Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge by Van Morrison.

There was once a fraudster in New York who sold real estate, (Sounds familiar!). His name was George C Parker (1860-1937) who sold public buildings that he didn’t own to gullible people. His most famous exploit was selling the Brooklyn Bridge. The scam was only discovered when the new ‘owners’ opened toll booths at the bridge to recoup their investment. George ended his days with a life stretch in Sing Sing prison. His memory lives on with a saying about gullible people, ‘If you believe that, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you’. It also gave Van Morrison the title track of his new album of Blues music Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge. It is the third release on Van’s Orangefield label after the excellent Beyond Words and Live At Orangefield. Van created the label to release non-mainstream archive material that wouldn’t otherwise be released on a major label.  

The sleeve design is interesting because if you look at the shadow of the musician depicted on the cover you will see that he has a tail. I guess this tells us to expect blues music because amongst conservative Christian fundamentalists in America in the early 20^th century blues music was known as ‘The Devil’s music’ as it was associated with juke joints, speakeasies, brothels, alcohol and gambling. There are twenty tracks in all, mainly blues covers with just four tracks written by Van and one by John Allair. 

Buddy Guy & Van plaque.

At nearly eighty minutes of music, you are certainly getting your money’s worth. Van’s regular touring band are mainly absent from this collection of songs, but he is joined by many illustrious blues friends such as Taj Mahal who Van has worked with many times. Taj adds excellent harmonica and vocals to four tracks including the politically incorrect Delia’s Gone which I remember Johnny Cash singing at Glastonbury in 94. 

Taj, Van, Mitch.

Elvin Bishop who I mainly know from the song Fooled Around and Fell In Love plays guitar on five tracks. There is a great video of Van and Elvin from 1977 performing Domino (See video below). Buddy Guy is still going strong at 89. You may remember that it was Buddy who unveiled the plaque on Van’s former house on Hyndford Street. I don’t think Van was very pleased about that at the time but seems to have got over it now. I love Buddy’s guitar playing and vocals here on I’m Ready and Rock Me Baby. You can see Buddy make a cameo appearance in the recent multi-Oscar nominated film Sinners. John Allair who has played piano and organ on many great Van albums contributes (Go To The) High Place In Your Mind. 

Elvin & Van 1977

I hadn’t heard Anthony Paule until recently, but he plays some excellent guitar on this album, and I think the backing singers here Omega Rae, Nona Brown and Larry Baptiste are members of his band.  Dave Lewis like Van is also from Northern Ireland. He played piano on the Magic Time album and wrote Madame Butterfly Blues featured on this album. Mr ‘Boogie Woogie’ Mitch Woods plays piano on twelve of the tracks. Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson whose songs Van has recorded previously wrote the first two tracks. Other songs were written by such luminaries as Junior Wells, John Lee Hooker, Fats Domino, Sonny Terry & Brownie Magee, Leadbelly, Willie Dixon, Blind Blake, BB King, and Marie Adams who wrote Play The Honky Tonks. I had never heard of Marie Adams, so I just looked her up and found that she sang the original version of Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me which gave Lena Zavarone a number one hit in the UK. 

John Allair

If I had to choose a favourite song here, I think it is Van’s version of Fats Domino’s Ain’t That A Shame. I can’t fault this album. It is just what I expected when I ordered it. Van’s voice and sax playing are as good as ever, although the four tracks he wrote himself aren’t among his best compositions in my opinion. The musicianship of the players is excellent. I think the problem for me is that I’m not the world’s greatest blues fan. My initial enthusiasm to hear the songs began to wane after a while and I found they began to sound a bit samey to me. Don’t let me put you off though. I know a lot of music fans who are steeped in the blues will love this recording and find it a very valuable addition to Van’s great body of work

VAN MORRISON / ELVIN BISHOP - DOMINO (LIVE 1977)

Van Morrison: Ain’t That A Shame

Van Morrison & The City of Bath.

