Well I shall endeavour to be more brief today. It will be difficult though. The Headteacher asked another teacher to call me, though why I am not honoured with a personal phone call I have yet to ascertain. The teacher advised that she had spoken to both Youngest Daughter and Head teacher, and that they are both contradicting eachother. I suggested that in a case like this there is very little chance that anyone is going to believe the child, and she then told me that she actually did! So we have a situation where a teacher knows that her boss is perhaps mistaken, but cannot say! I continued my growling, but asked her to get the headteacher to phone me and explain why she thought my daughter, and the five other children had been dishonest. I don't hold out much hope of this happening, but will, dear reader continue to update you.
In other news, I will have walked 86 miles to and from the bus stop in the space of three weeks. The aches and pains are going, and the old pins are feeling pretty good. I am very tired by the end of the week, but it's the fittest I have felt in ages. I am also listening to a lot of music, both new and old, and enjoying that. I used to travel for many hours on my daily commute, and really missed the experience of popping in the headphones and losing myself. As I mentioned earlier this week I have been listening to the new Streets album, which is really rather good. Since then, after seeing an old friend of mine mention them, I have been revisiting an older album. When I was a young slip of a thing, and furthering my lazy tendencies at 6th Form, myself and my friends spent many an hour listening to "The Crossing" by Big Country.
We all adorned ourselves with chequered shirts and rolled up jeans, and leapt around like absolute numpties to songs like Fields of Fire and In a Big Country. I have very happy memories of the album, and the friendships I enjoyed at the time, and it all came flooding back listening to it again. They were critically well acclaimed for the duration of this album, but the follow up "Steeltown" never reached the height of "The Crossing", and eventually, as young men do, I fell out of love with them, and felt rather embarrassed at how much I had liked them in the first place. They continued for many years until dear old Stuart Adamson decided he wanted to make another crossing and took his own life in 2001.
Stuart Adamson in 1991
As I have got older and approached something called maturity, I have realised that sometimes you stop loving something because you feel that it would not be cool to continue. Silly really, but young men and their music in particular create this. I discovered the Smiths, and never really looked back. Every now and then you would hear a Big Country song on the radio, but very little was ever really heard of them. They have recently reformed, with Mike Peters of The Alarm taking over the lead duties. These reunions are usually dire affairs, but I suspect in this case it will simply be a really affectionate tribute and a joyous occasion. I will probably not go, but reading about it and chatting to my old friend made me want to revisit. The Album is rather a life affirming one, and I was amazed at how much of it I remembered, even the old B Sides that were tagged onto the version on Spotify. So I would recommend it as an album to lift the spirits.
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