to alert anyone who still looks to see if anything has been posted here ...

i will be posting from now on to 'Sea Songs', which can be found here: http://in-the-cage.blogspot.com

ten years after i first gained home internet access, the next phase of my life now begins (i hope)

You shouldn't think I don't have things to say, things to think. I just find it hard - as I have for as long as I can meaningfully remember - to get them down ( Read more... )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88wFQuv9g_Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-HoG5BTdoA

June's "The Only Place Where Brits Play Football" season had plenty of unexpected frissons - the most dramatic for me was an Irish fan making an obviously political pitch invasion during the Republic's 1976 match against England at Wembley (played the same week AF's 'The Attic Term' was published, just after the heatwave broke and a few weeks away ( Read more... )

To clarify my below post (though Francis Beckett does a lot of it for me), I think there was a fundamental conflict (which could not have been fully understood at the time) between 60s/70s pop culture's supposed (but compromised more often than not) aim of absolute, unequivocal freedom for all and the full implications of the mass Americanisation ( Read more... )

as rarely spoken in the mainstream media (specifically the second and third paragraphs ( Read more... )

This. Actually. Happened.

(and in an area riddled with paranoia at the time about the trade unions taking over, as well)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv-vS4oBJAg&NR=1

... has just very nearly rendered me literally incapable of speech (part of me wishes the "very nearly" wasn't true). And I've lost count of how many times I've heard it, and yet still ... *that's* what it does to me ( Read more... )

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/19/usa.guantanamoRead more... )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfy0Osckk1E (part 1 ( Read more... )