Nina Simone: Wild Is the Wind

Wild Is the Wind was written for the 1957 film of the same name by the Hollywood team of composer Dimitri Tiomkin and lyricist Ned Washington, where it was sung by Johnny Mathis. The wonderful Nina Simone first recorded it for a live album in 1959.

This studio version dates from 1966. Bill Janovitz says of it:

On a recording by David Bowie and on Mathis' lush original ... it is a romantic torch song; the narrator is haunted by the possibility – one senses more of a probability – that his lover will not "run away with" him. There is a sense of longing and despair, especially in Bowie's passionate guitar-driven rendering. But there is a glimmer of hope in the narrator's desperate imploring in both interpretations. 

With Simone, though, all hope seems lost; she sounds as mournful as she has on almost any of her recordings – resolved that her lover is gone, yet singing to herself as if he were there. ... Her own sparse piano accompaniment is measured, with resonating and sustaining low notes and grand arpeggios.

Lead mining remains at Gravels in Shropshire's Hope Valley

It's time for some Shropshire lead-mining remains porn. This photograph by Dave Croker from Geograph shows the A488 at Gravels in the Hope Valley.

The Geograph blurb says:

East Roman Gravels lead mine was also known as Wood mine and was owned by the Earl of Tankerville. The Hope brook carved out a valley which exposed many galena veins and in the eighteenth century, adits were driven into the hillside to exploit them. 

Beside the road is the truncated stone chimney of the ore crusher house. Of the crusher itself, only the foundations remain.

The photograph was taken in 2008. The cottages still stand beside the road, but the mining remains are more overgrown today.

Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair in conversation

When I first discovered Iain Sinclair he was obscure enough for me to feel I had him largely to myself. That notion encouraged was by the fact that his early novels – my first was White Chappell Scarlet Tracings – were first published in Uppingham by Mike Goldmark.

But that was 40 years ago. Now psychogeography is no longer a novel idea and its big beasts are getting distinctly long in the tooth. So this conversation between Sinclair and Alan Moore, who has fished in the same waters, has a valedictory touch.

I used to count Moore, along with Jeremy Seabrook and Ray Gosling, as part of a post-war Northampton working-class renaissance. Now I've discovered Henry Bird, I may have to move back the date of its commencement.

Thanks to John Rogers for posting this – you can find the earlier video he refers to on this blog too. John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

The Joy of Six 1512

Chris Dillow lays bare the stupidity of Westminster politics: "If your final shortlist for a job comprises Mandelson, George Osborne (and maybe Bear Grylls) but not anyone with direct relevant experience such as career diplomats then you’ve probably not even bothered to do a detailed job description; you’ve not asked 'what’s the shape of the hole we want to fill and who is that shape?' One of the most prestigious jobs in government seems to have been filled with less care than an investment bank would take over the hiring of a junior analyst."

"Every child is met at the door with a handshake and direct eye contact. This is one of the strategies we use to 'fill the emotional piggy bank' - a deliberate, personal connection that ensures every child feels seen as a human being, not just a data point. We’ve doubled down on the 'analogue' joys of childhood. We try to prioritise the outdoors and Forest School, getting muddy, play and physical movement. Every one of our pupils plays a musical instrument every single day." Primary school headteacher Ruth McManus on educating digital-native children.

Alissa Walker brings good news from France: "Paris's school streets are effectively sculpting out instant parks in the locations where they'll provide immense public health benefits to the city's most vulnerable populations. But it's true, they really stand for something else entirely: a city brave enough to prioritise children."

Amanda Cole has found there's not just prejudice against regional accents by people in the South East of England, there's also prejudice against the wrong sort of South-Eastern accent.

"The Ipcress File (the book) came out around the same time as Dr No (the movie). Reviews of the novel pointed out the contrast between the glamour of James Bond and the grime of Deighton’s spy world: there are no Aston Martins or high-rolling casinos in The Ipcress File, just ‘a little grey rusting Morris 1000’ and a grimy strip-joint on Wardour Street." Thomas Jones explores the world of Len Deighton.

Emma Linford sees Great Expectations as an early exploration of the effects of romance fraud.

Finedon was once one of Northamptonshire's four largest towns

At the time of the Domesday Book the four largest settlement in Northamptonshire were Northampton, Brackley, Rushton and Finedon. The first two are still towns (one a great deal larger than the other) and Rushton is now a small village near Desborough

Finedon, where I went today, is described as a town, though its population at the 2021 census was only 4552 and there are few shops left in its historic heart.

The pub proved to be closed until six – as it was a Friday, that suggests to me that it's more of a restaurant these days – and the cafe that was my fallback had the builders in. 

I was saved by a small Co-op branch, were I got a sandwich. Looking round for the refrigerated unit with the cans of pop, I found it had a whole cold room devoted to them. How neat is that? The owner offered to let me stay in there for a while to cool off, but it wasn't that hot outside.

Anyway, Finedon's many ironstone buildings – there were many quarries serving the steel industry here at one time – remain and here are some of them.

Later. In fact, as someone pointed out on Bluesky, the pub I mentioned (The Bell Inn) closed in January. I'd assumed there would be some more pubs on the very busy A6 – as seems common in Northamptonshire, the original centre of Finedon lies off the later main road – but there are none.

Finedon may soon resemble the Leicestershire village of Hallaton, which once tried to rival Market Harborough as a market town. It has what still feels like a high street, but there are no shops on it.

Oh, and the Finedon building in the photograph immediately below this text used to be a hotel.

Gentrification and the rise of the pro-bedtime left in the Nineties

The term "the anti-bedtime left" is in vogue as a way of disparaging people in the Labour Party who still have ambitions to set the people free rather than police them more closely.

But I am old enough to remember the days when there was a pro-bedtime left. And this press cutting from The Scotsman (18 November 1996) is a relic of it:

Bedtime Stories 

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, says New Labour. The shadow home secretary Jack Straw has called for firmer discipline at home, including set bedtimes to stop today’s children becoming tomorrow's juvenile delinquents.

That framing is very New Labour. Today we would be worrying about children's wellbeing or mental health, but back in the Nineties it was all about preventing crime. If they were in bed and drugged with Ovaltine, they wouldn't be out causing trouble.

Even Labour's education agenda then, with its support for homework even in primary schools, seemed us much about keeping children off the streets as about their learning.

Why was New Labour so authoritarian? One reason is gentrification. Imagine If you had moved into an up-and coming but still edgy part of London in the mid Nineties and wanted to entertain a senior member of your chambers and their partner to dinner in your garden on a summer evening to show off that amazingly good value Bulgarian red you had found. 

You would be looking forward to scheming with them to remove some left-wing Labour council candidates. And if the opportunity arose, you might broach the subject of your being selected for a safe Labour seat in the North of England. You wouldn't want kids kicking their football against your back fence, would you?