Living In The Past

We were having a  conversation over a coffee, my daughter and I, and she said Ian was a fan of Jethro Tull, (that's Jethro Tull the pop group, not the 17th century agricultural engineer, although he might be a fan of him as well for all I know). I had no idea they were still going, (the group not the engineer, obviously) but I do remember their best hit from the sixties - it was called Living in the Past, and it's not only a good song, but has the unusual distinction of being written in 5/4 time, that is five beats to the bar. Almost everything in western music is written in variations of four or three time, and five time is quite unusual and distinctive. Not a lot of people know that. But why do I remember this obscure bit of information? It was in the sixties, and although nowadays, I frequently go upstairs and find myself wondering what I came up here for, it seems I still hve no difficulty remembering that Jethro Tull wrote a song in 5/4 time forty years ago. Humans brains are truly amazing,even mine.

Anyway Living in the Past makes a nice link to what I've been doing today, which is putting up the Christmas decorations, many of which are 30 or more years old. Obviously I hope I don't "live in the past", since that would be unhealthy and boring, but hanging up the decorations that your children made in primary school all those years ago is a lovely way of keeping a kind of family history. If you have small children do keep at least some of their efforts for the future. They will obviously go through a stage, usually in the early teens,  of being horrified and embarrassed at your displaying their childish efforts, but persevere, and eventually they will look back with you rather than just at you (in a horrified teenager kind of way) as the Blue Peter Red Hanging Bird Decorations come out yet again. The birds are made of red card with red tissue paper and tinsel for their wings and tails, and after nearly thirty Christmasses are a bit delicate, some might say tatty. There's always some discussion about what they are actually meant to be, turkeys, partridges, doves, or something else, who knows? Anyway, very Christmassy, very old, and very lovely don't you think?