I was just watching the morning news and they mentioned a extremely high priced woman’s hand bag, a Birkin bag. Apparently the real ones cost about $28,000 each. I immediately thought of Jane Birkin and went searching to see if Birkin Bags were named after Jane Birkin. And the Google AI answer was, “Yes.”

Jane Birkin died last year but not too long ago, I saw her in a 1969 movie, “The Swimming Pool,” with Alain Delon, a French actor who died earlier this year. An odd little film in which Delon’s character drowns his “drunk” friend in a swimming pool by repeatedly keeping the friend from getting out of the pool. And Birkin was the “drunk’s” supposed daughter. I didn’t watch until the end of the film, and I was never sure if she was the drunk’s mistress playing his daughter, or really his daughter. Anyway, she was a very young Jane Birkin.

My first memory of Jane Birkin was after I had watched two movies she acted in, “Evil Under the Sun (1982),” and “Death on the Nile (1978).” Both of these movies were made from stories written by Agatha Christie featuring her hero sleuth, Hercule Poirot and played by the actor, Peter Ustinov. Birkin’s name appeared just after Peter Ustinov’s name on the opening credits. Now maybe alphabetical credits, after the star’s name, would be one explanation, but of all the other ensemble actors & actresses, why was Birkin even in those films? Peter Ustinov, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith, Roddy McDowell, etc.

Up to that point, I never recalled seeing Jane Birkin in any other movies. I wondered who she was screwing to get such name recognition in these two movies. And, in one of the movies she played one of the murderers, having killed the character played by Diana Rigg (the Avengers, Game of Thrones). “Evil Under the Sun” had an ensemble cast which also included Maggie Smith (the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Downton Abbey) & Roddy McDowell.

Within the past three days, I was watching a segment of a film, and I recognized Jane Birkin as she got on the back of a motorcycle. I said to myself, “That was Jane Birkin,” and googling it, yes, she was credited as “motorcycle girl.”

I just read online that Jane Birkin was briefly married to the movie composer, John Barry, until she became pregnant with their child, Kate. I love many of the musical scores Barry has created, “Out of Africa,” 11 of the James Bond movie themes, “Somewhere in Time,” and “Dances with Wolves,” etc.

In 2013, at age of 46, Kate Barry died from a four story fall from her apartment. Her father had died in January of 2011.

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My mother about 1971 and no, that’s not a Birkin bag she has on her arm. That bag probably cost her no more than $5 and if we could see her shoes, they might have cost even less, and the dress, although not by a designer, was probably sewn by mom on her Singer “Zig-Zag” sewing machine. She learned how to “read” and layout fabric on dress patterns. She probably made the dress she is wearing in this picture. *Nothing fancy, but hey, not “store bought” either.

And it only took me 55 years to realize that the money she saved on cheap handbags & shoes and handmade dresses, probably went to providing for “little Billie. All the Christmas toys, the new clothes for each school year, and the blue & white, 1971 Pontiac LeMans. *Yes, my name on my birth certificate (created by some “dip shit” at the Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital) is spelled “Billie Gene Gibson, II.” On my dad’s last driver’s license he spells his name as “Billy Gibson.”