I haven’t done anything worth telling you about recently because the weather has been so dull and miserable, so to pass the time on yet another rainy dark January day I thought I’d update a story I wrote a few years ago about Van Morrison and the city of Bath because Van is returning to Bath Forum for two nights in April and maybe some of the fans who are coming to Bath might like to read about Van’s links to this wonderful city.  Van lived and worked around Bath for nearly 20 years and as a Van fan who lives 12 miles from Bath I am very proud of Van’s connection with this area. Wherever Van has lived has been a source of inspiration to him. Belfast obviously, New York, Woodstock, California, Copenhagen, London and Ireland, but I feel that one of his most sustained periods of creativity was when Van lived right here in the West Country of England. When Van moved back to England after many years in the states he lived in Notting Hill London, an area he knew from the 60's, but Van had changed since then. I think he was tired of the hustle of life in London and wished to be far from the madding crowd.  Inspired by the likes of William Blake Van had become a nature poet inspired by the countryside as shown in such songs as Summertime In England and he was exploring the healing power of music. 

Wool Hall

Van set up offices in Bath which became Exile Productions. Thus began a golden age in his career. The first album he recorded in this area was Poetic Champions Compose which was recorded at Wool Hall Studios in the village of Beckington only five miles from where I am sitting at this very moment. The studio was owned at the time by the famous Bath band Tears For Fears and Van became one of its most regular clients. In 1994 after recording five albums at Wool Hall Van bought the studio. All Van's studio albums between 1987 and 2006 were recorded at the Wool Hall as far as I know. About 14 albums, a very impressive body of work indeed. 

You can see the influence the area had on Van’s work immediately. Avalon Sunset from 89 with its pastoral imagery was partly inspired by the Vale Of Avalon and nearby Glastonbury. In the song Pagan Streams on Hymns To The Silence Van says, 'And we walked the pagan streams and searched for white horses on surrounding hills, We lived where dusk had meaning, And repaired to quiet sleep, where noise abated, In touch with the silence On honey street, on honey street’. At nearby Westbury a famous White Horse is carved into the hillside. It commemorates the Battle Of Edington against the Danes where King Alfred dumped the Jutes on the burning ground. I wonder if this is the white horse that Van is referring to? It is quite visible from Beckington.  Honey Street is a small village on the Kennett And Avon Canal near Devizes. 

Van became a well-known figure around the quiet streets, cafe's, bookshops and record shops of Bath and beyond. A friend of mine spotted him in a shop in nearby Frome called Raves From The Grave where Van was mooching through the blues albums. Another day, I was in a now defunct record shop in Trowbridge called The Record Collector and I asked the man if he had any Van Morrison and he said that Van had been in only the day before, buying records for his jukebox. I think that is great that someone like Van with all his fame and fortune still enjoys looking in second-hand shops for rare records. In the late 90's we used to go into a tiny wine bar just around the corner from the Theatre Royal in Bath. It was called Raincheck after a song on Van's Days Like This album.  Van was a silent partner in the place. I think he probably just lent a friend the money to open it. I never saw Van in there, but he used to frequent it regularly according to people I spoke to. One man in there told me that he had been chatting to Van about the two 1965 Them gigs at Bath Pavilion (see picture) and he said Van had told him that the supporting band on the first occasion were The Four Specs who had that name because all the band wore glasses. I looked them up and they really existed.

My partner Kim used to have her hair done in a place called Mahogany in the Corridor in Bath. The staff told Kim that Van also had his hair cut there, but he never had much to say for himself. Kim was a care worker for people with learning difficulties. One day she was taking some of them out shopping in Bath. She stopped at the pedestrian crossing near Queens Square and this familiar figure walked across, “It’s Van the Man", exclaimed Kim, Van turned round and gave her one of those looks that only he can do. A friend called Jean was in Sally Lunn’s tea shop in Bath one day with her son Ben and spotted Van who was enjoying a pot of tea and some scones in the corner. As she was leaving, she went over and said,” This is my son Ben and he would like to shake hands with you". Van wiped his hands on his napkin and shook hands with Ben aged 11 and said, "How do you do”.  

