Some Random Thoughts

I am looking forward to my next gig under my nom de guerre Jazzy D on Wednesday night as I have a number of tunes that I have re-discovered or not realised I had when I played them from the external hard drive over the weekend.

I was reading a book the other day about the Cuban revolution, and what I did not know, and is not so well known outside of the country , is that since the turn of the 20th century there has been a sizeable Chinese community. Chinese immigration to Cuba started in the middle of the nineteenth century. That is one factoid that was new to me.


You know it is becoming autumnal when the nights draw in and you have to turn on the lights at earlier times in the evening. I have noticed that the last couple of days have felt chillier, although the forecast is for one last bout of heatwave for the next few days.

I think my brain must have been floating in space last night as I tried to answer some of the questions in University Challenge and attempted the connections in Only Connect. I found myself floundering , and as it dawned on me today, that disengagement gave me a very good night's sleep. I am usually sharp as a pin and apart from getting the Gladstone answer right, and the science ones, my mind must have drifted into a sea of tranquillity.

A Facebook colleague was gushing praise over the portrayal of Cilla Black in the three part dramatization of her life by actor Sheridan Smith on the ITV channel. He has not heard of her before. Well, Barry, she first came to my notice years ago in the BBC 3 comedy Two Pints of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps. As well as being on TV she is an excellent theatre actor and a wonderful singer. Not only that, but she played Lucy Miller in the Big Finish audio dramas alongside Paul McGann as the 8th Doctor, and for awhile was the travelling companion of the Meddling Monk, as revealed at the end of the Book Of Kells episode.

Last night, after thinking about the Monk's nom de guerre, Thelonios, I played some music by the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, followed by some early thirties blues from Blind Willie McTell. Listening to Monk is getting to be a kind of habit (pun intended).

In Faversham Again

Well, after bemoaning that it was getting cooler, today has turned out to be quite warm. Sunshine and blue skies

I popped over to Faversham to sell some books at Past Sentence and got him to pay five quid for three of them. This gave me the chance to get some cat food for Florence and a cucumber and bread roll to add to a salad which i will prepare when i get back.

Spent some time in the library as well and soaked up the gorgious warm sunshine outside smoking my pipe whilst finishing my reading of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Murial Spark. I remeber a TV dramatization of the book many years ago, and it might have ben on the BBC, but i canot be certain.

I will be taking a few books with me for coming42, one which we agreed a price on, that being "Birders" by Mark Cocker, plus a coupe of rail books.



The second one i am not so sure about but if he does not have it i can always sell it on again.

Hvae four slabs of vinyl to post tomorrow bwfore i leave, one in the UK, one in france, Italy and Russia. All sales from Discogs. Thank godness for that website.

I popped into the PC shop in faversham and a new wifi dongle is £12.99, and it is very small. reminds nme of the Edimax one i use to have. I shall wait to either tomorrow or Thursday to purchase one as i may pop in to Maplins in maidstone or Tunbridge Wells  on the way down, but first i will have to pop into Sittingbourne for the morning so i won't be traelling down to Sussex till after midday.

Book 85 - Muriel Spark "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie"

Muriel Spark "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" (Penguin Modern Classics)




What a curious book. In terms of style, Muriel Spark's non-sequential narrative and extensive use of prolepsis, is unusual, and yet works well as Muriel Spark repeats the same themes and phrases. The book is also very simple to read and well written.

I thought it was refreshing to read about such a free thinking, idiosyncratic and rebellious woman working in a deeply traditional environment in an era where great store was still placed on conduct in the bourgeois world of a girls' school in the 1930s. Miss Brodie is unconventional and daring. Instead of following the curriculum of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, she treats her pupils as adults and discusses all manner of subjects which include her admiration for the emerging fascist leaders in Italy and Germany, her personal history, and her emotional life. Miss Brodie also invites her pupils to her home, and the home of other teachers, and takes them to the theatre and other outings.

Whilst initially appearing to have the welfare of her special students at heart, Miss Brodie's primary motivation appears to be to control and manipulate her pupils, and ultimately this is a disturbing portrait of a self-obsessed and psychologically disturbed teacher. This is the brilliance of the book, behind the rebellious and unorthodox teaching style which is cloaked in the benign appearance of taking special care of a small coterie of hand picked pupils, lies a monster. The revelations which emerge throughout the book would create a tabloid newspaper feeding frenzy if they came to light in the modern era. Not only does Miss Brodie appear to want to force her special pupils - The Brodie Set - to fulfill a destiny she has predetermined, she also has cast each girl into a tightly defined character. Muriel Spark constantly repeats these characteristics throughout the story, almost as if, like Miss Brodie, if she repeats them often enough they will become self-fulfilling. There are also other more amusing stylistic motifs that are frequently employed by Miss Brodie, for example, "you are the crème de la crème", and "I am in my prime". These help the reader to see through the Brodie character and hint at her self-delusion.

Whilst the book's primary focus is Miss Brodie we find out very little about her motivation. I think it's to Muriel Spark's credit that she leaves the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, and yet I would be very interested to know the extent to which Muriel Spark is sympathetic to her literary creation. Ultimately that is the most puzzling thing about the book - on one level it's just a quirky story about a slightly weird teacher, on another more profound level I think Miss Brodie is meant to mirror her fascist leader heroes. Like Hitler, Miss Brodie employs slogans, charisma and mind control to subjugate a group and attempt to force them to comply with her own twisted agenda.

This is unusual, weird and very good. It's also very short and simple to read - it's well worth a couple of hours of your time

Railway Journeys

So after my trip to lovely Faversham I made some salad and added some cold smoked mackerel to mine as cousin is not s fish fsn.

Watched an episode of Great Railway Journeys as it was in Kent where he visits Faversham's Shepherd Neame Brewery and then travels down to Dover and then onto Staplehurst.Sometimes such programmes can be quite interesting.

On my journey back from Faversham I found a read copy of today's Guardian which I usually read online. At least it gave me time to tackle the crossword.