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60 Years Ago Today: Love Me Do by The Beatles

Someone to love. Somebody new. Someone to love. Someone like you. Time plays odd tricks. It’s 60 years ago that The Beatles released Love Me Do on 5th October 1962. The opening harmonica hook remains haunting and evokes the grainy black and white early Sixties. Melancholic images of fog on the Mersey. John, Paul, George and Ringo playing the smoky Cavern Club. Screaming teenage girls tearing out their hair. The thaw in post war austerity. Yes, the first few notes of the harmonica hook are instantly recognisable as redolent of a seeming moment of cultural change in Britain. By the…

October comes with rain whipping around the ankles / In waves of white at night

Autumn is definitely here. Not the lingering, warm Autumn of early September, but the damp, wet Autumn that points with trembling finger towards Hallowe’en and the first chill winds of Winter. For me, September has been one of reading tales by Algernon Blackwood that seem to anticipate this change of weather: of islands of willows on the Danube, of remote Canadian wilderness, of ghostly monasteries. I’ve also enjoyed reading Thistlebone by T. C. Eglington and Simon Davis. In the background of my September life has been The Advisory Circle, Pye Corner Audio, Boards of Canada and (more upbeat) Stereolab.

He’s cooking in the woods, a brush fire in your neck

Today I’ve been thinking about a couple of environmental articles I’ve read. Both present a similar viewpoint: individual changes to consumption or recycling won’t impact the environmental crisis the planet is facing. The first, I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle. by Mary Anaise Heglar, argues against apathy, despair and a sense of nihilism that pervades some of the environmental debate. Industries and governments have transferred responsibility onto individuals and “it’s victim blaming, plain and simple.” Heglar says: We need to let go of the idea that it’s all of our individual faults, then take…