Sign of the times

Continuing a theme appreciated by keen trade spotters such as Matt and myself, I saw a couple of great business names plastered across vans on the motorway today.

Some sort of agricultural supplies merchant was rejoicing under the name of Sow ‘n’ Sow.

Another estate van flashed past so quickly that I didn’t catch much of the detail but it looked like it was being used by electrical traders. They were billing themselves as ‘The Boffins’.

A piece of graffito also made me laugh. Just before the M25 junction on the M40 there is an expanse of fencing facing the east-bound carriageway. Over the last 10 years or so it has been the billboard for deep, philosophical messages like ‘why do I do this every day?’ and the pithy, political one-liners or grave statements about religion and the Iraq war. The latest offering in huge characters one fence-panel-high says merely: ’sweaty bollox’.

The ballad of TomTom Jane

I’m clearly paranoid and delusional. Ever since I purchased a satnav in a futile attempt to make the traffic go away I’ve become fixated with ‘the voice of reason’ which is English Jane.

Our relationship started quite well. Every time I jumped into the car for the trip back from work I would say “Home Jane” and she would plot the best course for me in a sultry, seductive tone.

Then she started leading me a merry dance, attempting to distract me to quiet places where she could engage me in further conversation through the twisty lanes of an ‘alternative route’ (eyebrows flashing). As autumn draws on she has been surreptitiously dimming the display to romantic, ambient lighting and flagging up nearby cinemas on the route home.

I admit that her advances have not received the full attention they deserve so she’s been deliberately withholding traffic updates, and then in a fit of peek on the motorway on Monday she suddenly exclaimed “Turn sharp left!”

Unless I can repair the damage I fear that our close companionship may be at an end and that I should ….(sniff)…find… ‘another voice’.

I was thinking about a neutral comrade, a joker, a guide, a buddy rather than a siren. Yoda install I might. Any other suggestions?

PS. A sober and excellent assessment of the F1 farrago here: Cause for concern

Favourite things

The BBC’s remake of Tess of the d’Urbervilles has left me in a quandary. It happens to be one of my favourite books but the 1979 film featuring Natassia Kinski is also at the top of my film list and I don’t want the image ruined. I know it’s a gut-gripping tragedy but Thomas Hardy’s courageous novels were brilliantly written and gave injustice and hypocrisy the thumping the Victorians deserved. I’m not a film buff so I’m not sure where Kinski sits in the acting pantheon but I thought she made a damn good fist of playing Tess.

Natassia Kinski in Polanski's version of Tess

Anyway, in view of some of the grittier comments I’ve made in this arena recently I thought I would flag up a few more uplifting favourites and invite you to do the same.

I was hoping we would run into a banjo player at the folk festival – and one who knows Sean Ryan’s jig. Songs are usually temporal and fall out of favour when you fatigue of hearing them. I first heard this tune about the same time I saw Tess and I never tire of it. Sean Ryan was a Tipperary fiddler who died in 1985. He’s little known outside Ireland but was a champion fiddle player in the 1950s and composed about 200 pieces. Hardly anyone seems to play this jig, and outside the odd scratchy Youtube offering recordings are as rare as hen’s teeth. This chap only plays the pattern once through so it’s just 37 seconds of glee. Click and savour.

Sean Ryan's jig - also known as the nightingale

Press here to play the tune

Meadows. Their importance really only registered with me this year. The contrast between a modern field system and a traditional, unimproved meadow could not be more plain. One is a desert and the other is close to paradise if you can tolerate the biting horseflies. Herefordshire is blessed with some of the few remaining examples so visit them next spring before someone builds affordable housing.

What about you? Any favourites? No rules, just blast away.

Points of view

...or I could lend you my rose-tinted spectacles

Bromyard Folk Festival always seems to throw up something intriguing. God was there of course – at his usual seat in the King’s Arms. And Guy Fawkes turned up at the Bay Horse with a puppy, a 10-string lute-thang and a lewd song about cockerels.

Also saw a couple of great musicians – an enigmatic femme on a fiddle and an excellent button accordian player. They performed several tunes I can just about play on my banjo but it made me realise that musicians with real talent have something extra. Sure, I play the same notes in the right order in approximately the right tempo but they have some indefinable additional quality which breathes life into the tune. My struggles though have certainly enhanced my appreciation of their abiltities. Magical.

It’s the same with photography. I’ve worked alongside dozens of snappers – and all of them bar none could take a professional picture even on a bad day. But two or three of them (and it really isn’t that many) seemed to come back with images you just wanted to stare at, irrespective of the job. They were all good technicians but only a few had the stardust, the seeing.

Trying to emulate these people doesn’t necessarily get you there but it does alter your perspective. It becomes easier to judge what is good and what isn’t. I hate crap, always have done but I refuse to adopt the Buddhist philosophy of passively accepting it the way it is. Stocks of North Sea cod and Mediterranean blue-fin tuna WILL collapse inside the next decade but I’m not going to give up shouting about that disgrace any more than I will pack in trying to master The maid behind the bar even though I know I will never be able to play it with the liquid verve of the anonymous accordian hero.

The answer my friends is… infrastructure. (Little in-joke. You had to have been there ).

As usual, feel free to wade in with a counter argument.

It’s the end of the…

Classic piece of live journalism this morning as everyone gathered at the hadron collider.

Andrew Marr excitedly declared that “it’s happened!” before turning to a poor, bewildered scientist.

Marr: Tell me, when will we know the result?
Scientist: In about two years.

In the interim, if we’re all sucked into a black hole will someone be kind enough to inform me?

(Old curmudeon from the wings: Thought we were in one already. Bah!)

And another thing…Now that Capello is blaming Wembley for England’s demise I should like to pin the blame for the parlous state of Britain on dogs. The Democratic Republic of Congo has just jailed a herd of goats – I think they’re onto something.

What a shower

It’s been yet another wet weekend so I listened to the England game yesterday and watched the Grand Prix this afternoon – and wished I hadn’t bothered in both instances. Call me an arch-cynic if you will but there seems to be a parallel agenda in top-level sport that renders it all pointless. I’m still not sure who actually won those ‘contests’.

In contrast, I couched on my sofa this evening and thoroughly enjoyed the friendly Soccer Aid. It was thrilling, competitive and fun. Like sport should be.

If only this goddam wretched weather would pack up. I’d rather unsubscribe to the afore-mentioned charades and go for a walk or cycle instead, preferably on dry land.

Bromyard Folk Festival next weekend. I sincerely hope it doesn’t turn into a floating carnival.