Five miles east of Shardlow: Trent Lock at Long Eaton

I liked Shardlow, where the Derwent and the Trent and Mersey Canal join the River Trent. So yesterday I visited Trent Lock, five miles to the east, where the Erewash Canal and the River Soar join it.

The walk down the canal from Long Eaton station deserves a post of its own, but Trent Lock was also more interesting and attractive than I expected.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station dominates the view from the other side of the river, and I once named the Trent Viaducts, which take the Midland main line across it, as one of my five favourite bridges. Thee is a weir beneath them that boats heading north avoid by using the artificial Cranfleet Cut.

Their are two pubs and a tearoom by the lock where the canal enters the Trent. The Erewash (pronounced as three syllables, please) was built to serve the area's coal mines, and one day I will go to Great Northern Basin where it ends. 

That is also where the Cromford Canal once began its journey to the obvious new venue for Parliament.

The mouth of the River Soar is the other side of the river from Trent Lock, but easily seen thanks to a helpful narrow boat.

Let's leave the last word to Auden and Isherwood in the Dog Beneath the Skin (though I think these lines were lifted by the former from a contemporary topographical writer):

As at Trent Junction where the Soar comes gliding; out
of green Leicestershire to swell the ampler current.

Six of the Best 804

The death of local democracy is the national calamity we don’t hear about, says John Harris.

Jurgen Habermas, the eminent German sociologist and philosopher, discusses the future of Europe: "Today, national populations are overwhelmed by the politically uncontrollable functional imperatives of a global capitalism that is being driven by unregulated financial markets. The frightened retreat behind national borders cannot be the correct response to that challenge."

"My first London Pride, meant to be an inclusive event, was being hijacked by people telling me I shouldn’t be there. I chair one of the main LGBT charities, and I was being made unwelcome, as were other trans people, by a handful of people who were apparently getting special treatment from the organisers." Helen Belcher on last Saturday's event.

"Most of the one million visitors who visit Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain every year believe they are looking at untouched 4,000-year-old remains. But virtually every stone was re-erected, straightened or embedded in concrete between 1901 and 1964, says a British doctoral student." Emma Young reports on a controversy in archaeology.

Chris Schurke goes on a hunt for a graveyard of military aircraft.

Clerk of Oxford has a tale of St Thomas Beckett and a lost village.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

I welcome guest posts on Liberal England.

As you can see from this list of the 10 most recent ones, I am happy to consider a wide range of subjects.

If you would like to write a guest post yourself, please send me an email so we can discuss your idea.

• The peculiar contradictions of Scotland’s Named Person scheme - Simon Calvert
• The straight line of racist politics from 19th century South Carolina to Donald Trump - Phil Noble
• How can a Liberal talk to a hate addict? - Katie Barron
• The Second World War families who took evacuees into their homes - Gillian Mawson
• What happened to the 8th Lincolns at the battle of Loos? - Nigel Atter
• The importance of respectful relationships between teachers and pupils - Sean Warren and Stephen Bigger
• The Lib Dems and Brexit: How a shot in the arm became a shot in the foot - Neville Farmer
• Drinking with Daniel Farson - James Tarry
• An ideological conflict is coming - time for Liberals to seize the initiative - Luke Jeffery
• Social Liberal Forum conference promotes big ideas - Helen Flynn

Mark Kermode takes Edward Woodward back to Summerisle

Mark Kermode and Edward Woodwaord visit some of the locations used in the film The Wicker Man.

According to the blurb on YouTube, this dates from 2007. Edward Woodward died two years later.

The old signal box at Stamford

When I first visited Stamford there was a large disused goods yard between the railway station and the town.

Desirable houses have now been built on that land and the disused signal box has been moved 200 yard east so it now stands next to the station.

The box is being looked after and has a Facebook page. I took my own photograph of it today.

In which I am quoted in the Shropshire Star

For the first time, as far as I recall, I have been quoted in my favourite newspaper.

An article in the Shropshire Star (or at least on its website) looks at the drying up of the River Teme above Leintwardine, which has obliged the Environment Agency to rescue more than 700 trout and salmon.

It ends by quoting the tweet of mine you can see above.

Now read about Malcolm Saville and the pubs of Leintwardine.

Taking care at Church Langton

I went back to Church Langton and diffed my sunhat to J.W. Logan. I also tried the Langton Arms again and found it less full and a good place to eat.

