Chilled

I’m going to take ‘chilled’ as temperatures between 0 and 5 degrees centigrade as that is what the UK’s Food Safety Agency recommends. Mind you, it also says you should check your fridge thermometer once a week. Really?

Before fridges and thermometers, however, humanity needed to preserve food for obvious reasons. There were methods using salt, leaving it in the sun and smoking it (as in smoked herring). But the best way was by cooling it.

It would be impossible to talk about the origins of cooling and refrigeration without mentioning the yakhchal which are domed icehouses that not only preserve food but can also generate ice. They were particularly useful in their native Iran, where the climate could very often reach extreme temperatures.

a yakhchal

 Records suggest that yakhchals were first constructed as early as 400 BCE. They have a conical shape. This allows hot air to escape upwards out of the structure. Cool air is allowed in thanks to small entryways at the bottom. The cold air stays firmly trapped within, while hot air escapes. Apparently many people in Iran still use “yakhchal” to refer to modern refrigerators.

To cut a longish story short modern fridges really started in 1851 when James Harrison created a patent for the first practical application of artificial cooling. He started in 1851 by creating an ice-making machine, which he showed off in Geelong, Australia. After tweaking the design slightly, he released the first commercial ice-makers in 1854 and then refrigerators.

Geelong museum with Harrison's portrait

So how does it and subsequent machines work?

Step 1 – The Compressor
The compressor pumps in cold and low pressured refrigerant in a gaseous state. Then, the refrigerant is compressed. This compression heats and pressurises it.

Step 2 – The Condenser
The hot and high pressured refrigerant is then channelled into the condenser. The condenser removes the heat and condenses the gas into a liquid.

Ventilation Fins: The heat that is removed from the refrigerant is then released through cooling fins at the back of the fridge. This is why the back of your fridge can get quite warm, or even hot.

Step 3 – The Expansion Valve
Then, liquid refrigerant is pushed through the expansion valve. Within this chamber, the pressure is suddenly dropped. This sudden drop in pressure causes the liquid to expand, with some of it rapidly turning into vapour. This change of state from liquid to gas has a cooling effect on the surrounding area.

Step 4 – The Evaporator
Afterwards, cold refrigerant in a liquid state leaves the expansion valve and enters the evaporation coils. As it travels through, it absorbs any warm air inside of the fridge. Because refrigerants have low evaporation points, this absorption turns it back into a gas, therefore evaporating. This process has a cooling effect that keeps your fridge cool.

Finally, the cold and low pressure gas from the evaporator travels back into the compressor to begin the cycle again.

Thanks to the Reliant and the Appliance City websites for some of the above information.

I’m going to veer away from fridges for the poem. Straight to Matsuo Bashō (translated by Lucian Stryk).

Lips too chilled
for prattle –
autumn wind

Matsuo Bashō

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Read More

My Desert Island Discs

So there I am, stranded on the mythical Greek island of Dyskos, with just my solar-powered Dansette record player, eight precious slices of vinyl, a book of my choosing and a luxury item, happy as a castaway sandboy. 

Before we get to my personal selections, just a brief preamble about the BBC's longest-running radio programme (first broadcast on 29th January 1942). Nearly 3,500 episodes of Desert Island Discs have been broadcast, introduced by its theme tune linked here to put you in the mood: By The Sleepy Lagoon. 

Each week a famous guest would be invited on and prompted by the presenter, he or she would talk about their life, interspersed with eight pieces of music they would choose to have with them if they were ever cast away on a deserted island. The shipwrecked celebrity was also allowed one book of their choice and a luxury item that could serve no purpose as part of their escape plan. The longevity of the programme is a testament to what an inspired format Roy Plomley had devised.

Early episodes were broadcast live and have been lost to posterity, but an extensive archive of the recorded shows exists and many episodes can now be accessed via the BBC's online platform. 

One recorded episode was never broadcast. The BBC thought it had invited the thriller writer Alistair MacLean to the studio, but on the appointed day the head of the Ontario Tourist Bureau arrived with his list of chosen music. Rather than disappoint the wrong Alistair MacLean, Roy Plomley graciously went through the motions. 

The strangest luxury item nomination came from John Cleese who chose to take Michael Palin with him. And the most idiosyncratic selection of music came from Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf who chose, among her eight pieces of music, seven of her own recordings! 

Selecting just eight records was an almost impossible task for me, with so many thousands to choose from in my collection built up over decades, so many hundreds vying for a legitimate right of inclusion. As paralysis threatened, I made a trio of sweeping decisions to simplify the task:

1) This would be a rock and roll shipwreck. Alternate founderings featuring classical music or spoken word  recordings might lie in wait for this castaway in future. Who knows?

2) I would only select British artists - so no Byrds, Dylan, Jackson Browne, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Love, Neil Young, R.E.M, Spirit, Talking Heads, Translator or Velvet Underground.

3) I wouldn't pick more than one record from any given year - sorry 1967 in particular. 

Those criteria helped some. Here are the eight that got into the waterproof crate, in chronological order.

