In 1970 Wishbone Ash arrived on the scene. A new rock band. Different. They had two lead guitarists. Who played at the same time. Sometimes simultaneously. Often almost battling. They sounded different to other bands. So we ‘adopted’ them. Chose them as the leaders of our air guitar play. Like a lot of rock bands during the hippie era, they were sympathetic to and ideologically aligned with Mediaeval serfs. Scruffy villagers, farming types, always going off to war to fight some King or Lord or the neighbouring county. Because like hippies, these historical types had long hair, never washed, lived in tents and ate without cutlery. So there were similarities which became an essential part of the ‘folk’ movement, and into ‘folk rock’, the popular crossover of the time. And thus Wishbone; folk themes played to heavy (ish) rock. I loved ’em.

And I’ve had a bit of a Wishbone Renaissance of late. Don’t know why, it must have just hit me one day alone with Alexa and it just snowballed. And the album ‘Argus’ is a journey from peaceful farmers to ‘warriors’ when called to fight for… whoever, and then ‘throw down the sword’, because in that track ‘the fight is done and over’, so its back to impoverished farming for thieving Lords of the Manor, bread crawling with weevils and incest until the next war. It was the rural way.

Meanwhile, in Kindle-land, I was reading a book which is the myth of Achilles turned into a novel told from the women’s perspective. Who knew women had their own perspectives? The book’s called The Silence of the Girls (who knew girls were ever silent?), and I have no idea why or when we acquired it. Possible on some Sunday paper’s ‘must read’ list? Maybe it was 99p on Kindle? Either way, it’s a really great book. And, again, full of swords and death and Kings and warring unwashed people. Ok, about 1600 years before the Wishbone Ashers’ song lines, but all parts of my artistic world seemed to coincide in a clash of hand-to-hand weaponry. One minute I was fighting with Agamemnon to sack Troy, the next I’m in Wiltshire or Shropshire fighting Lancastrians or the French. It sounds confusing but there’s a kind of symmetry.

Yet while the British were slaughtering each other for King and country, those ancient Greeks were aspiring to game-changing levels of brutality. Over-run a town, kill every man over the age of 7, take all the women as slaves, empty the place of anything remotely valuable, then burn it to the ground. Nice.

I’m done with sword-fighting for a while now. Reading a book about a librarian. Though still can’t get Wishbone Ash out of my head, or off my Alexa.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx