Amidst all of the ghastly carnage, the staggering levels of human failure, the awesome natural disasters, the inexorable iterative loss of our musical elders and the debasement of proper cricket, there’s still the balm of music to sooth our hearts. Give thanks and listen, oh ye faithful.
Here’s a lovely little number to start you off, and please feel free to add your own modicum of serenity and peace in the comments below.
The August Bank Holiday always leaves me feeling a little down. It feels like the last official day of summer. Winter draws on.
Staying at Rievaulx Abbey one August Bank Holiday and going for a walk in the woods you could smell the earth and the slight decay of the first fallen leaves. Certainly heralded the start of autumn.
Lovely. I adore autumn, and am very partial to deep winter. Autumn and Spring are my favourite times of the year.
How sensible of you to bring a pair.
Nice thick flannel ones, they are. Comfy-wumfy, as the advert in GQ said.
Absorbent? Asking for a slightly odd-smelling friend
Both absorbent and drip-dry.
They make me look like a more attractive version of Daniel Craig emerging from the sea after a quick early morning dip.
Yup @slug, I get that. Gloom.
Still 3 weeks of summer to go! Here Labour Day is next Monday and it often heralds less humid conditions, cooler nights and just the best weather of the year.
Perfect choice.
Petrichor is such a wonderful word for evoking a sense of autumn. This music feels to evoke that mood also.
I’m going back to Blighty tomorrow, to see those gorgeous twins. I’ll likely be away for year. When you get to my advanced age and live on two continents you have to juggle priorities. Mrs thep says she’s looking forward to losing weight now I’m not around to do the cooking. There’s gratitude.
So this non-bank holiday I have mostly been adding to my pile of paperwork. When I arrive at the airport tomorrow I will have to present: ticket; UK Passenger Locator Form, submitted no more than 48 hours before departure; evidence of negative test, taken no more than 72 hours before departure; Australian Government COVID vaccination certificate; UK international arrival COVID test booking day 2; evidence of permission to leave the country; passport. I can remember when you just rocked up to the airport and got on a Vickers Viscount.
Oh, and Wednesday is the first day of spring. 27 degrees is threatened in Brisbane.
I saw those gorgeous twins just now. I suspect you don’t mean the same thing.
These gorgeous twins. Wash your brain out with soap and water.
I was referring to my Ronco © Disco Mix turntables, of course!
*spins on head while wearing ill-advised dayglo shellsuit*
Booyakasha!
You are forgiven, if only because we are three sheets to the wind and playing Lee Perry at neighbour-unfriendly volume.
Speaking to a friend in Austria yesterday she said there had been the first fall of snow, and sent me this photograph.
Long shot – is that Fulpmes near Innsbruck? Had a week there when I was 13 and the mountain looks like the one that features in the photos.
It’s St Veit im Pongau. so some distance off.
If you go high enough there is always the chance of snow, I remember the “Shneefallgrenze” reaching about 1000m in Switzerland once in July. In Zurich it was 8 degrees
She did say it had been 25 degrees last week I think it was that intimation that winter was on the way. In other news we have just had the dreaded ” I think it might be time to put the heating on” conversation.
Yeah, I suspect here the heating may go on around mid October, but hopefully the AC can be switched off in a week or two for the next 7 or 8 months or so. I used to refuse to wear my winter coat until December 1st until I realised that was idiotic in Canada.
Stunning. So evocative.
I always associate August Bank Holiday with Test Cricket and football.
Mercifully, like Good Friday and May Day, at non-league level it still is a day of football.
Danny F Thompson! Always an apt contributor to the loveliest of musics.
I remember when everything was closed on Sundays and Bank Holidays and they felt like a double dose of house arrest. Aside from grocery shopping and housework I don’t usually do much in Sundays, but knowing I could helps the sense of oppression which still lingers on them.
As it happens I had a busy Sunday yesterday, a touristy day in London leading up to seeing Frankie Boyle perform a short but very funny work in progress set. Consequently Sunday felt like a Saturday and it took me until morning to realise that today isn’t Sunday.
“Ah! Autumn! You fucking cunt…” One of my favorite opening lines to a song ever…
I posted a photo of what is probably the last rose of summer, which a friend said brought this to mind.
Lovely: not that often that folk icons cover the Dead.
Or just Monday if you’re in Scotland.
Words from our sponsors.
And a belated happy Bank Holiday to you too @vulpes-vulpes.
I think The Durutti Column is always my go to band in times of crisis. I discovered the band during a very bleak period in my life, when I was living in upstate NY, and in very poor health. I’ve always found this song extremely restorative, and I’ve told my wife I want it played at my funeral. She was sweet enough to buy me surprise tickets for one of The DC’s last ever gigs, at The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, and we flew over from NY to witness a memorable evening.
Never heard that track before. It’s gorgeous.
Thanks to you my friend – that’s a wonderful track. I have only a few DC albums (mainly the 90’s CD reissues of the early albums) but I’d love to get a load more – it seems as if everything Vini has released under that name is of an extremely high quality. It’s a real shame that acquiring the DC albums is now in the realm of highly expensive!
There have been some really good recent re-releases on Factory Benelux, but the availability of the back catalogue on CD is a bit patchy. Kooky records (https://cargorecordsdirect.co.uk/collections/kooky-records) still has a few of his 21st century releases. PM me for assistance if needed.
@martin-hairnet
Thanks for this heads-up: I’ve just bagged myself a copy of the ‘A Paean To Wilson’ double CD, and i feel I may be going back for more shortly…
Man, that was good.
Bar last year, August Bank Holiday Monday has since 2009 found me camped in a leafy glade by the Severn, and may it remain so for the foreseeable. The angle of the sun, minimal birdsong save the buzzards and the insistent rustle of wind in the trees certainly herald a seasonal inflection, which I notice each year. The associations of being at Shrewsbury Folk Festival are so strong and positive that I mind not the change.