Today is Father's Day and there's a most appropriate track on LUMP's eponymous first album; it's a song called Hand Hold Hero. I was tempted to bring him along as my Track of the Week but he slipped from my grasp when the intelligent lyrics and fluid singing faded out to leave an unappealing exercise in…Read more Curse of the Contemporary
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Proud Mary
Yesterday the sun was out, the sky was clear and the birds were singing. Today, the forecasters assure us, will be just as nice. And tomorrow is likely to be the warmest Spring Bank Holiday there has ever been. Feeling unusually full of life the Crotchety Couple set about weeding the garden and cleaning the…Read more Proud Mary
Days of Pearly Spencer
Sometimes I feel I'm losing the will to live. It's usually when I'm ironing - shirts are so darn fiddly, aren't they? So I do my ironing weekday afternoons between 1 and 4 pm so that I can listen to the Radcliffe and Maconie show on the radio. They play some good music and…Read more Days of Pearly Spencer
Highwayman
The old walled city of York is famous for several things. It was a Roman fort and a Viking settlement, it has an impressive Gothic Minster and it was the birthplace of the actress Judi Dench. But the character most closely associated with York is Dick Turpin, butcher by trade, burglar and highwayman by profession,…Read more Highwayman
Message In A Bottle
Or, Tales of the River Bank¹. One morning in the summer of 1979 Crotchety Young Man was on his way to work. At that time he was based in the Berkshire town of Reading and his route took him over the river Thames at Caversham Bridge. There were rather more people than usual in the…Read more Message In A Bottle
Photograph
There has been an outbreak of man flu at Crotchety Mansions. In the interests of public safety Crotchety Man has cancelled all public engagements for the time being. A number of restrictions have been put in place on current activities, too. This Track of the Week was chosen simply because it was the stand-out track…Read more Photograph
August & September
Donning his pith helmet and carrying his elephant gun Crotchety Man went out hunting for tracks on the theme of autumn. It proved to be a disappointing expedition. To my mind autumn is a gloriously uplifting time of year and yet all the songs relating to the third quarter of the calendar seem to…Read more August & September
