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Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

06 July 2009

Forwards to the Past

Thirty days hath September, April...

June?

I think it's June, and Wikipedia backs me up on this fact, so I'm probably right (for once). Which means it's only been six days since I last posted, which might or might not be a record (don't you just love Heisenberg?)

Schoolchild mnemonics and uncertainty principles aside, however, I find myself gradually, yet noticeably, slipping backwards in time. Not, I hasten to add, in any sense literally, but I do get the feeling that my brain, which started off fairly normally in the 90s and should, by all rights, have steadily worked its way into the third millennium, is instead floating gently in the opposite direction.

To tell the truth, it's not quite as clear cut as that. I might have got to the 70s before the 80s, or the 20s before the 50s, and at times I might have caught up with the present day or even the future. It's more of a generalised anachronistic lifestyle than anything else. But anyway, back to the point.

Firstly, there was the prog rock. And the jazz-rock, the symphonic rock and all the other types of rock. The sort of stuff that was big in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and that my parents listened to during their childhood. Not only that, but they listened to it during my childhood too. As a result, I spent a fair slice of my formative years listening to the likes of Steely Dan and The Electric Light Orchestra. For a long time, I thought that Step by Step by The Alan Parsons Project* was a highly successful song (which it should have been, of course). And the love of musical genres past hasn't left me yet. The most recent piece of music on my laptop (excluding the stuff that Microsoft very kindly put on there for me, and all the CDs of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue) dates from 1985,** and is, in my humble opinion, absolutely brilliant.

Secondly, there's P. G. Wodehouse, light-hearted comedy writer extraordinaire, but I'll come to him in a later post, lest I bore you rigid. For the time being, therefore, goodbye.

* Anyone who's watched Austin Powers should be chuckling to themselves at this point.

** Well actually, the most recent is from 2008, but it's a re-release of an album from 1980 so it doesn't count.

07 October 2007

Warwick Castle

Last week, we went to Warwick Castle. It's expensive, but worth it. Once in, you can make your own way around the attractions. We watched the trebuchet display, those things are lethal! And boy oh boy, they don't half fling things a long way. You could kill some poor unsuspecting peasant in the next village with one of those. The archery was interesting, too. A good archer could do more than a dozen arrows per minute! Rather than have me bore you with details, you can take a look at their website here: www.warwick-castle.co.uk. Even better (and more realistic), go there. It's a nice place.