A Hard Day's Night - The Beatles (1964)

The soundtrack of our unshackling, as I once stated in my poem about Beatlemania (read it here: Beatlemania ). The Beatles burst into my life when I was nine. Cliff Richard and Adan Faith had seemed tame, but here was beat music that I could relate to. Armed with a newly acquired transistor radio, I switched on to the excitement of it all and never looked back. We went to see A Hard Day's Night at Peterborough Odeon a load of times. It felt as though a different future had just opened up for us - innocent but magical times.

Season Of The Witch - Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity (1967)

Julie Driscoll came to my attention via a performance of 'This Wheel's On Fire' on Top of the Pops. On the strength of that I rushed out and bought the group's debut 'Open' LP, which doesn't contain the single but has many even more wonderous things. I was fourteen, living in Cambridge, had started dating girls, fancied myself as a bit of a groover. Jools was one of the beautiful people. Season Of The Witch was a sophisticated and jazzy rendition of a Donovan song and quite the trip, man, at eight minutes long.

Fat Old Sun - Pink Floyd (1970)

The Cambridge connection was strong on this one, given that three quarters of the band had grown up in the university city where I went to school and spent my teenage years. I wrote a recent blog about Pink Floyd's origins (read it here: The Tea Set ).I bought Atom Heart Mother as a Christmas present for my steady girlfriend. We used to listen to it in the dark on Sunday evenings, lying on the sitting-room floor in her house or mine, with parents patrolling just beyond the door, so it seemed. Fat Old Sun encapsulates those memories.

Green Tree - Quiver (1972) 

After passing my A-Levels (English, History and Geography) and being offered a place at Warwick to read English, I opted for a gap year, left home, got a job and moved into a shared house with a bunch of like-minded friends in Cambridge. I started painting (couldn't do it for A-level - timetabling issues), read copiously, entertained girls, went to see lots of live music. Quiver were part of that local scene who signed for Warner Brothers and put out two great albums of their English version of West Coast music. Green Tree embodies that positive vibe.

Bright Side Of The Road - Van Morrison (1979)
I was living in London (Hackney) and teaching English and Drama at a comprehensive school. I'd been a fan of Van ever since Astral Weeks a decade before, and had all of his albums, but living in the capital gave ample opportunity to see him. He lived nearby in Holland Park and his tours frequently began or ended at the Hammersmith Odeon or the Dominion on Tottenham Court Road. London in the second half of the 1970s was a great place to live and Bright Side Of The Road triggers so many fond recollections.

Waterfall - The Stone Roses (1989)

I'd left teaching and London behind, was happily married with two young daughters and living in the Shire of Herts. I'd jumped ship into industry, working for Eastman Kodak, and in any free time, I wrote freelance for the music press. I reviewed this album very favourably, concluding: "These four young Mancunians have combined to re-establish my faith in the possibility of a truly popular home-grown psychedelia." And so it was. My daughters particularly enjoyed “She Bangs The Drum”. Their mother and father loved “Waterfall”.

Great Hosannah - Kula Shaker (1999)

In my work life, I was spending quite a lot of time abroad, in the USA and various European countries, implementing new IT systems for the firm that employed me for 33 years. I suspect ultimately it took a toll on my marriage as I was abroad as much as I was at home. I was still writing regularly about music, enjoying a raft of new guitar bands like the brilliant Kula Shaker, and writing songs as well, some of which would end up in the repertoire of the Deadbeats, the band I played bass and sang in.

Put The Sun Back - The Coral (2007) 
The Coral are, in my opinion, the best British band of the 21st century. I've hung out with them, interviewed them, written about them, been to many of their gigs. 2004-2014 was a turbulent decade in my personal life, divorce, another marriage, eventually another divorce and a move up to Blackpool (jewel of the north). The music of The Coral has somehow soundtracked it all in a bittersweet way. And Blackpool enjoyed a year in the Premier League. Put The Sun Back eloquently captures the mood of those rollercoaster years.

If I had to save just one of the above from the clutches of the waves, it would probably be the Van Morrison. (I've surprised myself there.) As for a book, that would be 'The Glass Bead Game' by Herman Hesse. I never tire of re-reading it. And the luxury item? One of those wooden rakes so I can make and re-make a Zen garden in the mythical Dyskos sand while listening over to the eight records stacked on my trusty Dansette's spindle..

That's all folks. I didn't provide links to the songs, but you'll find them all on YouTube. And if you're a fan of these exercises, by all means leave a comment with your own choices of desert island discs. I'd love to read them. S ;-)

Read More

Desert Island Discs

I’ve had my list of 8 records for Desert Island Discs ready for thirty years or more waiting for the opportunity to share them to the world. The usual format for DID is the guest to choose discs relevant to their life story but for heaven’s sake I’ll be marooned on a desert island and don’t want to be stuck with something from my primary school but to give some structure to the programme I’ll take the pieces in chronological order of composition.

