Fruit Tree

When I moved into my previous house in Thornton Cleveleys it was the garden that sold me on the deal. It was an really ugly house, the kitchen was drab and cheerless, the bathroom cold and unwelcoming but the back garden was huge. Despite a couple of discarded mattresses, overgrown by grass and weeds, there was mighty sycamore at the far end and closer to the house, a fruiting cherry tree and a neglected apple tree.

I had to prune it back quite hard and attach sticky strips to the trunk to deter ants but by the next spring it was showing signs of recovery. The cherry blossomed and bore some sweet fruit. The apple tree did not. Naturally I was disappointed. I had planted raspberry canes the previous year and would pick a handful to eat with breakfast every summer morning. The apple tree was a dilemma.

The following spring I took my mum and my daughter to Southport flower show. I bought some vanilla lily bulbs and while walking round the marquees, came across seated group involved in a question and answer session with two celebrity gardeners. We took our seats and after a while I out up my hand and asked how they would suggest I could fix my tree. They in return asked whether there were other apple trees in the surrounding gardens. I responded that, yes, one garden had a tree. The solution, they announced is to cut a branch from that tree when it is in bloom and brush the flowers in my own tree with the pollen. I am pleased to announce that it worked and soon apples appeared. Simple solution.

Sadly the following year, we were hit by The Beast from the East and the cherry tree took the brunt of the cold winds and started to die. The apple tree thrived, however much of the fruit had brown speckles and were not appetising. I would take them off and had soon built up a pile at the foot of my perimeter hedge. During the cold winter season, this became a food store for hedgehogs and blackbirds who feasted on the fruit and the worms that the apples attracted. It is said that everything happens for a reason.

When I was much younger, my parents were tenants of a 16th century coaching inn. Next door was an abandoned cottage with an orchard behind. As village children with little entertainment to be had, we loved to play in the old building. We collected discarded tins of paint and made attempts to make it cheerful. The colours of paint made the interior quite a spectacle.

One day, around a dozen of us were messing about in the cottage when we heard a child's voice screaming. Running outside we discovered a little boy of around four had climbed an apple tree and was being viciously attacked hundreds of wasps. It seems that he kicked the nest. I told one of my friends to run and get the child's father, then ran to the telephone box and dialled 999 for an ambulance. He was going into shock by the time help arrived but after treatment and a brief spell in hospital, he recovered. It is a vivid memory for me and very frightening!

Now to get back to my old apple tree. Eventually I began to hang bird feeders from it and attached a birdhouse that I found in my dad's shed after he died in 1998 to the sycamore. That year we had our first brood of baby bluetits and on Christmas Day while eating lunch, the lawn dusted with snow,  a magnificent great spotted woodpecker came to eat from the feeder. It was a red letter day for the apple tree and as an avid bird lover, for me too. Over the years it attracted jays, wood pigeons, countless robins and just once, a pair of waxwings. It became a happy little tree.

The poem was written a good few years ago but I think that it captures the right moment.

A Winter's Tail

On a bright and bluish Boxing Day
when the house is quiet
the kids away
I am ironing alone
in the peace
facing the window
wide and clear
and I gaze to the garden
through frosted grass
while the tears stream down
for the love that I lost
for the joy that passed
Then I stop
and I peer at a flash of light
the green and yellow
a bird in flight
with a soft black cap
and a bold black chest
my acrobats are back to their nest
dashing and dancing
from limb to limb
of the apple tree with it's mouldy trim
swinging from strings to a coconut
to taste sweet suet and butternut
such delight to my wondering eyes did appear
and brought me a smile from ear to ear.

Thank you for reading. Adele

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Fruit Tree

Arboriculture, or the cultivation of fruit trees goes back to the Neolithic period and was developed, perhaps, around 6,000 BCE within the Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and in Egypt, in the Nile Valley. The first fruit trees to be cultivated were indigenous species.

I was going to go along the historical line and trace what happened over the thousands of years since then but in looking up details I came across this place in Kent and I’d never heard of it before and it sounds wonderful.

Brogdale Farm is near Faversham in Kent. It has the largest collection of temperate fruit in one place in the world. Row upon row of fruit trees and grape vines make up its treasure trove of over 4,000 fruit varieties. It is, in essence, the UK’s largest orchard.

Brogdale Farm

The collection is owned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and is part of an international programme to protect plant genetic resources for the future. The University of Reading is responsible for the curation and maintenance of the UK’s National Fruit Collection (NFC) in collaboration with the Fruit Advisory Services Team (FAST), who are based at the Farm. Public access is organised by Brogdale Collections, who manage public access and provide guided tours and run various events throughout the year.

They reckon to have near to 3,500 fruit trees and say that with around 2,100 varieties of apple tree, the spring time blossom display is worth a visit alone. But there is so much more to the Nation Fruit Collection. Its mandate is to safeguard the future of each and every one of its trees and vines. The genetic resources housed within the NFC are fundamental to researching how we can adapt fruit crops to our changing environment, or select varieties that will grow well as our seasons and climatic conditions change.

They ask why should you visit Brogdale and the National Fruit Collection? And answer that question thus:
‘As well as being a stunning sight to behold, you can taste many different varieties of fruit and even taste the exceptional apple juice that is produced from the harvest. Visitors can get their unfamiliar fruit varieties identified.

What’s more, you’ll be better acquainted with an establishment that has contributed immensely to the development of global fruit growing knowledge.... Since the NFC was established it has conserved the 4,000 cultivars and distributed them to research organisations all over the world, as well as supporting many local fruit groups and orchards to identify fruit varieties and obtain scions for rare cultivars.

