When I'm 64 - How did it come to this?

 If I want to sing a cover of The Beatles classic song "When I'm 64" I've about got about seven hours to do it, before it becomes an ironic rendition! The False Dots have a gig to celebrate my birthday on Sunday and I seriously considered doing a Ska version, but I have to say that I didn't really want to remind myself of the fact, so didn't suggest it to the boys. 

However, the song has been weighing heavily on my mind. I can recall back in April 1981, when my Dad was 64, he sang it to my Mum when he got up. It was a beautifully sunny Wednesday. Dad was in a good mood. He took the family out to La Katarina restaurant for a slap up steak dinner. I was 18 and at Orange Hill Senior High School preparing for my A Levels. Well actually I wasn't. If truth be told, I was preparing my band, The False Dots, to play the biggest ever gig on the Saturday. We were playing with a band called Way of The West, who had the Radio 1 single of the week, with a track called "Don't say its just for white boys". Dad was cross with me because I'd arranged a rehearsal and told him I couldn't go. We had a blazing row about it. He told me that his birthday was more important than my 'silly band'. I reacted badly, and was accused of ruining his birthday. He hadn't told me he was taking everyone out. His view was that I should have set the time aside, but often he just went with my sister, who shared the birthday. 

When I got back from school, I was expecting another row. However my Mum had intervened and told him that he should have told me of his plans and that he should realised I took the band seriously and the gig was important. Mum then gave me a fiver and told me to go down and buy him a bottle of Johnny Walker black label for his birthday. She also said "Make sure you come back after your rehearsal and give it to him". We usually sat up till 3am drinking tea and smoking combustable substances after rehearsals at our studios, but I told the boys that it was Dad's birthday and I'd have to go home after we finished. Several of my mates decided that they'd come along and wish him Happy Birthday. My folks were quite tolerant of my mates, so this wasn't quite as odd as it may sound. 

Dad on his 64th Birthday

Anyway at around 10pm, myself and about three mates entered. The scene was quite amusing. Dad liked to enjoy himself and had clearly been having a few. Mum was on her 6th pint of Guinness, as was her want (yes really). My sister was also rather tipsy and as I recall her then boyfriend was tucking into the scotches. Most of my mates didn't sit around boozing with their parents, so they were a bit bemused. 

What was even more surreal as about half an hour later another mate turned up, as he'd heard we were having  booze up at my place. He turned up with a couple of beers, not realising he was crashing a family do. It all added to the jolity of the evening. My Dad actually liked my mates. He's been in the army and airforce and new what young blokes were like. Being an Aussie, he was hospitable and liked the craic. 

The next morning, he had a lie in and I didn't see him before I went to school. When I did see him, he also thanked me for bringing my mates around for an impromptu party. That was just how he was. 

At the time,, 64 seemed impossibly old to me. Dad was sill smoking like a chimney and would have a drink every night, usually a couple of pints of Guinness and  Whisky. He'd go to the Mill Hill Services Club on a Thursday night to play snooker. On a Sunday in the summer, he'd watch the John Player League cricket and give us a running commentary. I didn't appreciate how lucky I was to have a Dad who loved a craic and wouldn't get the hump if his errant son turned up with a load of mates to drink all his booze on his birthday. Dad actually told me off for not saying that people were coming, as he'd have got more booze in.

And now, here I am. Now its me who has kids turning up with their mates. I am the dinosaur now. I often try and judge myself against my Dad. I have adopted most of his outlook to life. His view was always that he'd live it to the full and when I wrote the False Dots anthem "We all love a party" it was very much dedicated to him. He lived another five years. In many ways I am very different to my Dad, but like a stick of Rock, I think when it comes down to it we are exactly the same. Risk takers who love a craic. 

I looked at myself in the mirror this morning as I shaved. A little voice in my head, that sounded rather like my Dad, said in a thick Australian accent "Don't worry son, you've done alright, enjoy your birthday weekend and have a Guinness for me at the club". Which is exactly what I intend to do now. How did it all come to this? He'd be 109 if he was still around. I'll miss the mad old nutcase until the day I die. 

Friday Fun and local music round up - Friday 21st August 2026

 As is the tradition in Barnet blogs, we start with a Friday joke and as we often do, we've picked a cracker from our mate Robert Wilkinson, purveyor of fine Dad jokes!

When I was a doctor, a patient asked if she could take her tablets with diarrhoea.

I said water was probably best.

