"We're going away for a few days", said Mrs Crotchety, "for your birthday". The look of anticipation on my face prompted her to continue. "I'm not telling you where we're going, just that we'll be going on the train", she said, enigmatically. So, for several weeks, I wondered where we would go and what we…Read more The Fool On The Hill
1960s
Good Vibrations
I think I remember, presumably around the end of 1966, watching The Beach Boys play Good Vibrations on BBC TV's pop music programme, Top of the Pops. I liked the song partly because it was quite unlike any other pop record I'd heard. This wasn't a beat group with two guitars, bass and drums, nor was…Read more Good Vibrations
Elusive Butterfly
It's officially winter here in the northern hemisphere but the other day, although it was chilly outside, there were fluffy white clouds hanging in a clear blue sky over the green green grass of the back garden lawn. Looking out from the cosy living room it could almost have been summer again. Suddenly my peripheral vision…Read more Elusive Butterfly
Peaches En Regalia
Peaches En Regalia is the perfect radio theme tune. It's instrumental music of indeterminable genre, of unspecified length and quite undemanding of the listener. It could be the background music for a speaker introducing a programme on the fine arts, history, politics or religion. For those potentially serious subjects it would set a light-hearted tone, inviting the listeners…Read more Peaches En Regalia
Blind Faith
Regular readers of the Crotchety Man blog may have picked up that I hold a non-religious view of the world. I'm a humanist - one who believes that there is probably no god and we must, therefore, base our moral code on being nice to one another. I came to this way of thinking because…Read more Blind Faith
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
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
The Kinks
It was 1963 when the Beatles' She Loves You sparked my road to musical Damascus moment. For the next two or three years the Beatles were the benchmark for every song I heard on the radio. Only the Rolling Stones challenged them for the honour of the Crotchety Kid's 'best band' rosette. But there was another group at that time that sounded…Read more The Kinks
A Whiter Shade …
Southend-on-Sea lies on the north side of the Thames estuary to the east of London. It's a seaside resort with all the usual tourist trappings: a beach, gift shops, an amusement park, a few hotels and lots of guest houses. But Southend is most famous for its pier, the longest pleasure pier in the world at a…Read more A Whiter Shade …
The Sound of Silence
The Sound of Silence is Paul Simon's vision of a nightmare. It describes a horror that goes far beyond that of a musician who can no longer hear. After all, Beethoven and Evelyn Glennie both overcame profound deafness to reach the pinnacle of musical achievement. No, this is a fate worse than deafness. It is a world of complete…Read more The Sound of Silence
Crotchety Man 