Nine Feet Underground

Leaving the south coast and heading home with the expectation that E will be discharged from hospital today, at last. Once I get home I'll have a lot of coordinating to do for upcoming events in June and July, so I'm probably not going to get much of a chance to read the papers or do much else. An uneventful journey home and as soon as I arrive I start finding out what is going on with the hospital in terms of E's return home.  A can of worms!! E is medically fit to go home but seemingly there is a communications issue between the hospital and social services: the care agency is ready to restart care as soon as they get the relevant go-ahead from social services, but it's not arriving.  I chase all parties involved but it would be easier to push water uphill. Evening arrives and it is clear E won't be coming home today though the nurse assures me she will be coming home tomorrow. I have much to do and get on with it. Son #2 and I make dinner and sit down to watch ...

I'm reading this book, 'Good Night and Good Riddance', about the influence John Peel and his radio shows had on music and cultural life for over 35 years.  It's a great book that I'd thoroughly recommend and, despite the book's subtitle, it's no hagiography, and casts a critical eye at times, even though, on balance (and I'm up to 1979), it pretty much confirms what fans, including myself, thought of him and his maverick musical taste. This post, however, is not a book review - that'll appear on goodreads after I finish it - it's about a question that gets raised in the book when the story reaches the mid-1970s.   [Oh, and in case the title of this post misled anyone, this is not going to be about the Midlands grebo band, affectionately referred to as PWEI aka Pop Will Eat Itself: this is not the article you are looking for.] My question - and it's not posed as a question in the book - concerns the state of rock music around ...