Kent

Mick Jagger at eighty: the beginnings of a Rolling Stone

Among the other jewels in the crown of Sir Mick Jagger’s songwriting career is a number he and his longtime creative partner Keith Richards knocked off in December 1963 to promote the Kellogg’s company products. Don’t laugh — it’s an infectious little tune in its way, even if the key lyrical message — “Wake up in the morning/ There’s a pop that really says/ Rice Krispies for you and you and you!”) falls some way short of the same duo’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which followed barely twelve months later. But then Jagger, who turns eighty on July 26, was always a quick study. Last year’s four-part EPIX documentary series My Life as a Rolling Stone may be numbingly banal (“They set the bar for what a rock ’n’ roll band should sound like, look like..

mick jagger

The vineyards of Kent

Driving home through Kent the other day, I was struck by how much the topography has changed. When I was growing up there in the 1970s, first in Rolvenden and then in Hawkhurst, there were hop gardens. Today there are vineyards. I’m not sure Alfred Jingle would recognize the county about which he stated in Pickwick Papers: “Kent, sir — everybody knows Kent — apples, cherries, hops and women.” The apple and cherry orchards are not nearly as numerous as they were in either his day or mine, and the hop gardens have largely, although not entirely, disappeared. As for the women, I can’t vouch for their numbers, but I’m delighted to report they remain very easy on the eye. I loved picking hops.

kent