By visiting, you’ll also be supporting the Brogdale Collections, which relies on visitors to the NFC and the festivals and events and on charitable funding. The best time to visit Brogdale Collections is during one of its events such as the Apple, Cider or Cherry Festivals, where you can taste and buy hundreds of varieties and tour the NFC, or Hanami Festival for spring blossom. But whenever you go, be sure to join the daily guided tour of the extensive orchards. See the website for more information.’

Here is an example of one of the Tours on offer:
Blossom Tours
Dates: 28, 29 March, 18, 19, 25, 26 April
Times: 11.30pm and 2pm

Brogdale blossom time

"The blossom tours will take you on a journey around the collections, discovering the seasonal highlights and peak blossom areas of the orchards. Ideal for the curious to learn about the National Fruit Collection or for aspiring photographers to grab those perfect shots of the blossom."

Thanks to Julie in Australia for suggesting the following poem.

After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

                                                   Robert Frost

               

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Fruit Tree - An Apple Tree on St Kilda

It was one of those rare mornings where I didn’t need to be up early. A grandson had stayed with us recently, which meant early starts and walks to school in all weathers. Since he’s been home, I’ve been fighting some sort of flu virus which has given me a dreadful cough and some aches and pains. I’m not blaming him, of course not. I’ve got run down and not rested enough. Anyway, it was nice to stay in bed a bit longer, just dozing, listening to the wind whistling round the windows and imagining that I’m in my fantasy cottage in St Kilda, warm, cosy, everything I need, as a wild blizzard dominates the bleak surroundings. Somewhere in this blissful existence, I wanted a fruit tree. In reality, there are no trees of any sort on St Kilda. High winds and constant salt spray prevent tree growth and the peat, acidic soil is completely unsuitable. In my imagination, I have had sustainable soil shipped over to help maintain my vegetable plot. An apple tree would be lovely. Eventually, I had to get up from my gorgeous bed and live in the real world. My fruit tree blog had to be in there, somewhere.

Close to where I live, there was an abundance of damsons. The tree was over-hanging the garden wall on the property and the fruit spilled on to the pavement making a sticky, purple mess. One of my neighbours, with permission, collected some damsons and made jam. Much better than wasted fruit making a mess.

Nearby, there is a small, confused cherry tree. I say confused because it comes into bloom with fabulous blossom at various times of the year. Never any cherries, though.

At a young age, I learnt the hard way just how bad a tummy ache can be after eating crab apples picked from the tree. Home was always a pub, on a street in a town, so nowhere to play out except the carpark. That was fine for my bike or scooter, but no mates to play with. All changed when we moved to a pub in the village of Padfield near Glossop. I soon made friends from our school down the road and we were never in. We fished for tadpoles, got in trouble for playing in the local farmer’s silage pit until we were filthy and stinky and one day, decided to feast from an apple tree. Crab apples. They were bitter tasting, probably not ripe, and I imagine it was quantity that made me unwell. A lesson learnt.

My Haiku poem,

In my wildest dreams
I’m in comfort perfection,
St Kilda cottage.

Sweet, rosy apples,
So juicy and fresh each day,
Clustered on branches.

A rare, sunny day
And a cloudless sky in this
Archipelago.

Strong winds just bring snow
Icy, northern blasts make a
Harsh environment.

I wish I could grow
A fruit tree on St Kilda,
Weather protected.

PMW 2026

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Vinyl(s)

In the beginning was the vinyl. 

Well, not quite at the dawn of recorded music. Originally, from the 1880s onwards, there were perforated paper rolls for pianolas, wax cylinders for phonographs, flat and brittle shellac discs for gramophones and even magnetic reel-to-reel for tape-recorders. In fact vinyl records, made from polyvinyl chloride (or PVC), didn't make their appearance on the scene until the 1940s, sixty years into the process.

The durable two-sided discs contained analogue recordings in a continuous groove and were played on the turntable of a device with a valve amplifier and one of more speakers. The records came in two varieties: 7-inch "singles" playing at 45 rpm (revolutions per minute) and 12-inch "long players" (aka LPs) spinning at 33rpm. They were nicknamed variously discs, frisbees, hot biscuits, hot wax, liquorice pizzas, platters, slabs, and spinners. 

Then since the golden age of vinyl records (1950s to 1980s) look what else has come along. First of all cassette tapes, CDs, minidiscs and  i-Pods and then the recording angels went truly ethereal with the arrival of digital streaming services such as Napster and Spotify.

Some of you whippersnappers won't even have possessed a record-player or a vinyl disc, maybe not even CDs. I had my hand luggage searched at Manchester airport last summer and the security lady took great delight in holding up my Sony Walkman CD player and asking her youthful colleagues "Does anybody know what this is?" Few did, much indulgent amusement at my expense.

Nowadays music has blue teeth and Alexa as DJ. But those of us of an age regret selling our record collections back in the 1990s, or boxing them up in the loft for want of anything to play them on anymore. I bought my first vinyl in the early 1960s (starting with The Beatles) and then sold hundreds of LPs thirty years later because CDs were more compact and versatile. 

I only hung on to a few LP records that I thought would never get reissued on CD, and then over the last decade I've been buying some of my old favourites on vinyl again as the format has been making a (somewhat expensive) comeback. I now have my favourite fifty albums of all time, many in pristine 180g vinyl, because you really can't beat the organic sound quality of a record played on a good hi-fi system.

