music
- I know these albums too well. I’m not bored of them, but they can drift past without me really being aware of them, through overfamiliarity.
- This won’t be very interesting, and certainly won’t have any surprises for anyone who knows me.
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Or a mixture of old and new, as with The Rezillos. ↩︎
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This is why you should always save links, folks. ↩︎
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God, I really come from another time, don’t I? ↩︎
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It’s named after a Clash song, as if you didn’t know. ↩︎
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Only 50p, in fact, when I first bought them. ↩︎
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We were schoolboys. ↩︎
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The B-side of “Clash City Rockers,” of course. ↩︎
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B-side of “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais.” What, you think I’m not going to talk about Clash singles? ↩︎
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But how you should give the date for reissues is a whole nother conversation ↩︎
- Why did the good doctor choose to name his blog that?
- And what does the “leancrew” mean in his domain name?
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Somebody must have, of course. ↩︎
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In an amusing followup to recent thoughts, I originally wrote that as “army,” but find that lyrics sites think this plural too. Correctly, of course. ↩︎
Top-Ten Album Lists
Two album-related memes have been doing the rounds on Facebook lately. Both involve posting cover images of ten favourite albums across ten days. One involves doing so without any comment, but the more interesting one to me involves the poster writing about their thoughts on each album. I was nominated by my friend Peter to join in with the long-form version.
I’m all about owning my own content, as you know, and not having it locked away in Facebook’s walled garden. So my plan is to write about ten albums, but to do so here, on my blog. Links to the posts will automatically be crossposted to Facebook anyway.
I started compiling a list of possibles, and thinking about starting to write posts. First I decided to restrict it one per artist. Otherwise I could just pick five by The Beatles and five by The Clash.
But then I played some albums, and thought some more.
See, I knew right up front that it was going to be almost entirely a white-guy fest. I wanted to approach it honestly, and not try to appear to be anything I’m not, so that’s how it would have to be. It would be reflecting my life as a music fan. As it stands the long list has one woman and no non-white people.
But as I played those albums — albums I love — and as I thought about them, I realised two things:
So I’ve come to a decision, I think: I’m going to do it slightly differently. I’m going to write about ten albums that I like now. Ones that I’ve discovered in the last few years, maybe, or that I’ve known for a while but have listened to a lot more in recent years.
I’m not entirely sure what that list is going to look like. I only have two, maybe three definites on it at the moment, and it’s going to take a while to construct it. But I think it could be a much more interesting list — certainly for me — when it’s done.
And I’ll do a post with a rundown of what the original list would have been, just for completeness.
So watch out for those in the next few days.
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon (Books 2018, 2) 📚🎵
You know how they say you shouldn’t meet your heroes? Well it turns out that sometimes that includes not meeting them between the pages of a book. I’m not sure I’d call Warren Zevon a hero, but he’s definitely a hugely respected and much missed singer and songwriter.
I knew of the tales of wild and crazy behaviour, though I hadn’t actually read any of them — except inasmuch as they come out in the songs. And anyway, those tales are a dime a dozen in rock’n'roll. A lot of this biography, though, is concerned with the people he hurt.
Which is fine, not least since the author — his wife and the mother of one of his children — is a major one of those people. Most of his bad behaviour happened while he was an alcoholic — or while he was drinking, I suppose I should say, since the standard twelve-step narrative is that you never stop being one. Alcoholics Anonymous helped him to stop, though he eventually stopped going to meetings. He didn’t drink for seventeen years, and the opening chapter tells us that when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer he had a scotch. Who could blame him for stepping off he wagon at a time like that?
So he comes across as a far from pleasant character. But my disappointment with the book is more about the complete focus on the man and his relationships, almost to the exclusion of the music.
“The man and his relationships” sounds like an important set of themes to address in a biography. But in the case of a creative person — or really any person worthy of a biography — a key part of the story of their life is their works. If it’s a writer you’ll expect to read about their books; a politician, their victories and defeats; a general their battles. And of course, a musician, their music. It would be strange to read a biography of Beethoven or the Beatles that told of their personal lives but largely elided the music.
Which may be the key: this isn’t a biography, as such. It makes no attempt to be comprehensive, and there’s no real narrative. Although there are plenty of reminiscences from Crystal, the vast bulk of the book is reminiscences from people in Zevon’s life, directly quoted and preceded with their names; almost like a play script. Presumably Crystal interviewed them all, but she herself comes across as just one of the interviewees.