Sally Lunn's

We saw him at Lydiard Park near Swindon which is only a stone’s throw from Van’s house in Little Somerford. I think that was the first or second time Brian Kennedy appeared with him. Also, at Frome Festival at Marston House just about 3 miles from Beckington. That was the last time I saw the great Pee Wee Ellis play with Van. We saw Pee Wee play in Bradford On Avon one Sunday afternoon and met Pee Wee and his wife Charlotte and also a lady called Nicky who was Van’s PA during his time in Bath. She recognised me from the TV. I had achieved some local short-lived fame after winning on a quiz show called Fifteen To One and she said that they had all been rooting for me because on the show I said I was a Van Morrison fan. I wonder if Van watched it. After Van left the area Pee Wee continued to live here for the rest of his life in Beckington. He gave local children music lessons and was honoured with a doctorate by Bath Spa University.  He continued to support local music as patron of the Bristol International Blues and Jazz Festival until he sadly died on September 23, 2021 at the age of 80.

I saw Van seven times at Glastonbury Festival and four times at Glastonbury Abbey only 26 miles from here. Plus, Van’s almost annual concerts down by Bristol. I think of the seventy or so times I have seen Van half of the gigs have been in a thirty-mile radius of Bath, so Van has saved me a lot of money by playing locally. In 2002 Van released Down The Road and for the cover he used Nasher’s Record Shop in Walcot Street, Bath. It was a great cover because the window of the shop was filled with albums of Van's influences. Maybe it was inspired by Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home album. I know Nasher’s well because I used to have a browse in there on my way to the Hat And Feather pub or The Bell. Twenty years ago I decided to sell all my vinyl albums because I had nothing to play them on. Because of the Van connection I thought I would get a good price for my Van vinyl in Nasher’s, but they only paid me about £1.25 for each. I bitterly regret selling them now. 

Eventually Van moved away. I think these days he spends most of his time back in Belfast. Although he has recorded some wonderful music since, I don’t think he has quite reached the sustained brilliance of those albums he made at the Wool Hall. The studio was sold and became a private house for many years, but I think it has reopened as a studio recently. Nasher’s record shop is long gone, and Raincheck. Van returns to Bath quite regularly. He often records at Pete Gabriel’s Real World Studio in the village of Box only seven miles from Bath and has recorded several recent songs at the Bath Spa Hotel. He played the Forum in 2012 and an outdoor concert at the Recreation Ground in 2019, so it will be a very welcome return when he performs in the art-deco splendour of The Forum in April. See you in Bath!

 

The Street of Crocodiles

Storm Goretti was battering the South-West last evening, so I wasn’t venturing out anywhere. That gave me a chance to finish reading the book that arrived here last week. It is called The Street of Crocodiles, a collection of short stories by Bruno Schulz. It was Patti Smith who led me to discovering Bruno Schulz when she mentioned him on page 338 of her Book of Days. Patti said that Bruno Schulz was shot dead in the street by a Gestapo officer on November 19^th, 1942. This made me curious to find out more about him. I discovered that Bruno Schulz (12 July 1892 – 19 November 1942) was a Polish Jewish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher born in Drohobych, Poland (Now in Ukraine) where he lived all his life. He was the son of cloth merchant Jakub Schulz on whom the main protagonist of the book is based. At a very early age he developed an interest in the arts, writing and drawing. Bruno became recognised as a writer when several of his letters were brought to the attention of the novelist Zofia Nałkowska who encouraged Bruno to have them published as short fiction. They were published as The Cinnamon Shops in 1934, and when published in English in 1963 as The Street of Crocodiles. 

My Copy

Several of Bruno's manuscripts were lost in the Holocaust, including short stories from the early 1940s and his final, unfinished novel The Messiah. When WW2 began in 1939 Drohobych was occupied by the Soviet Union, but when the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviets in 1941 Bruno along with thousands of other Jews was forced into the Jewish Ghetto. Most of the Jewish population were sent to the death camps, but Bruno was kept alive by a Nazi Gestapo officer called Felix Landau who liked Bruno’s artwork and wanted him to paint a mural in his house. Bruno even had a pass to enter the Aryan Quarter. In 1942 he was walking home carrying a loaf of bread when another Gestapo officer called Karl Günther casually shot and killed him. This murder was in revenge for Landau having murdered Günther's own "personal Jew," a dentist named Löw.