— Robert Wilkinson (@robertwlk) August 16, 2026

And on to the local music news and gig round up. 

On Sunday I'll be celebrating my birthday at The Dublin Castle between 2-5pm

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There will be two great bands on with us, Little Rock and Niall Logue - Niall is launching his new album, check it out. Click here for more details https://wegottickets.com/f/22613#

Friday 21st

The Bluesbrokers (Blues Rock, 4 piece) at Butchers Arms, Barnet

Our debut at The Butchers Arms

Live music details for this gig on Lemonrock

9pm - 11.45pm

Barrington Bar 8.30 pm - midnight Karaoke with Neil

Ye Olde Monken Holt 9pm – 11.50pm - DJ The Real Slim Sadie (Disco) 

Saturday 22nd

Lord Algae (Rock Covers, 3 piece) at The Three Wishes, Edgware 4.5 miles

Live music details for this gig on Lemonrock

9pm - 11.30pm

East Barnet RB Legion 8.30pm – 11.30pm £2 non members - Cruisin Mooses (Blues/rock/soul)

Ye Olde Monken Holt 9pm – 11.30pm - Nially (acoustic)

The Arkley Club 8.30pm – 11.30pm £5 cash on door - The Flying Foxes (Covers 60s – present)

Toolans 9pm – 11.30pm - Beyond Retro

Maddens 9pm -11.30pm - The Bear Pit Band (Rock Covers)

The Lord Kitchener 8.30pm – 11.30pm - Karaoke with Johno

Sunday 23rd

Paul's Butchers Arms Jam (Rock and/or Blues and/or Pop) at Butchers Arms, Barnet

The Longest-Running Jam Night in HIGH BARNET.. Every Sunday, from 8:30pm. Electric based rock/blues jam night - we encourage all performers to jam with other musicians. Full backline, but amps...

Live music details for this gig on Lemonrock

8.30pm - 11.30pm

New Barnet Allotment Day, Tudor Park, 12pm – 4pm £1 entry - Amy and the Bar Studs

The Kings Head 2pm- 4pm - Killer Queen tribute, Kate Sanders

Ye Olde Monken Holt 7pm – 9pm - James Or

Toolans 8.30pm – 11.30pm - Barry Owen

Monday 24th

Jan's North London Jam at The Three Wishes, Edgware 4.5 miles

Live music details for this gig on Lemonrock

9pm - 11pm

Ye Olde Mitre Inn, High Street 8pm – 11pm (stables room) - Barnet Acoustics Session

Wednesday 26th

Toolans 5pm – 8pm - Two in Accord

Ye Olde Monken Holt 8.30 – 11pm - Open Mic Night

Thursday 27th

Ye Olde Monken Holt 8.30 – 10.30pm - Irish Session

Friday 28th

Butchers Arms 9pm – 11.30pm - The Past Unperfect (Country/blues)

The Lord Kitchener 8.30pm – late - One Man Stand

Barrington Bar 8.30 pm - midnight - Karaoke with Johno

Exam results day - the only degree I've ever got is the third degree!

 Today is the day when millions of students get their GSCE exam results. For some, it will be a life defining day. Restaurants will be full of families celebrating and bedrooms will be full of children crying. It is fair to say that I massively underachieved. There were mitigations. I was an undiagnosed dyslexic which practically means I read at about 2/3rds the speed that people with a non dyslexic brain do. In a timed exam situation, that was a massive disadvantage. I have heard ignorant people saying that it is unfair on 'normal kids' for dyslexics etc to have more time. I think that is ridiculous. In fact I think the concept of timed exams is ridiculous full stop. Exams are meant to be a test of intelligence. In truth, they are more a test of ability to cope with pressure and stress. As I was undiagnosed, when I did things like English exams, I could never understand why everyone finished before me. I'd score higher in the questions I answered, but not complete papers. I got nine O Levels eventually. Of those, seven were grade C and 2 were grade B. The grade B's were in decoration and design and RE. When I learned I was dyslexic and that people now get longer, I do wonder what I'd get now? But it was what it was. Although nine sounds impressive, that was in two attempts. 

I wanted to go to University at the time. Not because I was interested in the topic, but because I wanted the Uni social life. My sister Caroline went to Westfield college and had a blast. They had a cheap bar with bands on. I now recognise that I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. When I got appalling A level results, I was not upset. I went out with some mates to watch a gig at Dingwalls, met a Swedish girl and invited myself to Stockholm for six months. It was the best thing I ever did. Having lived in another country, not in an expat environment, I realised that the UK is not the centre of the world for most of its population. They view us as a bit of an oddity. The Swedes thought us incredibly socially backward. The most terrible thing was that after being there for a couple of months and getting to understand how their society worked, I realised that they were right. 

