A certain member of our household is hooked on this programme and usually I put up with it. But on Saturday night it went beyond what was reasonable.
OK I hear you say it's supposed to be a gritty and topical drama and it was quite right to feature an episode centred around the pandemic with people dying left, right and centre and it would have been wrong for it to pretend that the virus doesn't exist.
The fact is that life is depressing enough at the moment and what we need from our television is some lightness and entertainment (I even find the dreadful Wheel quiz light and relatively entertaining). What we got here was the best part of an hour of members of staff dying, members of staff having nervous breakdowns under pressure and one hour of unmitigated depression. I guess my main beef with this episode of Casualty was using death and the pandemic as entertainment at prime time.
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Thanks to everyone who responded to my "Playlist for Hethersett" idea. I asked on the "All Things Hethersett" Facebook page for local people to send me either one or two tracks of music that have special meaning for them. There was a good response and the playlist now has 43 tracks and runs for well over three hours.
I'm still adding tracks so if you are reading this, live in Hethersett and would like to add to it just get in touch with the name of the track and the artist's name and I will add it to the Spotify playlist.
You can get access to the playlist by following the link below. I'm not sure whether you have to have a Spotify subscription or whether anyone can play it. Would be interested to know how people get on.
The link is: Hethersett - playlist by petersteward | Spotify
I was very saddened to hear that Gerry Marsden has died.
The news came just a few hours after listening to Katherine Jenkins singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" on television. It's arguably the most stirring piece of music ever written. Everybody knows it - even Captain Tom recorded a version with Michael Ball.
It was written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein and originally comes from the musical Carousel. But without doubt (imho) the best version is the one played at Anfield before every Liverpool Football Club's home game - the version by Gerry and the Pacemakers and sung by Gerry Marsden.
Gerry and the Pacemakers were contemporaries of the Beatles. Like the Beatles they were managed by Brian Epstein and produced by George Martin. They were the first band to have their first three singles go to number one - even the Beatles didn't achieve that. Their version of "You'll Never Walk Alone" was the third of these singles.
They also recorded the seminal Liverpool record "Ferry Cross the Mersey."
Interestingly the next group to have their first three singles go to number one was also from Liverpool - Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
I saw Gerry Marsden very many years ago when he did a gig somewhere in Norwich - I believe it was at a nightclub in the Anglia Square area of the city but I might have got that wrong.
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I have started work on editing my blogs in order to self publish them via Amazon under the heading "A Year in Lockdown." The idea is to publish in March to mark the anniversary of lockdown. The idea is also to sell digital and printed copies of the books to raise money for the Priscilla Bacon Lodge appeal to build a new hospice close to the existing Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.
All proceeds from the sale will go to this worthy cause. I have a considerable amount of sorting out and editing to do before the blogs are in a suitable shape to publish.