Back at the church the paving stones over what must be the crypt where the Hanburys now lie were rickety. The traffic cones on them were not a jape by lost students but there for a purpose.

Be careful. Some people never escape the church at Church Langton.

Polly Bolton: If There's No Other Way

Human Nature is a 2003 album by Ashley Hutchings billed as "A collection of new songs observing the human relationship with creatures and plants."

If There's No Other way depicts a woman turning to "omens, symbols and charms, potions and prayers" to win her love.

It was written by Hutchings with Joe Broughton and performed by one of my favourite singers, Polly Bolton.

A Southampton blue plaque for John Arlott

Yesterday Mark Pack posted a 1950 film celebrating cricket with narration from Ralph Richardson and John Arlott.

Attentive reader's voice: Didn't you post that film yourself a few years ago?

Liberal England replies: It was seven years ago, but who's counting?

Watching the film again on Mark's blog, I was struck by how quickly Arlott established himself as the voice of cricket. Only five years before it was made he was a police sergeant in Southampton.

Arlott made the leap to cricket broadcasting via the BBC Overseas Service, where he produced poetry programmes for Indian listeners. (He was an accomplished poet himself and had cultivated the friendship of John Betjeman and others.)

The post Arlott was given at the BBC in 1945 sounds very like the one George Orwell vacated in 1943.

Yesterday a blue plaque was unveiled on the house in Lodge Road, Southampton, where Arlott and his wife lived when he was still a policeman.

Read more on the Bevois Mount History Facebook page, from which I have borrowed this photograph.

The lost manor house and gardens of Hanging Houghton

Hanging Houghton has not had a church for centuries, and the manor house that was built with its stone is long gone too.

I wrote on Monday.

The Victoria County History for Northamptonshire gives more of the story:

A chapel of some importance once existed at Hanging Houghton, but Bridges says that its ruins were used for the building of a manor-house, which in turn was left deserted in 1665 after the Montagu household had been carried off by the plague, which they had fled from London to escape.

And the Historic England listing for the site tells you about the substantial but subtle remains of the house:

The monument includes the buried and earthwork remains of a great house and gardens at Hanging Houghton, located on the crest and slopes of a south westerly projection of high ground at the western end of the hamlet. 

The house was owned by the Montague family from 1471 until it was abandoned in 1665, following the demise of the entire family during the plague. The house is depicted on a map of 1655, located in the north east corner of an elaborate formal garden including knot gardens and terraced walks. It survived as ruins as late as the 18th century. 

The remains of the house and gardens are represented by a series of rectangular areas defined by low earthworks and banks, measuring up to 0.75m high. The remains of the house are visible as a low rectangular building platform measuring approximately 40m by 30m in the north eastern angle of the garden. 

Illustrations from the 17th century suggest that the house was built with three bays and that its south elevation was symmetrical with a central porch, typical of a late 16th or early 17th century date rebuilding. 

Immediately to the west of the house there are earthwork enclosures marked by low boundary banks which indicate the location of formal knot gardens. 

To the west of the knot gardens are the remains of a large rectangular raised area, which is shown on the 1655 map as an area of garden planted with trees and surrounded by a system of formal paths. 

The boundary of the gardens is defined by a continuous curving bank, measuring up to 4m high and 2m wide, enclosing the site on the west and south sides.

I found this site on Monday. It was occupied by horses and sheep trying, like me, to cope with the heat.

When Etonians go to war: David Cameron disowns Boris Johnson

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An interesting snippet from today's Times.

In response to stories that, when David Cameron and Boris Johnson met, Cameron agreed with Johnson's condemnation of Theresa May's proposed EU settlement but persuaded him not to resign, you can read this:

But Mr Cameron has disowned the claim and rejected outright any attempts to paint him as an enthusiastic Brexiteer. His former allies were apoplectic on his behalf, saying that he had consistently advocated a Norway-style soft Brexit, and regarded Mr Johnson’s approach as a “fantasy” that ignored key problems. 

“When they met it was all whingeing, with Boris blaming everyone but himself,” a source said.

That last bit certainly has the ring of truth.

