It was Monday morning when Coco noticed it.
Continue readingTravel
Never too late
It was a warm afternoon when Elmer and Wilma drove up the mountain from Brenzone through Prada. As they drove behind another tourist, whom they recognised as a tourist from the British number plates, for some reason his thoughts turned to his elder brothers, Barney and Homer. He missed them both, though they were quite different both in the characters and their careers.
Continue readingThe Prepared Piano
Had we not known what was coming the backstage sounds may have indicated that the music that was to follow would be of, shall we say, an interesting nature. If you have ever listened to the Lord Denning of the now defunct Third programme in its modern guise, Tom Service, you will understand that we can all be composers, it is simply a matter of rearranging the notes, as we were to hear in the first two pieces for prepared pianoforte, into a new order to produce a new work.
Continue readingThe Fall of Florence
Saturday had an interesting evening, Beethoven, Ireland and Honegger. Daniele Gatti played Beethoven’s 4th concerto in a pleasant way that drew you in to the conflict that he portrayed. After a generous interval and Ireland’s Concertino pastorale for strings we were treated to what I had thought, and those of you who know anything about Honegger also would also think, would be quite a challenging piece, Liturgique, symphony nr.3.
Somewhat astonishingly however It proved however to be as lyrical as Ireland’s pastorale.
Loch Ness
Plan for biggest Nessie search in more than 50 years
Loch Ness Monster: Hundreds join huge search for Nessie
They are at it again…a copy of the best photograph they had may be found here Loch Ness, 1934
Continue readingLambton Worm
Coco came across the Lambton Worm recently, in proper dialect sung in a wonnerful Geordie accent. It is a tale about a young squire who went fishing on a Sunday morning when he should not have done with terrible consequences for the people who lived on both sides of the Wear.
Continue readingCar three
Coco’s dear old Corsa was so far out of condition.
Continue readingDowlais – steel works
When steel matters
The events that are shortly to be related took place in a different age and a different culture, in an altogether foreign location in the broadest sense which was unknown to the people of that time, but is now known to us as a consequence of the work of Einstein in the early part of the twentieth century. It was the time of railroads, steam trains, iron mills, steelworks, coal-mines and dirty work, when undertaker meant more than the entrepreneur and entrepreneur was an unknown word. The prosperity of a municipality could be measured, at least in part by the number of railway stations that it boasted, but better by the quality of the steel produced there and it was from one of these small towns towards the upper end of one of the rolling Welsh valleys that a principle undertaker in the steel industry received a telegram from a bridge and engineering fabricator in North Africa who wished to discuss the procurement of a quantity of steel for the provision of the building of a new bridge across the Niger.
Continue readingFasting in the new normal
The new normal: a new perspective
Continue readingCar too
Coco has a friendly Corsa who is ever the optimist In fact she is in his view overly optimistic even in the face of the facts.
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