Saturday, 7 May 2016

Laurie Taylor, blackbirds, neo-liberalism and Manx Fiddling


Here's a post I prepared (while I had the chance) on Wednesday night. Whether it's worth posting I'll let you be the judge!

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It's a lovely night here in Morecambe, still and sunny and sinking softly towards sunset. Collared doves are pouring out their three-note tune in counterpoint to the wood pigeons with their five-note tune. There's a robin doing his trickling little song somewhere, a starling gargling on a drainpipe, and sundry blackbirds letting rip melodiously - all against the backdrop of a chap playing what I'm guessing to be Manx folk music to himself on a violin (and to the whole neighbourhood, as he's got his door open, and we've got our windows open to listen to him). O to be in Morecambe now that May's here!

Meanwhile, if someone isn't playing Manx folk music to your neighbourhood this evening and you're not too busy booking yourself into a hotel in Morecambe tonight, you might care instead to read two fine pieces about BBC bias by ex-BBC high-flyers:
David KeighleyRadio 4’s Mark Mardell wears his EU flag on his sleeve
Scott Gronmark - The BBC and the EU: a bromance made in left-liberal heaven 
Just before the expert folk fiddler struck up I was listening to Uncle Laurie on Thinking Allowed sniggering at ordinary folk and their love of traditional weddings. 

As ever he began it with a personal anecdote. He'd been dragged to Nice to attend his pal Keith's wedding. Oh, it was all too much for Uncle Laurie, and Keith's bride Julie was "tedious". Laurie called poor Julie "tedious" twice. 

My first thought on hearing that was, 'I hope she's not listening. That's a horrible thing to say about someone, especially on Radio 4 and by a Radio 4 presenter'. I then looked up Laurie on Wikipedia. He's been married three times and divorced three times. 

Capitalism, class, posh people. Sociology. Laurie sniggering at women wanting to wear white. Thinking Allowed. Radio 4.

And then the folk fiddler began playing, like at a wedding. 

The second half of Thinking Allowed discussed 'Migrant women in Britain' and how they've been "in the vanguard of a social revolution in women's contribution to the economy in the second half of the 20th century. In factories and hospitals, care homes and universities they've played a lasting role in British society, in spite of recurrent discrimination".

For some reason, the folk fiddler made me click off the iPlayer just as that bit was about to begin.

And now it's getting dark. The blackbirds are sounding alarm calls. The folk fiddler is probably reading a history of Manx folk music. And so to bed.