Women ? Playing Football ?

I've just watched Australia vs Norway which went to extra time and penalties after watching  Germany vs Nigeria earlier. Som "men" has made a big thing about "not watching" the games. Well it's their loss. There is a lot of skill, some very nift touches, great goals, no acting like three year old spoilt brats, and the games are a joy to watch.

I think I've watched more of the Women's World Cup than I did of the men's. We are flooded with football but the women's game gives the impression of people playing for the joy of playing, not chasing a wage packet. And to be quite honest it's a slap on the arse for the misogynists.

Possibly the refereeing is not as polished as the playing, and also because women are generally smaller physically than men the pitches seem much bigger, but the games they give us are excellent, and that's what people come to watch.

The hard work, togetherness and pure joy that they generate is something truly to be savoured.

So what do we choose for music.

It has to be a girl band or singer. So I have gone with the gorgeous "Dark Therapy" by Echobelly who's female members included on vocals Sonya Madan,  Debbie Smith on guitar and Ruth Owen on bass. An incredible song from a great band.

If you haven't watched any of the Women's World Cup, start now. You will be impressed.

It's The Summer Solstice

This came upon me quite suddenly , it's the longest day , the most light , there's sunshine, and it's Friday so basically a very very good day. Although we always assume Friday is good , many people I know work weekends so the Friday thing is not always a huge positive, but I do definitely like Friday because tomorrow provides the opportunity for a lie in , though I probably won't take it.

There's a lot of events and celebratins of The Solstice and thanks to the Internet we can find out out where they are happening and if we want go along to them. Obviously Stonehenge is a husge focal point for this as a sacred place for the Druids to see the Sunrise there.

Then we start getting into the pagan and natural religions which would later be homogenised and corrupted by Christianity, but the Pagan stuff is always more respectful and more fun to be involved, although I am very irreligious.

The number of videos about Stonehenge is big (see here) with lots of facts, theories and hokum, but it is a totally impressive structure, and though simple there's a lot of weight in those stones and remarkable accuracy in their positioning.

Hawkwind played many  festivals around Stonehenge so we will go with the "Watching The Grass Grow" thirty odd years back and the 1984 Festival. Wouldn't surprise me if they tried to be there today but todays corporate security will never allow it.

Forty Days

It looks like Feedburner has burnt out for the blog , but that's forty days of unexpectedly hitting over a thousand hits per day. It didn't actually bring it much advertising revenue either, but just nice to think a few more people (or a lot of robots) visited.

This has to be extremely short as I need to get to Durham and to attend a course , so we'll go with Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days" which is ten days less than the forty days the Feedburner referrals have been upping my visits.

Actually it's been a day strewn with mini disasters, but worked out fine in the end but the visits are back down to 50 a day even though most of those are still from Feedburner.

Another Rainy Day

So another day where I don't have to water the garden. One the things about the Facebook ban is the fact you cannot communicate with anyone unless you play a game with them (I can message people in Scrabble but as I only have two people I play with not very good and I can contact both of those outside the game). A friend messaged me asking if I was OK but I cannot reply in Messenger. Just a warning make sure you have your import friends phone numbers or emails, and, although it may open you up to spam, put some alternate contact on your Facebook profile.

Today is grey and hardly uplifting, but I am being positive, have a course in Durham tomorrow and I see by daughters for a Father's Day get together tomorrow at Bar Loco which is always good.

I've just finished watching Chernobyl, an absolutely stunning mini series, and was struck by the similarities between the Soviet Government of that time and our current Tory Government with Brexit. Both refusing to acknowledge reality so their version of events is the one that's pushed. Having said that I've worked with a few managers who have had that attitude and one once said to me, "You might be right but I am in charge". They crashed and burned.

So what should we play this morning? What about "Go" by Public Service Broadcasting as it is a huge injection of positivity guaranteed to lift you out of any apathetic or lethargic state.

Yes we will GO!

Early To Bed

Just a short post to say how good it is to go to bed early and actually sleep well. That sort of happened last night night and I've woken up to bright sunshine and blue skies, so even though it's Monday and I have to go to work and I have a hospital appointment for some cardio scan, although I think this is just due to the fact that I mentioned that sometimes when walk up inclines I get a bit of tightness in my chest. It's not anything that I consider being a problem but doctors know better than me mostly.

Chris Hawkins has the entertaining Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy (they did the theme to 'Father Ted' among other things)  talking about Dublin as well as playing songs from the new album "Office Politics".

Though I slept well I did wake from some complex dreaming and very often if that happens and I decide to have ten more minutes I fal back into the dream often to find out what happens, which is actually irrelevant  because most of my dreams make no sense at all.


This is post 1957 and 1957 is the year in which I was born, so I found Lonnie Donegan performing two of hits hits from that year "Cumberland Gap" and "Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O" which is always a good way to start a Monday.

Have a good one.

Scrabble and Facebook

I wasn't going to post tonight , but what the hell, I thought I'd then just dispose of a couple of things that were on my mind.

There are now only two people who play Scrabble with me on Facebook. If you read this and want to play me feel free to leave your details in a comment. Scrabble is one of the main reasons that I go on Facebook but everyone I've played with (bar two) have dropped off. Maybe they're bored or don't like playing with me any more.

Facebook Jail

I'm still on the ban, and while I may reinstall Facebook Messenger on my phone , Facebook won't be going on. Also give that I am on some kind of black list I have a feeling that next time it will be a three month ban. A facebook friend said it could be the image to the right which causes people who access your posts to report it as contavening Facebook's rules. That is a possibility, but I am making the assumption that anything I share could get me banned.

So basically with Scrabble coming to a halt and my inability to share anything on Facebook it isn't looking that attractive to actually use it as I did.

Since the ban the views to my blog have increased 25 fold so I don't think sharing on Facebook will improve it all that much.


I am probably using Twitter and Instagram more and installed Scrabble on my phone which the reactivated my Facebook account much to my annoyance. The problem is Scrabble has been a total pain recently by continually failing to load so that may be why my friends have dropped off.

So I suppose a suitable song for thinking they are out to get me is obviously "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath so I will share that with you on this Sunday night.

Classical Gas

I must say I am impressed with the sound of Classical albums on the record player that I got from RPM and was set up my Marek. On holiday I picked the Leopold Stokowski MFP album of Gustav Holst's "The Planets" and the Deutsche Grammophon vinyl copies of the Herbert von Karajan conducted 6th, 8th and 9th Symphonies by Beethoven.

"Mars" from  "The Planets" was the piece that actually got me into Classical Music when Alan Freeman played it on his Saturday afternoon show. At school music lessons consisted of the music "teacher" putting on a classical LP and that was it. Incredibly tedious for kids who's music preference was single an pop songs, although ironically we were fine with Yes, Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield subjecting us to twenty minute pieces, but a twenty minute piece of music is seldom instantly catchy.

So just a short post, this and the visits are showing no sign of abating with 1400 visits yesterday and 38K over the last running month. I was hoping to hit 200K visit by the end of this year but today I will hit 220K so that has been smashed.

I've decided to share a take on "Mars" from the 2015 BBC Proms.