You may wonder what particularly I saw. Firstly they had a grown up attitude to sex and sex education. Girls were taught rather useful things such as "boys can become very unpredictable when they get sexually activated". They were properly taught about contraception, STD's and also about the anatomy and process of sex. This did not make them promiscuous, it made them well equipped to make good decisions. There was no social stigma around girls taking condoms on a night out. The attitude was practical and pragmatic. If a guy wants sex and you are not taking the pill, make him put a condom on. 

I recall sex education lessons at FCHS, which was a Catholic school. We were told almost nothing. Condoms were banned by the Church. so we were told that contraception was evil. It was quite ridiculous. I was given the third degree by the headmaster for handing out leaflets about contraception in a religious debate about the subject. 

My headmaster at FCHS informed me that I would never amount to anything. He told me that people with my attitude end up sleeping in the gutter. You may think that would be devastating, I took it in my stride, because I thought he was an idiot. Now I am coming up to my 64th birthday, I can honestly say that he was wrong. Of course it may all go wrong now, we can't see the future, but I have achieved all of the things I wanted in life. If I dropped dead tomorrow and my life flashed before my eyes, I'd see three kids who are wonderful and have done well. I'd see a 31 year marriage, I'd see a world famous music studio built from nothing. I'd see a band that had been heard by millions of people and done numerous well received gigs. I'd see financial security for the family. I'd see a blog that has had over eleven and a half million views. To quote Frank Sinatra "regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention".

So that day, back in 1978, when I went up to get my results and had the shock of seeing my failure written large on the wall, was nothing more than a temporary setback. If your children do not get the grades they wanted, it is not the end, it just means that they are taking a different fork in the road to the one you wanted. Who knows. It may lead to The Promised Land and the one you wanted for them, may have just been to a life of miserable drudgery, living someone else's dream.

Why not come and celebrate my birthday with me on Sunday. If you do, please stop and have a chat. Click on the image for more details.

The False Dots next Gig

How much is that doggie in the window?

 Go on, you are intrigued. I bet you thought what is he on about? Has he got a new dog? Is he going to rant about puppy farms? Has he become a raging misogynist and is it a poor taste joke about red light districts?

Nope, none of the above. I am of course going to have a little chat about "How much is that doggie in the window", the 1952 global smash hit by Patti Page. 

It is a cracking song. A great melody, a memorable hook line and a terrific video, long, long before Rock and Rollers got the knack of making great cheesy videos. When I was a snarling punk rocker, such tracks as this would be dismissed with public disdain, but in truth, there was always a part of me that loved this sort of stuff. In 1982, Captain Sensible released Happy Talk from the film South Pacific. My Mum and Dad loved it. It was completely uncool to the hipsters. but the good Captain was having a scream and he became a massive pop star, something that had rather eluded the Damned up to that point.

Was this the last truly great novelty record to bother the charts? When I saw the Damned's chaotic reformation gig at The Moonlight Club in West Hampstead in 1979, I never dreamed that four years later, my Dad would be telling me that if I wanted success in music, I should be more like Captain Sensible.

But my Dad had spotted something I had missed by a mile. Captain Sensible and the Damned have had a 50 year career in music. They still tour to sell out audiences. Why? Because they are damned good fun! The odd thing about Happy Talk was that I actually think it enhanced Captain Sensible's rock and roll credentials. Why? Because Punk rock is, or should be, about doing what you want to do as an artist and not simply churning out the same old sort of stuff in ever decreasing circles. For Sensible it was almost as if doing the most uncool thing possible was actually cooler than just being the bassplayer/guitarist of The Damned. People realised that the Damned genuinely didn't care what people thought of them. They were there for the fun and you could join in or you could be miserable. Your choice. Even at their most gothic, the Damned were Hammer House of Horror Camp Gothic with dollops of fun. 

Anyway, as it is coming up to my 64th birthday, I was thinking about putting together a guilty pleasures playlist of songs. Songs that I'd have rather died than admit I like when I thought I was cool. It will be my birthday present to you as my Saturday birthday list. But I thought I'd give you a little taster!

