The Siren's Call

It's a funny thing, this blogging lark....

....and it's also a funny thing how easy it is to slip into 'socialmediaspeak' - like beginning a post by saying, "It's a funny thing, this blogging lark", and then adding a few dots after it (for some strange reason)........................

I very much enjoyed Brendan O'Neill piece at the Spectator this week bemoaning the fact that we're increasingly giving up our privacy, thanks to the social media bug, by blabbing about our every move.

It's a piece I read whilst working out on a treadmill (positioning my copy of the Speccie on the treadmill's board) in order to lose weight.

Brendan quite rightly argued that, for our own sakes and for the sake of everyone else (except a few media ghouls), we should keep our gobs shut a bit more. He didn't sound very optimistic though about anyone taking his advice.

I can't think why..........

Before blogging endlessly about BBC bias I used to write endlessly about classical music (with a pen, and in a book. I completed more than a dozen of them). My aim was to write a one-man encyclopaedia about every piece of classical music every written. (Come to think of it, that was perhaps a little too ambitious.)

Now, my aid and comfort in all of this was BBC Radio 3. For many a year BBC Radio 3 was the life and soul of my party. Donald Macleod and his Composer of the Week was my guiding star. Private Passions was the only Desert Island Discs imitation worth listening to. Choral Evensong was my path to salvation.....

....oh, blessed dots.............

...and the BBC Proms...Ah yes! I'd pre-order my Proms booklet and study it as if it were a newly discovered early Koran (peace be upon it).

Ah but....alas, alas....

......the invisible worm that flies in the night in the howling storm had unfortunately found out my bed of (BBC Radio 3-loving) crimson joy and did my dark secret love (for the BBC) destroy.

The worm in question was my adulterous interest in politics, especially after my Blair Era-induced political coma passed and I started listening to the BBC's political coverage again.

Oh fatal mistake!

Alas, Radio 3 has fallen by the wayside in recent years. My beloved has been cast aside. My bit-on-the-side, Radio 4, has taken her place (along with her news-hungry BBC comrades), and I'm not at all happy about it, or the BBC. 

Bias, bias, bias. BBC political bias. Bias, bias, bias. So much of it, so little time.

The Proms have started again. So far I've listened to the First Night only - and, frankly, I'm surprised I even did that these days. 

Among other things, the Proms this year are marking the anniversaries of two of my favourite composers - Sibelius and Nielsen. 

The first night featured Old Sib's suite, Belshazzar's Feast - a piece that, unusually for me, I hadn't got to know closely before. It's not the best of Sibelius but it includes some very beautiful music, especially its haunting second movement, Solitude - a movement that rather reflects my mood at the moment. I keep playing it, again and again.