Dive in

I love dive bars. I've spent a significant proportion of my adult life in dive bars. And it never did me any harm. (Don't @ me.) Someone else who has a penchant for all things dive is No Badger Required. Our paths have never crossed, yet I feel is if I should be inviting them to BlogCon26; where, I'd like to think, we would meet in a Leeds dive bar of their choice (of which there are many). Hmm, let me mull that one over.

In the meantime, today's musical show & tell is nicked wholesale from NBR's Dive Bar Anthems playlist - now my Dive Bar Anthems playlist. Here's the studio version. However, this is a frantic, not to mention frenetic, no holds barred live version. Enjoy.

Parquet Courts - Live Football (2018)

Bang average songs with amazing intros

I think it was only when I saw Johnny Marr play his own version of How Soon is Now that I realised a song (a band, even) that I'd never much cared for has in fact got a stunning intro. I'm sure if I thought long enough and hard enough I could come up with a few more examples of this genre. But as I've just alienated all my Smiths loving readers I think I'll quit while I'm behind - for fear of inadvertently slaughtering another scared cow.

Johnny Marr - How Soon is Now

Overdue library books

April 2022

"The only thing that you abolutely have to know, is the location of the library." So said Albert Einstein. They knocked our local library down in 2022, so I could only tell you where it used to be. They set about rebuilding it shortly thereafter: it was to be part of a new development that would see a major supermarket occupy the ground floor (with the library upstairs) and some affordable housing at the rear. So far so good.

However, various construction delays, arguments over funding etc. etc. and it all got very messy. Sainsbury's opened for business in November 2023 and directly above stood a library with no books. For over two years. God knows what they were playing at. But Sherwood Library finally opened its doors to its book starved populus last week.

April 2026

I paid a visit yesterday morning and it was doing a brisk trade. And there were a lot of kids in there - which is always good to see. And a lot of books - old and new (see Julian Barnes' latest novel below). I can't tell you how brilliant it is having a new (well newish) library just up the road.

Gone too soon

Jan loved having her nails done - she'd let me take pics of her latest offerings

It was a desperately sad day yesterday. My friend Jan had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and knew that her eventual retirement wouldn't the retirement she would have hoped for; enjoying her beautiful garden and spending more time with her friends and family, not least he beloved grandchildren, would be limited. But even a drastically reduced retirement wasn't to be. Despite putting up up a formidable fight against her virulent cancer, Jan tragically slipped away in the early hours. There are no words.

Jan was one of my first visitors after I came home from hospital

One for the road (#1)

Today I want to share with you the first in an irregular series of rock and roll streets - inspired by a recent blog post over at Alan Parkinson's excellent 365 blog project for 2026 'World of Music' - that in some small way have shaped the musical gazetteer. 

Ammonia Avenue can be found on the 1984 album of the same name by the Alan Parsons Project. It's also the name of one of the link roads that form part of ICI's massive ammonium nitrate manufacturing plant at Billingham on Teeside. The writer Aldous Huxley visited the plant nearly a hundred years ago and came away with the genesis of his 1931 novel Brave New World. Similarly in the early 80s, Eric Woolfson of the APP visited the chemical complex  after being invited by the then-chairman, John Harvey-Jones. On his arrival Woolfson was struck by a street lined with pipes where nobody was working, featuring a sign that read Ammonia Avenue.

For those of you who seek meaning in their long players, the premise of Parsons' album hangs loosely round the themes of industrialisation and the disconnect between scientific development and public understanding. Yep, that's concept albums for you. 

Alan Parsons Project - Ammonia Avenue (1984)