THE BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE IN THE WORLD!

THE BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE IN THE WORLD! OK – here are things you need for very best choc cake of all time!! 2 round 8” baking trays line with a circle of gproof paper and smear with margarine so they cake will not stick electric blender to mix it all Next . . . . . oven at 180C or Gas 4 50g/20z cocoa powder (sift if lumpy) 6 tbspn boiling water 3 eggs 20ml/4floz milk 175g/6oz self raising flour (if plain add 3 lev tsps of baking powder!! 100g/40z margarine 275g/10oz castor sugar put cocoa in blender bowl add boiling water bit by bit – blend together – scrape all down from sides too add rest of ingredients – blend well until smooth and thick share equal into two baking trays – middle of oven for 20 –25 mins until fairly firm in centre remove firm oven - let cool for 15 mins put on tray or something – (tip upside down on left hand – and upside down on tray ok – two halves made put coating of apricot or some other jam on one half Now the icing – easy you need – 50g/2oz butter 50g/2oz icing sugar 2 round tblsps cocoa powder put butter sugar and 6 tblspns water in pan heat until butter is melted and sugar dissolved – boil for 5 mins sieve icing sugar and cocoa together – no lumps see add bit by bit some of the liquid – beat with mixer until it looks glossy should stay on spoon – if runny add a bit more sugar done put layer of icing on top of jam put other half of cake on top coat of with rest of icing – swirl with knife – careful ‘cause cake is soft! die for this cake – soft moist – perfect with ice cream
from Isle of Skye – Moyra Mackenzie

time and tide

In the time it takes a tear to trace
a salty line upon your face
the earth has spun a little more
and wet the pebbles on your shore.

In the time it takes the tide to turn,
you might take the time to learn
that a sea will erode over many years
this place you've wasted all these tears.

Louisiana 1927

Randy Newman's song Louisiana 1927 about the great flooding of New Orleans - August 29th 2005 which became an anthem for the devastation from Hurricane Katrina. In the city the storm surge caused more than 50 breaches in drainage canal levees and also in navigational canal levees and precipitated the worst engineering disaster in the history of the United States. By August 31, 2005, 80% of New Orleans was flooded, with some parts under 15 feet (4.5 m) of water. Ninety percent of the residents of southeast Louisiana were evacuated in the most successful evacuation of a major urban area in the nation's history. Randy Newman is one of the great songwriters - no doubt. Find him out if you don't know that.


Martin Simpson does this with great feeling and style - as he always does. Listen to him here performing in California.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3nv4vdASBQ

Its a typically graceful and stylish accompaniment using a CGCFCD tuning which, though not hard on the fingerboard, requires subtle timing and intonation to make it move under the melody as Martin makes it. If you need the Tab it is available on his site
http://www.martinsimpson.com/

If you haven't played in this tuning before - once you have you will want to.

Sammy's Bar - Cyril Tawney

Sammy's Bar - Cyril Tawney

My first venture onto the folk scene was at a pub in Devonport (Plymouth) in around 1965 as a young and aspiring guitar player who had heard Davy Graham. Running this club was Cyril Tawney who went on to be a broadcaster and professional folk singer for 44 years - a record he proudly held. I remember the evening well. I was introduced to Cyril and he asked me if I wanted to do a spot. I did and made a nervous stab at Seven Gypsies (a la D. Graham). Later on Cyril asked me to join in one one of his songs - simple enough he said and indeed I tinkled along happily.The song was Sammy's Bar. I have never forgotten it or stopped singing it along with Cyril's other songs.

Here it is

I went down to Sammy's Bar

Hey, the last boat's a'leavin

By the shore at Pieta

Haul away the daighsoe

And my real love, she was there
There was sand all in her hair

How did sand get in your hair
Darling Johnny put it there

Been with Johnny all the day
Down at Ghajn Tuffheija Bay

He's a better man by far
Because he's got a Yankee car

I went out from Sammy's Bar
Had to hire a Yankee car

Fourteen days I drank no wine
Saving for that love of mine

Then one day in Paula square
At a paper I did stare

Johnny tried a hairpin bend
For my love, it was the end

Going back to Sammy's Bar
I don't need no Yankee car

Cyril Tawney (12 October 1930– 21 April 2005, Exeter.)

Here is Cyril's site - http://www.cyriltawney.co.uk

Thank you Cyril - for the memories and the songs.

Conservative credibility

Of the 31 of David Cameron's Cabinet - 18 have public/private school backgrounds. Can these people really have any inkling what it is like to be without, hard up, in poverty, at the bottom, feel despair, loss of self respect, loss of community etc etc

VOTE AGINST FASCISM

Stepping stones to power

David Williams discusses why today's BNP presents a far more serious political threat than the 1970s National Front.

The British National Party is determined to contest more seats than any British extreme-right party ever before. With over 160 candidates declared for the general election at the time of writing, the BNP appears well on track to reach its target.

The figure the BNP has to beat is the 303 candidates that the National Front (NF) fielded in the 1979 general election. However, their average vote of 1.5% was the end of the road for the NF, which had overreached itself and imploded. Out of the ruins was born the BNP, founded in 1982.

Unfortunately there are few comparisons between today’s BNP challenge and that of the NF.

The NF had never really been interested in contesting elections for their own sake, preferring a more violent path. It believed it could rise to power if it could “kick our way into the headlines” through demonstrations and marches in an attempt to “control” the streets.

Nevertheless the NF did contest elections and occasionally achieved some notable results. In 1973 Martin Webster, the NF’s national activities organiser, polled 16% in a by-election in West Bromwich. This compares favourably with the 16% that Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, polled in Oldham West and Royton in the 2001 general election and the 17% that Richard Barnbrook won in 2005, the highest percentage achieved by the BNP at a general election to date.

Nick griffin leading a National Front march

However the NF was not geared organisationally towards contesting elections in the same sustained manner in which the BNP has focussed on cultivating wards and constituencies in recent years.

The NF believed that its support, which was concentrated in the West Midlands and Greater London, would simply filter outwards but did little to facilitate such growth. NF support experienced two distinct spikes related to the influx of Asian immigrants in 1972 and 1976. BNP support in contrast, although similarly concentrated in pockets of the country, shows some sign that it is transcending the regionalisation of its core support base.

Since emerging as an electoral threat in 2001-02, the BNP has fielded increasing numbers of candidates at local and general elections. It currently has 56 council seats, one member in the London Assembly and two MEPs.

BNP support appears less volatile than that of the NF, which has given the BNP a measure of electoral stability that the NF never managed to achieve.

There is another crucial factor, which invalidates any comparison with the 1979 general election. The BNP’s fortunes are still rising; the NF in 1979 was already in decline, which its appalling showing in the general election that year only helped accelerate. The party was in poor shape after being wracked by splits in the middle of the decade, which the temporary boost given to the NF by the arrival of the Malawi Asians in 1976 served to mask. The party polled strongly in the 1976 local election and in the following year fielded more than 400 council election candidates across the country, achieving 235,000 votes.

In the 1977 Greater London Council election the NF stood in all but one of the 92 seats and took 119,000 votes, over 5% of the total. In Hackney South the NF polled 19%. This was the peak of the NF’s electoral achievement.

The BNP is simply not in the same position. Griffin is more realistic about his prospects and is standing for Parliament in Barking largely to boost his party’s attempt to win the main prize, namely control of Barking and Dagenham council.

The BNP has implemented a “ladder strategy” – securing one tier of government before contesting the next – something that was beyond the resources and strategic imagination of the NF. However, it offers the BNP its most realistic chance of putting down enduring roots in Barking and Dagenham.

In addition, the BNP is operating in a different political context. In the 1970s Margaret Thatcher led a resurgent right-wing Conservative Party that won support on the back of campaigning against immigration. There was also a strong left, both inside and outside the Labour Party, which acted as a pole of attraction for working-class militants.

These factors are not present today. David Cameron is desperate to divest the Conservative Party of its right-wing image but is widely disliked by the type of working-class Tories who flocked to Thatcher in 1979. The left is considerably weaker than in the past and less involved in the lives of working-class communities. The vacuum, on the left and the right, is now being occupied by the BNP.

It has taken the BNP a long time to reach this position. After founding the BNP in 1982, John Tyndall perhaps unsurprisingly remained committed to the same failed strategy as he had followed while leader of the NF.

The BNP would have to wait more than a decade for its first whiff of electoral success, with the election of a councillor in Tower Hamlets in a by-election. The party lost the seat in the council elections seven months later and it would be another decade before it began to focus on elections and grassroots campaigning. Unlike Tyndall, however, Griffin has belatedly learned many of the lessons of the past, making the BNP and the threat it poses in the forthcoming general election a very different proposition.

Some argue that the BNP is overstretching itself by fielding so many candidates in the general election. However, the position of the BNP today cannot be compared with that of the NF in 1979. Contesting a large number of seats will give the BNP legitimacy, a free mail shot to millions of voters and television airtime. With many of its candidates likely to save their deposits, the BNP will see the money paid out as a good political investment.

MY COMMENT :

BNP can believe what they will. Personally I find their views repulsive. What I also care about is the adoption and then corruption of folk music - the tradtion, the heritage, the musicians and the heriatge they uphold that is being used for scurrilous political propoganda. I have been a folkie all my life - some 50 years and while music comments and satirises - it does now represent racist political parties - not for me. The Nazi party used Wagner - BNP want to use Kate Rusby - its obscene.

Give your support to Folk Against Fascism - go here :

http://www.folkagainstfascism.com

and go here . . . . http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/

The redwing is most commonly encountered as a winter bird and is the UK's smallest true thrush. Its creamy strip above the eye and orange-red flank patches make it distinctive. At a first glance you see a regular Thrush but the splash of red gets you looking twice. They roam across the UK's countryside, feeding in fields and hedgerows, rarely visiting gardens, except in the coldest weather when snow covers the fields. This has been so during this rather snowy winter and we've had them in our garden here in Argyll. Also heard owls which is unusual so close in - hard times for themthis winter.

About Folk Against Fascism

The British National Party’s manifesto encourages its members to insinuate themselves into the folk and traditional customs of Britain. This involves the appropriation of British folk music and culture as a means of spreading its peculiar brand of racism and intolerance.

The UK folk scene is a welcoming and inclusive one; folk music and dance have always been about collaboration, participation, communication and respect. Folk Against Fascism has been created to take a stand against the BNP’s targeting of folk music, a stand against the appropriation of our culture. Folk Against Fascism isn’t a political party or a bureaucratic, top-heavy organisation. It is any and all of us who want to make ourselves aware of the BNP’s bigoted view of our history and culture, and who want to do something about it.
The BNP want to take our music, want to twist it into something it isn’t; something exclusive, not inclusive. We must not let them. Folk Against Fascism is a way to demonstrate our anger at the way the BNP wants to remodel folk music in its own narrowminded image.

The BNP’s Activists and Organisers Handbook encourages its members to get involved in the folk scene; Folk Against Fascism aims to make such infiltration impossible, with support coming from all sections of the folk community. We can be found on the web and at various folk clubs and festivals, and we encourage people to organise and support events in their own area.

If you sign up to our newsletter you’ll receive updates and information on Folk Against Fascism events. We are currently organising a series of large-scale concerts to be held starting next year, but also encourage people to join the group, set up shows, distribute our stickers, badges and T Shirts, or simply pass on information to friends. If you’re a Folk club or organisation, you can affiliate to Folk Against Fascism.

“Maybe I should talk to you about fascism. It is a big word and it hides in some pretty little places. And it is nothing in the world but greed for profit and greed for the power to hurt and make slaves out of the people. Fascism and freedom are the only two sides battling.”

Woody Guthrie

Wherever you are in the world - add your voice by joining and supporting today.

http://www.folkagainstfascism.com

Swooping Molly- Martin Simpson

Martin Simpson is, for me and many, a guitarist and composer of such unique quality, skill and sensitivity to theme and interpretation he is unsurpassed. I've listened to many guitarists over the years - played with a few - but Martin's ability to arrange and develop both accompaniments and compositions is second to none. He can take a song and give it a totally different colouring with use of tunings and deft left hand and use his great singing voice to give sincerity I just keep returning to. I've been trying to play like Martin for a while - using his techniques and phrasings. Sometimes successful to an extent but never anywher near his skill use of tone and attack. If you haven't heard his music - traditional folk, American blues with superb slide guitar and wonderful banjo - get out today and do so. If you are a guitarist - go sooner.

