?Does anyone remember Vera Lynn?? A line made memorable by Pink Floyd in The Wall. But I didn?t know that some twenty odd years ago when I was living in a tiny village on the southern coast of the island of Crete opposite Libya. My younger son turned to me at some point and mentioned Vera Lynn in relation to something we were talking about. Vera Lynn? I looked at him in utter astonishment. How could you possibly know Vera Lynn? Though the blue skies over the white cliffs of Dover and all that that meant were very well known to me, having grown up in London in the fifties, I couldn?t for the life of me imagine just where he might have heard of her. I was very impressed and perhaps a touch nostalgic too. The very mention of her name reminded me of my childhood, my father, who had been an officer in the Greek Navy and had served with the British, whom he admired and appreciated ever more. He would have been one to remember Vera Lynn. But not this little guy, decades later on the southernmost tip of Europe. Though perhaps the very fact that we were there might have prompted us to wonder where we might have been, if at all, had it not been for Vera Lynn and all those she sang for. Nevertheless, Vera Lynn is probably still remembered more thanks to The Wall, than to our grandfathers and great grandfathers, most of whom have already taken their leave and their memories with them too.
Listening to a CD with such gems as ?Diamonds are a girls? best friend? and ?My heart belongs to daddy.? I thought, well. ?Does anyone remember Marilyn Monroe?? would probably give rise to hoots of laughter. Well of course we do! Everybody does! But then the CD also includes ?Happy Birthday Mr. President.? Ah! Now how many people actually remember that and what in meant? Not in retrospect (though even there it has probably faded to a threadbare grey if it?s even there at all) but in its ?real time? impact. So, what do we remember? An icon. A myth. A great entertainer? No. That?s going now, with the last dregs of the sixties survivors, sinking into crotchety senior citizenship and perhaps, already, Alzheimer?s. Marilyn Monroe? Who? Oh, that blonde whose frock got blown into the air. Some of us may also remember that Elton John?s song for Diana Princess of Wales requiem was originally written for Norma Jean, Monroe?s real name. I always did think this second handing was apt somehow. A song for another icon. But a second hand one. Not the original.