Whose Baby Are You?

[poliphilo]

Do you know who was President/Prime Minister the year you were born- without looking it up? Apparently Matt Drudge doesn't. I was scornful until I tried to answer the question myself.

I guessed Eisenhower/Churchill. Wrong. I was a toddler when Eisenhower and Churchill came in. The answer is Truman/Attlee.

I'm pleasantly surprised. I idolise the post-war Labour Government (which gave us the Welfare State) and I don't like Churchill (whose post-war administration was the vanity project of a senile old man.) I'd far rather be a post-war Labour baby than a Churchill baby.

Yay- Attlee!

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

The first official reporting I did as an eighth-grade journalism student was to write up a speech made in Lubbock, Texas by Harry Truman. My dad took me, and I remember writing notes, mostly about how he looked in his blue suit with his white hair. He had, as I recall, a rather small frame and was rather cold in his demeanor.

I don't remember his speech. I remember his blue suit. And I got an A on my writeup and a front page byline in the Atkins Junior High School Gazette.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose Truman was a nice man, but there was something four-square and reassuring about him.

I don't think I've ever been that close to any comparably important figure.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I saw the old Bush once, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where I was an employee. We had to go through a metal detector, and I could hardly see the man through the thicket of people until one of my pals, a big hulk, actually lifted me up and I could see Bush's face for a couple of minutes.

Carter came through the Lab, too, and I joined other workers on the hillside where we waited for his entourage to come through. I saw for a brief moment the flash of his famous teeth and his hand waving.

When Vice President Gore came to the Laboratory, I was working in an office very near the auditorium where he was to speak (to the important people), and security people came in to check our entire room, but I didn't even try to see Gore. I was so not into Gore.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The only politicians I've rubbed shoulders with have been lowly specimens. When I was a vicar we used to get the local MP to open church jumble sales and the like.

And when I was working on the trains Gerald Kaufman- who has been a Government minister- grumbled to me (to me personally) about the quality of the service he was getting.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

And how did you respond to Kaufman? Did he know you worked for the trains?

(What did you do on the trains?)

Inquiring minds must know...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was working as a cleaner- so the fact that Mr Kaufman's train was running late had nothing to do with me.

As I remember I agreed with him and then hurried to get away.