It is a cold and wet Friday afternoon. I just thought I ought to write something as I haven’t said anything for a week. In my last post I said I was going to a gig this week and I would tell you all about it. Well, I was going to go to Bristol tomorrow night to see Martin Simpson, I was looking forward to it because you might remember I wrote a review of one of his albums recently. Sadly, that won’t be happening because there is a train strike tomorrow and I wouldn’t be able to get home afterwards. Never mind, I’m sure there will be other chances to see him.
It has been a catastrophic week politically. The new Prime Minister and her Chancellor of The Exchequer have almost managed to destroy the British economy after only three weeks in the job. The Bank of England had to step in to save the economy from the government who are not fit to be left in charge of a horse’s nosebag, never mind the economy of the country. They don’t seem to care about the havoc they are creating. They are being controlled by right-wing think tanks such as the Institute for Economic Affairs which has a reasonable sounding title but is a lobby group for the likes of hedge funds, oil and fracking companies, tobacco industries, and big business. No wonder Truss refused to put a windfall tax on power giants’ profits. Sadly, it is still two years until the next election when hopefully the Labour Party will get into power, fund the NHS properly, help the poorest in society, and restore some sanity. I won’t say any more about that.
Westbury Festival is underway. There are events on all over the town until October 9th. It is great that a little town like this has such a thing. The organisers should be congratulated. I went to an art exhibition last week which was held in somebody’s garden. There are free lunchtime concerts in the church every day. On Tuesday I enjoyed some classical music by a string quartet called Beckford Strings. I might go to some more of those concerts next week. There are lots of other performances, talks and exhibitions in various venues. I have a ticket for the finale concert. There isn’t a cinema in Westbury anymore, but they have been showing free films in the Laverton Hall.
Yesterday they were showing a film called Delius, Song Of Summer which was a 1968 film by Ken Russell about six years in the life of the composer Frederick Delius based on a memoir by his amanuensis Eric Fenby. I didn’t know what an amanuensis was, so looked it up. It is a person employed to write or type what another dictates, or to copy what has been written by another. Delius was blind, so that is why he needed help in writing the scores of his compositions. Ken Russell said that this was his favourite of all the films he directed. I didn’t know much about Delius, so I thought I would go along to see it. Unfortunately, I forgot about it until it was too late. Last night I was regretting not going, until I looked on the internet and found that it was available on youtube.
I watched it last night and enjoyed it. I didn’t like Delius at first but grew to like him before the very moving end of the film. It was very educational and made me want to hear more of Frederick Delius’s music. I want to find out more about Percy Grainger as well. I have shared the film below if you have a spare hour or so to watch it. If I go to more Westbury Festival events, I’ll tell you about them next week. Have a nice weekend.
