I am very grateful to Carol for forwarding this. Though I have my doubts if these saucissons were ever actually on sale 'in Ireland' as she suggests. And it's only fair to say that Ainsley's instant Cupasoup clones are absolutely brilliant. Well, quite good anyway. If you're very cold.
Gosh, those new Macs are LOVELY! Macbook Air? FABULOUS. Just like I thought my Macbook was gorgeous when I bought it 18 months ago. Now it is stained, dirty and cracked where the magnetic closure catches rest, subject to major battery problems and I am certain it is meant to be like that. To make me WANT A NEW ONE. To hell with this, I'm going to buy a Panasonic Toughbook, built to withstand nuclear attack! And user-serviceable with a CHISEL!
It must have been, I don't know, 1972 that Rory Gallagher played in the Caledonian Hotel in Ayr. I was still at school in Troon and, having been bought the Taste album by my Uncle John, was a huge fan. I pined to go to that gig. But at 16 and with my highly religious parents (and conscience), rock music on licensed premises in the den of iniquity 10 miles down the coast was unthinkable.
So I never saw the great man play live. And until YouTube, my only glimpse on telly was (I think)a brief clip from the OGWT. But I've owned three copies of Live in Europe, the third greatest live album ever made (after Get Yer Ya-Yas Out and It's Too Late To Stop Now. The two songs that open the second side - Going To My Home Town/Back In Your town, still send shivers up and down my spine.
Now there's loads of bits and pieces of Rory on the net, and I'm off in a minute to see if I can find an 'Irish Tour' DVD on eBay. The clip here is just unbelievable - no security, no stage, some mad climbing on amps, and suddenly, you see where Springsteen (who certainly knew about Taste and Gallagher, especially during his power trio days with Steel Mill) got some of his stage moves. The same sense of utter commitment, too.
Rory died in 1995, aged 47, of MRSA contracted in hospital after a liver transplant. He had been unwell for a long time, the result of long-term alcohol abuse and, it's said, the use of prescription drugs to combat a fear of flying.
Two pictures from a few days of exquisite winter weather...the first at 4.15pm on Friday, preparing to cycle home from The Radiocroft. The second taken from the new museum in Lerwick on Saturday. It all ended, meteorologically, on Sunday, with a truly horrible day of vicious wind, darkness and icy rain, during which I did nothing but eat, light and tend the peat-fired Rayburn, drink some fair-trade red wine and read, in its entirety, Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother, which is very like an episode of that old TV series A Bit of a Do. Alas, not in the same league as his stunning The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but entertaining enough for a dreich Shetland day.
