Saturday, July 29, 2006

Time to Blow This Pop Stand

Each of the 4 topics posted is worthy of its own entry frankly. What links them is that irrepressible thing called time. Love it or hate it time marches on. A year ago according to a diary entry, I purchased a new watch in China for $10. This week it stopped. Maybe it is just the battery. I went looking for my old watch of ten years which had been substituted to see about getting it repaired at the same time. Lo and behold it is working again! Four days later it is keeping perfect time and just keeps on ticking. You would think it was a Timex from Dundee! So this week marks the last airing of that BBC institution Top of the Pops. Forty years later Jimmy Saville is facing the media microphones again as he walks down nostalgia lane. I was weaned on his show, both the radio and TV versions. Where are Mary Hopkins, Badfinger and hey, Jude, these days? Do you remember where you were 25 years ago to-day? Yep, Charles and Di got hitched at Westminster July 29th, 1981. I played an early morning round of golf at the links in Neepawa, Manitoba, then, humbled, slunk back to the hotel to watch some rip roaring pageantry dished up as only Britain can do. Talking of time, or timing to be more precise, have you ever heard of the Five Browns? Piano virtuosos from the same family, born within six years of each other, now in their twenties, they play classical on five grand pianos simultaneously. They have ten pianos in their house which takes up a lot of rural Colorado (or Utah?) as you might imagine. They have been on Jay Leno, Oprah, Sixty Minutes and were live on CBC Radio yesterday with me in the audience. Mum and Dad were poor on their timing if you ask me but the kids are significantly better.