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George

1. Joseph Bologne’s Quartet no. 4 in C minor was composed in about 1771. Bologne was a virtuoso violinist, conductor and composer. He was a champion fencer, a Parisian socialite, excelled in swimming and riding and fought in the French Revolution. This is the music I would have as the sun sets on my island and peace reigns (with a Guinness). Here is the piece being played by the Belinfanti Quartet: Quartet no.4 in C minor

2. Beethoven 7th Symphony 2nd movement. At its premiere at the University in Vienna on 8th December 1813, Beethoven remarked that it was one of his best works. The second movement was so popular that audiences demanded an encore. Here is a link to the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in a performance at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, Spain in March 2017: 7th Symphony 2nd movement

3. Duet from Georges Bizet's 1863 opera Les pêcheurs de perles. Generally known as ‘The Pearl Fishers' Duet’. Best if you don’t know the words, I did look them up once. It’s the same for all of the operas I’m mentioning. It’s the voices that count.

I do remember hearing this for the first time. It was in Abu Dhabi and my friend asked if I’d heard this piece. I hadn’t and thought it was just ok. She said take the cassette home and try again. I did and was moved to tears on second hearing. How many times has a piece of music hit home on a second or third hearing. Here’s a link to Dimash Qudaibergen and Placido Domingo au fond du Temple Saint (2023): The Pearl Fishers' Duet

4. Léo Delibes. The ‘Flower Duet’ is a duet in the first act of the opera Lakmé, premiered in Paris in 1883. You may recognize the work from an advert. And damn them for using such beauty for commercial gains. Here is a link to Sabine Devieilhe and Marianne Crebassa performing: The Flower Duet

5. Sibelius 2nd Symphony, 3rd movement and Finale. The revised version was given its first performance by Armas Järnefelt on 10th November 1903 in Stockholm to immediate acclaim.

I remember being electrified by this music on the first time of hearing at the Guild Hall (RIP) in Preston back in about 1996. At the end I didn’t want to move. This is the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra performing at Joran Hall in 2017: 2nd Symphony 3rd and 4th movements

6. In Paradisum from the Requiem by Gabriel Fauré. The piece premiered in its first version in 1888 at La Madeleine, the church in Paris where the composer served as organist. In 1899–1900, the score was reworked for full orchestra. This final version was premiered at the Trocadéro in Paris on 12 July 1900. The composer said of the work, "Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest."

I first heard this in Dorset in about 1993. I’d been to Christchurch Priory and picked up a cd at random from their shop. I played it on a balcony overlooking the sea late in the evening and it hit me on the second hearing. I was overwhelmed. John Rutter, Cambridge Singers, City of London Sinfonia: In Paradisum

7. America, from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein AND STEPHEN SONDHEIM. The original from the 1961 film is still sharp and thrilling and much better than any attempts (yes, I am looking at you Mr Spielberg) afterwards. It still bugs me that it is called Bernstein’s West Side Story: America

8. ‘Baker Street’ by Gerry Rafferty was released in February 1978. It won the 1979 Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. The song is known for its saxophone riff, written by Rafferty and performed by Raphael Ravenscroft. I seem to remember hearing this by a swimming pool somewhere and asking a stranger who it was by: Baker Street

This blog has taken about five times longer to write than anything before. Listening to music that means such a lot and then choosing the version I like best. Actually make that ten times longer.

And I’d have Outdoor Survival by Ray Mears as my book and cans of Guinness as my luxury item. The disc I’d save from the waves would be America.

As for the poem:

l'eglise de la Madeleine

Faure’s Requiem

I’d turned on the radio
ready for the game
but instead of a whistle
came familiar sounds
easing into Requiem Aeternaum

I’d be ready for this usually
getting the timing right
in some hotel
a cassette or cd
filling me with pleasure
before an evening stroll

but tonight’s a surprise
so all I can do
is slowly stand quite still
way ahead of mindfulness
until the baritone
brings Hostias
into a spell where
knowing the meaning of words
spoils the meaning

everything he imagined
by way of religious faith
was put into this Requiem
and everything I take
can be understood
after the four minutes
of Pie Jesus
wishing I could press pause
and watch notes drift down
from the domes
of L'église de la Madeleine
instead of my kitchen ceiling.

First published in French Literary Review Jan 2021

Thanks for reading and listening, Terry Q.

Read More

Desert Island Discs

Desert Island Discs, which is on Radio 4 these days, is another throw back to my childhood, like Mrs Dale’s Diary and Sing Something Simple when we listened to the huge, polished wood wireless in our living room. I expect it would have been broadcast on the Light Programme or the Home Service in the 1950s. 

Its first home was the BBC Forces Programme from 1942-1944. The unchanged opening theme is “By the Sleepy Lagoon” by Eric Coates, which makes me imagine bright, azure sky, warm beaches, hammocks fastened to palm trees and gentle, clear water stroking the sand. It might be appealing to some, but this is not my Desert Island.

My chosen island, St Kilda, fails to meet the criteria of ‘desert island’, so I’m breaking the rules here. Oops. I haven’t had the privilege of visiting and probably never will. I’ve been to the western edges of the Outer Hebrides from where St Kilda is still too far away and difficult to reach. 

