The hailstones.

Perfect timing.

Enter, stage-left, and don’t exit until everyone is thoroughly brow-beaten and hacked-off.

Essential Yorkshire fayre.

 

Chill it by around forty degrees C.

Remove all those wierd little bright green frogs that have suckers for hands so’s they can cling to the trees  (and how cool must that be?).

Add a liberal smattering of retail parks, industrial units and factory outlets.

Add a westerly, bastardly, totally Dick-Dastardly wind that chills the bits where the sun don’t shine (not even in Hampshire).

Garnish with an overblown sense of local pride.

Et voila…….

Yorkshire.

 

 

Mid range Takamine acoustic with new set of strings.  £150 O.N.O. Dreadnought style. Solid top of course.

Gigging bag thrown in.

Turned out to be a bridge too far.  Trying to play guitar after a break of three years is not easy. Will stick to lyrics from now on.  4oo mile round trip to fetch the Takamine utterly wasted 🙂

Sky turns slate-grey

Round Market Harborough way

Then you’re back in the land

Of northern industrial town

 

No flat caps or pigeons

Just hard-working curmudgeons

And the familiar frown

of northern industrial town

 

Here they all scrape and forage

This ain’t the New Forest

This ain’t the South Downs

It’s gritty, northern industrial town.

 

A bit roughly hewn perhaps, but cut me some slack its only around ten minutes old.

 

 

 

On my way up to Yorkshire.

For those of you unfamiliar, Yorkshire is the place that Yorkshire people call “God’s County”.

It’s quite a billing for places like Rotherham to live up to.

They even have their own vocabulary.

For example, ‘takeaway’ ………….Yorkshire-speak for a painkiller.

Yorkshire……..the undisputed………..county close to Lancashire.

…………..back in Yorkshire.

Need to go see if there is any chance of retrieving it.

Will be interesting to see how this pans-out.

But the Queen of Hearts used to believe in six impossible things before breakfast.

[mind you, she was barking-mad].

See you all in awhile.

Enjoy the Hampshire spring.

 

 

 

Watched the Matt Frei thing last night on Donald Trump.

Been trying to figure him out…it’s really just one big vanity project for him, isn’t it?

And if the American nation gets drawn into Civil War #2, then what the hell…………..

And then I thought about what we (as writer – performers) do, and that’s just a vanity project, too. We like to see if we can get a reaction, just like Donald wants to. Can we make people giggle, smile, or simply think ……………….or (in Donald’s case) can we make them  angry?

A few get lucky, and make a few bob, but that’s not really why we’re in it. I’ve got a day job and I quite like it really.

So there you go – Donald and I …………………..him all billionaire-loaded, and me just getting-by, but both of us on some kind of vanity project. Both trying to get one stage further up Maslow’s cliché of over-taught models.

And hopefully, that’s the only thing I’ve got in common with Mr Trump.

(long pause).

“That was Thought For The Day, read by Jody Redmires.

Bink-bink-bink-bink-bink-biiiiinnnnnnkkk.

Its 8 O Clock. This is BBC Radio 4, and here are the news headlines……………………..”

Is everyone still in one piece?

I migrated from the North partly to get away from stuff like that.

Went for big walk this a.m.-

Big tree down across the Itchen Way near The Brewer on the Bridge.

A shoe shop on High St has lost half it’s roof.

Hopefully The Railway is still there – see you tomorrow night for some schmoetry.

 

 

 

Friday 25th March: The Art House, Cultural Quarter, Southampton

(it wont be too cultural by the time I’ve been and gone).

Tuesday 29th March: The Railway, Winchester

Well, that’s two venues, so I figured it’s a ‘tour’.

And they are both on the banks of the Itchen so the name sort of picked itself, really.

Wouldn’t bother tryin’ to find them on Ticketmaster, tho.

PS Can anyone gimme a lift to Southampton tomorrow nite?

The tour bus has developed a technical fault and my other vehicle is in a mates garage in Sheffield (I cant afford the Winchester City Council car parking fees).

Its OK. The train service is surprisingly good.