Friday 20 April 2012

Death + Cake

Sadly, death has been in the air this week. On Wednesday went to the funeral of John Wood, Darling #1’s Step Dad. Nice service; not too long, quality readings, hymns you could sing along to and a nice cuppa afterwards. Someone quipped that it looks ‘less like a coffee morning and more like a coffin mourning’ and it was indeed a very thoughtful spread involving cake, jelly babies and some quality sandwiches.

Members of the Wood clan face the cameras














It was the next evening back in the Wu and I mentioned to Nathaniel about the service and what an interesting and incident packed life the late Mr Wood had lived and how un heroic today’s artists lives appear by comparison. We both agreed that some adventures were the order of the day so that come THAT day our relevent Rev's would have something upon which to spin a tale. We had a couple of shandies and hurried home shortly after 9 p.m.

I was also saddened yesterday to learn of the passing of Levon Helm, drummer/singer/mandolinist with The Band. Went to bed and watched the Last Waltz, Martin Scorcese’s terrific film of their farewell concert from (I think) 1978 and what struck me again was how little of the great Richard Manuel there is in it, likewise Garth Hudson and how much of Robbie Robertson there is. Scorcese must have coached him although Levon had the last laugh by being the more successful actor. The other thing that got me was how little their bassist Rick Danko looked at what his fingers were doing, instead always peering along the line, quizzically in the case of Neil Diamond, appreciatively in the case of everyone else.


Check out this noisey bad boy!
Finally I just got down and dusted off an ancient ‘ghetto blaster’ that was William Minton - my late uncles way back in the 70’s. I found a lead and plugged it in wondering if it still worked – and what do you know, it was tuned into Mayo & Kermode's film review programme, the exact same radio programme that I was listening to on my regular stereo!