There are quotes from Zevon’s diaries, but he either wrote them in a very fragmented, abbreviated way, or they have been heavily edited. An example:
Jan. 12, 1975
… Took Jordan, visited Father at the steam baths. He gave me a handsome Seiko watch and $135 … quarreling with Crystal … T-Bone came over for spaghetti and I quaffed vodka martinis all night. T-Bone trounced me soundly at chess which surprised and aggravated me, but pleased me, too, by mellowing my lonely-giant-of-the-intellect trip … Made love.
Jan. 15, 1975
… Snorted coke which kept Crystal awake all night … she’s thinking of pregnancy and worried about chemicals in her body …
(All ellipses in original.)
After he gets sober the diary entries become more frequent, which is good. But as a fan of his music, I would have liked to read a lot more about it: its creation, how it was accepted or not at the time, stories of gigs and recording studios, and all that. Unfortunately Crystal wasn’t really involved in that part of his life, and the interviewees who were — like Jorge Calderón or Jackson Brown — either weren’t asked to talk about it, or weren’t quoted doing so.
So not quite the music biography I’d have liked, but not without interest.
Lana, What?
Turns out Lana Del Rey was… mistaken? about Radiohead having brought a lawsuit against her. After me leaping to her defence. I’m very disappointed.
Amanda Petrusich, writing in The New Yorker, tells us:
Eventually, Warner/Chappell*, Radiohead’s publisher at the time of the song’s release, refuted her claim: “It’s clear that the verses of ‘Get Free’ use musical elements found in the verses of ‘Creep’ and we’ve requested that this be acknowledged in favor of all writers of ‘Creep,’ ” the company said in a statement. “To set the record straight, no lawsuit has been issued and Radiohead have not said they ‘will only accept 100%’ of the publishing of ‘Get Free.’ ”
Which seems fairly clear. Read the whole article, though. It’s interesting.
Crazy Copyright Claim
Gotta say I hope Radiohead (or their lawyers) lose this case:
Pop star Lana Del Rey says she’s being sued by Radiohead for copying their breakthrough single, ‘Creep.’
I’m not a fan of Lana Del Rey, but I just listened to her song, ‘Get Free,’ and the only similarity is the chord progression in the first verse. You can’t claim copyright in a chord progression. Or if you can, you shouldn’t be able to.
If the chords and the melody were the same, they’d have a point, but even then apparently they want 100% of the publishing royalties; don’t the words count? Del Rey has offered them 40%, and I think that’s way too much.
I’m amused that the album containing the song gets its title from a doubtless much better one by the same name: Lust for Life. There’s no copyright in titles, of course.
Weird. I go to Ted Leo’s Soundcloud page. A track by someone called Lil Purpp starts playing. Nothing to do with Leo or the page I’m on, as far as I can see.
Not the Nails I'm Looking For
I got an email from Songkick about a forthcoming gig in Camden by Nails.
You’ll recall, being the avid reader of this blog that you are, that a while ago — OK, six years ago — I wrote about a great song called ’88 Lines About 44 Women’ by a band called The Nails. I know nothing else by them, but the idea of seeing that song live in a tiny basement club is pretty cool.
But I had my suspicions. Especially when the first comment on the Songkick page was all about how it was the loudest gig they’d ever been at. Clicked through to the band’s page, played the video there, and it was immediately obvious that the hardcore band Nails are not indie/new wave/whatever band The Nails.
Just goes to show the difference a definite article can make. Nails sound pretty good, but I don’t think I’ll be going.
You Choose
Funny where thoughts of current affairs take you.
All the fawning (and, to be fair, condemnatory and neutral) coverage of Trump’s bombardment of a Syrian air base in response to Assad’s gas attack have stated the quantity and type of munition that was used: “59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles.”
Those of us who lived under the shadow of the mushroom cloud in the 80s will remember that missile. It was the one stationed at Greenham Common, which of course was the subject of much protest, mainly from the Women’s Peace Camp.
The Greenham camp was primarily part of the anti-nuclear movement, as the missiles stationed there carried nuclear warheads. Obviously the ones the US launched a couple of nights ago didn’t, but what the whole thing did was remind me of a song from that time: “Tomahawk Cruise,” by TV Smith‘s Explorers.