St. Kilda, Outer Hebrides

I’ll keep her in my dreams and pretend that I’m cosy in a little cottage with a peat fire, or whatever the departed inhabitants used. A blizzard has been blasting the islands for days, even weeks, and there is no visible definition of sky to land. I love the sound of snow hitting the windows and occasional howling wind. It is calm and restful. I don’t miss the irritating noise of traffic, especially sirens at all times of day or night.

My music, and eight pieces isn’t enough, would be: ‘Honky Tonk Women’ by the Rolling Stones. I love the beginning where the rhythm is joined by other instruments one at a time until they are all playing together. ‘Music’ by John Miles because I think it’s amazing. ‘Baker Street’ by Gerry Rafferty for his remarkable voice and the saxophone. ‘In My Life’ by the Beatles, the words speak for themselves. Anything from ‘The Peer Gynt Suite’ by Edvard Greig – there’s a surprise. I know I’m not allowed to take it all. While I’ve gone classical, ‘Troika’ by Sergei Prokofiev, a favourite piece, not just at Christmas. ‘Holding Back the Years’ by Simply Red, my first introduction to Mick Hucknall and it always makes me stop to listen properly. ‘Isn’t Life Strange?’ from the Moody Blues, written by John Lodge and needs no explanation.

I’m stuck on choosing luxury items and this is where I’m probably breaking rules again. Food, water, strong tea, my laptop for access to everything else? Such things work perfectly well in fantasy land. I would love this poem in a frame on my wall:

Sonnet XLIII, from the Portuguese

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

                                     Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806-1861

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

When The Music Starts To Play I Want To Be Around

I taught in a High School in North Blackpool for twenty five years. By the time I regenerated- that’s retired to you- my kids were big into Dr Who and said “Daddy you haven’t retired. You’ve regenerated" and that was good enough for me. Regenerated. Wow! And indeed I have. I’ve been regenerated- that’s stopped working to you- fifteen years now. During that time I‘ve set out to do all the things I’ve been saving for years to do. Like writing for the Dead Good Blog for instance.

During those twenty five years I rose to the dizzy heights of senior management. And boy was it dizzy when I looked at those around me and listened to what they had to say about education. I also hobnobbed with the school governors when I was up there in that rarefied atmosphere, rather short of oxygen. One day I was chatting to the chairperson of said governors. Well you do don’t you, chat to them so that they know that you’re there running yourself ragged to make his school successful while he basks in glory at the top of the mountain. Wanting something to chatter about, it transpired we that were both “into” music. He was lamenting the fact that one of his favourite albums he couldn’t find on CD. This was “Twice around the Houses” by Jonathan Kelly. Not that I am a bottom polisher, but I told him that I had got said LP but not on CD. I wasn’t even sure that it was on CD then or even now. I stand to be corrected, of course, because somebody reading this is looking that up right now, I bet.

Then he suddenly invited my wife and myself to his house for a “Desert Island Discs” soiree. So when your boss invites you and your wife to his “Chair of Governor’s House", you jump up, fall in and say, of course, “Oh Yes Please!” Don’t you?

I had readily agreed to accept his kind offer. I said I was a bottom polisher. However the most frightening thing that I had to do was to tell my wife that of which I had committed her to. I knew she would hate it. But you can’t go to soirees at the boss’s house without your wife can you? It would be the height of bad manners and both social and professional suicide and I knew that she would push me off the mountain, leaving me to retire, regenerate or whatever I wanted to do. All without oxygen and no tea or anything else for a year. However after goodness knows of how many pretty pleases and promises to take her everywhere she ever wanted to go for the next fifty years or something like that, the time arrived several weeks after the invitation to go. I forget to slip in that there would be another couple there, the lady of which was also a school governor and her partner who was consulate doctor. So hey this was serious stuff.

Still the next thing to do was draw up my list of Desert Island Discs. Thankfully we only needed to pick eight, just like the BBC programme, since that would give us an epic twenty four discs to listen to and discuss anyway. 

So where to begin? I had been buying records since I was twelve in 1963. The first of which was “Blue Bayou” by Roy Orbison. It will stagger you if I tell you I have been buying, purloining, borrowing, and copying records ever since. And guess what, just like T.S. Eliot measured out his life in coffee spoons, I have measured out my life in records. I have still got them all, every single one. Sad bastard. And I can remember where, why and when I got my grubby little mitts on each one. Well actually my mitts would need to be clean wouldn’t they? I mean, come on, I’m not irresponsible.

Anyway after pondering, sweating, and sleepless nights passing, I made, at least, I wouldn’t like to say how many lists and that was, in fact, the most enjoyable thing of the whole lot because I love music. Then after a lifetime of decision and selection- right word there because my collection –rather a grand word- went back to a time I was twelve as I said. It was indeed a lifetime’s journey. I was famous for talking about music none stop. A friend of mine once said, “You’re nobody until Bill Allison has been to your house and looked over your records”. Right on! So I eventually made the CD with my selection. More of that later.

The evening approached. Like what do you wear when you go to your boss’s house, and spend an evening with him and his wife and other guests from the rarefied mountain top! ”Just be yourself”, my wife said. So I went with my jeans and trainers on. That vogue mode of mine had got me to most other places I had been to. It wouldn’t get me into Buck House or the Posh Friday Night Pubs in Poulton le Fylde. Nevertheless it was more than good enough for this night. Slick Shit Ho!

