Monday Long Song

This is the meadow, across the way from my place, underwater on Xmas Day and visible again on Monday 28th.

In the week leading up to Christmas I drove to work in the dark and I drove home in the dark. No biggie, it's what happens at this time of year. On December 22nd it started raining and didn't really stop until the early hours of Christmas morning. The rain coincided with unusually strong tidal surges along the River Waveney. Throughout those commutes I hit standing water several times, which I don't mind admitting is a bloody scary thing to happen in the dark. I'm not talking puddles either. These were fast flowing, deep streams, moving across the carriageway and it got to the point where I just hoped for the best that I'd make it through some of them without flooding and stalling the car. While I made it by the skin of my teeth, others weren't so lucky and several vehicles stood abandoned by the side of the road. All this time, I was obviously aware of the ferocity of the weather conditions, but had no visual confirmation as I journeyed through the darkness. I was just grateful to make it to and from in one piece.

On Christmas morning I woke to a message from a friend checking in to see if I'd been affected by the floods. He'd read online that the emergency services had been on the scene in my town for the whole night. When I looked online myself, the first thing I saw was a photo of a fire engine standing in a very familiar location - directly outside my place. I went out for a wander in the warm sunshine and saw the devastation for myself. The worst flooding in this area for over 50 years by all accounts, for a while only one road remained passable in and out of town. Surreal scenes of streams, paths, fields and roads all gone, replaced by vast lakes. All the properties beyond mine in my street, down towards the river were either still under water or had sustained serious flood damage overnight and, as I walked around the outskirts of the town, the story was repeated again and again. It was terrible to see people having to salvage their saturated belongings on Christmas Day, particularly at the end of such a dreadful year. Just over a week later and the water has gone, but for the unfortunate households affected, the clean-up will take considerably longer.

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Released in 1979 on the legendary Studio One label and produced by the equally legendary Coxsone Dodd, 'Flood Victim' rides the popular Real Rock riddim, well known to many for its use in Willie Williams' original recording of 'Armagideon Time'.  

Windel Haye & Captain Morgan - Flood Victim

Monday Long Song

Staying on a reggae tip again this week, here's Linval Roy Carter, better known to the world at large as Prince Jazzbo, with 'Crabwalking', a 1972 Coxone Dodd produced reworking of Horace Andy's classic 'Skylarking'.

Prince Jazzbo - Crabwalking

Higher

Soon after discovering the joys of Adnams beer at the tender age of 20, my pals and I pledged to make a group pilgrimage to Southwold (home of the aforementioned sacred beverage) to take the Adnams Brewery tour. We were never organised enough to get it together in those days though and another 30+ years would elapse before I eventually took the tour in 2013 - and it's well recommended if you ever find yourself in the area, but then I would say that wouldn't I? On Saturday, my 56th birthday, I fulfilled another similarly long-held ambition in the very same seaside town, when Mrs S & I climbed the iconic Southwold Lighthouse. The 113 steps to the top, spiral up around the internal wall of the structure, with just a handrail to separate you from the void. Mrs S, who isn't great with heights, had a very big wobble half way up (and a pretty much continuous wobble all the way down at the conclusion of the visit), but we made it and were rewarded with excellent views, in spite of the general miserableness of the weather on the day. (Click on any photo to enlarge)

Looking up at the climb and looking down towards the pier.

In the distance, Dunwich & Minsmere and down there............

..........the Adnams brewery. It must be time for a pint.

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Clean Up

Every Monday afternoon I vacuum the house from top to bottom. It's one of the very few household chores that I've been granted top level clearance to take on alone, though the work is of course carefully monitored and I receive regular and detailed feedback on my performance.

After vacuuming for a few minutes, I get into 'the zone'. My mind wanders and often I'll catch myself singing out loud to a tune in my head as I work, usually something bizarre or relatively obscure. (This week it was a seamless medley of 'Nijinsky Hind' by Tyrannosaurus Rex and 'Surreal Estate' by Be-Bop Deluxe.) Sometimes I don't even realise I'm doing it - until it's mentioned later, during my debriefing.

Here's the late great Jackie Mittoo, fronting Sound Dimension, with a cracking 1969 Coxsone Dodd produced instrumental, 'Clean Up'.

The Mysterious Case of the 24 Beat Instrumentals

Did I ever tell you the one about what was, until recently (see here), my second best ever car-boot sale find?* It was ridiculously early one Sunday morning in 1991, in a shady corner of a car park, adjacent to Ipswich Town football ground and as I ambled along a row of tightly packed wallpapering tables, bowing under the weight of a thousand unloved nick-nacks, I spied a cardboard box on the ground, pushed back beneath a table and almost out of sight. I pulled the heavy box forwards and lifted the flaps to discover a pile of magazines, topped by a vintage copy of the Radio Times. Nothing too exciting here, I thought. Delving a little deeper, though, beneath several more old TV listing guides, lay 24 random issues of Beat Instrumental Magazine from the late 1960s and very early 1970s. I got the whole box for a quid.

During that period, Beat Instrumental was a publication where Clodagh Rodgers rubbed shoulders with King Crimson and an interview with Glen Campbell jostled for position with Viv Stanshall's latest column. I had hours of fun ploughing through the magazines, reading about 'underground' band Tyrannosaurus Rex shortening their name to T.Rex, Jimmy Page unveiling the line-up of The 'New' Yardbirds and The Trogg's adventures on a package tour with a new young band called The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Towards the end of the 1990s, with finances a little tight, I sold all 24 of the magazines for an amount that, at the time, it would've been silly to turn down.

The only reason I mention this fairly uninteresting little tale, is that at the weekend I stumbled, in not totally dissimilar circumstances, upon another batch of Beat Instrumentals. The weird thing is that, once again, there were 24 of them in the box. Not consecutive issues, but 24 random ones. I picked them up 50 miles from the location of that initial haul 23 years ago and 120 miles from where I later sold them, so I doubt they're the same magazines, returning like a group of long lost homing pigeons (though I've yet to totally rule this out), but why 24 again? Why not 5 or 10 or 50? Perhaps people only dispose of them in lots of 24 - I did. Perhaps 24 is my lucky number. Maybe it's time I did the lottery. Either way, my spare time reading material for the immediate future just took a turn for the better.

Here's Coxsone Dodd's house band, The Sound Dimension, with a killer Studio One instrumental entitled 'Heavy Beat'. You see what I did there? Instrumental.....Beat..... Oh, please yourself!

(*My number one best ever car-boot sale find? I really must share that, one of these days.)