“We love you, yeah, yeah, yeah”
– Daily Mirror, 27th May 2005
A bright spring evening in England. It’s a perfect time to be outside.
And yet, strangely – the streets are deserted. On my drive home across the Surrey Hills, the roads are as empty as I can remember.
And then I do remember – it’s the European Cup Final.
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Posted in 2005, football, life and times, music
Yes, I’d like to remind you, I’m running for President
– appreciate your vote, and here is an industrial love song.
Joe Walsh, Eagles – November 1980
We’re having an election here. On 5th May.
So much has happened since our last, in 2001.
And can eight years really have gone by, since John Prescott was dancing away the London small hours to the heady optimism of D-Ream’s ‘Things can only get better’ ?
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There are stars
In the southern sky
Southward as you go
There is moonlight
And moss in the trees
Down the Seven Bridges Road
Sometimes there’s a part of me
Has to turn from here and go
Running like a child from these warm stars
Down the Seven Bridges Road
Eagles – November 1980 (words and music by Steve Young)
A summer’s evening, in spring. It’s a rare gift, and too good to miss.
The late afternoon warmth is still brittle, the low sun still shining through bare trees and fragile blossom. The far edge of an April day.
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Posted in 2005, Guildford, music, Surrey and Sussex
I’m sitting on old Guildford station
Got a ticket for my destination
How I wish I was
Homeward bound
I’m on a tour by rail you see
‘Cos tonight I’m out in the great City
And the day at work’s begun for me
This rock hound with a BlackBerry
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Posted in 2005, life and times, music, poetry
And girl it looks so pretty to me
Like it always did –
Like the Spanish city to me
When we were kids
Dire Straits – October 1980
La Rambla de Almería. An elegant Spanish boulevard, rising gently but inexorably towards the sunlit mountains of the Sierra de Alhamilla. Just 2.4 km of climb, and yet this one stretch defines an entire race. Twice.
It was a cold and wet December day
When we touched the ground in fair DK
Denmark, like a Christmas tree
Tonight this city belongs to me
After ‘Angel of Harlem’ (‘Rattle and Hum’, Island Records – October 1988)
Another week, another city. The traveller’s laments may be eternal, but so often they are rewarded by a fresh viewpoint on the world.
It’s a short flight across the North Sea, and yet remarkably it deposits us from grey old Gatwick into the floodlit swirl of a million scattered snowflakes illuminated by our approach beam. Even in the airport there is that quintessential flavour of Denmark – warmth, light, sophisticated simplicity, and a sleek array of thinly sculpted, contemporary wooden furniture.
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Posted in 2004, music, Scandinavia, winter
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roads of stone 