I recall hearing that song in my Dad’s car1 back when it came out. It’s possible that I only heard it that one time, but it has stuck in my mind all these years, just waiting to be shaken loose.
On listening to it on Apple Music I’m pleased to find the chorus is almost exactly as I remembered. The rest of the lyrics are more oblique than I’d have expected. It was an anti-nuclear song, but less obviously than I’d have thought.
It’s very 80s, as you might expect (it was released in 1980), but there is, of course, nothing wrong with that. Inevitably it’s to be found on YouTube and Spotify.
Not sure whether this counts as nostalgia, in terms of my post the other day, but I don’t really care. What definitely isn’t, though, is the album I’m listening to as I type: The Chiswick Story by Various Artists2 (most of whom I haven’t heard) is a potted history of the label. Lots of good stuff on there.
Swim, Test, Shop, Film, Sleep
Yesterday I kind of wilfully skipped a day. At some point in the evening I realised I wasn’t going to write a post, so I just said, “Fine: that’s allowed.”
Today I started by going for a swim. After my new regime of exercise last summer, I got out of the habit once I started a new contract. So it was good to get back to it. (Which is not to say I haven’t swum or gone to the gym in all that time, but it’s been a few weeks at the moment.)
After that I took a HackerRank test for a new job opportunity. It’s a site that does programming tests. This one was, I suspect, a disaster. I hate doing that kind of thing: you’ve got a timer running, and the problem you’re trying to solve is unlike anything you’d have to do professionally… Anyway, suffice to say, it didn’t go terribly well.
This evening was all about falling asleep in front of the telly. We tried to watch 20,000 Days On Earth, the film about Nick Cave from a few years back. I got it a few Christmases or birthdays ago, but hadn’t got round to watching it till now. I enjoyed what I saw of it, but there was definite falling asleep on the sofa and missing chunks. Oh well, it’s a DVD: we can always go back.
Oh yes: there was also a trip to Westfield, the time-void where hours go to die.
Looking Back and Forward
My recent and forthcoming live music experiences all involve bands of my youth that have reformed and are touring their old material.1 Wallowing in nostalgia, some might call it.
But there’s nothing inherently wrong with bands getting back together. It can be problematic if you are the band that tours as the Dead Kennedys, of course. There’s a whole saga there that I won’t go into, but if Jello Biafra’s not involved, and in fact is actively against it, then it’s not the Dead Kennedys.
Indeed, in his song “Buy My Snake Oil” Jello suggested that a way for old punks to make money off their history would be to
Give in
Ride the punk nostalgia wave
For all it’s worth
Recycle the name of my old band
For a big reunion tour
Sing all those hits from the “good ol’ days”
‘Bout how bad the good ol’ days were
Which is a fair criticism of old bands doing their thing in modern days, I guess. But I see two arguments to counter it, from a gig-goer’s point of view.
Unfinished
The first was made by my friend Andrew, around the time that the Sex Pistols reformed and toured. This would have been in 1996.
“I missed them first time round,” he said when I challenged him about it. “This is unfinished business for me.”
Which was a good point, and kind of made me regret playing the purist and not going.
In 1993 I had investigated going to see the reunited Velvet Underground. But I really didn’t want to see them at an all-seated venue. Partly because I’d had a bad experience seeing Lou Reed a year or so before (despite having had a very good experience with him a year or two before that).
I recall that I phoned the venue — Earl’s Court, I think — and found that it did have some standing room. But those tickets were sold out. So I didn’t go. Regretted that, too. So I’m taking the chance to see bands like the Rezillos, or The Beat and The Selecter, that I missed first time around.
OK, But What is it Really?
The second point about the “punk nostalgia wave” (or any similar accusation of nostalgia) is: that is not what it is.
Because here’s the thing: it isn’t nostalgia if you’re carrying on with something that was always there.
according to Cambridge.Nostalgia (noun): a feeling of pleasure and also slight sadness when you think about things that happened in the past
But this isn’t that. Because while those bands’ heydays might have been in the past, their music has remained available and frequently-played. You can’t be nostalgic for an album you listened to last week, or last night.
And a live performance always happens in the present.
