Totty of the season

Sting (born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, 2nd October 1951)

Chris Lowe (65 years old tomorrow, 4th October)

George Peppard (1st October 1928 – 8th May 1994)

Jake Shears (born Jason F. Sellards, 3rd October 1978)

Clive Owen (60 years old today)

Guy Pearce (born 5 October 1967)

Yum, Yum.

I won't share you with another boy

Sharing a birthday as he does with another ill-matched collection of notables, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Donna Karan, Jan Morris, Groucho Marx, Annie Leibovitz, Trevor Brooking, Don McLean, Rex Reed, Phil Oakey, Graham Greene, Anna Ford and Mike Rutherford...

...Mr Gordon Sumner, better known as Sting, is 70 years old today! Gulp.

His voice may never have been the most melodic, he may have an ego the size of a planet, but when I was a hormonal teen and this spiky blond pixie-like figure arrived in the "New Wave" post-punk era, my heart (and groin) went all a-flutter!

I was particularly fond of this video...

The Police - Don't Stand So Close To Me

He and his (then) chums in The Police amassed a long string of classic hits in the late 70s and into the 80s and many artists, including Grace Jones, UB40 and Mika among others, covered them. However, I need no further excuse, dear reader, to play my favourite version of their first hit...

El Tango de Roxanne from Moulin Rouge

Faboo.

Many happy returns, Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner CBE (born 2nd October 1951)!

Giant steps are what you take

A view up my back passage [click to embiggen].

Fifty years ago, as a little five-year-old on a family holiday in heatwave-hit Cornwall, my interests were in making sandcastles, singing, and writing silly little stories. In the middle of the night (nobody slept very well because of the heat), I remember I had just finished one story about a bear who pushed down a tree to make a bridge across a river, and I was so proud of it I ran into the living-room of the rented cottage where I could hear that my parents were still up watching telly, scribbled notebook in hand, to show them my achievement.

I was a little upset that they both shushed me up, and could not understand what was so much more important then me - until my father took me outside to look at the moon and to tell me that there were men walking up there. He then took me back indoors to stare at that now-historic grainy black and white footage of Neil Armstrong in a spacesuit planting a flag in the dust. All thoughts of bears building bridges were forgotten, and a long-lasting memory was ingrained...



As the media goes to town on commemorating the half-century since that momentous occasion (just about every UK channel, TV and radio, has some moon/space-themed programming going on, and there's even a Sci-Fi Prom next month), it is a happy coincidence that today also happens to be the birthday of one Stewart Armstrong Copeland. And thanks to him, with his erstwhile band The Police, we have the perfect song to play:

The Police - Walking On The Moon

Moon landings 50th anniversary