Another Wasted Day

I had intended going for a walk along the Lancaster Canal but it's been raining all bloody day and I have no wet weather gear, and the car, which is not dead after all, although it may not be terribly healthy, has not yet proved itself reliable enough to take me off the beaten track.

The car's a problem. Do I splash out on a new radiator, three new tyres, a new alternator, a service and wheel alignment and balancing or simply run it until it really does die on me and scrap it? It's a Rover 214 and has never held a high place in my affections, though it's been reliable and run well over the past three years. Mrs Gruff calls it George because it's boring but like Georges everywhere it has been dependable and I haven't the money to replace it.

The Best A Man Can Get

This is something to aspire to:



The bedroom is obviously aimed at 'the little lady' (of lamentably poor taste) but then most cars are sold to women, even if the man pays, as he usually does. A 'kegerator'* and an indoor barbecue make excellent additions. The dedicated bachelor slob's ideal accommodation, as described by John O'Farrel, is within the reach of most working single men.

* One of these:

Cumbria 'The Police': Earning Their Pay No Doubt.

My car died in Kendal on Friday evening. I managed to drive it to a car park and from there found a 'phone box and summoned assistance. Sometime after the assistance that could not assist me had come and gone, and while The Mrs Gruff and I awaited a tow home, and in between the arrival and departure of the local car borne chavs, a police car turned up. My first thought was not 'oh thank God' but 'Oh God, what the fuck do they want?' I was not glad to see them. In a difficult situation I thought them just a nuisance to be got rid of, so I smiled and nodded and said no thank you, in a manner the late Mother Gruff would have approved of, and made myself agreeable and held my breath and, in a difficult situation, breathed a sigh of relief that the police drove off and left us alone, knowing that they weren't there to protect me or anyone or any thing I value.

We got home and I'm grateful to 'The Police' for helping us by driving off and leaving us. I'm not being sarcastic: When I saw the police car my first thought was that we were in trouble and when one is in difficulties trouble from 'The Police' is the last thing one wants as a law abiding tax payer.

With a Little Help

Shakin' All Over

Vince Taylor

Smokers

The Crowley Two Step

J'etais au Bal

Tout Les Deux Pour La Meme

The Lacassine Special

One of my most liked Cajun songs.

Amede Two Step

Jolie Blonde

The Midland Two Step

The Cajun Waltz

I've always loved Cajun music and have some albums with the rest of my compost heap.

Slim Harpo

Jimmy Inman & the Impollos

Non Existent Ledge Camping

Doesn't that look like fun?

Ronald Wycherley

That's the trouble with travelin' first class, and the reason I only ever go steerage: One never knows what rock 'n' roll singin' riff-raff one will have to put up with.

Randy and The Rainbows

The Del-Chords

The Del Vikings

Mickey and Sylvia

Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers

Who Can Explain sounds familiar.

Lincoln Fig and The Dates

No I'm not joking, and yes, he sang 'she kicked the bucket'.

Some Early Music and Folk Dancing

This remembers me, as my daughter said once when she was about the same age as her daughter is now, of a tape, bought almost twenty five years ago, that conjured images of wintry landscapes and short hard lives.



I'd quite forgotten that I have a twelve inch long playing record of the Lays of Guillaume de Machaut. There's all sorts of stuff mouldering in Berwick, and my books too, few of them fiction, which I rarely read, not that I read much at all these days.

A man needs to live alone. If only I could make some money.

This is not mediaeval but it entranced me in 1969, or thereabouts and did form some part of the long train of thoughts and fantasies that led me to undertake post graduate study at the wrong university. Had I stayed at Sheffield and taken up the very generous offer that was made to me I might now be a happier and slightly richer man, fool that I be I went to York and have regretted doing so ever since, though I enjoyed studying under Martin Carver:



I'm sure we have a tape, somewhere, of the Mediaeval Baebes:



About fifteen years ago, in Sheffield, there was a minor controversy surrounding a 'trendy rev' who used lights, smoke and music to spread his message. The usual accusations were made that he was trying to establish a 'cult' but his approach was nothing new: The early church used light (stained glass and candles) incense and music and chant to entrance its audience, and entranced they were.

I include this merely because my thoughts are on the Pre-Raphaelites and I knew a fellow, not so very long ago, who claimed that Millais painted the picture in a stream at the bottom of his great (or great great etc) grandfather's garden, somewhere in north eastern Surrey, if I recall correctly. Who knows, it may be true:






I have a version of this:







This may not be what academics consider 'authentic' but I'm certain the mediaeval commoner would have appreciated it:





In about 1994 or 5 I saw a husband and wife duo, he French and she French Canadian, I think, at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. They played Breton folk music (if I recall aright) on bagpipes and hurdy gurdy, two of my favourite instruments, although I've always hated the noise made by the Scotch pipes.



I have a more robust version of this:



This too:



This rots too:



Here's a Pavane (I'd forgotten the word):



Now my evening will be compleat if I can just find a bransle.



