Lancaster bomber - overhead

Lancaster bomber - overhead
Originally uploaded by Smallbrainfield.

As part of the war weekend ( lots of folk dressed as soldiers, jeeps rushing about and a full-on battle at Ramsbottom station with ersatz jerries) at the East Lancashire Railway, the steam enthusiasts managed to get a low level flypast by a Lancaster bomber organised.
I took the kids to watch, mainly because they probably won't see one ever again. I think it's the last one flying in the U.K.
It circled over Ramsbottom, and for a moment I thought it wouldn't pass us, then suddenly it soared down the valley passing right over us. Big throaty engine noise had the kids jumping about and shouting and pointing. It was an impressive sight. Luckily it didn't unload a ton of bombs on Bury, but gracefully rolled off over the hills and away. Fantastic.

The street of mystery people

I live about halfway down my street. It's not a big street, in fact, it's an avenue. It even has a few trees in it, which sway terrifyingly in high winds and faithfully deposit sticky stuff on your car every spring and summer. I can walk to either end of my street in about thirty seconds. I can amble it in under a minute. So by most standards it's not a big street at all.

And yet, there are people who live in my street I have never seen or met in ten years of living there. There are some I can stop and have a chat with, some of them I'm on merely nodding terms with. (Most of them I can never remember their names, though my wife can. I think that might be something to do with my brain though, as I can still remember how to do Atic Atac.) There are some I wish I saw and heard less of, like the Incredible Fighting Lesbians and the Staring Man, but there must be three or four houses whose occupants I have never seen. How can this be? I mean, they could be working odd hours, but not all the time. There are lights on sometimes, so I know people live there.

I can only assume they spend their time on the Internet writing about the bloke across the road who has a benny at the lawnmower when it cuts out and swore at his car that day. Or perhaps they are as unaware of me as I am of them, suspicious of the house across the road where they sometimes see the lights on but never see anyone. I find this hard to believe as my kids make at least as much noise as the Incredible Fighting Lesbians and leave a trail of debris as wide as the Titanic. Coats, sweet wrappers, plasticine, bikes, scooters, odd-shaped sticks and a variety of sticky foodstuffs are all cast aside in their wake. I'm thinking of getting a small street sweeping vehicle as my next car.

Anyway, people who I never see on my street. Centuries-ancient Lancastrian suburban vampires or nervous ex-mafia supergrasses relocated to provincial north west England? Possibly.

The Sundays

 

I had a mate that used to buy everything that came out on the 4AD label, mainly for the Vaughn Williams cover work. Consequently, his record collection had it's fair share of shit in it, but it looked great . Music is a weird old barrel. Something can sound great, but for some perfectly illogical reason or other you instead hate it .

 

Only 17 years after most indie saddos were creaming their pants at the merest glimpse of Harriet Wheelers woolly tights, I've actually started listening to The Sundays. And they sound quite good.

 

For some reason, at the time I went out of my way not to like The Sundays, probably because I figured that they were the kind of music bought by people who don't actually listen to music but feel they should buy some music because that's what people do. Mr Fremescent tackled this issue rather wonderfully in his blog recently. There was a time when I lumped a lot of musicians in this bag, and in fact still do, but these days I am too old and uncool to care who likes what, so long as I like it. (I can, for instance, admit to owning almost all of Rush's musical output, but I haven't listened to them for a bit. Apart from Exit, Stage Left, which is always in the car and is possibly the best live album ever. Live albums are generally shit, but Exit, Stage Left actually improves on some of the songs contained on thier studio albums in almost every case.)

 

That said, there are artists I will never like on principle, or at least have a deep mistrust of. These include such joys as Travis, Tanita Tikaram, The The and some others that don't begin with the letter 'T', like Sade, Paolo Nuttini and her that did that punk rocker with flowers in her hair and is absolutely not major label backed product, oh no sir. And Katie Melua, who appears to be far too nice for her own good.

 

Some of them I hate because of the music, some of them for shallow reasons. I never liked Tanita Tikaram purely because she always had a face like a slapped arse, while I hated Sade for her particularly souless brand of soul and the fact she always had a face like a slapped arse.

 

The The have a special place in my heart for their song 'The Beaten Generation', which has the presumptiousness to call my enitire generation a bunch of mindless layabout consumer cunts with no political will or capacity for independent thought. What a twat. Well I have news for you The The bloke, at least 2 people read this blog. Where are you, eh? Where is your band, eh? Nowhere! Ha ha! Who's the loser? You! Ha ha!

 

Anyway. The Sundays Reading, Writing and Arithmetic turns out to be a decent album, and mentions sheds, which is always welcome.

 

Non uniform day.

It's a dress down day at work and I forgot. So I'm wearing a suit while everyone else is wandering around looking louche and casual.
What makes it worse is I was tasked with producing a poster to advertise the fact. And I still forgot.

So here is a picture of Audrey Hepburn grafted onto Lady Sovereign, looking uncomfortably like Cheryl Tweedy. Go figure. For any Photoshop geeks reading this, I had to recreate a bit of Audreys chin as she had it resting on her gloved hand in the original image (the cover of Breakfast at Tiffany's). Seamless.