Alistair Carmichael stars in Parliamentary Exchange of the Week

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We go back to Wednesday and this exchange in the Commons debate on the SNP's opposition day motion on the Claim of Right for Scotland:

Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem, Orkney & Shetland): What Scotland voted for was for the United Kingdom to remain part of the European Union. I campaigned and voted for that, but I did not want to see my vote then used as a lever to break up the United Kingdom. When the hon. Lady tries to do that, she does so not in my name or in the name of the majority of my constituents.

Marion Fellows (SNP, Motherwell & Wishaw): The right hon. Gentleman is looking very angrily at me.

Alistair Carmichael: That is just my natural expression; you can’t hold that against me.

Marion Fellows: In that case, I apologise.

Mike Brearley in The Secret Policeman's Ball

The Secret Policeman's Ball of 1979 contained riches.

I have already posted Peter Cook's parody of Mr Justice Cantley's summing up in the trial of Jeremy Thorpe and Rowan Atkinson's schoolmaster sketch.

There is also a great solo version of Pinball Wizard by Peter Townsend beginning at 13:19.

But it is Mike Brearley's appearance in The Name's the Game is have chosen here. He is the third and final mystery assailant.

When I wrote:

When Brearley became England's captain in 1977 it was almost as though Jonathan Miller or Michael Frayn had been put in charge. Brearley was a representative of liberal North London in an age when cricket was still run by the Establishment.

it was partly his moving in these circles that I had in mind.

It is hard to imagine Joe Root appearing on an equivalent show today. I expect they would ask Gareth Southgate instead.

Cromford waits impatiently for Parliament to be relocated there

Regular readers will remember my solution to the problem of the Palace of Westminster needing extensive, expensive restoration:

Just let the place gently fall into decay. Imagine how much more attractive it would be as a ruin alive with feral cats, buddleias and fragments of Gothic tracery.

They will also remember my alternative venue for Parliament: Arkwright's Mill in Cromford, Derbyshire.

I was there today and am pleased to report everything is in order.

The mill itself is now more of a visitor attraction - in fact it is an experience - and could surely accommodate a couple of debating chambers.

And you can take a boat along the Cromford Canal, which you have not been able to do since the 1980s, when what was once a vigorous restoration society fell apart.

Industrial remains at Hanging Houghton

As I wrote the other day, Hanging Houghton used to sit in an industrial landscape.

The old Market Harborough to Northampton railway, now the Brampton Valley Way and part of a national network of cycle paths, is easy to find at the bottom of the hill.

As for relics of the ironstone tramways and aerial ropeway, the best candidate I could find was the concreted lane leading to a minor water treatment plant.

Leicestershire County Council returned £260,288 that should have subsidised a Market Harborough bus service

Last month the Leicester Mercury established that Leicestershire County Council has returned almost £900,000 to developers because it failed to spend money given to ameliorate the effect of new development.

Now comes news that £260,288 of that should have gone to fund a bus service for the Farndon Fields development in Market Harborough.

At a time when many of the town's bus services are under threat, I find that quite extraordinary.

The reason given in the Mercury is:

Elsewhere, £260,288 was sent back to the developers behind the Farndon Fields estate in Market Harborough after internal roads on the estate were not ready to facilitate a bus service because development was slower than expected. 

The council asked for a time extension but the developer refused.

I bet it did.

Leicestershire Tories at war over leader's bid to bin district councils

“I say to Coun Rushton – bin this, this week or you will find yourself in great personal difficulty.”

That was Sir Alan Duncan, Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton, speaking about Nick Rushton, the Conservative leader of Leicestershire County Council, and his plans to abolish the county's district councils.

I am not sure an MP should be speaking like that. Mind you, I would have more sympathy for Mr Rushton if he had not waited until county council meetings had ended for the summer and then called a press briefing.

People who want an easy ride seem to leak things to the BBC these days, and the parallel with Vote Leave is not the only echo of Brexit here. The Labour group on the county council supports Rushton's plans.

Thank goodness the Lib Dems and Tories are providing some opposition to him.

Two questions remain.

Why does the Leicester Mercury think "Coun" is the abbreviation for Councillor?*

When, oh when, will the person who hacked Nick Rushton's Twitter account be arrested?

* I am told this dates from the 1970s, but surely it should be "Coun." if they are determined to use it?