The thirteen stories which make up the book are all fictionalised boyhood memories set in his hometown and concern his immediate family, other relatives, and the employees of the shop downstairs. His father Jacob features in most of these fantastical tales. This is one of the strangest books I have ever read because of Bruno’s incredible imagination which begins in some sort of reality but then takes flight in all directions. For instance, in one of the most amazing stories simply called Birds Jacob in order to relieve the monotony of their drab existence takes up ornithology and begins importing exotic bird’s eggs from all over the globe. The eggs hatch and before long, their apartment is full of parrots, pelicans, vultures, and even a condor which bears an uncanny resemblance to Jacob. Finally, the housekeeper Adela tires of the noise and the droppings all over the floor, opens the windows and doors and shoos them out. They do return in a later story to visit their ‘master’. 

There is great humour in this book. At times Jacob with his bizarre experiments reminds me of De Selby in Flann O’Brien’s masterpiece The Third Policeman where bicycles also feature prominently. In Jacob’s universe there is even a new constellation called ‘The Cyclist’. Time and space are twisted like a bicycle wheel; In The Night of The Great Season the year grows another 13^th month at the end of August which is stunted like a hunchback. Jacob is tired of the tyranny of the Demiurge who created the physical world and wishes to create his own universe of pseudoflora and pseudofauna. 

In this strange world, houses, Apartments, Streets, and roads become labyrinths full of long forgotten rooms where even the wallpaper comes alive. The seamstresses Pauline and Polda are forced to listen to lectures by Jacob such as his treatise on tailors’ dummies. Every paragraph has vivid descriptions, a flock of crows resemble flakes of soot, Jacob’s face looks like an old plank full of knots and veins. Uncle Charles leaves his room in the morning while simultaneously walking in the opposite direction into the depths of a wardrobe mirror to a world that doesn’t exist. Nimrod is the pet dog who meets a cockroach, Pan is a tale of meeting an old tramp in the weeds of an overgrown garden. The Gale describes an account of a storm which is so strong his brother has to fill his pockets with irons and other metal objects as ballast in order to leave the house. 

The Street of Crocodiles itself is a sleazy area of the city where you can venture into the shallow mud of companionship and dirty intermingling. Tailor’s shops sell dirty books and there is a black market in railway tickets. One story called Cockroaches is very Kafkaesque where Jacob’s obsessive fear of cockroaches leads to him metamorphosing into one. I won’t tell you any more in case you read it yourself. 

I’d just like to add one thought about the cruel death of Bruno Schulz where the world was robbed of the work of his brilliant mind. Casually shot dead on the street by a fascist. You would think that we have progressed and such depravity has no place in a modern ‘civilised’ society. Then you look at the BBC News and see that Renee Nicole Good, an acclaimed poet, guitar player, mother of three, and peace activist is shot dead in Minnesota by a government official who enjoys full immunity. The lesson of Bruno Schulz is that we cannot afford to take our hard-won freedom for granted because it could easily be taken away again.

Bruno Schulz

 

Who Dares Wins.

In these cold dark days of Winter I often don't have anything worthwhile to talk about, so on days like this I thought I'd revisit stories I wrote years ago and see if I can improve them a bit. Andy Warhol once said that one day everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes. He might have been thinking of TV quiz shows. This is a story of when I appeared on one about 26 years ago.....          It all began in the early 90's when pubs began introducing quiz machines where you could win money by answering general knowledge questions. I was soon completely addicted to them because I found I could answer the questions quite easily and could have a free night down the pub whenever I liked. The local pub landlords grew to hate me as I went further and further afield in search of quiz machines to empty. One night I started in the Phipps Arms at Westbury Leigh and went on to The Hollies, The Royal Oak, The Castle, The Angel, The Horse And Groom, The White Lion, The Ludlow and The Crown. When I emptied my pockets that night I found I had about £70 in £ coins. It weighed a ton.
The Landlord of The Horse And Groom was Rod who decided to use my talent to his advantage and asked me to be captain of the pub quiz team. In our first season we won the Trowbridge and District League and my local fame grew in leaps and bounds. I felt really brainy. Then one night in the pub my mate Dave said I should go on Fifteen To One. This was a popular afternoon TV show which was a forerunner of The Weakest Link and at its peak had an audience of 4,000,000. It was very popular with pensioners, students and the unemployed. I sent off an application form and was invited to an audition in Bristol. Two weeks later I received a letter inviting me onto the show. This was going to make me famous. Everybody I met I told that I was going to be on the telly and to make sure they watched.