Swooping Molly is one of Martin's recent compositions - you can discover the meaning of the title when you get the CD. Its played in CGDGCD - a tuning he uses a lot and which I really enjoy playing in. You can get Martin's Tab for this on his site from Brass Tacks. http://www.martinsimpson.com/
Its a tricky piece mainly because you have to be nimble to keep up with it and its easy to rush and hard to gain Martin's fluidity and clarity. Its basically two sections with repeats and some variation. The Tab is Ok but you need to listen to the music too. Wavepad is handy for replaying parts..

Here is Martin playing the haunting Granuaile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piK4Lwm4Y9k&feature=relate

and here ae some extracts of him at a gig at Arts Centre in Shoreham by sea, West Sussex

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijzEBNpYngk

Enjoy.

As if we need this to tell us its a wee bit cold. You can see our snowman (personage)- its 397th left from a very cold bit in the Highlands! Its been hard on small birds though and I've broken the ice in the water and left loads of fatnutsseeds stuff out for them. We have a tame pigeon who calls around now and then and jumps on a hand that contains visible peanuts.
Huge icicles this year too. Our heating broke down and we lived very cold for four days - a few heaters and lots of candles and hw bottles. You survive.It doesn't take much to bring things to a halt though really in this country. I can't see us surviving the next ice age like our ancestors did. At least there'll be no Big Blubber to want us to not want to!
Hope you all get on ok.

This is a strange affair

This is a strange affair.
One of many many fine songs by this man and some I have played for a long time. You can look him up for yourself, not look back and gain much. His song 'This is a strange affair' is, for me, one of the most moving of all songs. You can see Linda his wife singing it on the Tube but when I heard June Tabor singing it with Martin's (Simpson) guitar (the best of the best of all musicians for me) it was one of those times you have to try it. I can play the guitar part just well enough to get by but my wife can sing it with lovely feeling and we are moved. Martin accompanies with such skill so hear June and Martin here - if you or someone have time past and passing in your life you will hear the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVFpMLE6WIo&feature=related

Blackberry time

We managed to catch the last of these up along the loch - scratches and yelps later and we had a bucketful apart from the ones that were eaten along the way. Blackberries are really good food and full of antioxidants and omega 3 - whatever they are. Personally I think they triumph in Blackberry & Apple pie but here is our recipe for Blackberry wine - chateau longwayhome.


4lb Blackberries
3lb Sugar
1 Gallon water
Yeast
Pectic Enzyme

1. Wash berries well - small maggots hide in 'em.
2. Put fruit in a basin and crush well with a wood spoon.
3. Pour over the gallon of boiling water.
4. Leave until lukewarm - add the pectic enzyme according to instructions.
5. next day add the yeast.
6. Cover and leave for 4/5 days - stir every day.
7. Strain through net or muslim onto the 3lb of sugar. Stir well.
8. Pour into a dark fermenting jar - just to the shoulder of the jar. Fit an air lock.
9. Keep the spare stuff in a bottle plugged with c.wool. Keep an eye on for a week to see if it is going to erupt through the airlock - if all ok add the leftover stuff.
10. Keep in a dark warmich place.
11. Wait until it clears and rack off into bottles. Keep for a year - (if you can) but taste occasionally to check it is ok.

John Martin

Ever heard of him? Many other people I ask haven't either. Maybe where you are that that is reasonable but up here in Scotland it is just a sadness. if you haven't go to this place on You Tube and listen to him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLNnzrlim-4&feature=PlayList&p=5DDD1F72895684EB&index=0&playnext=1
John died just before Christmas last year and gave his last performance in Glasgow -home town - just a couple of months before.
You can see this on the Tube too if you look.
I've been listening to John since the 70's and playing some of his songs. I think he is the finest songwriter ever to come out of Glasgow and think he should have a statue in George Square.
His music explored all avenues - his songs recorded by so many - his asscoiations and contributions read like a musical Who's Who
Quote - Folk? Blues? Jazz? Rock? Reggae? Trip Hop? Funk? John refuses to conform to any particular music genre whilst simultaneously embracing them all. Without fail he always takes the less travelled road in search of new experiences and inspirations. The diversity and quality of John's music is undeniably stunning. A virtuoso musician with a voice to melt the coldest of hearts.
He never made the mainstream or the big lights but year after year produced music of such intense emotion and diversity.
Here is his site - www.johnmartyn.com - treat yourself. Listen to him singing Hurt in Your Heart and not be moved.