However, for a few decades sales of vinyl records plummeted from their millions per annum to a few hundred thousand, mostly on specialist labels and for club DJs who kept the vinyl culture going into the new millennium with their twin decks and their 12" grooves. So it's DJing I'm going to focus on today.

state of the art DJ twin-deck rig

The first documented use of the term disc jockey (DJ) is from 1941, no great surprise that it was coincident with the arrival of vinyl records. From the Second World War onwards, through the birth of rock & roll as a phenomenon, radio presenters who played records over the air started to become celebrities in their own right, building their fan base, commenting on the music they liked, having the pulling power to make songs 'hits'.

In America, the likes of Alan Freed, Bill Randle, Dick Clark, Murray the K and Wolfman Jack became cult figures. Randle brought Elvis Presley to the attention of the nation in the 1950s, and Murray the K did the same for The Beatles a decade later.

In the UK we had Brian Matthews and Alan Freeman on the BBC, Kid Jensen, Jimmy Saville and Johnny Walker on Radio Luxembourg and then a raft of DJs who would eventually become household names as pirate radio stations proliferated in the 1960s with Dave Cash, Dave Lee Travis, Emperor Rosko, John Peel, Keith Skues, Kenny Everett, Simon Dee, Tony Blackburn  and many more. (By the way, if you haven't seen the brilliant Richard Curtis movie 'The Boat That Rocked', remedy that soonest please, you won't be disappointed.) 

Radio Caroline DJ about to play the latest 'hot biscuit'

As well as radio DJs (whether terrestrial or piratical), the 1960s also gave rise to an enduring breed of vinyl spinning disk jockeys at clubs, dancehalls and discotheques up and down the country, They were often more than comperes and spinners of vinyl. Many were influencers and trend-setters, creating or promoting a dance craze here, a whole scene there... in no particular order or chronology, mod, goth, Motown, hip-hop, bluebeat, psychedelia, northern soul, grime, acid house, hi-NRG, electronica, reggae, new romantic, techno, ambient, jungle, ska, Eurobeat, whatever people wanted dance the night away to.

I can name-check a few movers and shakers if you like. Jeff Dexter in London basically turned the country onto the twist, before becoming the regular DJ at Middle Earth in the mid-sixties. Ian Levine and Rob Winstanley curated Northern Soul at places like the Twisted Wheel and Wigan Casino in the 1970s. Dave Haslam was the top DJ at Manchester's Haçienda during that city's Madchester era of the 1980s. Eddie Richards, godfather of 'house' music, was the main man at Camden Palace from the 1980s onwards. Annie Mac was a favourite spinner at Creamfields in more recent years. 

Then there are high profile DJs you've probably heard of by cultural osmosis, like Big Youth, Calvin Harris, Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim, Paul Oakenfold and Pete Tong, and beyond them a plethora you've certainly never heard of who go by funny aliases like Bro Safari, Deadmau5, Eiffel 65, Green Velvet, Jack Beats, Jillionaire, Lisa Lashes, NERVO, Sharkey, Totempole and Weird Genius.

I was once tempted by an offer to host a music show on local radio here in the jewel of the north. I thought about it for a while, the opportunity to turn people on to the range of music I like. I'd got as far as choosing an alias, Stanley Park, and a name for the show which would go out on Friday nights as Stanley Park's Midnight Works. But then I figured I'd be permanently tired with everything else I try to do - and anyway it turned out that the radio station doesn't have turntables and vinyl anymore, it's all digital now, WAV and FLAC and MP3 files plucked from the ether. So I got off that particular cloud.

While researching for this piece, I came across the song 'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life', a cheesy disco dance hit in the early 1980s for New York group Indeep. Rolling Stone magazine declared it to be "one of the greatest songs ever written about being a girl, listening to the radio, or any combination of the two" (lol) and Billboard reckons it's in the top fifty best dance tunes ever. I watched the video. It's two girls singing and a DJ playing the backing track on vinyl on a deck. The protagonists sing "if it wasn't for the music, I don't know what I'd do, yeah" and the DJ's response is "There's not a problem that I can't fix, 'Cause I can do it in the mix." What a hero.

I also stumbled upon the fact that a playful tweak of the title has given rise to a T-shirt very popular with clubbers (as pictured below) and I was momentarily diverted by the thought of perhaps writing a short story that would do justice to the title 'Last Night A DJ Shaved My Wife', something along the lines of a feisty midwife whose husband has walked out on her and three young children, so she becomes a sought-after DJ in a local nightclub at week-ends while delivering babies by day. How does that work as a treatment?

de rigeur saucy clubbing T-shirt "LAST NIGHT A DJ SHAVED MY WIFE"

I didn't go there in the end (not enough hours in the Saturday), but I did want to write a poem about the power of DJing, that shamanistic leading of the musical tribe into revel and rave. It's not the first time I've written on the topic. Check out this blog from six Januarys ago, which includes a poem featuring DJ Sky High (aka the Detonator) in Radio Big Bang.

As background (though one should never explain a poem), in 1927 psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who never visited Liverpool, claimed to have had a dream about the city saying “I found myself in a dirty, sooty city. It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining. I was in Liverpool. With a number of Swiss—say half a dozen. I walked through the dark streets... we found a broad square dimly illuminated by street lights, into which many streets converged. The various quarters of the city were arranged radially around the square. In the centre was a round pool, and in the middle of it a small island. While everything round about was obscured by rain, fog, smoke and dimly lit darkness, the little island blazed with sunlight. I had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that is why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is the “pool of life.” The “liver,” according to an old view, is the seat of life, that which makes to live.”. A local poet in the 1970s reckoned that Jung and his dream friends had arrived at the Cavern in Matthew Street.

The poem is truly a work-in-progress, to be continued obviously (at some point) but never mind that. So move the furniture out of the way, put on your black vinyl shoes and dance to the groove of...