This train of thought was kicked off for me a couple of years back when there was an article in the Guardian, prior to The Force Awakens coming out. I can’t find it now,2 but it claimed that “nostalgia” was part of the cause of the excitement for the new film.
And I thought, no. Well, maybe for some people. But for many of us, if not most of us, Star Wars never went away. We’ve watched it, talked about it, read theories about it, and so on. It has been part of our lives.
Or take Doctor Who. Sure, there were the wilderness years before 2005, but The Doctor never really went away. The Tardis and Daleks are burned into Britain’s cultural memory, and I think they always will be.
Now if I were to see an episode of, say, Marine Boy: that would be nostalgic. I remember it fondly from my childhood, and have never seen it since. I’ve never even seen it in colour, because those were the days of black & white televisions.3
But I can’t be nostalgic for punk bands or Star Wars or Doctor Who, because they never went away. The sense of warmth and shared experience they bring: that’s not nostalgia, it’s something else. Familiarity, at worst. Or better: community.
Punk and Hugo
I hadn’t come across Garageland London before, though I approve of the name.1 They came across my radar the other day with a piece called Cease and Desist: An open letter to Brewdog from PUNK, which says:
It has recently been brought to our attention that you are claiming legal ownership of the word ‘punk’ and are sending threatening legal notices to those you feel are infringing on that ownership by using that word.
I hadn’t heard this about Brewdog. If it’s true, they’re being beyond ridiculous (or possibly winding people up). I’ve got a lot of time for a Scottish company making craft beer, even if it’s only OK (and too damn strong most of the time: I like a beer you can drink a few of without falling over). But like the Garageland people, I thought their “Equity for Punks investment portfolio did raise some eyebrows.”
The open letter ends:
Definitions of punk are varied and debates over those definitions have been going on since before you were born. However, one thing punk is not is a bully! That goes against everything punk stands for. If you continue in this vein your punk credentials will be revoked and you will be called upon to cease and desist.
Kind regards and a middle finger salute
and is then signed by hundreds of bands. So many that I can’t really believe the website got agreement from all of them. But I heartily endorse the message.
In other good news, the Hugo Awards nominations were announced, and it looks like a great list, and also like the Puppies have been almost totally wiped out this year. Yay fandom!
I also note that one of the novel nominees is the very Too Like the Lightning that I was writing about the other day. Hugo nominated, and you still can’t buy it in Britain. Come on publishers!
Also: WordPress tells me that this is my 600th post on here. Not that many for the time the site’s been going for, but a milestone — or at least a round number — nonetheless.
Interesting Lineup
Interesting generation-spanning lineup at the British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park: Green Day headlining, with the lower-on-the-bill bands including The Damned and The Stranglers. Interesting questions of seniority there.
They should really get Stiff Little Fingers as well, for the full High Fidelity vibe.
Singles
I was thinking about the loss of singles. Not individual tracks released individually: that still happens, of course; perhaps more than ever. But back in the days of actual, physical singles — 45 rpm records, or even CD singles later — you didn’t just get an individual track.
I’m here to celebrate — and maybe mourn the loss of — the B-side.
When you bought a single you usually knew what the main song was going to be, because you had heard it on the radio, or at least read a review. Or you might just know and trust the artist’s work, and believe that the chosen track would be worth your 75p.1
But there was always the promise that there would be something good on the other side, too.
Often, of course, the B-side track was really “B” quality, or lower. It was genuinely just filler. Which was always a shame. I remember flipping Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army,” to find out what “My Funny Valentine” was like. I hated it, and never listened to it again. Though as (in other versions) it’s something of a jazz classic, it’s possible that I’d like it more now.
The Members’ classic “The Sound of the Suburbs” was backed by something called “Handling the Big Jets,” which always sounded slightly rude to us2 and I think was an instrumental.
But for every one of those you could get a “Jail Guitar Doors,”3 or a “The Prisoner.”4 Or almost any Beatles single.
Then there were double A-sides, wherein both sides were supposed to be worthy of being playlisted. They always felt like slightly better value for your hard-earned pocket money.
And when CD singles came along they usually had three tracks, raising them arguably into the EP category.
But now, tracks are realised for streaming or download, completely on their own. It’s very sad, and I’m sure they must feel lonely. Plus if you’re buying the download and you want what would have been the B-side, you have to pay for each individual track.