George Butterworth

It has been since 2007 since I did this place. If you start something keep going. Unless its falling off a high building or watching Big Brother in which case revise rules fast.
Ask people who George Butterworth was and you too often get a shrug. This is a dire sorrow becaue if you are English (or would like to be (form an orderkly queue of 6 here)) you should at least onece listen to his music. Along Ralph Vaughan Williams and Elgar who is quintessentially romantic, bucolic english. He was born 1885 and between 1911 and 1912, he composed two of the most enduring cycles of British song: Bredon Hill and Other Songs and Six Songs from “A Shropshire Lad”, both settings of Housman poems. His career was brutally cut short, however; after enlisting with the British Army in World War I, he eventually became a company commander with the Durham Light Infantry. On 5th August 1916, while leading a raid at the Somme, he was killed by a sniper; he received a Military Cross during that battle, and was posthumously honoured at the Thiepval Memoria. For me his The Banks of Green Willow is a defining picture of english countryside. Everytime I travel through Somerset I play it as I pass Brent Knoll and anytime else.
If you haven't - go make a cuppa- find a quiet spot in the garden with a player and do yourself a favour. Or go here to Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Q9dz1kse8&feature=PlayList&p=479539E66953DA65&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=34

Cornish Pasty

I have been asked by some to throw in a recipe for a real Cornish pasty. Now this is a dangerous venture because A) I'm not Cornish and B) everyone in Cornwall thinks they have the best recipe. Mine is simple and I believe it should be because it was a workmans meal and not 'posh nosh' rubbish - it was meant to feed a working man.

It was probably the first complete take-away meal originally designed for the Cornish miner and farmer who was away working all day and needed a meal but had no facilities to prepare one. The reason the filling was contained in a pastry case with a thick crust along one side was to hold on to, especially as their hands were dirty or tainted with tin, copper or iron. Often in previous times this was discarded or fed to "The Cornish Knockers" (ghosts of dead colleagues said to haunt the mines). The traditional filling was meat or fish, potato, onion, turnip and a little butter or cream.The housewife prepared these daily for the man of the house and for the children who took them to work or school. It was the staple diet of the Cornish for many years. As the mines in Cornwall declined and "Cousin Jack" travelled extensively to find work this recipe went with him and still today one can still find small outcrops of societies all over the world producing the Cornish pasty, especially in Australia, South Africa, Canada and America.

Here is the recipe I have used and it works.

Pastry

You need:

500 gms strong bread flour
120 gms white shortening
25 gms cake margarine
5 gms salt
175 gms cold water

Mix fat lightly into flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.Add water and beat in a food mixer until pastry clears and becomes elastic. This will take longer than normal pastry but it gives the pastry the strength that is needed to hold the filling and retain a good shape.Leave to rest for 3 hours in a refrigerator, this is a very important stage as it is almost impossible to roll and shape the pastry when fresh

FILLING

You need:
450 gms good quality beef skirt
450 gms potato
250 gms Swede
200 gms onion
Salt & pepper to taste( 2/1 ratio)
Clotted cream or butter

Chop the above finely then add to the rolled out circles of pastry raw. Layer the vegetables and meat adding plenty o f seasoning. Put the dollop of cream or a knob of butter on top. Then bring the pastry around and crimp together. The crimping bit takes practice.

Fan assisted 165 approx 40 min (bit hotter and longer in an ordinary oven I guess)

Swede or Turnip?

People get these either way around - here in Scotland they call them the other way they do in Devon. In Cornwall I believe the round yellow one is the Turnip.

