Salad Days

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Today's awful weather amplifies my strong urge to take a rain check from the news at the moment, which generally is simply anxiety-inducing gloom and doom, right across the board. Frankly the state of the world is just depressing. I know it's always going to be less than optimum, let alone perfect, and probably always has been, but I do seem to remember periods in my long-ish life that were slightly less fraught. Again, the rosy spectacles might be responsible, but I'm not so sure. This last decade-and-a-half has just been plain weird, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, some things never change, such as the seemingly destined-to-be-eternal conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine.

Much like the Postmasters' continuing struggle for justice here in the UK. Having got so far as they did in getting recognition that the Post Office had fucked them over for so long and at such great personal expense to them, they now are struggling against the tide of Civil Service bureaucracy with respect to their getting just recompense for the wrongs and harm to them caused by an institution that should by its constitution have been trustworthy and honest: values that had been squeezed from it by the botched pseudo-privatisation of our General Post Office over the last several decades by politicians hitched to the venal agendas of their financial backers.

I was listening, in my head this afternoon, to the B-side of Albatross by Fleetwood Mac; "Jigsaw Puzzle Blues". This cover of a 1933 tune, originally by Joe Venuti & Eddie Lang's Blue Five, showcased the estimable talents of [the now sadly late] Danny Kirwan [in front of the picture of the band above] on guitar. Kirwan's version was somewhat up & strict tempo of the original, but none the worse for it. But just musing on it always takes me straight back to my salad days of the wonderful summer of 1969, when the long school vacation consisted of lazing around with my schoolmates, laughing, joking, playing board games and listening to music with the fresh ear that is the domain of adolescence, when musical tastes and loves are formed for life. To me, 'Jigsaw' is my aural version of Proust's Madeleine, and instantly sets me back in the world of my fourteen-going-on-fifteen-year-old self, before life got as complicated as it is now...

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