I was going to say, as well, that if you search for single on your streaming service of choice, you only get one track. But I found out the other day that’s not quite true. I wanted to listen to “Elephant Stone,” by the Stone Roses; and in fact the B-side, “The Hardest Thing In the World” was listed too. Its “Album” tag was given as “Elephant Stone — Single (2009)”.
Which apart from the wrong date (and ok, it could’ve been a reissue 5) is not a bad example of misused metadata. Or maybe just misnamed: not every gathering or carrier of a group of songs or musical pieces is an “album”.
Or maybe that’s just a change of meaning: what we used to call a single or an EP is now just a very short album.
Demo
Sadly, I couldn’t make it to the anti-Brexit/pro-Europe demo today. I had a work thing that ended up taking most of the day. But I was there in spirit.
Last night was Comic Relief, which included Red Nose Day Actually. I thought the speech by Hugh Grant’s prime minister character was amazingly relevant to the times. Obviously that was intended, generally; but specifically it had resonance with London’s reaction to the Westminster terrorist attack.
Also about that, Mitch Benn has written a song called “London’s Had Worse,” in which he sings of our resilience and the attacker’s crapness. Not his best song, but no bad.
And Then it Was All That
One of the blogs I follow is called And now it’s all this, by the mysterious Dr Drang. He writes mainly on engineering and provides lots of interesting Python scripts.
What I’m interested in his blog’s title and subtitle, though. “And now it’s all this”; and “I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or was taken wrong.” I’ve been reading it for years, and had only idly wondered about why it was called that, or what it really meant.
I’ve also been listening to, and reading about, The Beatles for years — for a great many more years. And so I was very familiar with John Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” line, and the subsequent furore.
But not that familiar, it turns out. Or not with his apology, at least.
We recently watched the excellent Eight Days a Week film, which has lots of Beatles footage I’d never seen before, and puts it all together into a compelling narrative.
Of course, it covers the “Jesus” period. So there was John, at a press conference, making an apology of sorts. And out pops:
I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or was taken wrong. And now it’s all this.
Oh. OK. Right. I should have seen that years ago.
Of course there are two remaining questions:
Saved Life
In International Clash Day I mentioned a life-changing song: “Wasted Life,” by Stiff Little Fingers. SLF’s anti-military song literally changed my life; or its potential direction, at least. I was probably moving in an anti-war kind of direction anyway, to be fair, but it was definitely a trigger point.
People say — or used they to, at least — that a song couldn’t change your life. By comparison, I don’t think there was ever a similar tendency to say that a book couldn’t change a person’s life. I suspect that is down to their comparative sizes: it seems respectable for something the size of a novel to have a major impact on a human’s psyche, while a three-minute song? Not so much.
Although if it were merely length, then people wouldn’t have complained if you said an album changed your life. I’m not sure that anyone ever said that,1 but I suspect that if they had, their statement would have been pooh-poohed just as much as the same claim for a song.
At this point I feel I ought to quote Springsteen, giving the opposite view:
We learned more from a three-minute record, baby,
Than we ever learned in school
he sings in “No Surrender.” Hyperbole, certainly, but there is a core of truth to it: the truth of the feeling you can get from listening to a great song.
With “Wasted Life” the feeling for me was of sudden crystallisation, or realisation. I had, for some years, been saying that I wanted to be pilot, join the RAF. This was before the horrors of the Gulf War, or for that matter the Balkans. Though it was in the heart of the Cold War, and British soldiers were stationed in Northern Ireland during the troubles — though not so much RAF staff, I would think.
But I was blind to all that, brought up as I was on a diet of Second World War films, Commando comics, and Airfix models of warplanes. I had, in short, a thoroughly romanticised view of war. And I just wanted to fly.
But I didn’t want to kill. I had always known that, I’m sure. But two lines of that one song made it real for me:
Stuff their fucking armies
Killing isn’t my idea of fun2
And that was all it took. I remember that it was a while before I could tell my parents that I had changed my plans. Perhaps because they would have asked why, and I didn’t want to have to explain it. Maybe because I thought they’d be disappointed. I’m sure my Mum wasn’t. My Dad kind of was: “But you were going to be a Spanish-speaking pilot,” he said. He had always been slightly amused that my school taught half of us Spanish, instead of the then-much-more-conventional French.
