Whatever Happened To Pipes And Slippers?

I can't get my head round the marketing of rock albums as Father's Day presents.
Last year there was a commercial that showed middle-aged Dads playing air guitar and headbanging to Meatloaf.
(By the way, does anyone know what it was that Mr Meatloaf wouldn't do for love? He always struck me as an unconventional cove for whom few things would be off-limits).
This year the main TV commercial is for more Meatloaf and other rock ballads that your Dad can play at 100 decibels in the car as he goes to pick Mum up from the Women's Institute Bring and Buy Sale.
This is wrong, wrong, wrong.
It's a crime against Nature and the natural order of things.
It's like your Dad inviting you to join him at a midnight dogging session at the local country park.
Well, not quite but it's well on the way.

In my day your Dad was someone who hovered in the doorway when you were watching Top of The Pops and said things like: 'Look at the state of that!' and 'Is that a boy or a girl?' and 'They're all on drugs!'
Once, when I told my father that there was a report in Melody Maker that Sonny (of Sonny and Cher) had collapsed on stage, he said: 'Thank God for that. Let's hope it's nothing trivial.' I said I hoped that he would confess that to Father O'Flaherty on Friday night because it was probably a mortal sin and then played 'I Got You Babe' very loudly while he was trying to check his football pools coupon.

On Father's Day you bought your father a Glen Miller LP, or some Rodgers and Hammerstein or if he was a bit more of a swinger (in the best sense of the word) a James Last LP.
Today, many teenagers are into retro-rock and pop so presumably they sit down with their fathers and sing along to The Who and the Stones. Probably the Sex Pistols too. Never mind the Bollocks, what about the Generation Gap?
No wonder the poor little sods are prowling the streets in hoodies with 8 inch blades and half a pound of crack in their pockets.






Meet my new friend.
Yesterday I moved a plant pot and he jumped out at me, putting me within a whisker of needing ventricular defibrillation. There are about three times as many rats as people in this village so any sudden movements or rustlings in the garden always have me fearing the worst.
But I love frogs and this one was happy to pose for a picture before hopping off. And yes, I did hum 'Crazy Frog' (still at No 1) at him. Well you'd have to, wouldn't you?

I've decided to call him 'Peter'.
Only because 'Freddy' is such a cliché name for a frog and there's already too much alliteration in this blog.
I'm just going out to tell him he's on the internet and also now in the Google image library. He might become the most famous frog in the world after Crazy Frog and Jacques Chirac.