This is important to me, my band The False Dots have unleased the power of having a party and having some fun.  Humour has always been a part of the package, I always thought most of our songs were funny in a very dark way. We have lightened up the humour over the years and I think we now use humour to make people smile and on the odd occasion make them think. Our last single, Big Hairy Spider was written in 1979, but only played last year! We were far too cool for such silliness when we were sixteen. We made a proper animated video for it and the response has been amazing. 

My conundrum as an artist is always how to top the last thing you did. I think Big Hairy Spider sets a high bar. Come down and see the band on Sunday at the Dublin Castle in Camden Town. CLICK HERE FOR FULL DETAILS

The Camden New Journal have rather liked the new album, so see why!

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It would be so much easier just to go with the flow and say nothing when people are bang out of order

 Do you ever wish you had a different personality? I do. I genuinely wish I was the type of person who didn't feel it was morally wrong to stand by and watch people bully, lie, gaslight and generally abuse whatever position of minor power they may have. I am comfortably off and I am at a stage in my life where I could do without the hassle. Sadly for me, I was raised to believe that God had blessed me with many gifts in life and that it was my duty to show my appreciation for this by not taking the easy path and saying "it's someone else's problem" when I see people behaving in an appalling manner. It is bad enough to see people behave in an appalling manner, but when I then see them being dishonest to try and get away with it, it gets my goat. Much as I would love to walk on by, I can't. I am sure that one day it will be the death of me. However, I've had the best life and I would rather go to my grave early with my dignity and self respect than let people act in a way that is horrible. I've never been afraid to go out on a limb, shout back at a howling mob, if they are wrong.

Life is short and at some point, I believe we all have a reckoning. I am not perfect, I've made terrible mistakes in the past and I will again. I've let people down, I've looked the other way at times when I shouldn't. What life has taught me is that when you do this, the shame is a heavy burden. There are several stories in the news today that have demonstrated a terrible cost associated with not doing the right thing.

I have learned that life is a bit like a game of chess. Sometimes you have to make a sacrifice to get what you need to succeed. But you have to have a clear strategy. I am so often shocked at the fact that people who take a different path so rarely have thought through the consequences of their actions, beyond what they can see at the end of their nose. When you don't treat people with dignity, when you demonise them for their mistakes, when you want remedies that are disproportionate, you enter a very dangerous place. 

I apply three principles to life. The first is that we all make mistakes, so mistakes should be treated with understanding, if the person who made them acknowledges them. Secondly, If you make a mistake, you should do everything in your power to rectify it as soon as you recognise it. If you don't then you have not learned and no one should have any faith that you will not make a similar mistake again. The third principle and one that is perhaps hardest for us to get our heads around is that we are not being true friends if we don't tell our friends the truth and put them right when they have behaved badly. We have to balance that against ensuring that they know we will help them get through difficult times, but when we know they are in the wrong, we should support their efforts to put things right, not reinforce and mistaken belief they may have that if they tell enough lies, they might get away with it. As friends, when we support atrocious behaviour, we become co-conspirators and culpable. 

My memory always brings me back to a certain Barnet Tory councillor, who continually behaved in the most atrocious manner. His party chums went along with his appalling behaviour, although several privately told me they were appalled. Instead of learning from past misdemeanours, his behaviour deteriorated, until the point where he assaulted a woman on the High Street and ended up with a criminal record. When the CCTV showed the assault, he exclaimed "That is not how I remember it". 

I realised that he convinced himself that an alternative reality was true and despite hard evidence to the contrary, many of his local Tory chums fell into line behind him. For some reason, weak, pathetic bullies generally prefer picking on women, unless they have a baying mob supporting them. 

Over the years, I have seen so many examples, in work, in local politics, in social settings and clubs that I belong to, where unpleasant individuals pick on people they believe are not in a position to fight back. In every case there is one constant. They refuse to admit they are wrong and have extreme reluctance to apologise to those they have wronged. I am 64 soon and I am thoroughly sick of such people. Their unpleasantness is so deeply engrained that they see it as not only perfectly normal, but they genuinely enjoy the upset that they cause their victims. The one thing you never hear from them is that they have any sense of regret for the upset that they caused their victims, unless it is part of a strategy to get themselves off the hook.

If I wasn't in a great band and surrounded by nice people, I think I would find it very hard to navigate waters inhabited by such individuals. As it is I seem them for what they are and it reminds me why I never want to be in their camp. But I will leave you with this thought. It is not the man who pulls the trigger who is the most dangerous individual. It is the man who hid the gun for him, so he got away and did it again. It took me a while to understand.