• Redemption Song

     It’s been a tumultuous 9 days since I last posted. With the help of some British politicians, some American politicians and owners of social media along with some fairly ordinary people from, mostly, England, various collections of racists, right wing idiots and collections of people out for a fight have rioted in parts of the…

  • I Know It’s Only Rock n’ Roll

     We’ve been watching some of the BBC Proms concerts, and last night we watched The London Sinfonia play some music by American composers. While I found the second half of the concert a bit ‘difficult’, Adagio for Strings (Barber) was utterly beautiful. You will probably have heard it. It’s been in all sorts of films…

  • This is Southport

    They started coming almost as the new day dawned, bringing brooms and buckets, trays of drinks or just goodwill. The rubble was swept from Southport’s once-quiet streets and the windows shattered by rioters were fixed.  Local builders volunteered to shore up a wall outside the mosque, smashed in the previous night’s orgy of self-righteous thuggery, while neighbours helped council workers…

  • Wild in the Country – Bow Wow Wow

     After a lovely evening of Shakespeare the weather returned to normal so didn’t do much for a few days. We did, however, discuss the walk we did last week and decided to compare and contrast with a walk on our own this week. We headed to the Wyre Valley at Scorton and walked up to…

  • English Trees (Crowded House) – Actually some are French!

      Saw this during the interval in Romeo & Juliet at Lytham Hall I’m a big fan of The Rest is Politics podcast with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart. Alastair Campbell has had a tree of the week on his Twitter Feed, so I thought I might steal the idea. On the Nantes – Brest…

  • The Ghost of Tom Joad

     In the UK, we’ve managed to show some sense and get rid of the bunch of self serving, privately educated conservative politicians and replace them with a group of, hopefully, more effective, honest and moral leaders. With 2 cabinet members from the same Wigan Comprehensive school, at least we should be able to see an…

  • Take the Long Way Home (Supertramp 1979)

     Sunday the 7th was dull in the morning but dry, so we decided to go for a walk in the afternoon. The countryside around the gite was very pleasant. Rolling farmland with loads of trees and deep river valleys. In fact lovely walking country. We covered 6 or 7 miles, on what tuned out to…

  • Won’t Get Fooled Again!

      It has been a fascinating last few days politically with the landslide for Labour in the UK and the turnaround in France with the right wing National Rally being relegated to third place.Could it be that the rise of right wing parties is frightening ‘normal’ people into voting to keep them out? While I…