Back in 1987 I was a freelance software developer. In the autumn of that year I was working on a contract at offices some 15 miles from Leicester where I lived then, driving north up the A46 in the mornings. It was an easy journey. The road was fairly straight and not too busy. And it wound…Read more China In Your Hand
Track
River Song
The times seem to be changing at Crotchety Mansions. Recently, I added another couple of blogs to my list of followed sites. As if to balance those beginnings the first music blog I followed since starting this one, Vinyl Connection, has just ceased publication and this week The Maccabees announced they are disbanding. It's sad…Read more River Song
Diamonds and Rust
Nimble fingers pick gently at the strings of an acoustic guitar. Dark hair tumbles around her face. Her features and her music speak of Spanish ancestors as she gazes into the pale yellow light of a rising moon. A little while ago the phone had rung and the voice on the line stirred memories from years ago. Precious memories of…Read more Diamonds and Rust
Aviation
So far this year there have been about 40 posts on the Crotchety Man blog. Of those only six have carried the 2010s tag and one of them was an appreciation of that great old campaigner Bob Dylan - not exactly up-to-the-minute news. I felt I was in a temporal rut. It was time to break out, to find something…Read more Aviation
The Fairground
In the previous entry in this blog I mentioned A Trip To The Fair, a track on the Scheherazade And Other Stories album by Renaissance recorded and released in 1975. That song recounts a spooky incident at a funfair. Now, there's an eerily similar song on Ralph McTell's 1969 album, Spiral Staircase; it's called simply The Fairground. The two…Read more The Fairground
Big Yellow Taxi
It's been a rather miserable summer in the UK so far. Here in the middle of England there's hardly been a day when it didn't rain or at least threaten to. There have been sunny periods, too, but I've lost count of the times we planned to go out for the day and at the…Read more Big Yellow Taxi
Lady Rachel
From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us. There's a fine line, sometimes, between a curious dream and a terrifying nightmare. The flimsy tissue-paper barrier between benign and malignant worlds, between the familiar and the unknown, is conjured up perfectly for us by Kevin Ayers in his song Lady Rachel.…Read more Lady Rachel
Maria Browne
It was the 100th anniversary of the start of the battle of the Somme the other day. The battle lasted the best part of 5 months. 20,000 men died on the first day; one million were killed or injured all together. It is difficult to imagine how we can inflict such misery on ourselves and yet there was…Read more Maria Browne
I Vow To Thee …
Last Saturday Crotchety Man went back to school. It was the first time I had visited my old school, St. Dunstan's College, in more than 45 years. My father, who also went to St. Dunstan's, had visited a couple of years ago when they celebrated the 125th anniversary of moving to their present site in south London. This time…Read more I Vow To Thee …
This Wheel’s On Fire
I remember walking down Putney High Street back in 1968. It was summer and I had time to kill. In the late sixties Putney was a rather dull part of south west London; it probably still is. After so many years I can only guess why I was there. It was where my dad worked and it must have…Read more This Wheel’s On Fire
Crotchety Man 