A life can hinge on such a small moment.
Stiff Little Memories
I’ve just had two slightly odd experiences while researching Stiff Little Fingers.
SLF were the first band I ever saw live, and they had a major effect on my life — which is why I was researching them: I’m writing a longer piece about the effect they had on me.
So as I was reading the Wikipedia article about them, I became somewhat confused. Because it says they split up in 1983, and reformed in 1987. Now the breakup I’d forgotten about, but it seems right. However, I saw them on the tour in 87. I saw them two days in a row. I had tickets for the Brixton Academy gig, which I think was on a Saturday, and then when Time Out came out that week there was a small advert in the back (I’ve no idea how I came to see it), which said:
Tin Soldiers
Belfast’s finest. Shhh: a secret gig!
Or something very like that. It was on the Friday night at the Mean Fiddler. Which I don’t think I had ever been to at that time, and which was a bastard long way from Tooting. But I wasn’t going to miss the chance to see SLF in a small club.
What I mainly remember was that the Academy gig the next night was a bit of a letdown after the intensity of seeing them at the Mean Fiddler.
But anyway, the point of all of this is that as far as I remember things, this all was — or was billed as — their farewell tour. That’s why the t-shirt (which I still have) says “Game Over.”
Now obviously they’re around again, and I’ve seen them since, and bought albums they’ve released since. But my memory says they broke up in 87 (or it could have been 88, but I think not (though actually March 88 if this setlist site is to be believed)), and then reformed later. But Wikipedia and All Music both say I’m wrong.
I don’t know. Who would you trust?
Actually probably not me. I’m becoming more convinced as I look at that setlist site, that I must have seen them several times at the Academy, after moving to London in 87, and the supposed farewell tour must have been later. In which case the Mean Fiddler was a bastard long way from Walthamstow, but that’s still true.
The second odd experience was that I clicked onto the Wikipedia talk page to see whether the history was disputed at all. It isn’t, but around five sections in there’s a section entitled “the?”, in which someone asks whether they were ever referred to as “the Stiff Little Fingers.”
And back in 2007 some guy called “Devilgate” answered firmly in the negative.
Little, Feat...
Many songs these days involve one or more other artists guesting with the main one. Rappers adding a part to a singer’s track, for example. Nowadays such guests are always credited. Quite rightly: we’ve come a long way from the days when Billy Preston played keyboards on some Beatles songs uncredited (though visible in the famous Apple Records rooftop performance).
As featured artists, such guests are nearly always credited using the abbreviation “feat.” “The Beatles feat Billy Preston,” to give an example that was never used.
But “feat” is a word on it’s own, of course, as well as an abbreviation. Which I think may be why I always find the formation slightly amusing. And there used to be a band called Little Feat, if I’m not very much mistaken (I’ve never knowingly heard them).
So I’ve been wondering how the modern crediting style would have worked if they had ever been guests, or had featured guests, on any of their songs. “Little Feat feat Joe Feet.” “Legs & Co feat Little Feat.”1
Alas, it was not the way back then. Though their Wikipedia article suggests they’re still around, so it could happen.
More surprisingly it tells us that they changed “Feet” to “Feat” as a “homage to the Beatles.”2 I had no inkling of that connection when I mentioned the Beatles above.
Reassessing
I never cared that much for Joe Cocker’s highly-rated cover of “With A Little Help From My Friends,” but I just saw it on BBC Four’s … Sings the Beatles, a programme whose title tells you exactly what it’s about.
And… hell, yeah: it’s really good. Apparently Steve Winwood and Jimmy Page are on the recording. But we won’t hold that against it.1 Sometimes all you need is the passage of time; sometimes it’s just about the mood you’re in. But it’s often worth giving things another chance.2
Now it’s on Petula Clark’s weird-arse version of “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” during which the caption tells us that Petula is Britain’s best-selling ever female artist. I’m guessing this was made before Adele.
Memorials
The Quietus reports on a crowdfunding proposal to build a memorial to David Bowie in Brixton. I like the look of it, but they’re going to have to go some to make the required £990,000 in 21 days, given that they’re only at £45,000 now.
In other news, the new series of Broadchurch started tonight. Strong start, powerful stuff. But it now seems weirdly old-fashioned to have to wait a week to see the next episode.