This is my go to playlist of many of my favourite pieces of music and something I often listen to on shuffle on the car entertainment system (mustn't call it a radio or stereo anymore).
So there I was on the way to play tennis yesterday morning when what should come up but the Fish Cheer or Chant. Now that probably doesn't mean a lot to most people. The Fish Cheer which is also called the "I Feel Like I'm Fixin To Die Rag" comes from 1965 and was a protest song against American involvement in the Vietnam War.
The sixties were the decade for protest songs and this was one of the best/worst according to how you looked at it. It was recorded by Country Joe McDonald and the Fish and was played at the Woodstock Festival of 1969. The Fish Cheer features the spelling out of a four letter word as in "Give Me An F" etc (I think most people reading this will understand where I'm going with that one).
Anyway the lyrics are rather childish looking back over 55 years but they were part of the hippie culture of the time.
"And it's one, two three, what are we fighting for?
Don't ask me I don't give a damn
Next stop is Vietnam
And it's five, six , seven, open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopie! We're all gonna die."
I Googled anti-Vietnam war songs and came up with a list of over 200 - so it looks as if another playlist is on its way.
Another anti-war lyric came back to me from another of my favourite artists - Rod McKuen.
"Soldiers who want to be heroes number practically zero
But there are millions who want to be civilians."
OK it isn't Shakespeare or Keats but it has stuck in my memory for many years.
I have recently signed up for a 30-day free trial of History Hit. This is the Internet history channel founded by Dan Snow and there's plenty of content on it covering many periods of history. I watched an interesting 25 minute piece on the Folly that is Broadway Tower in the Cotswolds - somewhere we visited just before lockdown struck last year.
I have mentioned this Folly before as it was featured in the Father Brown series of mysteries on BBC television. It makes me want to visit other Follies throughout the country. I do remember having a look at the so called House in The Sky which is in Suffolk but there are many others.
The definition in building terms of a Folly is: "A building constructed primarily for decoration." One of the most intriguing is a summerhouse designed in the shape of a pineapple in Scotland. It was the kind of thing that Antonio Gaudi constructed in Barcelona and nobody thought twice that the man was Barking Mad. There are many of these structures to uncover once we can travel again.
One of the first trips we will be making once it's safe to do so is a visit to Constable Country which we have had in mind but had to put off for over a year. Apparently you can get off the Norwich to London train at Manningtree and then walk to Dedham Vale and the other areas on the Suffolk/Essex border associated with the British landscape painter John Constable. It seems time to start planning again.