Six of the Best 803

"Within hours of British police announcing last night that a couple from Amesbury, Wiltshire had been poisoned with Novichok, Russia’s propaganda machine was firing out projectiles in all directions with the usual aim of casting doubt and confusion in people’s minds." Sarah Hurst lays bare the tactics of the Putin regime.

Alastair Meeks diagnoses the disease in the English hard right and the failure of the rest of us to confront it.

Matthew D'Ancona is right about Jacob Rees-Mogg and his weaponising of quaintness: "He personifies all that is wrong with conservatism in 2018. But until we stop indulging him, we’ll deserve everything we get."

"Winchester, Eton, St Paul’s and Westminster all started out as philanthropic institutions whose statutes expressly excluded the children of the wealthy." Houman Barekat reviews Posh Boys by Robert Verkaik, a dissection of the effect of the public schools on British society.

Daniel Engber on the remarkable story of the triplets who were raised apart as part of a psychological experiment and found each other in later life.

Tom Worthington listens to a neglected Nick Drake compilation.

Two minor discoveries in Kettering

The Shire Horse is a Kettering pub that sells good beer at competitive prices. What more can you ask?

Its old sign can be found propped up in its unexpected beer garden. Examination by a team of passing archaeologists showed that the pub was a Mann's house before it was a free house.

Earlier, wandering the town's back streets, I came across a house with C.W. on it.

That must stand for Charles Wicksteed. His company, which has made playground equipment for generations of children, still operates a factory in that part of town.

And then there's Wicksteed Park.

Being "radical" and talking to voters in a way that appeals to them

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Mark Pack wrote an illuminating post at the start of this year:

Particularly in the aftermath of a general election, you hear lots of Liberal Democrats saying that the party needs to more radical or more distinctive. Or, as this views are often played out on the internet these days, MORE RADICAL!!! 

The problem is what often comes next: the favourite policy idea of the person making this call. 

Now Rob Parsons has asked whether we should try to be radical at all. Or rather, whether we should present ourselves to votes as being radical:

I find the word “radical” increasingly difficult nowadays. It has become a shibboleth. Whatever is being pitched has to be framed as radical. And everybody knows exactly what it means and says so with great authority. The trouble is that the next person will, with equally great authority, give it a different meaning.

Rob would rather we presented our polices to voters as being "common sense".

He is on to something in that I suspect being radical appeals to activists more than it does to the average voter.

But, reading him, I thought of a post of my own that was picked up by Wired:

Jonathan Calder on his politics blog, observed that LGBT groups in America won over voters by discussing their quest for equality not in aggressive demands for equal rights, but with language conservatives would refer to their own marriages: love, commitment and family. 

Similarly, a press release from The Association for Psychological Science found that talking about climate change in terms of 'purity' and 'sanctity' of Earth could win over those with conservative morals, traditionally unconcerned with climate change.

To win people over with this approach you have first to be clear about who it is you are trying to win over.

And there has lain the Liberal Democrats' problem for many years.

Should parliamentary candidates be selected in open primaries?

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We will fund 200 all-postal primaries over this Parliament, targeted at seats which have not changed hands for many years. These funds will be allocated to all political parties with seats in Parliament that they take up, in proportion to their share of the total vote in the last general election.

Recognise this? 

It comes from the 2010 Coalition agreement, but we never heard anything about its being put into practice. 

Which was rather a shame.

Joe Zammit-Lucia returns to the subject of open primaries in an article on Radix:

Such an approach would force candidates to take the interests of their constituents in putting forward their platform – not just the narrow interests of their constituency parties. They would have to campaign more widely – providing both training for an eventual election and name recognition within the constituency. 

It could be a way for getting a larger group of voters interested in party affairs without having to become members (something that is anathema to most of the population) and in a way that is in constituents’ self-interest. And it would dilute the power of central party apparatchiks – which is why so many of them would fight against such a system. 

From the constituents’ point of view, they are now invited to participate in a different way – outside any formal election and getting involved in selecting their own candidates.

Given the febrile state of British politics, he passes too quickly over the objection that members of one party would try to sabotage another's selection by voting for an unsuitable candidate.

But it remains an attractive idea.

Lynsey Hanley on Britain's transport divide.

There was a good documentary on BBC Radio 4 last night in which Lynsey Hanley looked at the decline of bus services outside London.

