London 0 Hull 4
Out of my several thousand tracks on my iPod, few have survived my personal test of time like London 0 Hull 4, the début album in the short career of The Housemartins, that was released in 1986. What is so striking and indeed depressing about it, is that so many of the tracks are as relevant in 2014 as they were in the summer of 1986. Mixing the anger of The Clash, the soulful voice of Paul Heaton and some catchy, almost poppy sounding ...
My Computer is Back – So Am I
I am sure that it will be with a mixture of relief, heady excitement and uncontrollable joy, that you, my Blog readers, via email, will once again be able to receive confirmation of my updated posts. A lot has happened since June and as a consequence, I am back in Basingstoke (Beggarwood) in a bachelor pad with a balcony that features stunning views that stretch from Kingsclere, across Oakley and it's famous cricket club, on to the throbbing ...
Farewell James Alexander Gordon
I don't know what it is about me at the moment, but whenever I hear about death or demise of someone linked to my life, I become overwhelmed by irrational nostalgia and a sense loss. Maybe it is a case of getting closer to the grave that make me more emotional about such things? So when, yesterday, I learnt of the death of BBC Radio's classified football results reporter, James Alexander Gordon, I felt like another part of my youth had died, ...
The V Festival
When I went to the first V Festival in Chelmsford in 1997, the last thing that entered my mind was that some 17 years later I would going again with my two lads, George and Harry, along with George's mate Alex. Even more bizarre than that, is the fact that I saw performing, the object of my first sexual fantasy (Blondie) some 35 years after a poster of her on my sisters bedroom wall confirmed heterosexuality as my sexual orientation. How...
Cliff – Is This the End of the Righteous One?
A few weeks ago when I was in Turkey, my friend Kate and I got chatting to a lady from North London and when the talk of all these child abuse cases inevitably came up in the conversation, she claimed to be close to a legal team who were in the process of building up a case against child of God, Cliff Richard. In fact she didn’t say that, she said it was 73 year old God bothering pop star who was currently out of the country, so neither ...