Ho?).
I have the museum to myself. And it's brilliant. Bits and pieces dug out of local attics. Photos of Beat girls and boys in the market place - pea coats and polo necks and eyeliner. Board games and records, Hornsea pottery and magazines. An interview with Mary Quant - 'I just want to make everything nicer'. (Amen, sister.) The music scene in St Albans - Donovan plays The Peahen! Maddy Prior at The Cock! Donovan at The Peahen again! Flowers and guitars and festival nudity. There's something very moving and bittersweet in the relics of excitement - a modern world now grown old.
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven
The highlight of my day is a visit to St Albans Museum (I know how to rock out). I keep walking past it and I've never been in. At the moment they have a special 1960s exhibition. This has finally drawn me, because for the last few weeks my ear worm has been The Byrds - 'Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There is A Season)'. Until I looked for some Byrds artwork just now, I didn't realise that, in the title of this song, 'Turn' is a triple exhortation followed by exclamation marks. I envisaged commas. Nowhere near the urgency! Urgency! Urgency! (Or is it just an echo? Cho? Ho?).
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