And:



Here's Mike Smith again:



Back to bransles:



I stopped looking for early music on YouTube years ago but things have clearly changed since.

I was a member of Handsworth Traditional Sword Dancers for four years, from 1992 until I moved, mistakenly, to York in 1996. I've done this dance many times in practice but never actually danced out, as they say (never mind the applause, the dance isn't finished until the 'lock' is formed and held aloft:



For eighteen months, in 1991 and 1992, I was a member of The Seven Champions Molly Dancers and did dance out with them several times (I moved to Sheffield in 1992 and could no longer attend the practices). I could have danced at Sidmouth in 1992 and had just enough to go but I owed my accountant almost the same sum so paid him instead. I missed a chance that I shan't be given again but I did the right thing, unlike those bastards who refused to pay me.

Here are The Seven Champions performing a dance I remember well:



I've done this one as well:



The boots, I still have mine (1954 WD ammo boots), are hobnailed (I removed the hobnails one evening at a Handsworth practice) and tend to slip on hard pavement. The toe cap of the right boot still has a gouge caused contact with a stud on another dancer's boot.

I've heard this before. Beowulf is a poem I knew well: I had to translate one third of it, that is about one thousand lines, into good idiomatic modern English as part of my degree. In this unread and insignificant blog it is perhaps excusable to record that I attended only one seminar and disregarded the set text and translated and learned by heart the thousand lines and achieved firsts in four translation tests, with a single pencilled emendation of a word that was correct but, as I knew when I wrote it, I had used two lines earlier. There was an alternative, as my tutor pointed out, and he wanted me to use it, as I knew well enough. At the time I was disgusted that I had only been given two seventy fives and two eighties, and blamed myself. These days I don't care.

HWAET! We Gardena in gear dagum theo cyninga thrym gefrunon, or something like that. My Klaeber, the pages of its glossary grimy with the sweat of a few weeks intense work, is in Berwick with Swan (Swann?) the spine of the latter broken as a sacrifice to pragmatism. It took me two and a half days to learn the first slug of three hundred lines by heart but I learned the fourth slug of two hundred and fifty in less than six hours. I can remember very little now. I do recall that Scyld Scething does not mean King Scyld but Scyld the son (or follower or kinsman) of Sceth (Sc makes sh sound, as in scip and scit - which Bosworth and Toller translate, in the phrase scit wurde as 'foul language', if my memory serves me aright)



This isn't appealing ...



but it does remind me of this (the which film this accompanies being amongst my most liked and the catalyst for a row in the cinema that used to be housed in the riverside park surrounding the abbey ruins behind the King's Manor in York, wherein I was once a very cynical post graduate student, between myself and The Mrs Gruff, although I am not sure we were then married):

Back to something like what I heard in Sheffield:



This is the only track from The Piano that I really like:

A Chanter M'er

My things rot still in Berwick but I look forward to hearing my music again, soon.

Early Music: Greek Lyre

Blind Willie McTell

This Evening's Dinner

This evening I cooked a risotto of onions, celery and fresh peas, and followed that with what The Mrs Gruff calls a fruit compote and I term stewed fruit: dried figs, prunes, apricots and some very old sultanas stewed in red wine, some very dark sugar and some mulling syrup that is more than two years past its sell by date. I served that with some of her orange ice cream and a curious biscuit like thing formed into a long thin tube.

Dion and The Belmonts

The Crests

Johnny Maestro, of The Crests, has died.



I've always liked Doo-Wop, even as a child, and before Delta Blues, Cool Jazz, R&B and Rockabilly (the 'early Rockabilly' as some would have it). I've always understood Doo-Wop to follow two distinct paths, black and white, and I've always preferred white as it has a rougher, less 'honeyed' feel which seems to convey more of it's urban working class origins. The Crests combined the nuances of black and white nicely and there is not one of their songs that I dislike, at least not of those I've heard.

Simon's Cat

See more here.

Japanese Costume

Have a look at the costumes shown here.

The English Electric Lightning

For my generation (b 1956) this was the jet fighter. Every schoolboy knew what it was because even had we not seen photographs of it, the Airfix kit* was available in model shops, newsagents and sub post offices every where. It looked like death abroad and we knew that those who flew them could handle them. Taken to the Biggin Hill airshow sometime in the early / mid sixties I still recall its awe inspiring power. Bored with the chatter of adults in the refreshment tent I noticed that the cups and spoons were rattling very gently in the saucers. This went on for what seemed like an age while the adults, oblivious, chattered on. Eventually someone noticed and drew attention to the phenomenon. We all trooped outside and scanned the skies, and the chatterers were reduced to gibbering incoherence as a Lightning flew up and over 'The Bump' at little more than tree-top height, tearing the sky apart with its searing exhaust. Some seconds after it disappeared from view it was seen climbing vertically into the clouds, and then it was gone.

I don't think anyone had any doubt that our airspace and our sovereignty were secure.

*


(Taken from here)

Addendum: A Series 2 kit cost 2/6 when I was a boy.