As the blurb for it on the BBC website says:

For more than 30 years buses in the UK have run under two systems. In London, a powerful transport authority commissions and pays for bus routes it deems necessary. Outside the capital it is up to the bus companies which routes they run and to local authorities which gaps to fill, if they are able. 

In the first of two episodes on Britain's transport divide, public transport user and non-driver Lynsey Hanley rides the bus and speaks to bus users in one of the UK's most isolated communities- which is bounded by not one but two motorways- visits the English city least well served by public transport and hears from the local authority that tried and failed to regain control of its buses. 

She finds a country where in one corner there is a world class public bus system and the rest; where there isn't and concludes this is not merely a matter of inconvenience.

GUEST POST Social Liberal Forum conference promotes big ideas

Helen Flynn, chair of the Social Liberal Forum, looks forward to its annual conference in London on 28 July.

The Social Liberal Forum’s (SLF's) eighth annual conference is a meeting place for all liberals to talk about big ideas, following on from the successful publication of the SLF’s new book, published in March this year, Four Go In Search Of Big Ideas.

The SLF Council took the decision to publish the book because:

• the Liberal Democrats appear to have fallen into "managerial mode" since the Coalition, and there is a space for Liberals to talk about new ideas that is largely unoccupied;
• the country in general is on permanent hold because of the uncertainty that has been unleashed since Brexit vote, leaving the territory of what we need to do next as a country to look forward and modernise, wide open and empty.    

The book is an attempt to open the debate on the issues we need to be urgently addressing to face -head on - the 21st century and its many challenges.

So we are pleased to be basing our annual conference on the themes of the book: a new Liberal economics; the welfare society; and climate change.

But we shall also have a section devoted to the policy areas we need to be addressing next, and also to look ahead at what a post-Brexit UK may look like.

We are delighted to have Kate Pickett as one of our headline speakers.  Kate is co-author of the influential book, The Spirit Level, and the newly published, The Inner Level.

As well as talking about the social and psychological issues that surround inequality, Kate will also be tackling regional inequality in the UK, which is the focus of one of the contributions in the SLF book.

We also very pleased that Layla Moran MP, our other headline speaker, will give the annual Beveridge Memorial Lecture.  Layla and Kate are joined by a whole host of other speakers, including Ed Davey MP, Amelia Womack (deputy leader of the Green party), Caron Lindsay, Baroness Kishwer Falkner, David Howarth, Alex Marsh and Lucy Salek.

Go to the SLF website to find out more and to register for the conference.

The early-bird registration rate finishes on 4 July, but bookings can be made online or bythe post any time up until the day of the conference, Saturday 28 July, or on the door on the day.

The conference takes place takes place at Resource for London, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA (two stops from Kings Cross), from 10 am to 4 pm and lunch and refreshments are included in the price.

Helen Flynn is chair of the Social Liberal Forum - follow her on Twitter.

Looking for Hanging Houghton

"I've been driving this route for eight months," said the bus driver, "and you're only the second person to have got off there."

Hanging Houghton is a great name for a hamlet. It stands just off the Market Harborough to Northampton road between Lamport and Brixworth, above the Brampton Valley. I once suggested Brixworth's men in black had been dealing with the downing of a flying saucer here.

When you get there you find a surprising amount of housing - old and recent. But that is all you find.

The tableau above - a pillar box, a telephone box that now houses a defibrillator and a noticeboard for Lamport and Hanging Houghton parish council in front of the former school - are all the amenities it offers now.

Hanging Houghton has not had a church for centuries, and the manor house that was built with its stone is long gone too. There is, of course, no shop, though it may have had a sub post office until recently.

This is a landscape that will surprise some: dry stone walls are a common feature on Northamptonshire's uplands.

And until the 1960s it was an industrial landscape, with an aerial ropeway and broad-gauge and narrow-gauge tramways all connected with the local ironstone quarrying industry.

At the bottom of the hill you meet the Brampton Valley Way, a footpath and cycle path that occupies the trackbed of the old Market Harborough to Northampton railway. More of that another day.

Six of the Best 802

Wilson T. Bell relates the dreadful history of children in concentration camps. "The Soviet Union’s system of camps that reached their peak during Joseph Stalin’s rule from the 1930s to the 1950s also reveals the destruction of families. While mass arrests broke up the family, and children of “enemies of the people” were separated from their parents, there were also many children in the Gulag itself."