My wife looked gorgeous as she always did. I have to say it at this point she doesn’t really like music. It all sounds the same to her. Especially the music I am addicted to. Somewhere in “The Merchant of Venice”, it says that you shouldn’t trust anyone who doesn’t like music. It’s a good job that we really do love each other. I always turn the music off when she comes home.

So we drive up. Knock and are invited in. Offered sherry. Escorted into- what the Estate Agents call- a reception room. Introduced to our fellow castaways and disc jockeys ready for the Grand National of our lives. The guidelines are laid out; the male of each couple will play their selection and talk about that particular selection and why they have chosen it and what it means to them. Very much like the beloved BBC Radio programme of the same name. “Desert Island Discs”. We didn’t get round to the Bible, Shakespeare, a third book of choice or a luxury item. Maybe next time. Shame!

Anyway while we savour our sherry and limber up, here’s an hors d’oeuvres

Roy Plomley, originator and first host of Desert Island Discs

Out of interest, over 2500 episodes of Desert Island Discs have been broadcast since 1942 and they are all archived on the BBC Radio 4 site and all are available as podcasts. Pick as you please from them all above- because down here we’ve got the green light and we’re off. I was first up because well as you can guess my surname has always been the blight of my life. Allison. First for everything except the things that matter. No - just kidding. It’s always good to be first but anyway I can’t do much about that now, I suppose, can I?

Suddenly this turns serious as I talk to you about my selection as to how and why. I am a very dedicated muso. I hope that you have gathered that by now. If not you will have gathered it by the end of the article. You have to remember that the Desert Island Discs evening I am describing took place some years ago and that my selection may have changed after all these years. There was a criteria for my selection. It traced out different aspects of my life. As I said measured out, not in coffee spoons but music. But there was a method and madness in each piece of music. Let me unroll that for you now if I may. What follows is a version of what I said at the time. There was so much more to say, there always is, but time was of the essence. Are you listening comfortable? So here goes…

1 “Surf City” - Jan and Dean
First up was a 1963 hit by Jan and Dean written by Brian Wilson and Jan Berry. I remember listening to this on Radio Luxemburg, fading in and out, on my tiny transistor tucked under my sheets at home in my little box room at the top of the stairs with my mum snoring in the next room. It was all there, Californian sunshine set to high harmonies - another world, far from grimy Bolton. The chorus ran "two girls for every boy". That’ll do for me.

2 “That Would Be Something” - Paul McCartney
The Beatles changed everything. They opened the garden gate to somewhere else. Every boy in the world had a cheap guitar and a Beatle wig and thought they were going to make it. Most didn’t. But The Beatles did. However I didn’t want to play some Yeah Yeah Yeah stuff because by 1971 it had fallen apart. Everything put together falls apart. Out of the end, amongst other things though came Paul McCartney’s first solo- really solo, he played everything on it- album- 'McCartney'. It was laughed at and ridiculed at the time. But as far as I am concerned it has more then stood the test of time with some great songs. “That Would Be Something” – the whole album was more than just something. Much more.

3 “Waterloo Sunset” - The Kinks
One of the most wonderful sets of opening chords you could imagine. Instantly recognisable, everybody recognises it and sings along as the vocals start. It was one of the first songs where Ray Davies staked a claim to be a poet in a well-established English tradition and has walked that road ever since. As long as I gazed on Waterloo Sunset I was in Paradise. Say no more.

4 “Mr Tambourine Man” - The Byrds
If the Beatles opened the garden gate, Bob Dylan kicked down the front door. Sitting listening to Bob on such a joyous evening approaching midnight might not have been the best thing to do in such an esteemed gathering, so The Byrds were the next best. Another great opening. Dylan said that it was groovy because you could dance to it. He was impressed that somebody had made his music danceable to. Let’s twist again like we did last summer.

my younger self (left) and Dylanologist John Bauldie

5 “Tinker’s Blues” - Bert Jansch
“Tinker’s Blues” is a short guitar instrumental from guitar maestro Bert Jansch from his second album 'It Don’t Bother Me'. I wanted to show how important so called folk music and so called Folk Clubs were to me in the late sixties. 'Bert Jansch and John Renbourn', an album of acoustic guitar instrumentals they play together is one of my all-time favourite records- then and now. Folk Clubs were ancestors of online dating. A Famous Clancy Brothers Folk Song went “The boys won’t leave the girls alone.” Too right.

6 “Spanish Radio” - Jimmy Webb
This is a song from Jimmy Webb’s wonderful 'Suspending Disbelief' album. I guess that's what music does at its best, asks you to suspend disbelief. Well come on now-Someone left the cake out in the rain. How much suspense do you have to disbelief to get that one? Macarthur’s Park is melting in the dark. Really? Webb said if The Beatles could write about newspaper taxis and glass onions why not melting parks? Webb has written some of the most intelligent and romantic songs – if that is not a contradiction in terms- of the late twentieth century. “Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston” “Up, up and away” and plenty, plenty more. Everyone should be a Jimmy Webb fan. More cake anyone?

