Includes the Beatcroft Social playlist and streaming links

To listen to my weekly Beatcroft Social show 60 North Radio, 7-9pm on Fridays, click here and then on the 60 North archive (same page). From 9.00pm on Fridays it’s also on my Mixcloud page here. For the full playlist, including the Social Soul Selection, go to the end of this newsletter. From Richie Havens in Roots to Michael Marra in Australia via Dundee

Not-so-great coats and the wrong bunnet

You weren’t supposed to wear British military clothing unless it had been stripped of insignia, badges and the buttons exchanged for anonymous lumps of metal or plastic. But in 1973 I wore dad’s Royal Air Force greatcoat to university, its official eagle buttons carelessly unpolished and ignored by everyone, as far as I could tell.

It was actually an awkward, lumbering piece of apparel, particularly on a wet winter’s day when it acted like felted sponge, growing heavier and heavier with moisture until my 17-year-old shoulders drooped in damp, creaking pain. But with longish hair, the fluffiest of non-beards and absorption in pictures from the NME and Melody Maker of slouching fans at boggy rock festivals like Buxton, it felt like….well. A tribal uniform. 

Flight Lieutenant Morton’s officer’s hat was kept in the family house as a souvenir of dad’s dental service in the RAF, until Dougal the dog ate it. But in the early 1970s, such wartime memorials in apparel were widespread, less than three decades from the end of hostilities and with national service stopping only in 1963. There were vast warehouses full of military surplus gear, like the one in Glasgow’s Gorbals where I once found a truly wonderful Norwegian motorcycle policeman’s leather jacket. I wish I still had it, though it never fitted properly even half a century ago.

The war was fresh in many minds. I remember a pal’s dad reluctantly showing us his leather flying suit from Spitfire-driving days. When the ex-commando next door, whose hobby was restoring old Jaguars, began driving one of those new-fangled Audis as his daily transport, he was roundly and publicly condemned by the woman across the road for betraying his country. Forgetting the Auto-Union owner’s own wartime service and perhaps being unaware that it was a British officer, Major Ivan Hirst, who restarted the German automobile manufacturing industry after the war, at Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg plant.

I have a neighbour who still wears an old RAF greatcoat (horn buttons, no epaulettes) and swears that it is the warmest way of coping with the vicissitudes of a Shetland winter. But I hadn’t seen any civilian deliberately wearing a piece of British military uniform, complete with insignia, for malevolent effect until I watched the England-Switzerland quarter-final last Saturday. There he was, glowering out of the TV, a ba’-faced supporter, three lions on his shirt, sporting an RAF officer’s peaked dress hat. Complete with eagle badge and – invisible to me, but presumably there – that famous motto, Per Ardua ad Astra – through adversity to the stars. Not that I imagine the wearer could read Latin, appropriate though that saying may have been to the England team’s aspirations.

I can only guess that the hat was a deliberate nod to the location of the game in Dusseldorf, which was a focus of RAF bombing raids during World War Two, and in fact was largely destroyed as a result. Over 6000 people were killed.

Just one dementedly, aggressively nationalistic Reform supporter in a provocative hat shouldn’t have dented my determination to support England in the Euros, now that Scotland and our desperately buoyant, ironically jolly Tartan Army have departed. But I did feel angry. As angry perhaps as the silent ex-servicemen and women who saw a scruffy 17 year old lurching along University Avenue in 1973, brass-buttoned blue-grey coat flapping heavily, a CND badge on his duffle bag.

Funerals and farewells

It’s been a very tough week, for lots of reasons, starting with a funeral and full of other reminders of loss and leavings. 

I’ve conducted many, many funerals now, as a small-h humanist celebrant, and still one poem always stands in its blunt Ayrshire brilliance as my favourite graveside reading. It’s Robert Burns’ Epitaph on my own friend, and my father’s friend, William Muir in Tarbolton. That final couplet…

An honest man here lies at rest

As e’er God with his image blest.

The friend of man, the friend of truth;

The friend of Age, and guide of Youth:

Few hearts like his with virtue warm’d,

Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:

If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;

If there is none, he made the best of this.

Valuing a vow

Still on public proclamations, the sight of so many newly-fledged Members of Parliament making their vows, affirmations or various protesting and reluctant mumbling  of loyalty in the Mother of Parliaments this week varied from the intensely moving to the embarrassing. I found myself remembering chunks of  the extraordinary Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, with its “everything is crap except wisdom, and even that’s rubbish” cynicism, leavened with some of the most beautiful and Godfearing poetry in existence.

A fool’s voice

Is known by a multitude of words.

When thou vowest a vow unto God

Defer not to pay it

Pay that which thou has vowed

Better is it that thou shouldst not vow

Than that thou shouldst vow and not pay

Finally, Joe. It’s time to go. If you can’t tell the difference between your own vice president and Donald Trump…I can’t get Dr Strangelove out of my mind…Merkin Muffley could at least string a sentence together as the world ended…

President Merkin Muffley : I will not go down in history as the greatest mass-murderer since Adolf Hitler.

General “Buck” Turgidson : Perhaps it might be better, Mr. President, if you were more concerned with the American People than with your image in the history books.

The Beatcroft Social playlist for 12 ~July. Available on 60 North Radio 7-9pm here and then on the 60 North archive (same page). from 9.00pm on Fridays it’s also on my Mixcloud page here.

Ellen Foley — We Belong to the Night

Lyle Lovett — Ain’t It Something?

World Party — When the Rainbow Comes

Lloyd Cole — Writer’s Retreat

Rod Stewart — Gasoline Alley

Joni Mitchell — This Flight Tonight

Randy Newman — I Want You To Hurt Like I Do

Sheryl Crow — Leaving Las Vegas

Diana Krall — Departure Bay

Elvis Costello — Deep Dark Truthful Mirror

Teddy Thompson — Everybody Move It

Richard Thompson — We Roll

10,000 Maniacs — Hey Jack Kerouac

Cowboy Junkies — Sun Comes Up It’s Tuesday Morning

Ray Davies — Imaginary Man

Ricky Lee Jones — Last Chance Texaco 

Wendy Rene — After Laughter Comes Tears

Richie Havens — Going Back to My Roots

Solomon Burke — Cry to Me

Johnnie Taylor — I Ain’t Particular

Ron Sexsmith — Strawberry Blonde

Patti Scialfa — Lucky Girl

Van Morrison — Wonderful Remark

Plainsong — Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight

Chicken Shack — I’d Rather Go Blind

David Baerwald — Nothing’s Going to Bring Me Down

Fairport Convention — Si Tu Dois Partir

Michael Marra — Australia Instead of the Stars