What Are You Doing Now?

[Anita Bensoussane]

Courtenay's lack of YouTube link for Winchester Cathedral has something to do with never having heard the song before... I didn't grow up in Britain, don't forget!!

I grew up in Britain and I hadn't heard that song before either. In fact, I'd never even heard of The New Vaudeville Band.

[Rob Houghton]

Admittedly I'd only heard of it because my dad had a Henry Mancini LP with it on, which I remember listening to as a child.

[Chrissie777]

Just finished watching "Cover Girl" with Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly...I had forgotten what a wonderful musical this is!

[Eddie Muir]

The New Vaudeville Band were a very popular UK band in the late sixties. They had four chart hits in 1966/67:

Winchester Cathedral No 4, Peek-A-Boo No 7, Finchley Central No 11 and Green Green Street No 37.

They were a very entertaining band who were similar in style to The Temperance Seven: another band who specialised in 1920s-style jazz music and who had a number of UK chart hits in the 1960s.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks, Eddie. I don't think I know The Temperance Seven either. Ah well, at least I've heard of The Young Trotteville Band (i.e. The Find-Outers) and The Secret Seven!

[Rob Houghton]

Just finished watching "Cover Girl" with Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly...I had forgotten what a wonderful musical this is!

One of my favourite Rita Hayworth movies - love the two stories, past and present.

[Chrissie777]

One of my favourite Rita Hayworth movies - love the two stories, past and present.

Me, too!
I also like the two she did with Fred Astaire (You'll never get rich/You were never lovelier).

[Eddie Muir]

Thanks, Eddie. I don't think I know The Temperance Seven either. Ah well, at least I've heard of The Young Trotteville Band (i.e. The Find-Outers) and The Secret Seven!

Great comment, Anita.

[Rob Houghton]

Thanks, Eddie. I don't think I know The Temperance Seven either. Ah well, at least I've heard of The Young Trotteville Band (i.e. The Find-Outers) and The Secret Seven!

Great comment, Anita.

I also like the Pasadena Roof Orchestra,


Yes Chrissie - I love both the Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth films - great stuff!

[Darrell71]

I had definitely heard of Kashmir (not Jammu) years ago — I remember in my high school atlas, on the map of the subcontinent, noticing the border of Kashmir was marked as a jagged line for "disputed" — but didn't really know how the conflict came about until recently.

Yeah, the border is disputed. Officially the whole state belongs to India, but there is Indian Kashmir, POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) and COK (China Occupied Kashmir)

What's the title of the book, if you don't mind telling me?

Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. It was first published in, I think, the late 1970s, but has been reprinted a couple of times, most recently for the 70th anniversary this year to tie in with the film Viceroy's House, which used it as a major reference. It's a lengthy book, but very well-written and readable, although certainly not an "easy" read as in a comfortable one. (I saw the film as well and would also recommend it — it's directed by Gurinder Chadha, of Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice fame, but this time she's telling a story that's very personal to her, as her own grandparents were caught up in the partition of the Punjab.)

Ooh, I've not heard of the book, but I can guess the kind of content it would have.
Bend It Like Beckham is a good movie, and it started my long standing love for David Beckham. Yeah a lot of people experienced personal loss in that time.

So many "what ifs" and "if onlys" — it's a very harrowing story, but I'm grateful I read it and learned a lot more about that part of history than I knew before.

Yeah, harrowing and interesting too, because it was rather sudden, though the circumstances were being laid out for many years of course.

[KEVP]

(What the narrator of the song "Winchester Cathedral" sings is "She wouldn't have gone far away
If only you'd started ringing your bell". So what he expected the Cathedral to do is to ring its bell, and somehow that would have prevented his girlfriend leaving . . .)

[Darrell71]

Wait a minute... WHAT?

[Courtenay]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking.

[Liam]

Probably just an indirect reference to wedding bells.

[Courtenay]

Could be — I didn't think of that, not that many people get married in a cathedral unless they're extremely important (or rich)! I suppose it's just a fairly silly song lyric that isn't supposed to make much sense. Catchy, though.