Do not use carrots - ever - it is never never used in a true pasty.

a little scrap of life and death

Its amazing how a little scrap of life can find their way into your life and your heart and yet you don't realise just how much until they've gone.
This was Rooney the Love Bird who is no more.
I put his cage outside on a sunny Sunday and somehow he managed to escape. The last we saw of him he was loudly shrieking at passing birds and promising severe times if he caught up with them.
Sad though - he was such a part of our daily life - we talked to him when we went by him - he whistled to us and he was a real character that bought so much happiness and enjoyment into our home.
He will not have lasted long outside - he was born a cage bird and would not be able to feed or defend against wild birds.
I take a bit of comfort from thinking that at least he went out free and flying even if only for a short time - rather than quietly going on the cage floor. How you do get attached to wee scraps of life though.

The Oggy Man

Cyril Tawney (1930 – 2005)

I first started to sing and play guitar as a young lad at a pub in Devonport in Plymouth which Cyril hosted in the late 1960's.
I have always said that whatever I have done since owes it to his songs and singing and I still sing his songs to this day as many others have done.

I have been asked before about the 'oggy man' and what an oggy is.
The song was written by Cyril - longest performing singer in the country, incidentally, who sadly passed away in Exeter in 2005.





His song the oggy man is, as all Cyril's songs, straight to the heart whether in pathos or humour. This is an exquisite gem of a song.
It helps if you know the background to the song . . . . . .

Before the war (WWII) in the old days, you could buy oggies at many places in Plymouth, but sailors coming back to the Dockyard last thing at night were most likely to get them from the man who sold them from a box outside the Albert Gate.

Before the war the Oggie Man had no competition, simply because there was no room for any. The Blitz, however, cleared a space right opposite his pitch, and in the late Forties first one, then two or three, caravan snack bars appeared on this bomb site, selling a variety of snacks, not just oggies. It was only a matter of time before the Oggie Man, as such, disappeared, either to retire from business or to get his own caravan and join the others. In the song, this change has taken place while the sailor has been away.

Picture a dark evening in the rain outside an old Dockyard gate in Devonport Plymouth . . . .

and slowly sing . . . . .

Oggy Man

Well the rain's softly falling and the oggy man's no more
I can't hear him calling like I used to before

I came through the gateway and I heard the sergeant say
The big boys are coming, see their stand across the way

Yes the rain's softly falling and the oggy man's no more

It was there that she told me when she bade me good bye
There's no one will miss you one half as much as I

My love will endure, dear,like a beacon in the squall
Eternal as the oggy man beneath the dockyard wall

Well the rain's softly falling and the oggy man's no more

Beautiful isn't it?

Cyril's wife Rosemary keeps the official site where you can learn about the man, other songs and buy recordings - do yourself a favour and do that.
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/cyriltawney/enter.htm

You get oggys - or pasties as they are more often known nowadays all over the world where ever Cornish people went. They were often taken by tin miners because they were easy to handle and contained a meal in one. What is a real oggy - and how do you make it - there's another blog and some risky territory.

Beryl Cook

Sad to hear that Beryl has gone - a wonderful British painter.
I knew Plymouth in the 1960's - played at a Folk Club at Devonport and first heard Cyril Tawney sing 'The Oggy Man'. Another item to tell that one - Prince Albert Gate at Devonport Dockyard.
Union Street Plymouth - famous in every port in the world - haunt of sailors and ladies was just the colourful and vibrant place that can be seen in Beryls pictures. She paints the action , the fun and the characters she has seen. Here is description from her web site . . . . . .
" . . . . there is nothing dark in her world. The appeal of Beryl Cook’s paintings is their directness, exuberance and the instant laughter they create. Her characters are always enjoying themselves to the full. Beryl is the least pretentious of painters and an artist in the same tradition as Breughel, though perhaps via Donald McGill! She was described by Victoria Wood as ‘Rubens with jokes’.

Beryl Cook’s work is particularly interesting when viewed in the context of the tradition of British social realist painting and she could easily be described as a contemporary Hogarth or Gilray, although she has a more sympathetic view of the human race. She is like those painters above all a social observer. She records human frailties and the absurdities of human behaviour with her own unique vision."