Scouse House

A dream of a darkened cavern - the sound, the lights,

lights and sound of happy humanity bouncing round

bobbing and spinning at the bidding of  DJ Jungman.

Girls in short PVC dresses, lads all in black vinyl macs

sway as one to the rhythm of the shaman, undulating

in a primordial soup of collective euphoria,  gyrating

and hydrating, spinning and bobbing in trancelike joy

hydrating, gyrating to the rhythms of 12 inch grooves,

this musical amoeba in the grip of the power of DJing.*

To be continued...

(*pronounced "jing" with a silent d, not "deejaying", and evocative of magic as in Djinn or Genie.)

Thanks for reading, pop pickers! S ;-)

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Vinyl Junkies

For Christmas in 2025 my sister-in-law bought me a mug with the legend “It’s Not Hoarding if it’s Vinyl” emblazoned across it. She knows me well. It now stands full of paper clips in the room I keep my vinyl hoard in.

In the Seventies I lived in Lancaster just about the time I was coming of age. My records certainly weren’t a hoard then, but they were on their way to becoming a collection. A guy I worked with, John LePage, showed me how to make a box to store records in. He said you buy four pieces of blockboard ready cut to fourteen inches square and a piece of plywood to form the back. Take them home, counter sink and screw it together. It may take half an hour to make. You can paint it if you want to.

a vinyl hoard?

Now fifty years later, I’ve got fifteen of those boxes with over a hundred albums in each. Fifteen hundred records and more. If I play three a day over the next five hundred days, I’ll probably get them all in before I go to the great record shop in the sky. Ah well- maybe. That’s some going, even in retirement, and if I take out family days, Christmas days, birthdays, holidays, football matches and time with my wife, we are up to a thousand days already. So it’s probably totally unrealistic but then again hoarding is. I am not sure I would describe myself as a hoarder but others would. Hence the mug. I try hard not to be.

But do you know what the saddest thing of the lot might be? I can remember where I got most of them from or have a good go. I can certainly have a good go at guessing. The first long playing record I ever got was The Beatles' first album “Please Please Me “. My mum and dad were separated and my sister and I got our dad to buy two LP records, one for her and one for me. They were 30/-  (shillings) each. We got him to buy us these instead of his usual selection box. My sister got “With the Beatles”. We wore them out. But guess what - I have still got mine.

When I was doing my paper round, for which I got 30/- a week- luckily. I would plan out what records I would buy next, as I plodded around in the wet, cold and snow delivering the Bolton Evening News.

So it went. I used to buy new albums then. The folk boom came. I fell in love with the music of Mr Dylan. But if you wanted to be more esoteric you could buy albums on Elektra Records but they were 32/6d. The price of being erudite. Two and six more.

You could sit upstairs on the bus going to school with an album propped up on your knee, thinking everyone is looking at me because I’ve got a Jesse Fuller album. In truth they didn’t give a shit.

Somewhere wonderful to buy vinyl was Yanks in Manchester, a subterranean cellar next to the public toilets where Len Fairclough got caught or so they say, just across the road from The Palace Theatre. It was full of deleted records from across the pond that you could buy as cheap could be. The stuff I got from there was mind blowing.

In 1990 I moved to Blackpool. Forget the Tower, the Big One, Bloomfield Road - sorry Steve - the greatest thing Blackpool ever had to offer was Saddle Records which eventually ended up in Layton. This was a goldmine. Sadly missed by me and hundreds of others I would suspect.

a vintage Blackpool record shop

I once paid £20 for a David Blue album “Stories” in a second hand record shop in Chorley. I asked the lady if she wouldn’t mind taking the price tag off. She replied that of course she would and added that I would be surprised how many people asked this, so that their partner wouldn’t notice how much the record had cost.

And so on. Don’t worry I am not going to take you through every phase and every record I have ever bought since 1963. That would take more than five hundred days for me to write and for you to read. You would probably find it pretty tedious anyway.

I might add that these days I buy albums for their cover as much as for the record itself, which, of course, could well be knackered. There is always a good chance of that. I recently bought “Have I Right?!” album by The Honeycombs for two pounds in a charity shop in Poulton for the obscurity of the album itself and the cover. The record actually plays quite well. I had also previously bought an album by The Four Pennies at the same place for the same price with the same outcome.

I have six frames specially made for album covers on the wall in my mancave. I change these regularly to show off my collection and covers. Still remember the Jess Fuller album on the bus. Don’t know who I am trying to impress anyway. Nobody comes in here. Right now they display 60’s British R’n’B albums - The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Pretty Things, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames Live at The Flamingo and an Alexis Korner album. The last is of interest. Some second hand dealers have realised the interest in covers. I bought this for 50p with no record in it. These are in the frames now because I put them in after I took out my Christmas albums covers. Sad bastard stuff really. Confessions of a Vinyl Hoarder indeed.

Georgie framed and friends

I have always thought that the concept of the speed of records, seventy eight, forty five and thirty three and a third rpm was a good analogy for the way the baby boomers., like me, have lived our lives. Starting at breakneck speed and coming of age as the music slows to thirty three and a third. In the poem I have taken this idea and written around it in my poem.

The last verse stops in the early seventies. It has a certain pomposity and piousness about it. Still we were without too much doubt like that in our early twenties in the early seventies. I was anyway.

The Speed of Sound

You slid it from its cardboard wrapper
as if it were a holy relic.
You cranked up the gramophone.
The needle crashed down.
The black twelve-inch record,
spun at breakneck speed.
Seventy-eight revolutions a minute.
Brittle and fast they could easily shatter

Just like the records our lives turned fast,
We were the bees’ knees and bobby dazzlers.
Jiving, crashing, rocking and rolling.
ploughing the furrows, moving through the grooves.
Baby boomers let off the leash.

