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 Keighley - Radio 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.
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.
Very evocative. Morecambe's a great place to enjoy the seaside if you don't like looking at the sea. :)
ReplyDeleteAs for Laurie, well there is the rumour (he denies) that he was the model for The History Man - the great philanderer of the late 60s/early 70s.
I was somewhat perturbed at the potential reaction of Keith's bride. Since's he's not the History Man, we can reject the theory that she rejected his amorous advances.
I heard the discussion of migrant women in Britain. There were a few points of interest but also a number of absurd claims by the author e.g. the idea that (presumably non-migrant) British people assume all migrants are people of colour! Where do sociologists get these crazy notions?
Some of Morecambe's critics (and there are some, hard as that may be to believe) say that 'looking at the sea' is all Morecambe's good for. Shame on them!
DeleteI often find 'Thinking Allowed' to be like that. You can be happily listening to some fascinating nuggets about certain types of individual when some academic leftist idiocy crashes in. It's not often you can get through an entire episode without some crazy notion taking over.
Laurie Taylor and his Queen Mary poppet of aimless sociological gobbleygookey were quite an item weren`t they?
ReplyDeleteOnly a corduroy padded nomark like Lorry would trash his own mates wedding on live Radio...if indeed the serial fantasist WAS indeed telling the truth...after all, he though he was Howard Kirk when in reality he was an elbow patch short of a needle.
The man is as rancid as a reminder of how the good rebellion ends in a care home spat, as Mick Jaggers endless cavortings for the "rebels" is.
As for his-gosh, don`t migrant cleaners not get enough hugs for being anonymous women?
Utter shite...ALL people who work for a living in the service trades-white OR migrant-don`t get their award ceremonies or York Uni Alumni Trough tests. My family didn`t-and neither did I.
Maybe it`s being middle-aged and beige in the eyes of the demi monde star suckers like Laurie that means we`re invisible...certainly a fair few of those here illegally are HAPPY not to get Lauries Lovings...they`ll not be blabbing to Queen Mary about "not being noticed"...because they`d be deported!
So suck on that Taylor you unreconstituted lollard on the lotus leaf of the taxpayer...hope to pour scorn on Lauries empty and tedious funeral conformities very soon...but the bloody Beeb and Guardian will have a twenty one gun celery salute with BUPA-sourced viagra for the limp lettuces who turn out for this Tribune of Toytown!