7 “Tom and Alexi” - Mike Heron
“When the Music starts to play I want to be around”, the title of this piece, is the opening track of the first Incredible String Band’s self-titled 1966 album. Mike Heron was the co-partner of Robin Williamson, the front men of this hippy dippy band for nearly ten years, splitting up in 1974. They were underground favourites and I fancied myself as a bit troglodyte then. Still do!

Heron should have been a superstar in his own right if all things were equal. But, of course, they never were. “Tom and Alexi” came from a solo album. It’s a song about a Russian and an American astronaut sharing a space ship pazzing around the Earth. Far from being troglodytes!

There was a method in madness picking this song. All joking apart, music can be and often is a very serious part of your life. Most of the time that’s why you listen to it. At the time I heard this song I was involved in wrangling over contact for my daughter. There’s a line in the song as these astronauts look down on the Earth –"It’s hard to be geopolitical from up here”. They had seemingly put their own vested interests and differences down on Earth to one side whilst looking down on her beauty. At the time I just wished my ex-wife and I could have done that.

8 “ The Girl from Ipanema” - Astrid Gilberto
Last but not least some Bossa Nova. Some romance on Brazilian beaches. But I guess we go back to where we started from. Two girls for every boy. Well in this case one. A sister song to “Pretty Flamingo". Springsteen does a great live version of that. Check it out.

So there it is. Eight songs peppered and flavoured with lots of others to boot. All done.

That was it. Ordeal over. I kept my job but got told off for taking too much food from the buffet. I can’t remember any of the sixteen tracks the others played. Still music was always like that. You loved yours, couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t like it and you couldn’t understand why they listened to the crap that they did. On the way home my wife reminded me of the title of a Richard Thompson song. "Never Again".

Thanks for reading. Bill Allison

Read More

Raised Beds

'Raised Beds' must be one of the most oddball topics to have demanded the attention of the Dead Good Blogging collective. No wonder only two of us have risen to the challenge this week, for where does one go with such a subject? My friend Terry Quinn has cleverly written about hammocks, and has done so in a most entertaining manner. As for me, I'm slipping beneath the waves in my approach to the theme, to look at the parlous state of the planet's coral beds and what is being done to try and reverse a disaster-in-progress.

vibrant coral

Up until the mid-1980s, the temperature of our oceans and seas had been at a fairly constant level as far back as records went. Then over the last forty years those sea temperatures have begun to creep up, seemingly in line with the increase of man made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and in the last decade they have begun to rise at an alarming rate.

One of the most significant impacts went largely unnoticed for a while because it was out of sight, but the world's coral beds, home to one-third of all marine life, have started to die back largely as a result  of this sudden increase in sea temperatures. 

Without getting too technical, the effect is called 'bleaching'. It happens because when the water becomes too warm, the colourful algae that live symbiotically within the coral's tissue begin to produce reactive oxygen species, which are toxic and so the coral expels the algae and the coral tissue becomes transparent, revealing its white calcium carbonate skeleton.

When coral becomes bleached, it's a sign that it is sick and under stress, prone to disease, starvation and death. It is estimated that just in the last few years, a staggering 75% of all the world's coral structures have already been impacted to some degree by the bleaching process consequent upon warming waters.

In order to try and mitigate the ravages of this trend, conservation projects have been instigated by teams of marine biologists around the world to raise healthy corals in underwater nursery beds and to replant them on bleached coral structures (rather like a hair transplant) to give the original reef a chance to regenerate itself.

raising new coral beds

Typically, they nurture strains of coral that they believe will be less susceptible to rapidly warming waters. It is possible that the corals might have learned to adapt themselves if the temperature changes had been almost imperceptibly slow and over aeons, but the recent impact of man made climate change has been so sudden and so severe, the corals have not had a chance to adapt.

Sadly, the prognosis for corals is not a cheery one. Sea temperatures will continue to rise unless and until we can reverse global warming. Conservationists will continue to raise beds of healthy and more temperature-resistant corals for transplanting onto distressed structures in ever warming waters, but it could be a race that is destined to be lost. Let's hope not. 

Partly as a trailer for next week's blog about Desert Island Discs, today I have used as a starting point the titles of songs from my favourite British band of the modern era (namely The Coral, 2000 to the present) and shaped them into a poem that I hope connects with what I've been writing about above. I've called it simply...

Coral

Faraway worlds

oceans apart

wrapped in blue

It's in your hands

skeleton key

cycles of the seasons

Dreaming of you

Spanish Main

land of the lost

Watch you disappear

ghost of Coral Island

goodbye

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Raised Beds

The first two men to walk on the Moon, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, spent their rest periods on the Apollo lunar module floor and reported being too cold to sleep comfortably so from Apollo 12 until the last Apollo lunar mission, hammocks designed to attach to the interior of the lunar module ascent stage were provided. They helped reduce the cooling effects of contact with the cabin floor as well as a softer support. They enabled astronauts from the last missions to spend complete nights of sleep on the Moon. An old solution to a modern problem.

lunar module hammock

The hammock's story begins in ancient times. The earliest recorded evidence of hammocks dates back over a thousand years to the Mayan civilisation in Central America. Mayans, known for their advanced knowledge of architecture and textiles, crafted hammocks from plant fibres such as sisal and agave. These early hammocks provided a comfortable sleep surface, allowing people to escape from the damp ground and avoid contact with crawling creatures.