We lived our lives at seventy-eight rpm.
Brittle and fast we were easy to shatter
Whole lotta shaking going on

Stored in their paper sleeves,
there they stood pleading to be heard.
You switched on the Dansette.
The diamond hard stylus never missed a beat
The black seven-inch record
spun without threatening to break
Forty-five revolutions a minute.
Loud and proud get out of the way

The speed of the records was the sound of the times.
We were razor sharp and dressed up to the nines.
Short skirts, suave suits, with scooters outside.
Our clothes and the music danced hand in hand.
More than just records they said who you were.
We lived our lives at forty-five rpm.
Loud and proud get out of our way
Talkin’ ‘bout my generation

Laminated, leaning up against a shelf
each cover looked like work of art.
Hi fi separates balanced the sound.
The cartridge revealed glorious stereo.
The black long-playing record
spun six songs a side
Thirty-three and a third revolutions a minute.
Shining and modern they were shatter proof

Cooler, calmer, career guided and minded
coming of age as the music slowed.
We had boxes of albums stacked by the wall.
Nothing is better than a vinyl collection
and buying records at the speed of sound.
We lived our lives at thirty-three and a third rpm.
Shining and modern we were shatter proof
Wish you were here.

the speed of sound

And if, after all that, you're starting to feel the urge, consider this. Think of it as a vinyl junkie hit list.

In “On the Road” Jack Kerouac offered thirty tips for aspiring writers. Many clearly are about writing itself but others are more general such as “Be open to everything” and “Be in love with your life. I am going to offer some fun filled tips for buying records, predominantly second hand ones at that. If you want to spend twenty pounds plus on buying a new copy of your favourite album that’s fine but these tips are about getting out there and hunting for fun and being open to everything, wanting to build up your record collection and most of all being in love with life. Not quite thirty still nevertheless you can add some if you want to. So let’s go.

· Never pass by a charity shop without going in to see what they might have.

· Car boots can sometimes offer something you may want.

· Always look at the collections of your family, neighbours and friends. They will have stuff in their attic they will probably be only too glad to give away.

· Consider eBay from time to time.

· Take chances on something you might not be sure about but it’s always worth a couple of quid.

· Get out of your comfort zone. Buy stuff you feel might expand your musical boundaries.

· Most importantly of all, never ever leave something you think you might want because what will be for sure if you hesitate or doubt, it will be gone by the time you have made your mind up. You have been warned!

Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

Bill Allison

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Vinyl

When I was decorating my front room a few years ago I made the momentous decision to chuck all my vinyl LPs and singles. Taking them to the tip was hard both physically, they weighed a ton, and emotionally. Most, actually all, of them were scratched or the covers were covered with coffee or beer stains. But they were memories and two or three I know I won’t be able to replace. Maybe I should have kept the very first single I’d bought ‘Black is Black’ by Los Bravos or my first LP ‘The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter' by The Incredible String Band.

But if I’d tried to sell the records instead what might I have gained financially. Well, nothing I suppose as for a start its condition needs to be Mint or Near Mint. But there are apparently several other factors that determine a record’s value.

Rarity: Limited pressings, promos, and early releases are gold.

Pressing Details: Matrix numbers, unique labels (like the black/gold Beatles). First pressings are made from the initial batch of lacquers (or master discs) and cut from the original master recordings. Therefore, first pressings are significantly more valuable than subsequent pressings

The Label: Look for specific colours or text (e.g., Beatles black/gold).

Check the Matrix/Runout: The etched numbers/letters in the dead wax (runout groove).

Look for Inserts: Posters, lyric sheets, or unique artwork.

Age: Records from popular eras are usually more in-demand than others. You can identify your record’s age by reading the liner notes—the text printed on the sleeve.

Uniqueness: There are several factors that make a vinyl record unique, including autographs, test pressings and more.

Sealed: A sealed vinyl record is still in its original shrink wrap. These records are almost always in mint condition and have never been played.

Promo Copies: If you find a promo copy, there’s a chance you’ll see a slight increase in value.

Coloured Vinyl: Record companies began releasing coloured vinyl records to grab the attention of radio DJs in the ‘60s. Coloured pressings, like the translucent blue copy of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, are very valuable.

Vinyl records from the ‘50s and ‘60s are very collectible. These records are from the ‘golden era’ of the vinyl record timeline.

So what sort of records are we talking about? Here's a few examples of what to look for in the UK in 2026:

The Beatles: Please Please Me (early mono with black/gold label), White Album (numbered first pressings).

Sex Pistols: God Save The Queen (A&M 7" single with picture sleeve).

Led Zeppelin: Early albums like Led Zeppelin (first pressings).

Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon (original UK pressings with extras).

The Who: The Who Sell Out (early stereo/mono)

And how about prices in 2026?

BOB DYLAN Freewheelin' Outtakes (2017 UK/EU limited edition 17-track LP pressed on 180-gram HQ Virgin Vinyl. A collection of rare studio recordings from Bob Dylan's 1962 sessions for his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Gatefold picture sleeve with hype sticker, factory sealed). £19.99

PINK FLOYD Wish You Were Here (50th Anniversary) - 3-LP Edition + Rarities 1 & 2 - Sealed UK 3-LP vinyl set. £69.99

FRANK SINATRA Trilogy : Past, Present & Future (Rare 1980 Japanese 26-track sample vinyl triple LP. £167.

