Category: uk

Day 367 – Festival

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It’s been a while since I went to a music festival. A long while. And while I love to listen to music, there’s nothing quite like proper live music with one act after another, weeing in horrific portaloos, and – optionally – sleeping in a tent.

6Music would love to be having their annual festival at the moment, but for some weird reason [checks notes] – apparently it’s the coronavirus pandemic – they can’t. So they got loads of musicians and bands into empty studios across the country and got them to play live sets as if there was a crowd there.
No, of course it’s not quite the same as a real festival, but it’s still a whole lot better than nothing. There’s some jazzy stuff (that pianist!), some electronic stuff, some happy folk rocky stuff, some just plain weird completely indefinable stuff (cool song, but I just don’t think that it works live) and some indie rock stuff.

That electronic stuff link is Bicep’s Apricots. It’s not my favourite song of theirs: they’ve done much better songs recently, like the dreamy Saku, but you have to just watch it for the lighting alone. So completely simple, so symmetrical, to straightforward… but wow. So massively effective.
You just want to be there, like a lucky pillar of blue light.

The whole youtube playlist is here, and is being added to, daily.
And if you just want to listen without pictures, check out the more comprehensive playlist on BBC Sounds.

Day 343 – Win

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Day 3-4-3, although we were actually playing a 5-3-2.

Too little too late? Possibly. Probably, even. But the commitment and the sheer effort last night was a proper Sheffield United performance, not one of a team seemingly doomed to relegation.
Our defeating both Aston Villa and the best efforts of the officials and their laughable red cardism was wonderful to watch (if slightly stressful at the end).

You have to watch that DMG goal a couple of times. Once to see the inch-perfect cross-field ball, and then a second time to ignore the inch-perfect cross-field ball, and watch McGoldrick’s run once he had pinged the pass out to George Baldock.

What a goal. What a performance.
And a Sheffield Double as Wendy lost to relegation rivals Toytown in the last minute.

Dreamy.

Day 334 – Crooked

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Not a post about our erstwhile government.

But yes, Chesterfield does have a church with a crooked spire.

It’s quite a thing.

You drive right past it on the A61 when you’re heading to Sheffield because you’ve taken junction 29 off the M1 North in an effort to avoid the Catcliffe Link and the city centre traffic (and that’s really the only reason that you’d be in Chesterfield).

The spire was added in the 14th-century tower in about 1362, and is 228 feet (69 m) high from the ground. It is both twisted and leaning, twisting 45 degrees and leaning 9 ft 6 in (2.9 m) from its true centre. The leaning characteristic was initially suspected to be the result of the absence of skilled craftsmen (the Black Death had been gone only twelve years before the spire’s completion), insufficient cross bracing, and the use of unseasoned timber.

It is now believed that the twisting of the spire was caused by the lead that covers the spire. The lead causes this twisting phenomenon, because when the sun shines during the day the south side of the tower heats up, causing the lead there to expand at a greater rate than that of the north side of the tower, resulting in unequal expansion and contraction. This was compounded by the weight of the lead (approximately 33 tonnes) which the spire’s bracing was not originally designed to bear.

There are around a hundred twisted spires on churches across Europe, but this is the only one that you’d be likely to be passing if you were on your way to Sheffield

Day 333 – 1984

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If you choose to believe some people, we are currently living in 1984 – not the year (some of us have been through that already) – the George Orwell novel in which the population is controlled by Big Brother and the totalitarian state.

Get a grip. It’s just a bit of cloth on your face.

But what really happened in 1984 – not the George Orwell novel in which the population is controlled by Big Brother and the totalitarian state – the year?

Well, talking of totalitarian states (eh?) there was a by-election in Chesterfield and there were 17 candidates. By law, if you mention one of them (and clearly, Moira Stewart had done so), you also have to mention all of the others so as not to show any sort of bias.

So Moira: take us through the other names, if you would, please?

Ah, democracy.

Of course, none of these individuals came close to challenging the big three, and Labour’s Anthony Neil Wedgwood… er… “Tony” Benn romped home with 24,633 votes, much to the chagrin of John Connell of the Peace Party who came in 17th, just 24,626 behind.

So close.

Day 321 – Tenuous

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It’s Day 321 of the SA lockdown. And so Ted Rogers’ bizarre 1980s game show “321” (secondary presenter Dusty Bin – a er… bin) has been invoked.

Part quiz show, part game show, part variety show, it had the weirdest riddles with the most tenuous connections. e.g. 

wut?

Still, if you’re looking for really tenuous links, then come right back to the present day, with this gem (which apparently still needs explaining to some people).

Oh dear.