Our Quiz Team.

The big day arrived and I set off for London and my date with destiny. The studios were in Wandsworth and myself and the other contestants were put up in a nearby hotel as the show was to be recorded the following morning at 10.00. I began to have my first niggling doubts because the others looked really well educated and posh, and I found out that several of them almost made a career out of TV shows and had been on several other shows. I stayed in the hotel bar till 1.00 in the morning. The others went to bed. Next morning I was suffering with a really bad reality attack and all my bravado had gone out the window.  At the studio we drew lots and I was to be number 8. Then we were led into the place with the cameras and the genial host William G Stewart. I felt like I was about to be executed. The floor manager said, "One minute to recording". My right leg suddenly started shaking uncontrollably. William started asking the questions and everybody was coming up with the right answer.

Finally he got to me and he might as well have been talking Chinese. I was so nervous it sounded like this,
"Whatisthemathematicaltermforlinespointsorcurveswhichareequidistantapart?"
I stood there just looking at him. Then  realised what he was asking and I thought, "That's parallel, surely he wouldn't ask a question that easy". The buzzer went before I could blurt it out and William said, "The answer is parallel".
A couple of minutes later William returned and asked me who wrote the music for the film Brigadoon. I didn't know, but I was in such a state I didn't care who wrote the music for fecking Brigadoon. I answered "Rogers and Hammerstein", in a sort of high pitched squeak, just to say something. "The answer is Lerner and Loewe", said William, and I was out. My entire TV appearance was about 14 seconds. I hoped that nobody I knew would watch the show but of course they all did. For about a year afterwards I was known around town as Parallel Pat. People came up to me in the pub and said things like, "Sorry I didn't see you on the telly, I  blinked and missed, it", that sort of thing. Just when people were beginning to forget about it, the TV company went and repeated it the following summer and the jokes started all over again. I lost all interest in quizzes for five long years. As they say though, revenge is a meal best eaten cold and I was to get my revenge in the sweetest possible way.

Five Years Later........

Five long years had past since my disastrous TV appearance. Then in 1999 they announced that if you hadn't appeared on the show for 5 years you could apply again.
"I've gotta go back",I announced to Kim.
"Where?"
"London, I've got some unfinished business with William".
Once more I set off for London,
"Go get 'em Floyd", Said Kim, "Go kick some ass".
The stakes had never been higher, if I messed up this time I faced total humiliation, but as they say, 'Who Dares Wins'.
This time I was number 5. As William came along the line asking the questions my leg started its familiar jig, but this time I was grimly determined. Finally William got to me,
"When Britain joined the EU in 1974 which two other countries joined at the same time?"
"Ireland and er um Denmark"
"Correct"
I breathed a sigh of relief. Two minutes later William was back with my second question.
"Dancer Michael Flatley became famous in which musical show?"

