busker

Those days of yore ... before:

Excellent piece in 9/19 Sunday New York Times by one Roger Cohen - 'resonated', as the Americans put it.

A streaming catalogue of consciously well chosen beefs of better times gone by, many of which cry out for my kind of treatment for a song. My faves:

Before:

• seat belts beeped
• speed cameras and email and overheard cell phone convos
• airports became shopping malls
• break-out sessions and thinking out of the box
• the war on terror
• nurturing replaced good ol' punishment
• gentrification of the Bastille and Brixton
• stock options and stock answers
• relentless pursuit of cool
• jimi died, and janis and jim and jerry and kurt
• 'best of' albums and marketing of tenors
• New Labor
• Humvees
• personal trainers and Pilates and harry Potter
• teenagers said 'totally' and 'like'
• I vowed never to become a curmudgeon waxing lyrical about the past

And when:

• spies really did come in from the cold
• we had ideological battles and bruising debates
• every 2nd person wasn't a hero and every 3rd person not a victim and every 4th word wasn't 'stress'
• a thai meal seemed exotic
• snow settled for weeks in London
• things were not 'weird' but 'strange'
• we had outings and treats and loveless marriages that lasted