Showing posts with label Blossom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blossom. Show all posts

Tuesday, 30 June 2020

Pandemic 2020


The pink blossom and yellow daffodils are now out: the days are longer, brighter and hopeful of renewal. Spring opens and warmer breezes fill the air. As if by some strange irony, the world news is filled with a deepening gloom with this coronavirus - with lockdowns, deserted streets, death tolls, empty shelves. People must now work from home. And I worry for our frontline medical workers and that the NHS will be unable to cope.

We were fooled believing somehow we were protected, when in our interconnected world disease spreads even faster. France, Italy and Spain are now in lockdown in this fast moving situation. Many businesses  will be hit – first tourism: flights, hotels, restaurants, bars;  retail; culture and the arts, with theatre, museums, cinema, festivals, concerts - all closing. While some businesses are essential and will keep going – food, medical, drugs, energy.
Young people and children may mostly be okay, so life will continue. For those over 60, they must work at home and self–isolate. Why were the UK schools kept open so long as a babysitting service, when most other countries have closed schools? Children may not be getting as ill, but schools are major places of spreading viruses. Many school staff and children have been staying away, so schools weren’t functioning properly.

There is an eerie, unfamiliar silence, as people prepare for the worst of times ahead, with oddly empty shelves, grounded aircraft, silent airports and train stations and quiet city streets. I’m glad on Monday that the UK government changed its tac after Imperial College London advised them that their “washing hands and carry on” policy advice of last week wasn't enough.

My two older children are frontline hospital doctors, so I won't be able to see them. I'm worried too about what they are going to have to deal with soon. It makes us all realise who the important workers really are - and many are women and the carers. Can we have a rethink about what capitalism is really all about? It all feels like being in one of those catastrophic movies that we might have foreseen. I’ve heard odd things being said on the tv - one BBC commentator said, "its not often we see health emergencies like this!"

Now is the time to think urgently about planning Scotland’s supplies. Most of our food and more comes via long trucks that trundle all the way over from Dover, and then on long haul motorways all the way through England. How can we gain practical independence this way? Scotland used to have many busy ports to the Americas, Ireland and Europe – via the shipping ports of Ayr, Irvine, Glasgow Leith, now all silted up. If we depend on food from England, we cannot be truly independent.

When we see what is happening in Italy, where the over worked doctors are unable to cope and its likely the scenes in Italy will repeat here. The English have this odd sense that somehow they are protected, that they are uniquely special. I fear we in the UK have learnt no lessons and are acting far too slowly. On the news last night people in London were packing themselves into shops and tube trains: one lady even claimed she was out and about because she wasn’t going to let this virus defeat her! Sorry but this virus has never heard of the Dunkirk spirit! Clearly some people pay no attention to any news items. Britain may be an island but in todays interconnected world we will not be immune.

Thank goodness for the internet and being able to keep in touch! How was life before? Among it all the Italians continue to sing. Life will never be the same again.


Friday, 14 July 2017

First TRNSMT festival


Great times at TRNSMT festival Glasgow this weekend! Great crowds, weather was kind, (apart from rain Sunday which did little to dampen the crowds enthusiasm!) and the setting top class. As well as the main stage, there was the King Tuts, and the Jock Rock stages.

Highlights – the unforgettable Radiohead headline Friday night, Belle & Sebastian, Blossom, The Strypes, The 1975, Rag n’ Bone Man (I’m only Human), Twin Atlantic, Charlotte and more.
The headline band final night were the Awesome Biffy Clyro.

Radiohead pleased with a mix of crowd pleasers to sing to along with and their more experimental music, wonderful escapist, and mind blowing stuff. Their music makes me escape to new horizons.... Karma Police, Fake Plastic Trees, 

Stop for a while – ‘No Surprises’ – set you free, escapes, …..



The Stages were set up to be lit up with the magic of energetic bass and drums and those wonderful melodies the crowds love to sing.  This year was the first for TRNSMT festival, replacing T in the Park which had problems with its site last year.



Has tribalism in music disappeared? With our ease of access to thousands of sounds online – many artists now mix the genres and rarely are about one. A young scots singer songwriter (Rose Code Blue for example) may be bluesy folk or a singer 'rocky soul’. In fact crossing boundaries often gives an artist that edge and something unique to say.

I happened to read of the first major Scottish festival at Loch Lomond back in 1979 – when the bands included the Jam,  Boomtown Rats and Annie Lennox. The strange thing was the audience was mixed into tribes – the mods, rockers, skinheads and punks! Each tribe had their own bands and while the bands played some tribes would stand on the mounds and throw things at the other tribes! How weird! Thank goodness there are no tribes today – that I could see! This gig was for all ages and all walks of life...Some things improve clearly.

Bringing hope to the moment. Music lifts spirits often, and certainly makes more sense than todays stupid politics!!