A Rainbow In Curved Air.

Sorry I haven’t written anything for two weeks. I have been away a bit and also a bit lazy. I thought I’d try and write something today to get back in the habit of it. The weekend before last I went up north to visit an old friend in Wigan. I had never been there before. It was quite interesting. I saw Wigan Pier which was made famous by George Orwell in his book The Road To Wigan Pier although I must confess that it is one of his books that I haven’t read. I also went to my first ever Rugby League game which was Wigan v Wakefield Trinity. That was quite exciting, and I understood the game a lot better afterwards.

A lot of last week was taken up with watching horse racing on the telly from the Cheltenham Festival. I had a bet on every race and only picked a couple of winners. I always used to look forward to this event but the day following the meeting I heard that three horses died in the very last race and six in all at the meeting. I am afraid that this is unacceptable. They should make the sport a lot safer than this. It is the Grand National in a couple of weeks time and I usually organise a sweepstake for my friends, but I think the time has come to call it a day on that.

I got a new CD in the post. It is called A Rainbow In Curved Air by Terry Riley. It was released in 1969. I was watching a programme on BBC4 about minimalism in music and Terry Riley was talking on it and what he was saying made a lot of sense to me so I ordered the album. I quite like it although I have only played it once. I can see how it influenced Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. Also, apparently Pete Townshend of The Who was a fan of Terry Riley and I can see the influence in parts of Won’t Get Fooled Again. I read that the song Baba O’Riley was named after Terry Riley. Only time will tell if I play the album very often.

The weather has been quite cold and we had more snow so that put paid to any gardening activity for the time being. When it was snowing I tried filming birds in the garden. I’ll see if I can put up a bit of footage of that. Apart from that I haven’t done much. I watched a nice filum on the telly on Sunday night called Brooklyn all about this homesick Irish girl living in New York. I have had a nice copy of the book by Colm Toibin for ages. I enjoyed the film so much that I started reading the book. Whether I get to the end or not now I’ve seen the film is another matter.