Go visit her work - maybe you can afford to buy a painting!

http://www.berylcook.org

having a moan

I enjoyed teaching in the 70's in South Devon - there was the freedom to be spontaneous, take children to adventures and make memories. At one time I had Gerbils, ducklings, fish, rabbits and even a couple of lambs for a week - children used to arrive at 8.00 in the morning and be prised away in the afternoon. They could all read well, knew arithmetic, had manners and were curious and interested about learning. They were outdoors a lot more, ate better, were active and could entertain themselves better.
There was no trace yet of was the track suited sullen youth walking around with a phone permanently fastened to its face, eating junk and staring mindlessly at a game console or television for hours a day.
Teachers and school, if not always enjoyed, were respected and were empowered to set standards and codes of behaviour.
It wasn't perfect - far from it - and there were some really poor schools and teaching. There was the need to review and change curriculum and teaching for sure - it was, at its worst, a wandering and liberal self indulgence education experience.
The change however, when it squirmed forth as the National Curriculum was a catastrophe and in true 'baby and bathwater' many values, excellent practices and teachers were wasted.
The N.C. - often concocted by people with little real experience of schools or child learning, caused anguish and turmoil and became a monster that schools were unable to manage effectively. Staff were ill trained in it, schools were underfunded for it and once motivated teachers were bludgeoned into being tickers of boxes and forced to parrot a sterile and target based curriculum.
It was a time of nightmares, late nights filling in endless record sheets, and being part of a system with a high built in failure factor. Very demoralising and soul destroying for thousands of dedicated teachers who , like me, fell out of love with the job. More energy went into administering the Curriculum than in delivering quality teaching.
I heard recently that in Scotland they are moving back into a project and enquiry based curriculum to try and raise standards and child enthusiasm. I also note that SATs are not considered to be a good idea. We could have told them all that 25 years ago.
Having said all that, I admire teachers today. -They are, from the ones I know, hard working and trying to do the best while battling against awful attitudes and low motivation.
I do not however envy them.
I see the older youth in Secondary education become part of a cynical, careless and gimme culture that has scant respect and ever declining values - I pity them and see why some use the phrase 'the lost generation'. I see younger children in Primary schools being forced or enticed into adult attitudes and perceptions and childhood more and more truncated.
Of course there were problems 30 years ago and yes, its easy to look back and remember only the summers that seemed to last longer then. But there was also a more optimistic and happier society than there is now - not the 'must have' greed, banal television programming that rakes up ever more cheap, degrading, cynical and lewd trash it can throw at the public it can get away with. And yes - I will say it - I believe children were happier and more stable.

So, truly, I feel sorry for young people growing up today and having to cope with the pressures put uppn them in so many ways. Most youngsters are OK people - trying to do well and treat their world and people fairly but the values they are having to handle are too often driven by the worst of attitudes and behaviour to the point it becomes cool to be bad. Young people will always be ambivalent and emulate the outrageous but what they given to emulate today is just scary.
What I see generating the standards is not the best of young people but a low, base and unpleasant culture that expresses the worst of attitudes and behaviour as acceptable. Media, fashion and music all cash in on to promote and sell to a teenage customer base that nowadays has spending power unheard of in my day. Along with others, I have watched standards increasingly devalued and wasted by the 'do-good' influence that broadens the tolerance of low morality, poor standards and appalling behaviour to the point where teenage deaths are now regular and some old foolish old dollop this week whines about it being unfair to stop thugs and search them for knives. Try telling that to the parents of a youth stabbed to death.

If we are prepared to tolerate our children growing up in standards from the gutter what hope is there for our society? Is it too late anyway?

MELDREW I sound like for sure. So be it.

the song the linnet sings

I have never actually seen a Linnet until one popped onto the seed pot on the bird table early on this morning.
At first glance I saw Sparrow until it turned and the red colouring showed. It is a pretty little finch and a bit like a Twite which very occasionally wander down from the hillside.
It didn't sing so I still have yet to hear its beautiful song reason it was kept as a cage bird by Victorians.
Since it has been under threat it is good to know there are some of these lovely little songbirds still around. I couldn't get to my camera in time so I have borrowed this photo from a superb photography site www.djsphotography.co.uk - hope they don't mind! Go see for yourself how to photograph wild birds!