Well the stinky cold I mentioned in my last post has got worse and I am bedridden – Can’t be helped though as it seems the whole town has come down with this horrid virus. We will all emerge from our sickbeds in due course but just goes to show, even in 2017 the “common cold” (doesn’t feel that common from where I am at the moment) is something we are still a long way off from conquering. Oh and of course this was the week that I was due to start my new job but what with going home early on Monday, braving it out on Tuesday and Wednesday but then missing Thursday and Friday altogether, not a great start. We have collectively decided that I will now start the new job next week instead so cross fingers I’ll be back to firing on all cylinders by then. But don’t worry – Last time I checked you can’t catch a cold via an internet browser!
How have I passed my time then over the last couple of days? I have actually finished a novel which I started only recently. Since starting the blog I have noticed a serious decline in the time I spend reading fiction although I have of course spent an awful lot of time reading other people’s blogs and carrying out research for my own, so not low on word count, just not as much from the new Best Sellers lists as used to happen.
I also had another look, as I have been wont to do quite often this year, at the UK Singles Chart from 1967 – Now a full 50 years ago but always something “lesser-known” in there that jumps out at me. This time it was Single Girl by Alabama-born countrypolitan (it’s a thing) artist Sandy Posey. I really don’t think I am remembering this song from back then however but rather from 1975 when it was re-issued. We seemed to be having a bit of a love affair in the mid ’70s with the music of the ’60s when all of a sudden back in the charts were songs by The Shangri-Las, The Chiffons and so it seems Sandy Posey.
I’m not sure what Sandy looked like in 1975 but first time around she looked like the
average ’60s housewife but that was the style of choice back then for women singers who hadn’t really adapted yet to the brave new world that was emerging. Also this song can be seen as being a bit anti-feminist but I don’t really see it that way. It tells the simple, yet timeless tale, of a woman who just looks forward to the day when she will find someone to love and settle down with. Considering how popular online dating sites are nowadays, have things really changed all that much? I know that some of the best times in my life were when I flat-shared with other single girls but what did we spend every weekend doing? – Going out on the town in the hope we would find the man of our dreams which ironically would ultimately put an end to the “fun-times” we were all having flat-sharing. We are it seems, pre-programmed to pair up and create families but again, ironic, as in 2017 the divorce rate is as high as 50 percent so we’re not doing a very good job of it. I have my own theories about that one but perhaps for another today.
Single Girl by Sandy Posey:
As it turns out, indie band The Primitives from Coventry, who are probably best known for their 1988 hit Crash, must also have been a bit smitten by Single Girl as they included it on their 2012 comeback album “Echoes and Rhymes”. I really don’t think they would have included an anti-feminist track on any of their albums so like me they must just be reading into the lyrics that there are indeed two sides to this independence we have fought so hard to achieve.
Being ill today reminds me of the time when I first came to live in the Highlands – I had this great new job, a nice flat and car but no close friends yet. Down to very bad timing (and trust me I’m not ill very often) I picked up a nasty virus in the first few weeks and was all alone in my new flat with no-one to go out and get bread, milk or flu-remedies for me. In the end I sent out an SOS to my new workplace asking if someone could drop a few things off which they kindly did – Like Sandy Posey I was that single girl, all alone in a (medium-sized) town and feeling very sorry for myself!
Until next time, I leave you with The Primitives and their version of Single Girl.
Single Girl Lyrics
(Song by Martha Sharp)
The single girl all alone in a great big town
The single girl gets so tired of love letting her down
The life’s unreal and the people are phoney
And the nights can get so lonely
The single girl needs a sweet loving man to lean on
I’m a single girl wondering if love could be passing her by
I’m a single girl and I know all about men and their lies
Nobody loves me cause nobody knows me
Nobody takes the time to go slowly
The single girl needs a sweet loving man to lean on
I gotta make my own way
There’s rent I gotta pay
I need a night-time love to get me through the day
I’m a single girl all alone in a great big town
I’m a single girl and I get so tired of love letting me down
But there’s a man I’ve yet to know
Waiting somewhere I’ve yet to go
Someday I’ll have a sweet loving man to lean on
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