Tag Archives: Hanley

Tuesday 17th September 2019 – I’M HARD-PRESSED …

… to remember what it was that I did today. I must have done something or other I suppose, so I’ll have to dig deep.

One thing that I do know is that it should have been an early night, but totally destroyed by a wicked attack of cramp just as I was going to bed. And that was really my lot unfortunately as far as that was concerned.

But I did end up going to sleep eventually – at least until about 05:30 when I was awakened by yet another bad attack of cramp.

Somewhere during the night though I must have been in some kind of consciousness because there’s an entry on the dictaphone – 00:02:05 of it too and I would ordinarily listen to it to see where I was and who I was with, but I’m listening to some Hawkwind right now.

What is exciting about this album – or, rather, the original digital track – is that due to “contractual difficulties”, the tracks featuring lyrics and vocals by sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock (who I particularly enjoyed whenever he fronted Hawkwind) were omitted from the original vinyl album. But on the digital master tapes they are all there in all their glory.

On a rare night off from work, I saw this concert at the Free Trade Hall in Hanley. This was live Hawkwind at its finest and I remember being totally overwhelmed by it all.

As usual, I took the girls to school and then went shopping for a few things. And to my mailbox out on the River du Chute road to see if Strider’s licence tags had arrived. And I was in luck too. So they are on his licence plate and we are all legal. Insurance, safety and licence. What more could any vehicle require?

Up at the shop I hung around for a while, handling a few of the customers (I’m funny that way) then at lunchtime I came back home. A few things to do, some packing to organise, a shower to clean myself up, some lunch, and then I made a curry.

Par-boiled some potatoes and carrots and while they were doing, I fried some onions in olive oil with cumin, coriander and turmeric. When they had browned I added the garlic and mixed it all round.

Once that was looking nice, I added some mushrooms and peppers and had them thoroughly fried. And then tipped in the par-boiled potatoes and carrots. Add some coconut milk and a vegan stock cube, and leave it to simmer for 15 minutes. Finally some bulghour to thicken it out.

Up at the shop I loitered around again.

But here’s a thing. The car fairy has been to visit.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the ancient 1-tonne Ford with the big aluminium body that has been laid up at the garage since 2000 without turning a wheel since.

Well, today it mysteriously disappeared as if by magic and it’s miraculously turned up here back at the house. I wonder how that happened.

My curry went down really well tonight. Our little visitor left the table with a wiped-clean plate and told me that it was the best meal that she had eaten here.

Mind you, I’m not sure whether that says more about the curry or more about the rest of the meals that I have cooked while she’s been here.

This evening I’ve been downloading again. First off is Every Which Way. That’s an album by a group of musicians put together by Brian Davison, the former drummer in The Nice. Rare as hen’s teeth and my album is totally worn out after a frenetic spell in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A couple of tracks on there are really good.

The second download though breaks a habit of a recent lifetime in that I don’t actually own the album. But it appeared on the list right after the previous one above and I heard it by accident. And it so impressed me that I downloaded it and I’ll find a CD or a vinyl in early course.

I’m sure that very few – if any – people reading this post will have heard of Gay and Terry Woods. They were a couple of Irish folk singers who were invited into the first incarnation of Steeleye Span by Ashley Hutchings. Although they performed on the album “Hark The Village Wait” they didn’t stick around and for a brief period performed as a duo with various eclectic musicians.

It’s all just a faint glimmer in the back of my mind from 1971 and I hadn’t really any idea that they had released an album. But here it is, in all its glory.

This evening I finished off the lemon swirl vegan mousse, performed a computer back-up and I’m ready to hit the road tomorrow.

But part of the back-up involved the dictaphone files and I had a listen to the famous recording – all 00:08:02 of it – of the nightmare that I had the other night. And I’m astonished by the depth of emotion that I spat out. Like I said at the time, I thought that I had put all of that behind me a long time ago.

But apparently not. And that fills me with dismay. Who knows what other demons are lurking in the shadows waiting to be unleashed? That’s the bit that’s filling me full of dread for the future.

But then, as Alfred Whitehead once famously wrote, “It is the business of the future to be dangerous”.

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Wednesday 26th February 2014 – THIS IS WHERE …

caliburn le cap ferret gironde france … Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly stopped for lunch this afternoon.

I’m at Le Cap Ferret, which is on the French South-Western Atlantic coast not too far from Bordeaux. There is an errand and some Pionsat-based research to be undertaken in this neck of the woods and when I woke up this morning at Brive-La-Gaillarde to another round of miserable driving rain and the only spot of clear weather on the whole of today’s map of France seemed to be around here, I thought “sod this for a game of soldiers” and I’ve gone West.

“Not before time” I hear you say, but anyway, as Marshall MacMahon once famously said, “here I am and here I’ll stay”

phare du cap ferret lighthouse gironde franceOne reason for coming here is that there is a big lighthouse on the Cape and as many long-term readers of this rubbish will recall, I have quite a thing about lighthouses.

But this one wasn’t what I was expecting to see for rather than being isolated on some kind of sandspit somewhere, it’s right in the middle of a built-up area. Access is very difficult and also it’s not easy to find a good spot to take a photograph. Still, one does the best one can.

sanspit le cap ferret gironde franceI went for a good long walk for a couple of hours along the beach. Part of the beach is actually an enormous sandspit that stretches for a good mile, if not more, just offshore and it’s a wonderful place to go for a stroll.

There was practically no-one about which was surprising given how qwarm it was this afternoon. But I bet that it wouldn’t be like this in July and August, not by any means

rainbow le cap ferret gironde franceWe’d had a few sudden, short storms during the day, some of them quite heavy, and while I was out on my sandspit we had another one.

Come and gone in a flash, but we had the most astonishing rainbow and I’ve never seen one quite like this before. It came out really well on the photo which was something of a surprise as it doesn’t usually happen like this either.

But on the debit side, dunno if you remember me fixing the auxilliary charging circuit on Caliburn on Monday. Since then, there has always been an occasional little whiff of Sulphuric gas from the battery – no surprise as the battery is goosed and it’s only there to make a circuit. But this evening there was a different smell. The second battery is behind the driver’s seat so while I was driving, I put my hand down to feel if anything was out of the ordinary happening to the battery – and promptly burnt my hand.

The battery was more-than-red hot and so I think that it’s gone totally o/c. And so hot that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had burst into flames either.

I’ve disconnected it anyway and I’ll have another look at it tomorrow. Or sometime. Maybe.

But now I’m in a little seaside hotel just down the road from Le Cap Ferret. No idea where I’ll go tomorrow, but I don’t feel like going home.

And last night?

I was with Nerina and we went to the Victoria Hall in Hanley to see Neil Young. We were very early and caught him on stage setting up and checking his equipment. There were about 20 early birds in total and he invited us all on stage for a chat, and asked us if we had any questions.

I asked him about his songwriting – I reckoned that the songs that he wrote when he had the Black Dog looking over his shoulder were by far and away the best. Did he agree? And how did he cope with Depression affecting his songwriting.

He replied that he was so accustomed to it that he had learned to live with it and what he wrote, as long as it was technically competent, he had no qualms whatever about recording. Songwriting is all about expressing the writer’s moods and there is good and bad, just like in life.

He then asked for a volunteer todo something and, to my surprise, Nerina volunteered. Not like her – she always had very firm preiciples. But nevertheless she left her position of crouched on the floor at Neil Young’s feet and went off to do this task.

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