We’ve been out and about this morning getting ourselves vaccinated: booster for covid and the regular yearly flu vaccination. We had to go to Lees, not a million miles away but not exactly round the corner from our house: a bus-ride and a brisk walk to arrive on time. Nothing seems to be happening at the smart Delph clinic and Uppermill only seems to have occasional vaccination sessions. So it goes.
We went prepared for a long wait. A friend of hours had told us he had stood in a queue for the best part of an hour last weekend. We had no problems though: straight in, ‘just a little scratch”, as the nurse said, in each arm and then out again to make our way home. One possible reaction is muscle ache in the vaccinated arm. That should be interesting if both arms start to ache!
There’s a new bit of government scandal doing the rounds. It appears that the chancellor held or at least went to a champagne part with hedge-fund managers after the mini budget. Maybe it wasn’t celebratory. Maybe it was just routine. Maybe that’s what he always does on a Friday.
Here’s a story someone sent me, told apparently by John Bogle, philanthropist and economic advisor:
“At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes but I have something he will never have … enough!”
Enough. I was stunned by the simple eloquence of that word - for two reasons: first because I have been given so much in my own life and, second, because Joseph Heller couldn’t have been more accurate.
For a critical element of our society, including many of the wealthiest and most powerful among us, there seems to be no limit on what enough entails.”
Whenever I hear of people earning £1million a year or receiving huge bonuses or benefitting from tax cuts to the tune of £50,000+, I find myself wondering about just how much money some people seem to need. They must be fantastically insecure if they need to keep on squirrelling it away like that. Because I doubt they actually spend it. Maybe they had really poor childhoods where they were deprived of all sorts of good things! Or maybe they are just greedy and consider themselves entitled to whatever there is.
Listening to the radio yesterday I heard “This Classical Life” on Radio 3 where, according to the programme description, “Jess Gillam hosts the music show for people who like classical and other stuff too. Music, eclectic playlists and chat, with a new guest every week”. Yesterday’s guest was Cosmo Sheldrake, someone I confess I had never heard of. So I looked him up: described as a "musical visionary" by The Telegraph, Sheldrake has been releasing music since 2014. Okay, I am not a great deal wiser but he was interesting to listen to.
He talked about steel drums, now the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago. Back in the 19th century slaves were taken from Africa to work the sugar plantations there. They took their music with them and were allowed to have carnivals of sorts to celebrate the end of the harvest. Skin drums were banned after some time because they were believed to be used to communicate secret messages between groups who wanted to stage uprisings! So they improvised and used abandoned oil drums, fashioning them into musical instruments, as a way of asserting their identity!
He reckoned that the carrying of boom boxes by African-American youth in the 1980s was another example of a group of people asserting their identity. Denied access to so many things, these young men - and they were largely young man - reclaimed the streets by imposing their music on everyone.
One of his choices of music was Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez played on flugelhorn and trumpet by Miles Davis in an arrangement by Gil Evans. Fantastic! I sort of fell in love with the Concierto de Aranjuez played on guitar during my time as a student in Spain. Later, in France, I discovered the trumpet version. I am still entranced by both!
It’s amazingly lovely what you can accidentally listen to on the radio as it plays in the background.
Yesterday I wrote about the approach of Hallowe’en. No sooner had I posted my comments that I was not yet receiving adverts for Christmas than I found an email from The Works with this message:
The Christmas countdown is on🎅🏻🎄
Hey! Ho!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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