 "Riverdance".
"Correct"
Brilliant! I was into round 2 and had all my lives intact. In round 2 if you got your answer right you could nominate one of your opponents to answer the next question. This is where it got dirty. I soon got nominated.
"Such is life" is reputed to be the last words of which Australian outlaw?"
"Ned Kelly"
Then I went on a killing spree. One by one my opponents were going down like skittles. I was enjoying this. After a few minutes there were 12 down 3 to go and I suddenly found myself in the final. My two rivals in the final were a lady who worked at Tesco's and a lad from Galway called Brendan who had only entered so he could visit his brother in London for free. At the beginning of Part 2 you had to smile at the camera while they told the viewers all about you. 'Pat lives in Westbury, Wiltshire, he enjoys reading and music particularly Van Morrison and he supports Peterborough United football club'. Then it was into battle. I got my first 2 questions wrong and only had one life left, so the other two kept nominating me to try and kill me off. I held my nerve, and answered 13 questions in a row correctly. The others started to get their answers wrong and I was fighting back. The Tesco lady was the first to crack and she was out. Then finally Brendan lost his last life and I had won. I scored 113 points and the 13th highest score in the series so far.
 I kept my composure until I left the studio. I was back on the street again, back on top again. Then I jumped up and punched the air YES!. Then floated on a cloud all the way back to Waterloo Station. I couldn't wait to get home and see everyone up at the pub. "I'll give them parallel Pat", I thought. I had to wait an hour for my train, so walked across Westminster bridge and went in a pub near the houses of parliament. It was frequented by politicians. "Look at them", I thought, "they think they are so  important, don't they realise that I'm the 13th most brainy person in Britain".
We had a big party in the pub to watch my glorious win and  had a cake with 15 candles and I blew out 14 of them.

A lady came from the local paper and wrote a story with the headline, 'Getting the answers off Pat'. I was invited back on the show twice more as a previous winner. It wasn't as exciting though. I didn't get the same buzz off it. When you get to the top there's no where else to go and that was the end of my TV career. You can see the second half of my appearance in the video below.

                                                                           THE END.

Fifteen Minutes Of Fame..

You Boy, When Is Bin Day?

Today actually feels like Monday. Since Christmas every day has merged into the next until I can’t tell what day of the week it is. I had to look on the internet to find out when to put the wheelie bin out. It was today, but I noticed that some of the neighbours were unaware of this fact. It has been sunny, but bitterly cold here. Yesterday I got well wrapped up with warm coat, woolly hat & scarf and made the supreme effort to go to the shops for some provisions, and I thought the exercise would do me good. 

I don’t like using the self-service check outs because I get confused over some items and need to ask for assistance. I waited patiently in the queue at the regular tills. The people in front of me spent about £200. Then finally I placed my humble items on the conveyor belt. The check out girl whizzed everything past the scanner in the blink of an eye, as if she was on some sort of speed, and said, “£27. 52”, even before I had pulled my carrier bag from my pocket. I raced to fit my stuff in the bag as quickly as possible because the next people were already loading up the belt. “Phew, I’m sweating after that effort”, I said to Amphetamine Annie, eager to make conversation because I hadn’t spoken to anybody since saying hello to the post lady on Friday. She stared at me blankly as if I was speaking a foreign language. “Do you want a receipt?”, she asked. “No thanks” I replied. As I walked home, I thought that they don’t need to replace these people with AI robots because they have already been turned into automatons. When I got home I listened to Talksport and found that The Posh had been hammered by Lincoln City 5-2 which is a major setback, but never mind, onward and upward!

Wolf Moon.

 People gather at Glastonbury Tor to observe the first Super moon of the year.

 

Joanie

After I spoke to you yesterday the intention was to go out to the shops and later the pub, but in the end I thought there was no real reason to venture out in the cold, so I had another quiet day indoors, reading my new book (which I might finish by Sunday evening) and watching the TV. There wasn’t a lot on worth watching to be quite honest. After the second episode of The Traitors the highlight for me was a 1965 BBC concert by Joan Baez. This was to celebrate the fact that next week on January 9^th Joan (or Joanie as Bob Dylan likes to call her!) reaches the age of 85. The concert was most enjoyable. You can find it on Youtube.  

There is no denying that Joan has a wonderful, almost operatic voice, clear as a bell. Also, despite my eclectic taste in music I am at heart a folkie fan of singer-songwriters, although primarily Joan is an interpreter of other people’s songs and traditional ballads. The concert included such trad type songs as Mary Hamilton, Plasir D’Amour, Silver Dagger, We Shall Overcome. 500 Miles, and The Unquiet Grave, a sprinkling of Dylan songs, With God On Our Side, Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, and It Ain’t Me Babe. (She didn’t sing my favourite Joanie Dylan song though which is Farewell Angelina, so to make up for the disappointment I found a video from 66 on Youtube and shared below).

I did notice a few differences to BBC concerts these days. Firstly, some of the audience were smoking. That would be a big no no in today’s world. Secondly, I have always admired Joan for her political views. As a child Joan was subjected to racial abuse due to her Mexican heritage which coupled with her Quaker upbringing made her very aware of social injustice, Civil Rights, and non-violent protest. To this very day she has never been shy of standing up for what she believes in. In between the songs of the 1965 BBC concert she made a few anti-establishment statements. The Vietnam war was at its height and Joan said those politicians who ordered the bombing were murderers. I don’t think these days the BBC would have the courage to broadcast someone like Joan. There would be calls in the right-wing press for the BBC directors to resign for showing such a lack of  impartiality. It would cause outrage. Just look at the row this year when they broadcast Bob Vylan and Kneecap at Glastonbury. I think the Beeb was more enlightened back in the 60s. Anyway, that was last night, I don’t know what today will bring. It is a Wolf Moon tonight, so I’ll try and look out for that. See you later.

PS,  I just put the BBC News on and heard that the USA has attacked Venezuela and captured the President and his wife. Hmm, I wonder what Joan would say about that.  

Joan baez - Farewell Angelina 1965

Slan Le Van

A cold but sunny morning, sun streaming through the windows warming the kitchen. The ragged Tibetan flags fluttering in the breeze outside. A CD chosen randomly plays. It is by John Hoban gifted by my late brother Paul over twenty years ago. John Hoban is a native of Castlebar County Mayo in Ireland which is where my family came from. so, I can relate to the songs which transport me back to memories of Mayo. My favourite track however was inspired when John saw Van Morrison in a concert that became one of Van’s live albums, A Night In San Francisco in 1993, and that’s the track I want to tell you about. It is called Slan Le Van which translated from Irish means Farewell To Van. Sharon Shannon also recorded a great version of this song in 2000 with John on vocals for her Diamond Mountain Sessions album (See video below). 

Looking for the lyrics on the internet I couldn’t find any, but the song mentions people like Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Jimmy Witherspoon and Georgie Fame. Van songs name checked include Full Force Gale, Did Ye Get Healed, Moondance, Madame George, Brand New Day, Tupelo Honey, Domino, Cyprus Avenue, Baby Please Don’t Go, and ends with John exclaiming ‘It’s too late to stop now’. I think it must be my favourite song which mentions Van. After listening to the whole album, I was shaken out of my Mayo reverie by the post lady knocking on the door who handed me a parcel containing a book.  I’ll tell you all about that when I have read it.

Slan le Van by Sharon Shannon & John Hoban

A Fresh Start.

Viburnum

Another new year has begun. I’m full of good intentions as usual. I’ll try and write something most days even if nothing particularly interesting is occurring. I didn’t get up today until about 11.00. That’s because I was up late last night watching Jools Holland’s annual Hootenanny. I didn’t think it was very good this year and gave up on it before the end and watched Rod Stewart at Glastonbury 2025 on BBC 1. I witnessed that performance at Glasto and it didn’t improve by watching it on the television either. It was a nice sunny, but cold morning when I did emerge. The News headline was terrible with a deadly fire at a Swiss ski resort. To get some fresh air I ventured down the garden to see how my fish were. They seemed quite happy in their little watery pooliverse. I topped up the pond and gave them some food. 

Snow Dance

Apart from that it looked quite desolate in the garden as you would expect in the bleak midwinter. Three plants lifted my spirits. There was a nice viburnum shrub covered in white flowers, a Helleborus called Snow Dance, and by the back door an attractive evergreen with red foliage called Skimmia. I took their photos before I came in out of the cold. I did notice when I was out there that the fence is in a shocking state of disrepair. My little shed is beginning to fall apart as well. That is a couple of jobs for me to do before Spring, if I can get motivated. At 3.00 I put on Talksport Radio because my team Peterborough United (The Posh) were playing away to Rotherham. Posh won 0-2 and moved up to 11^th in the table. There is a new series of Traitors starting tonight at 8.00, so that will be my evening’s entertainment. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Skimmia.