Sour and Sweet

Like some sort of poisonous fumes, the tendrils of political scandal seep under our doors and pulse at our ankles in a horrible fog. The Government is held up by nothing; they have as much meaning as the Pardoner's relics. The worth of politicians as super-people who have the right to rule us conferred on them by our votes has become completely undermined by things we knew already but had to have spelled out to us. I have been working every day for ten days, and today is the first thinking day there has been. With friends, a discussion about it all can't change anything, but it helps to hear some sensible conversation and there is some sort of catharsis in conversation.
Strangely, I feel happy.
Thursday had looked like it would be a disaster; the tube to work that day was incredibly slow because someone had been taken ill on a train further down the line. It seemed I would be late, and of course I had sent an email to the students underlining the importance of never being late about two days beforehand. I did get there on time, but one of the speakers who was supposed to come didn't turn up. However, Colleen Murphy of classicalbumsundays.com did turn up, and the students loved her talk. Colleen was mentored by the late David Mancuso, whom the students had been learning about in their cultural studies class, so they were well impressed.
In Paddington Station there was a band of soldiers in busbies playing poppy-day music; men in business suits with laptop bags lounged about waiting for their trains. Chris Bryant, the Labour MP, whisked past with a sense of purpose.

The gig at The Thunderbolt was really good. The Charlie Tipper Conspiracy had a clutch of strong new songs; Karen played a punchy set of catchy indie numbers with some wild guitar punctuation; the sound was really good for my set and that always feels good. There were lots of people there, and we finished with Femme Fatale, played challengingly slowly, but people seemed to like it anyway! Many thanks to Jane Barnes for being a fab promoter and also for giving me a lift back, with her husband. Jane has uploaded a whole load of vids of the evening to Youtube.
The next morning, Bristol was beautiful and the maze of roadworks, pavement works and bridgeworks that had baffled me the night before made perfect sense; the station was a mere sneeze away, and the journey home was easy peasy lemon squeezy thank you, and goodnight 😊.