Then He Kissed Me

While we were in Oslo, I didn’t see the papers – and therefore didn’t see the obituaries, long one of my great interests, indeed pleasures. Last night, Elaine’s sister Christine brought over the half dozen missing copies of The Times and I tore through them this morning, literally. First came Ellie Greenwich, who wrote songs like Be My Baby, Da Doo Ron Ron, River Deep Mountain High and Then He Kissed Me, all long-standing favourites, including more recently on a couple of iPods; Barry Flanagan, whose hare statues Elaine and I have long adored; and then, today, Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, whose version of John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane has sometimes seemed to me a suitable anthem for my working life.