AofA's Hot To Trot Talking Points
Every Friday
Have you seen our FB group Advantages of Age - Babyboomers and Beyond? We have great discussions over there. Why not join us? This is what we’ve been discussing this week.
It's two years since Sinead's death. And this is a stunning photo by Hugh O’Conor that’s in the National Portrait Gallery.
'We’re remembering Sinéad O’Connor, and thinking of her family and friends, as tomorrow marks two years since her death.
This photograph by Hugh O’Conor is part of the National Portrait Collection here at the Gallery, and was taken in Bray in 2014 while he was shooting the music video for ‘8 Good Reasons’. "It was a very personal song”, he recalls, “and we filmed on an old bus that [Sinéad] said really reminded her of her childhood". The portrait records a quiet moment during a lull in activity, and the clear winter light lends the photograph a heightened realism and immediacy.
You’ll find it hanging in our Portrait Gallery in Room 23 the next time you visit.
Image: Hugh O’Conor, Sinéad O’Connor - 8 Good Reasons, 2014. © Hugh O’Conor.'
The Guardian interviewed older people who have been willing to be arrested in order to lift the ban on the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. I salute them. This is 80 year old retired teacher, Marianne Sorrell.
‘Marianne Sorrell, from Wells, Somerset, was arrested for holding a placard at a pro-Palestine rally in Cardiff, and she was held by police for almost 27 hours, during which officers forced their way into her house and searched it. She said officers removed 19 items from her home, including iPads, a Palestinian flag, books on Palestine, material related to Extinction Rebellion and the climate crisis, as well as drumsticks for – and a belt that holds – her samba drum. “At 80, to be treated like a dangerous terrorist is deeply shocking. I’ve been very traumatised by this. Every morning I wake up feeling sick, nauseous. [I have] had to take anti-sickness pills,” she told the Guardian.’
We loved this - Public Enemy bowing down to the great Mavis Staples. And so they should! I saw her a couple of years ago at the Roundhouse in London and she sounded magnificent. What a singer! What a woman!
This is happening in Japan - people are renting older women as companions because there is a huge loneliness epidemic there. Some of our members fancied being hired out themselves! What do you think?
Steve James, a 65 year old retired banker from Devon, is attempting to be the first over 60 year old to run the entire British coastline.
At 85, Siggy Cragwell is the oldest railway worker in the UK and he’s been celebrated with a new song by Richard Thompson.
‘An 85-year-old railway worker from north London has been honoured with a folk song to mark his long service.
Siggy Cragwell, from Hampstead, works as an assistant at Elstree and Borehamwood station, and is Thameslink's oldest employee.
The special track about Mr Cragwell was one of five commissioned by BBC Radio 2, external to tell the stories of people whose lives have been influenced – or changed irrevocably – by trains.
It was written by award-winning singer-songwriter Richard Thompson, and featured Mr Cragwell's cricketing colleagues on backing vocals at their club, Holtwhites-Trinibis, near Gordon Hill railway station.
"It's such an honour to have this song written about me," said Mr Cragwell.’