Blowin’ in the Wind was a song drifting through the ether waiting for someone to reach out and grab; a lyric ‘that the times seemed to call forth,’ to quote critic Greil Marcus. Dylan scribbled the words down in ten minutes, he said. ‘If I hadn’t written it, someone else would have done.’ Blowin’ in the Wind is […]
Monthly Archives: September 2022
JOSEP PLA WAS MY FIRST SPANISH TEACHER
Josep Pla was my first Spanish teacher. If I drop the odd anachronism into the conversation, don’t blame me, blame the great Catalan writer, journalist, bon vivant and, it has been said, forerunner of magic realism. It all started after spending Semana Santa climbing the dirt track to Sant Pere de Rodes with my wife […]
CASA ANITA IN CADAQUES
Casa Anita in 1984 was still a well-kept secret, The Ritz for those with a bohemian spirit and a taste for fresh fish that has leapt straight out of the sea and landed on the grill. Named after the effervescent owner, Anita was a beautiful woman with dark lustrous eyes, hair black as coal and […]
SLIPPERY LIZ THE PLASTIC POLITICIAN
Slippery Liz the plastic politician can bend into any shape or form and, like plastic, has the potential to destroy the world as we know it. Some 172,000 Conservative Party members were eligible to vote in the prime ministerial contest – about 0.3% of the total UK electorate. Of the 141,725 card carrying Tories young […]
THE QUEEN’S LEGACY
The Queen’s legacy is a land of food banks, child poverty and Rishi Sunak. I did not know the Queen. I never met the Queen. My feelings about the Queen’s death at 96 was the same as my feelings about the death of anyone who has had the good fortune to live to be 96 […]
THE JINGLE-JANGLE MORNING
In the jingle-jangle morning I’ll come following you. I love this line. It has always intrigued me, but I have never known what it meant. Now I do. It doesn’t mean anything. The words are the meaning. They are beautiful, melodic, alliterative, compelling. We have all woken in the jingle-jangle morning unsure what the day […]
SELVA DE LA MAR
The first time I visited the monastery at Sant Pere de Rodes was on a stone track that led out of the village of Selva de la Mar. There was no road and the climb up the almost vertical gradient took two hours. It was Semana Santa 1984. I was with my wife Valerie and two […]