Wot I’ve seen this week. By Andy. A brief review of wot I done in the realm of watchin’ stuff on the tv. So you’ll know what’s good and what’s shit. And that may help you grately. In your life.

Last night we ‘partied’ hard and long. But because of our year(s) of enforced confinement, our resultant agoraphobia means we party hard and long, but not very many of us, and only at home. Possibly in the garden, but only if its warm. So the party started with a jigsaw session. Because yesterday they released Rachie from quarantine! She came over last Sunday from Berlin, and the rules are so strict that you now have to piss away at least 500 quid on tests to be allowed release from the shed. So we got a take-away, shared a bottle of Prosecco and watched ‘Palm Springs’. One of the many movies to have been released in covid times. Palm Springs is Groundhog Day Redu. So the entire concept is surreal. If you don’t get or like surreal, don’t bother with it. But if you do, if your entire life has been leaning in that very direction (and steered ever more Dali-wise by the ‘pandemic’) then you’ll love it. I did. Mel hated it. And protested in the normal way, by falling asleep.

The previous evening I watched Tottenham Hotspur, a north London football team, play the Everton’s of Liverpool. In a match so horribly vile and rotten and shitty that I wish to pass no further comment at this time and will save my testimony for the trial. Which there really should be.

I also managed to squeeze in Midge Ure and Kim Appleby looking at ‘music of the 80s’ but in Scotland and Ireland. And that was fantastic. Because as the punk movement in Britain gave way to the horribly electro ‘new romantic’ Duran Diarrhoea and other voiceless wonders, the Scots were getting political. And there were loads of great bands making great music about joblessness and deprivation and the working class struggle. Mainly playing it to a bunch of over-entitled English kids whose only concern was whether they could dance to the beat without their face paint running. Then came the Proclaimers who re-wrote the entire ‘pop-star’ and ‘nerd’ handbooks.

In Ireland it was different. Lots of great bands, particularly from Dublin, all playing music based on traditional Irish sounds. Including U2, Thin Lizzy, Boomtown Rats. Great program. Shame they didn’t just slip into the early 90s for ‘my favourite ever song’ (one of 344) and the most politicised, Zombie by the Cranberries. Sung in almost unintelligible Northern Irish accents, the protest against ‘the troubles’ in the Province is as potent as it is powerful. But man, does it ‘rock’.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx