Good evening, fellow Bookworms!
Back again with another helping of waffle, plus two finished books and a new Ongoing Concern to mention! Yay! Making headway on the reading front. That is a very cheesy bathroom, isn’t it?! I bet Wallace and Gromit would love that, lol! More about cheese and other dairy products later, but for now some stuff from earlier this month that really should have been mentioned in the previous blog.
On 6th April it was 50 years since Abba won the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden with “Waterloo” – they are definitely the act who have had the most success since winning Eurovision, by some distance, although there have been a few others who haven’t done too shabbily after their moment of continental glory.
I’m not talking about some stars who were already established UK chart stars before they competed in the ESC, but more about those who were turned into stars by winning it, the likes of Brotherhood of Man and Bucks Fizz for instance, both winning for the UK, le Royaume Uni, in 1976 and 1981 respectively, and having a decent chart history afterwards for a few years, including some number one singles.
Another thing from Saturday 6th April was that the Pet Shop Boys were on Rylan’s show on Radio 2 that afternoon. As I have said previously on here, when there was a Top 40 of Wham! and George Michael songs on Radio 2 a few years ago, it is a clear sign that I am now a Middle-Aged Old Fart because all the stuff I used to listen to on Radio 1 when I was a kid, the stuff I taped off the charts on a Sunday evening, has now migrated to Radio 2!
Makes it even more pertinent, though, when it’s your absolute favourites who are on Radio 2, the duo I have loved since some time back in 1987 when I was a mere 14 years old. At that time, Neil Tennant was 33 and Chris Lowe was 28. In the present day, though, I’m nearly 51, Neil will be 70 in July and Chris will be 65 in October!
They were on BBC1 last night, actually, an excellent documentary with Alan Yentob, Pet Shop Boys: Then and Now, looking at their entire career. How they met in 1981 looking at synthesizers, and how Neil made the most of his music journalist job with Smash Hits by meeting up with producer Bobby Orlando in 1983 and giving him a demo tape while he was in New York – he was actually over there to interview Sting!
That photo is from June 2017 in Blackpool, when I saw them at the Empress Ballroom on the Super Tour, and me and Sarah ended up at the front partway through the gig, so I was able to get that unimpeded view of Neil and Chris!
Fairtrade hamper, an Easter pressie from Mum! Should have been posted in a previous blog but I didn’t blog in March when it was Easter.
Anyway, I should mention some books, shouldn’t I? When I last blogged, on 9th April, I had just finished Heroes of the RNLI, by Martyn R. Beardsley, which was being read to mark the 200th anniversary of the Lifeboats, but I have since finished a second book this month, my 11th for the year so far, and that one was Rambling Man, by Sir Billy Connolly. I have now lent that one to Mum.
With those read, I need some new Ongoing Concerns, and I have one book, although I still need to start another. The book I have got is on my Kindle, and it’s About Britain, by Tim Cole. A journey of 70 years and 1,345 miles! It starts when Cole finds one of the short guides to the UK which were created for the Festival of Britain in 1951. He manages to complete the set via various second-hand and charity shops, and then has the idea of retracing the suggested routes from 1951 in 2021!
The aim of the 13 short guides in the early 50s had been to encourage people to go beyond just London, get out on the roads and discover more of the country. Tim Cole sets out to retrace the routes and see what has changed and also see if anything has remained the same. I am now 10% of the way through that book, so it has officially become an Ongoing Concern as of yesterday.
One of the existing OCs has had some progress made today, and that one is The Almost Nearly Perfect People, by Michael Booth, which is about the Scandinavian countries. I had got to the halfway stage previously, and today’s reading has currently taken me to 59% read as I aim for the next milestone which will be 67% – two thirds of the book. In terms of countries, I’ve read the bits about Denmark, Iceland and Norway, am currently on for Finland and still have Sweden yet to come.
Still need to make more progress with Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, which is 33% read, and a trio of books all on 10% read, those being Abroad in Japan, by Chris Broad, Dark Salt Clear, by Lamorna Ash, and The Lost Rainforests of Britain, by Guy Shrubsole.
The aim is to get the Scandi one done, and also Before the Coffee Gets Cold, while still making progress with the others.
Classic FM currently playing the Largo from the New World Symphony by Dvořak, which I will always think of as the music from Hovis adverts! There was a spell, around 3 years ago, when Classic FM seemed to be playing this and Panis Angelicus quite a lot and I was reading books about bread at the time, so I suspected them of reading my blogs on the sly! They were also playing Sailing By quite a lot as well, and that’s the music played on Radio 4 before the late night Shipping Forecast, which was another subject matter about which I was reading several books on in the early months of 2021!
Anyway, you’re probably still wondering about the title of this blog, aren’t you? It came about due to a post I saw on Threads last week. I joined the platform towards the end of last year, it’s a sort-of side quest of Instagram. Anyway, I was fannying around on Threads, and chanced upon this post about a cave in Missouri that is full of cheese!
It seemed that there was an excess of the curdy comestible at one point, so some government bods decided to store the surplus cheese in a big cave! The mention of an excess of cheese then took me back to my 80s childhood as it reminded me of similar excesses of dairy produce on our continent, when there was the European Butter Mountain and also a Milk Lake!
Not sure what became of the cow juice overflow, but the powers that be decided they would resolve the spare butter issue by giving it away to senior citizens, so those in receipt of retirement pension enjoyed this perk for a while. My grandma and grandad got some free butter from the European Butter Mountain!
I think there was a European Wine Lake, too. That would go nicely with all that cheese in Missouri, lol! Just need an absolute job lot of Hovis digestives and Jacobs’ crackers, and we’d have a lovely snack, ha ha!
This evening, after work, I was all set to do a bit of postal voting. We have local council elections and a Manchester mayoral election coming up on 2nd May, and Mum and I have had a postal ballot for some years now, certainly since some time during the noughties. We got something in the post the other day and I thought they were ballot packs, so I put them to one side and thought I will sort those out later…
So, I decide to sort them out today after work. And I open the envelopes, ready to put an X next to the name of the person I least hate the sound of, lol, but imagine my disappointment… they were just booklets about the elections and the candidates, NOT the ballot papers! Those are still to come!
I’m not a fan of politicians, and you’ll probably have gathered this if you’ve been following my blog for any length of time. I don’t particularly like any of them. Most politicians are knobheads and some are even bigger knobheads than others, so when elections come along, it’s a case of deciding who is the least knob-like from the selection presented to me! I geared myself up for voting… only to find that the envelopes didn’t have the ballot papers in them! Gonna have to do this all over again when the ballot packs actually do plop through our letterbox!
You only have to see some footage on the news of them arguing in the House of Commons to realise what a bunch of overgrown children they all are! My nephew is 7 and he has more maturity and better manners than they do! MPs just make me want to yell “OH JUST BLOODY GROW UP, FFS!” at the telly. This is why I avoid news and current affairs as much as possible. Politicians are not good for your mental health or your blood pressure!
What was it that Sir Billy Connolly said about them? Along the lines of “the desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever being one” or words to that effect! Spot on, Big Yin!
That has been tonight’s snack of choice while blogging. Got them from Wandering Palate yesterday along with some of my favourite Iberian ham crisps. For the benefit of those whose French doesn’t extend much beyond “Pour aller à la bibliothèque, s’il vous plaît?” and other stuff you learned at school donkey’s years ago, the flavour of these crisps is goat’s cheese and Espelette pepper. They’re not mega spicy, so won’t set your gob on fire even though those peppers on the illustration look as though they would be quite fiery chillies. Any heat from the peppers is balanced out by the cheese, anyway. Would recommend.
Anyway, that is about it for now, so until the next blog, take care and Happy Reading!
Joanne x x x
Books mentioned in this blog entry…
- Heroes of the RNLI – Martyn R. Beardsley
- Rambling Man – Sir Billy Connolly
- About Britain – Tim Cole
- The Almost Nearly Perfect People – Michael Booth
- Before the Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- Abroad in Japan – Chris Broad
- Dark, Salt, Clear – Lamorna Ash
- The Lost Rainforests of Britain – Guy Shrubsole
Joanne's Bookshelf 