Day Off Week 7 2026

The main feature of this week's day off was a trip with my wife to  lovely restaurant. It was a birthday/Christmas gift from very king friend of ours. The location was the Vincent Rooms Brasserie near Victoria. The set up is connected with the Westmineter College and is staffed by students. We had a very nice three course meal and just enjoyed being out together. I also managed to complete the William Hague biography of Wilberforce that I have been reading and started a biography of Jimi Hendrix. In the evening, it was TV wall to wall as we watched the Apprentice with Owain, which we had missed last week, Silent WItness (just us) and then the news before bed.

Lives Behind The Music

I have enjoyed reading this collection of obituaries from The Times. The linking theme is that they are all popular musical entertainers. There are around 75 names altogether, nearly all of whom I was aware of (Phil May was new to me; I didn't know the name Jet Black; I knew the name Captain Beefheart but noithing about him). Some are legends, as they say, others less so. They die at different ages (with a little glut around 27 as is known - Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, etc). Few of them seem to have lived very easy lives and most of those who weren't abused themselves in some way were immoral or drug abusers. Some of the stories are very sad (Elvis, Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, etc). There are very few Christians here (Alvin Stardust and Glenn Campbell?) few religious at all. They are really a bunch of misfits in many ways but redeemed by their musical genius. From David Cassidy to Shane MacGowan I read them all and found them all interesting in one way or another. The obituaries change in style and length over the years (I'd like to have had a longer one on Marc Bolan). Some are missing (such as Johnny Cash).

10 London Musea focused chiefly on individuals

1. Sigmund Freud (Freud Museum)
2. John Wesley (Wesley's Chapel and House)
3. Thomas Carlyle (Carlyle's House)
4. Charles Dickens (Charles Dickens Museum)
5. Samuel Johnson (Dr Johnson's House)
6. Georg Handel (and Jimi Hendrix) (Handel and Hendrix in London)
7. John Keats (Keats House)
8. William Hogarth (Hogarth's House)
9. Benjamin Franklin (Franklin's House)
10. Florence Nightingale (Florence Nightingale Museum)

Another cassette

Another cassette I found is Volume 1 of a two volume collection of 28 classic rock numbers. I don't think I ever owned Volume 2. I bought it in a sale and Volume 2 was missing then.

Volume 2 contained T Rex/Ride a white swan, The Who/My generation, Peter Frampton/Show me the way. Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel/Make Me Smile, Canned Heat/Let's Work Together, Fleetwood Mac/Albatross – which I would have loved (the rest are okay - Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity/This Wheel's On Fire, Pink Floyd/Money, Dire Straits/Lady Writer, Lou Reed/ Walk On The Wild Side, Lynyrd Skynyrd/Freebird. Meatloaf/Dead Ringer For Love, Far Corporation/Stairway To Heaven, Deep Purple/Smoke On The Water).

If I remember rightly I bought the cassette for Free/My Brother Jake plus Derek And The Dominos/Layla, Thin Lizzy/Waiting For An Alibi, Status Quo/Caroline, Santana She's Not There, Electric Light Orchestra/Roll Over Beethoven, Jethro Tull/Living In The Past, Rod Stewart/Maggie May, Black Sabbath/Paranoid. I'm alsop happy enough with Mott The Hoople/All The Young Dudes, The Jimi Hendrix Experience/Voodoo Chile, Cream/Strange Brew , Rainbow/Since You Been Gone/Traffic/Paper Sun.

In some ways this is a broad range of rock and shows what good stuff was going down back in the late sixties and early seventies. I currently have on my ipod and listen to exactly half (ie 14) of these tracks.