ROLLING STONES Aftermath - 3rd - EX (Rare 1966 UK third label variant 14-track Mono LP on the red Decca label with 'ffrr' logo and the band members names printed below the title in small bold capitals, front laminated picture sleeve LK4786. £328

SEX PISTOLS Anarchy In The U.K (4.01 longer version)/No Fun
(EMI 401, 7”, Abbey Road 2-sided acetate, only 3 known to exist, 1976). It should have the blue and gold ‘psychedelic swirl’ Abbey Road logo on the factory labels. Artist and titles are handwritten. £7,000

THE BEATLES The Beatles (aka The White Album)
(Apple PMC/ PCS 7067/8, 2LP, first pressing, mono or stereo, numbered below 0000010, gatefold w/die-cut black inners, poster, four colour prints, 1968). A mono copy of 0000005 sold for over £19,000 in 2008. The ‘White Album’ seems to have become the most sought after LP for Fab collectors, so a mint copy of one of these early numbers, complete with the all-important white paper photo spacer, would easily top this figure. £25,000?

And then there is this:

QUARRY MEN That’ll Be The Day/In Spite Of All The Danger. The Quarry Men’s 1958 recording was lathe-cut directly to vinyl acetate by Percy Phillips at his home studio in Kensington, Liverpool for the princely sum of just under 18 shillings (90p) plus the cost of the record itself. It featured a very raw sounding version of the Buddy Holly classic with John Lennon on lead vocals and the McCartney/Harrison composition In Spite of All The Danger – a mid-tempo country-tinged rocker – that evokes early Sun Studios material. It featured three future Beatles: John Lennon (guitar/lead vocals), Paul McCartney and George Harrison (both on guitar and backing vocals), plus Colin Hanton on drums, with pianist John Duff Lowe. This is inarguably the rarest record in the world and certainly one of the most culturally significant. If Paul McCartney decided to sell his one and only copy. Well, who knows what the price would be?

You can check by using sites like RareVinyl.com and Atlas Records to compare details and values of rare records.

An Apology

I was going
to go on
and on
but my mind
is going round
and round
so I’ve stopped

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Friends

Friends. Some come "with benefits", as in the euphemistically titled 2011 romantic comedy about casual relationships. They imply good times. Others are "on benefits", sometimes called unemployment benefit, job-seeker's allowance, universal credit or formerly "the dole" They imply hard times. In the UK right now, over 700,000 university graduates are out of work and claiming benefits - that's 46% more than was the case pre-Covid. Unemployment nationally is now more than 5% of the adult population. That's a worrying statistic, but it's nothing like the 25% unemployment rate that crippled the working people of the country in the 1930s. 

Walter Greenwood wrote his first novel 'Love on the Dole' in 1932. It was about life in Hanky Park in Salford, an area and a life he knew intimately, for he was born and grew up there. Greenwood's parents belonged to the radical working classes. His mother came from a family with a strong tradition of socialism and union membership, and she inherited her father’s book-case complete with its socialist book collection. 

His father died when he was nine years old, and his mother provided for him by working as a waitress. This was pre-welfare state, pre-NHS, pre-workers' rights, pre-contraceptive pill, pre-WWII Britain. Hanky Park was a grimy slum and its inhabitants were the exploited workers and their families of Manchester's industrial heart, the cotton mills and foundries.

Love on the Dole (still, 1941)

Greenwood was educated at the local council school and left at the age of 13 after taking the Board of Education Labour Exam, which was only "open to fatherless boys" so that they could go to work to help support their family. His first job was as a pawnbroker's clerk. A succession of low paid jobs followed, while he continued to educate himself at Salford Public Library. During periods of unemployment Greenwood worked for the local Labour Party, after no longer qualifying for the dole, having exhausted his entitlement under the rules of the time. 

After being owed three months wages from his last job as a typist, he took home the office typewriter in lieu of his back pay, and began to write about the people of Hanky Park, to earn a living. 'Love on the Dole', was about the destructive social effects of poverty in his home town, written while he was jobless. After several rejections, it was published in 1933. It was a critical and commercial success, and a great influence on the British public's opinion about the issue of unemployment. The novel even prompted parliament to investigate, resulting eventually in some welfare reforms.

In 1935, Greenwood collaborated with Ronald Gow on a stage adaptation of the novel. The critic of The Times wrote:
"Being conceived in suffering and written in blood, it profoundly moves its audience in January 1935 ... it has the supreme virtue in a piece of this kind of saying what it has to say in plain narrative, stripped of oration."

The play had successful runs in both Britain and the United States, which meant that Greenwood would not have to worry about unemployment again.

programme from a1939 stage production

A film adaptation was proposed in 1936, but the British Board of Film Censors made strong objections to the possibility of a film about industrial unrest, which might prove socially divisive. In 1940, however, when unemployment could be presented as "a thing of the past" because of the war effort, a film adaptation was permitted. I watched it earlier this evening (it's on YouTube if you care to find it.)

The story centres around the Hardcastle family, mother and father, daughter Sally and son Harry. The son began working as a pawnbroker's clerk (as Greenwood himself  had done) before joining a local factory as an apprentice engineer. He dated a local girl, Helen Harkin. Harry won a sizeable amount of money on an accumulator, gave some to his parents and sister and took Helen on holiday to the seaside with the rest (Blackpool in the film, but not in the novel). Sally was pursued by half the men in Hanky Park, including Sam Grundy the prosperous bookie, but she favoured Larry Meath, an engineer and Labour Party aide (again, as Greenwood had been).