The Central Railway scheme of the 1990s was a proposal for a line that would run through the spine of England to the Channel Tunnel.  It was in part a more economic anticipation of HS2 and in part a look back to the ideas of Edward Watkin in the 19th century. Christian Wolmar asks why it never went ahead.

"No figure in the history of American psychiatry has proven to be more contentious—and perhaps more misunderstood—than the late Thomas Szasz." Mark L. Ruffalo re-evaluates his ideas.

"Fast, deadly and loveable": Alan Butcher remembers the Surrey and West Indies bowler Sylvester Clarke.

"'I usually say that most people came to Cabin Pressure because of Benedict Cumberbatch. But they stayed because of John Finnemore,' says Carina Pereira, a fan from Belgium. Kate Whannel on the success of the Radio 4 comedy Cabin Pressure.

Anthony Teague introduces the 1962 British film It's Trad, Dad, which is being shown on Talking Pictures TV on Friday evening.

Take Me High: Cliff Richard in Brutalist Birmingham

Cliff Richard's last film as the star was Take Me High, in which he took on Brutalist Birmingham and won.

I once posted a scene of him at Gas Street Basin, but that has disappeared from YouTube. Some nonsense about "copyright" no doubt.

But here is a Midlands Today report from last year about the making of the film.

Market Harborough's buses are under threat

Last month I reported that the 58 bus from Market Harborough to Lutterworth was to be withdrawn.

The good news is that the county council has stepped in and will support the service for another year, possibly with a different bus company running it.

But it may be best not to get too hopeful. Here is part of the announcement of the move on the county council website:

The replacement service will run until June 2019 as all existing subsidised bus services across the county have been extended to the date. This allow for the development and adoption of a new passenger transport policy. 

Cllr Pain added: “We are finding that we having to cover the costs of supporting commercial bus services more and more which is why it is important we have a new policy in place to help mitigate the impact.”

Meanwhile, people are collecting signatures to save the 33 bus, which is a Market Harborough town service, and also the 44, which runs from Fleckney via Harborough to Foxton. Tur Langton parish council is also worried about the future of this service.

And the 67 service from Haborough to Corby and Gretton has already gone - a victim of the extraordinary financial crisis at Conservative-run Northamptonshire County Council. There is currently talk of a vestigial service being financed by Corby council.

Meanwhile, national government talks of cutting carbon output and combating loneliness.

Power grab: Tory county council leader wants to abolish every district council in Leicestershire

Unused quote from unnamed MP: “No f*cking way this is happening. I’m not having a committee in f*cking Glenfield decide planning applications in my area”
The reception for this idea isn’t great https://t.co/NsqQ0xw1jQ

— Dan Martin (@Danjamesmartin) June 29, 2018

The Leicester Mercury reports an extraordinary attempt to grab power by Nick Rushton, the Conservative leader of Leicestershire County Council.

He wants to see every district council in the county abolished and their powers passed to the county council.

His arguments for this move, at least as reported in the Mercury, are pretty incoherent.

Behind it, I suggest, lie modern Conservatism's dislike of truly local government and personal envy of the powers enjoyed elected by the elected mayor of Leicester.

Given the county council's diminished role in education, there is a stronger argument (if you are determined to see unitary councils) for abolishing the county and giving its residual powers to the districts.

The Mercury quotes the views of my old friend Simon Galton, the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the county:

"I’m astonished Nick Rushton did not mention this at the council meeting on Wednesday. 

"It can only be because he knows he doesn’t have the support of all the district council leaders. 

"I know at least two Conservative district council leaders are not on board. 

"This is just a distraction from the deep cuts the Tories are making to services."

Judging by the tweet above (and I have pretty shrewd idea who that comment came from) the county's Tory MPs aren't on board either.

Meanwhile, the people of Leicestershire continue to ask: when will the person who hacked Nick Rushton's Twitter account be arrested?

John Otway: Beware of the Flowers

"John's not being funny, he's just being silly," an exasperated teacher once told the class as the young Otway drank a bottle of ink.

There are times when you feel that teacher was on to something, but who can fail to like this?

Beware of the Flowers was the B-side of Otway's Really Free, which reached 27 in the UK singles chart in 1977.

This live version was recorded at Appletreewick, a remote village in Wharfdale, a couple of years ago.

I have left the chat on at the start because it is funny, not silly.