The spread of hammocks across the world can be attributed to European explorers and sailors. During their voyages in the 15th and 16th centuries, Christopher Columbus and his crew encountered the Taino people of the Caribbean, who introduced them to the ingenious invention of hammocks. The sailors quickly adopted hammocks as sleeping quarters on ships due to their space-saving nature and ability to provide stability in turbulent waters

weaving traditional Yucatan hammocks

The word "hammock" itself, from Spanish hamaca, is derived from the Taino word "hamaca," meaning "fish net." This reflects the strong influence of the Taino people on the development and naming of this unique form of bedding.

It may be significant that in the first official mention of hammocks in the Royal Navy of 1597 they are not referred to under that name, but as 'hanging cabbons or beddes'. The medieval canvas hammock may have been an English invention which was not known on the continent when Columbus made his voyage. In the course of the seventeenth century its use spread to the navies of Western Europe, and eventually it was given the same name as the Caribbean hammock of netting which came to Europe when Columbus returned.

Aboard ship, hammocks were regularly employed for sailors sleeping on the gun decks of warships, where limited space prevented the installation of permanent bunks. Since a slung hammock moves in concert with the motion of the vessel, the occupant is not at a risk of being thrown onto the deck (which may be 5 or 6 feet below) during swells or rough seas. Likewise, a hammock provides more comfortable sleep than a bunk or a berth while at sea since the sleeper always stays well balanced, irrespective of the motion of the vessel.

a sailor's hammock

A narrow mattress was also issued which protected the user from cold from below. In addition naval hammocks could be rolled tightly and stowed in an out of the way place or in nets along the gunwale as additional protection during battle (as was the case during the age of sail). Many sailors became so accustomed to this way of sleeping that they brought their hammocks ashore with them on leave. The naval use of hammocks continued into the 20th century. During World War II, troopships sometimes employed hammocks for both naval ratings and soldiers in order to increase available space and troop carrying capacity. Many leisure sailors even today prefer hammocks over bunks because of better comfort in sleep while on the high seas.

Travel or camping hammocks are popular among leave no trace and ultra-light campers and hikers for their reduced impact on the environment and their lightness and lack of bulk compared to tents. The way they are hung is critical for comfort. The optimal angle of the attaching lines to the post / wall / tree is usually about 30 degrees. Hammocks can be attached to the anchor points using a variety of suspension systems, including ropes and webbing straps.

Some of the above information is from Simply Hammocks, Richmond, N Yorkshire.

a hammock among pines

Below is a poem by American poet James Wright. The poem was first published in The Paris Review in 1961.I had never heard of him or it until looking for an appropriate poem for this article. I love the title. 

I was very surprised to read that some critics regard the poem's final line as one of the greatest lines in modern poetry.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

   

                                           James Wright

James Wright's, “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” is from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose. Copyright 1990 by James Wright. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Read More

Work!

Work! A means to an end? An end in itself? Something to be avoided at all costs? Where would I place myself on the 'work to live....live to work' spectrum? Probably just about here, without giving too much away: always intellectually stimulated, rarely exploited, often emotionally fulfilled. I've been lucky. I'd like to think I'm just about the full pyramid. (See Maslow's hierarchy illustration further on.)

"When Adam delved and Eve span..."

We all started off (as a species) working to live... finding/growing food, building shelters, making clothes, fulfilling the most fundamental physiological needs. Husbandry and wifery (as above, farming and clothes-making), among the top jobs along with building (brick-making, carpentry, stonemasonry), hunting and fishing. Doctors, priests, teachers and soldiers followed, along with philosophers, prostitutes and poets (of course), fulfilling safety and societal needs. It could be argued that by this stage some, with their basic needs catered to, were becoming vocational and living to work. I'll leave you to ponder the pyramid below if you're not familiar with Maslow's ground-breaking 1943 work.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

I'm not going to get into religion and the rise of capitalism, overlords, underlings, exploitation, slavery and all that. Far too complex an area to cover in 500 words (which is approximately the length a blog should be, though I often disregard that rule of thumb). 

Anyway, I'm retired now, though I still work voluntarily as the Supporters' Liaison Officer for Blackpool Football Club and as the organiser of other volunteers from the fanbase who give of their time on a regular basis to help clean the stadium ready for match days and litter pick the rubbish that is left behind on the terraces after every game, despite tannoy requests to deposit it in bags at the turnstiles on exiting the stadium.

volunteering at Blackpool FC

It was while cleaning the stands at Bloomfield Road recently thar the idea for today's cheeky poem came to mind. It's not to be taken too seriously but there is truth in and between its lines. Any similarity to Henry Reed's famous poem 'Naming Of Parts' is purely intentional. 

Cleaning Of Stands

Today we have cleaning of stands. Yesterday,

Saturday there was a game in the stadium

with the team mis-firing again, And today,

today we have cleaning of stands. Buddleia,

roses and dahlias flower in the neighbouring

gardens, and we have cleaning of stands.

This is the North Stand, the Kop. And this

is where the Ultras sing and swear and drop

pie cases, cigarette butts (though smoking is

banned), plastic bottles and chewing gum while

in the gardens, tangerine blooms sway with

an eloquence our Ultras have not got.

This is the South Stand, which is never full.

It is cold and doesn't get the sun. Its terraces are 

littered with hot dog wrappers, wooden forks, 

empty bovril, coffee, tea and hot chocolate cups. 

Its fans are fragile and motionless, rarely letting 

anyone see a spark of joy or anger.

This is the West Stand, the most expensive seats,

beloved of families whose younger kids slide

excitedly backwards and forwards. We clear up

the remains of picnic lunches, dropped chocolates,

sweet wrappers, an occasional nappy. Those happy

clapping youngsters are tomorrow's Ultras.

And this is the East Stand, it holds the away fans.

It's open at the back, so if the game's boring they

can admire our gardens with their tangerine and topiary.

It's full of plastic beer mugs, pie cases, empty vapes

burst inflatables, stickers  and torn up match tickets,

and today we have cleaning of stands.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Lancashire Dead Good Poets' September Open Mic Night

Our next online event is fast approaching....

I hope some of you will join us, to perform your poetry or just to listen along.

Steve ;-)

Read More

Work

One of the first things I noticed when going through possible angles of approach to this topic is the sheer amount of nouns and verbs linked to Work. Although oddly enough, in the thesauruses and dictionaries I was checking very few mentioned a very real and defined version of Work. And as I vaguely remember questions about this in exams years ago it was a good chance to work out if I could still understand any of them now.

I’m talking about how to measure work. In the International System of Units (SI) then one joule is equal to the amount of work or energy done when a force of one newton displaces a body through a distance of one metre in the direction of that force. For example: lifting an apple one metre takes 1 joule of work or energy.

It is also the energy dissipated as heat when an electric current of one ampere passes through a resistance of one ohm for one second. It is named after the English physicist James Prescott Joule (1818–1889).

J P Joule

James Prescott Joule was born in Salford, he was the son of a renowned local brewer and grew up fascinated by all things scientific. He became particularly interested in electricity and was fortunate enough to be tutored by John Dalton, one of the leading chemists of the day. This expert tutelage, combined with Joule's personal obsession as well as access to some specialised beer-making equipment would ultimately lead to one of the most ground-breaking (and at the time, controversial) discoveries in the history of science: that heat is a form of energy.

In 1841 he discovered what became known as Joule's First Law. This defined the relationship between the amount of heat produced and the current flowing through a conductor. At this time things seemed to be going well, he was still an amateur scientist but had been accepted as a member of the London Electrical Society. He decided to look into the wider question of how much work can be extracted from a given source and soon found that the scientific establishment was strongly opposed to his ideas.

In 1843 Joule presented his results to a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in Cambridge, but contemporary anecdotes claim that he was met by a stony silence. Undeterred, he continued his experiments. In 1844, believing he had compelling evidence, he submitted his paper to the most prestigious scientific group of all, the Royal Society… who refused to publish his work.

One reason was that Joule said he could measure temperatures to within 1/200 of a degree Fahrenheit, something that was simply unthinkable with the majority of scientific equipment available at the time. However, Joule had two advantages. One was his background as a brewer, which meant he had ways to measure much more precisely, as the finely tuned measurement of temperatures is critical to the brewing process. The other was John Benjamin Dancer, an exceptionally talented instrument-maker who created custom equipment for him.

instrument made by J B Dancer

In 1847 Joule once again presented his ideas, this time to the British Association at Oxford, which was attended by both Faraday and Kelvin. Eventually his ideas would become the cornerstone of one of the most fundamental scientific laws ever discovered, the First Law of Thermodynamics. In 1850, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society, in 1852 he was awarded the Royal Medal, and in 1872 he was named President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the same group that had rejected his ideas back in 1843.

Mario Petrucci is a poet, educator and broadcaster. He was born in Lambeth, London and trained as a physicist at Selwyn College in the University of Cambridge and later completed a PhD in vacuum crystal growth at University College London. He is also an ecologist, having a BA in Environmental Science from Middlesex University. Petrucci was the first poet to be resident at the Imperial War Museum and with BBC Radio 3.

Orders of Magnitude

One hundred thousand trillion joules
to turn an ice cap into mush
One hundred thousand billion joules
to erase a major Eastern city
A hundred thousand million joules
to run a car to death
One hundred million of the same
for Fire Brigades to reach the kitten
Ten million just to keep
December from cold feet
A hundred thousand joules for a mug
of tea – A hundred joules
for a second’s worth of War and Peace
Ten to raise a hand – to lift
an average apple to the lips
A single joule to shout the command
Half a joule to pull the trigger
Just one tenth to push the button
Almost zero to have the thought.

Mario Petrucci, from Flowers of Sulphur, Enitharmon, 2007

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Read More