Life in Hanky Park was difficult and hand-to-mouth (except for the bookies, the factory owners and the pawnbrokers). The General Strike was a recent memory and the economy was sluggish. Inevitably, Helen became pregnant and she and Harry planned to marry but when his apprenticeship ended he was made redundant as the economy nosedived. The dole was there as a safety-net for some but it was means tested on a household basis. Harry didn't qualify as his father and sister were still in employment. With no jobs to be had and a baby on the way the future looked very bleak.

Love on the Dole (still, 1941)

As economic conditions worsened and more men were placed on short time or laid off all together, the Labour Party's attempts to educate and work for change through the ballot box were overtaken locally by angry men wanting change. Protest became violent and Sally Hardcastle's friend Larry Meath was fatally injured in a police baton charge. With her future husband dead and her father and brother unemployed, Sally eventually abandoned her principles and capitulated to the advances of Sam Grundy on the promise that he would find work for her brother and father on the local buses, which he did. Social realism and tough love. 

It's a powerful but chilling tale of grinding poverty, squalid lives, painful compromises and hope thwarted and it pulls no punches. I first taught it as a set text in the 1970s, only forty-five years on from its inception. Now in 2026 we're only a few years short of its centenary and its relevance seems undiminished. It's still well worth reading today, up there with the likes of 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist'.

Here's a poem of sorts inspired by the text and the role of money or capital at the time. (The latter hasn't changed so much, has it?)

Hanky Park Blues

"It isn't where you live, it's who you live with. Isn't it?"

It came, it swore, it conquered.

"You can see the sea if you stand on the chair."

It mocked, it rocked, it unseated.

"If only everybody would lend a hand..."

It snorted, it derided, it divided.

"They can take away our jobs, but they can't take away our love.

Can they?"

It lured, it whored, it corrupted.

"It's not what it is, but how it's used, capital"

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Friends

Back in 1865 a pharmacist by the name of James Lofthouse in Fleetwood was talking to three deep-sea fishermen but was having difficulty listening to what they were saying due to the fact that they were unable to speak properly because of the extreme weather conditions at sea affecting their throats and lungs.

He set about developing a liquid which might help the fishermen and came up with a very strong liquid in a bottle, that contained menthol and eucalyptus oil. It worked and the fishermen began referring to them as 'friends'. Lofthouse later made the liquid into small lozenges, which were easier to transport and use.

We’re talking about Fisherman’s Friends now famous around the world but not known outside the immediate locale of Fleetwood for a hundred years after Lofthouse’s concoction. It started to expand when Doreen Lofthouse, who had married into the business, was selling the lozenges from a kiosk on the Fleetwood Promenade and was getting letters from holiday makers asking why they couldn’t get the product in their home towns.

Doreen and her husband Tony then spent many years working 100-hour weeks, travelling by van to sell the product. She recalled that sometimes, lacking money for fuel, she was unable to leave a town until a sale had been made. A particular success came when Lofthouse persuaded Boots the Chemists to stock the product in all of their branches.

At the request of a friendly importer, a large box of Fisherman‘s Friend was exported to Norway for the first time. This was met with enthusiastic demand. Boxes quickly turned into containers, and from then on the orders never ceased. In 1977 Aniseed arrived. It was the first of the flavoured Fisherman’s Friend. The new lozenge was modelled on a button from one of Doreen Lofthouse’s dresses.

Fisherman's Friend lozenges in different flavours

Since then other flavours have been introduced and some are more popular in one country than another. It’s reported that Fisherman’s Friend markets its current total of 15 different flavours to 100 countries around the globe. 96 percent of the total production of around 5 billion lozenges are exported every year. Germany is the largest market, favouring flavours such as cherry and mint. Customers in Thailand, on the other hand, who represent the second largest market, prefer the combination of honey and lemon.

Yes, that did say 5 billion.

I do like the following from the Stuart Alexander distributor in Australia:
‘Embark on a comforting journey with Fisherman's Friend, where each product is a testament to the brand's dedication to crafting invigorating lozenges and mints. In our diverse collection, discover the perfect blend of soothing relief and delightful flavours...

Indulge in the timeless strength of Fisherman's Friend Original Strong Lozenges, ensuring you have a robust and classic companion in every box...

For a breath of freshness, dive into the invigorating Fisherman's Friend Spearmint and Peppermint Sugar Free Mints...Aniseed Lozenges, ensuring you have a distinctive lozenge ready whenever you seek a moment of calm...Order now and let the comforting orchestration of lozenges and mints bring relief to your senses!’

Once your voice is smooth and strong again after that orchestration you may want to sing along with another form of Fisherman’s Friends. The sea shanty singing folk from Cornwall. This well known but anonymous song, from at least as far back as the 1830s, is on one their albums (Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends (Special Edition) 2011) and is one of those earworms that won’t let go for the rest of the day.

Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends

The Drunken Sailor

What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Put him in the scuppers with the lee rail under
Put him in the scuppers with the lee rail under
Put him in the scuppers with the lee rail under
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Put him in the brig until he's sober
Put him in the brig until he's sober
Put him in the brig until he's sober
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Put him in a whaler, make him pull her
Put him in a whaler, make him pull her
Put him in a whaler, make him pull her
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Shave his belly with a rusty razor
Shave his belly with a rusty razor
Shave his belly with a rusty razor
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Put him in a bunk with the captain's daughter
Put him in a bunk with the captain's daughter
Put him in a bunk with the captain's daughter
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Have you seen the captain's daughter?
Have you seen the captain's daughter?
Have you seen the captain's daughter?
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Keel-haul him, keel-haul him
Keel-haul him, keel-haul him
Keel-haul him, keel-haul him
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Friends A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed

 

Friends are the family we choose for ourselves. We become connected by common interests or something happens to throw us together. I’m lucky to have long-lasting and some life-long friends. I value very highly the times we share together. We laugh, we reminisce and collectively, we can remind each other of any bits we forget, especially now we are ‘grown ups.’

