The Time Bubble

Music is such a personal thing, isn’t it? Some people will say they are into rock, others into metal, but the truth is that even if we identify with a genre each of us will have our own unique soundtrack to our lives. I don’t have a particular genre as such, but objectively, if anyone was looking at what I have been listening to now and over the past few decades, they might define it as a cross between electronica and shoegazing (also known as dream pop). Neither of these are particularly popular these days in the UK (if they ever were) and they certainly aren’t fashionable but I don’t care one iota about that. I’ve always believed that one’s musical tastes should be true to one’s self and not what’s “cool” or to fit in. I should add that I also like lots of other stuff that doesn’t belong to those genres. It’s why I go down The Red Lion most Fridays as they have all sorts of live singers on down there doing different stuff. I started doing one of those “ten albums in ten...

The subject of today's blog entry, as the title suggests, is the humble potato. At first glance this might appear a somewhat mundane topic. What on earth can he say about potatoes to fill a few hundred words, I hear you ask? Well, quite a lot. believe me! As a member of the potato buying public, I have become increasingly frustrated of late by the ever declining size and quality of my potatoes. As an old-fashioned chap at heart, I like to keep a lot of the traditions I grew up with alive and one of those is cooking the great British Sunday roast. Sundays aren't what they were when I was a lad. Much of what made Sunday special has now gone. You can't even listen to the Top 40 any more - not that you would want to considering the crap that's in it these days. Radio One in their infinite wisdom have moved it to Fridays. Bit that's another story. But no-one can stop me making my Sunday roast. Except when we have it on Monday, which is quite often, because Claire o...

Just before I start - and I am probably being incredibly thick but how do you put an accent on a letter - i.e. the word cafe in the title of this blog. I've often wondered. One of the things that I remember most about Tony Blair's Governement wasn't one of the biggies like war on terror or Iraq. No, it was his confident vision of Britain developing a Pavement Cafe Culture such as you see all the time in cities in Europe, particularly in Southern Europe. The vision I must admit when I was on holiday in Menorca a few years ago, I was struck by how lovely it was in the capital, Ciutadella. Clean, pleasant streets, even in the early evening - no litter, no chewing gum, and happy smiley people in the streets. Parents with their kiddies in the park, at 7pm, and the sun beaming down. Not a down and out sipping a can of White Ice in sight. Of course, the main drawback to this cultural ideal here, (putting aside general British yobbery and littering) is the weather....