LET’S be clear on this from the start: I bear no ill-will to anyone engaged on artistic endeavour. Certainly not to all those struggling performers, musos, writers, actors, artists, creatives, dancers, singers and all who gather under that misunderstood umbrella of culture. That said, there was a certain frisson of pleasure experienced this week in reading that “new music” is struggling. It is apparently battling against a floodtide of popularity devoted to songs created somewhat earlier than this century. T o quote the title of a jazzy, sassy number that was popular before the current generation first saw daylight, suddenly … Continue reading
BOOKING a holiday in Cornwall? Better make sure your agent puts it in writing. Think of the poor souls desperate for a summer break who decided on a couple of weeks along the sunny (?) Cornish Riviera. Suddenly they find part of their time in a holiday park perched on… 
NEARLY choked on my afternoon cuppa. Spluttered and dribbled before disaster was eventually averted. Yorkshire’s finest it was, too. You know, the brew that guy with the accent as broad as the Dales is forever chuntering on about. Seems that the much adored novelist and regular tea drinker Jane Austen… 
EVERYONE ready? Got your Union flags close to hand for some frantic waving? At least for 45 minutes. The bunting dragged out from storage to drape between houses? And hang there limply for days long after, a sad reminder of what might have been. The fridge cleared to make space… 
THE clue is in the name: care worker. In other words, a person whose job (though they may also be an unpaid volunteer) is to provide care to those less fortunate than themselves. To people who maybe disabled, incapacitated, incontinent, immobile or suffering one or more of the wounding barbs… 