Last week, I enjoyed lunch out with three friends. We met at work in 1974. We joined at different times that year, as teenagers, and we’ve been together ever since. Life and work took us in different directions and away from each other, but we’ve always stayed connected. It’s great to get together and catch up. Three of us hit seventy last year, and the other one not too far behind, so knees, hips and general health come into the conversation. We laughed at a joke that we’d all collapsed over circa 1975, when a colleague had to escape the office before the punchline – she was laughing so much and a superior staff member was there – we didn’t want to get into trouble. We were the mostly well-behaved generation doing as we were told by seniors. I can’t remember exactly how long we worked together, but it was many fantastic years. One day, we each wrote down where we thought we’d be in ten years’ time. I think it was a small note book that got passed round. Our individual paragraphs will have been hilarious, and I don’t know what happened to the evidence, but ten years passed and we were still there. All good things come to an end and one by one we spread our wings but remain forever friends. And eventually, our lunch came to an end, after food, drinks and more drinks. An hour became two, then suddenly it was half past four and the sun was sliding down behind the trees. Farewell, until next time.

“This, too, will pass.” I’ve been the needy one for a while due to some tough times. Every day, I’ve been thankful for messages from friends checking in on me with good wishes, advice and offers of help. They keep me smiling and working towards better times. Reliable, trustworthy, caring people. These are my friends, small in number, but top quality. I know I’m privileged. I also know that it is important to be a good friend in return. My gang can rely on me to be there for them.

I found this poem,

Friends for Life 

We are friends
I got your back
You got mine,
I’ll help you out
Anytime!
To see you hurt
To see you cry
Makes me weep
And wanna die
And if you agree
To never fight
It wouldn’t matter

Who’s wrong or right
If a broken heart
Needs a mend
I’ll be right there
Till the end
If your cheeks are wet
From drops of tears
Don’t worry
Let go of your fears
Hand in hand
Love is sent,
We’ll be friends
Till the end!!!

Angelica N. Brissett (b.1991)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Humdinger

I'd never heard the word before this week, let alone knew what it meant, but I figured if something is going to be worthy of being called a humdinger, then at a minimum it should both hum and ding - and that train of thought led me into the wonderful world of vintage American circus carriages, or wagons as they call them in the USA.

American circus wagon i - a Calliope

This specimen above is what is known as a Calliope and I'm assured it would have hummed and dinged with a vengeance. It was a steam-powered mechanical musical box on wheels, pumping out the tunes that lent excitement to the circus experience for millions of enthused American families from the mid-1850s onwards. 

a recording of classic circus calliope sounds

Some of the circus wagons were so ostentatiously ornate they could have rivalled royal carriages (except their gilt was fake). They looked real humdingers though, the sort of thing (see below) that Liberace might ride in. Or maybe Donald Trump in his pomp, laden with his medals and insignia, happily waving those little hands at a brain-dead adoring public. (Presidency as circus - pass the sick bag.)

American circus wagon ii - fit for a felonious president

If you're really captivated by them, then maybe the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin is for you. (It's not for me. I won't be visiting Trumpland.) The museum claims to have the largest collection of circus wagons and is a major participant in the annual Great Circus Parade held since 1963, a sort of humdingery overdrive-past. 

In case you're wondering why the musical circus wagons were called Calliopes (and I hope you were), I shall tell you. They were named after the Greek goddess Kalliope (Καλλιόπη), literally "beautiful voiced". She was the eldest of Zeus and Mnemosyne's daughters, the famed nine muses of Greek mythology. (The word museum derives from muses, incidentally.) Anyway, young Calliope was the one specifically revered as the inspiration of poets and singers. She was also the mother of underworldly Orpheus.

Calliope (Greek goddess of poetry and song)

As well as being famed for the ecstatic harmony of that voice and the eloquence with which she spoke, Calliope was often depicted in art holding a writing tablet and was recognised as the goddess of epic poetry, muse to Homer and the Ancient Greek poets. Given all that, I thought I'd feature her in today's poem. It's fresh from the Imaginarium, though not quite an epic, and comes with the usual caveat that I might revise it on reflection.

Calliope As Humdinger

It's speed dating night on Mount Helikon

whose singles bar is brightly holding out

against the enfolding purple twilight and 

inside ouzo, retsina and nervous laughter

flow. Eligible young gods and goddesses

and a few honorary mortals glow in robes

and finery, all golden smiles and flashing

thighs. Aphrodite's hosting for Hellas TV,

their media van in the car-park alongside

the sports cars and SUVs that Olympians

must be seen driving these days. Hermes

flew in by helicopter, caused a bit of a stir

and Hephaestus, a life lived on accelerants,

stumps irrepressible into the throng, orders

a Metaxa, downs it in one. He's got the hots

for the talent with decorous downcast eyes.

Naiads and salty Nereids too long alone in

their lakes, rivers and seas, seeking a catch

face competition from three Graces and all

nine muses, the talented daughters of  Zeus

and Mnemosyne. They're each an equal for

any Greek man, can speak in their allotted

minutes about astronomy, history, comedy

poetry, politics, folklore, dance and more -

just check their socials, each muse not only 

beautiful, but also a credit to the matriarchy.

Seems our lucky boys are spoiled for choice. 

But Calliope is the event's real humdinger,

destined to snag gorgeous Prince Oeagrus 

the wild sorb apple, just the perfect match.

She could perhaps have written this script,

given her way with words. Maybe she did.

In her mind, Parnassus Productions presents...

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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