Revenge on the car.....

The press was full of pictures of the destruction caused by a flash flood in the Cornish village of Boscastle. Thank goodness no one died, but a lot of cars did.

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Strikes me that this is divine intervention. Until we stop screwing up the environment there will be an increasing number of these storms which will precisely target and destroy the real cause of so many our problems - cars. Mini typhoons following the M25 orbital motorway next? Or will we see a final immolation scene with a giant flood wiping all the cars off the face of the earth? - or have I been listening to too much Wagner?
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If you like Spem in alium try this …

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Sketches of Joaquin Rodrigo

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Goodall showed that as a Wagner conductor he has no equal. His control of the musical architecture is absolute. The huge span of the score was shaped as if in a single phrase. At the same time the music seemed to move spontaneously, by its own inner force, and with a glowing beauty of sound, an inevitability of rise and fall and a kind of natural momentousness of expression that will remain ideal. These were the words of David Cairns writing in the Sunday Times in August 1987. The occasion was Reginald Goodall’s last ever conducting engagement, the Proms concert performance of Act 3 of Parsifal shown in the rehearsal photo above. Wagner’s saga of the holy fool somehow sums up Goodall; as David Cairns wrote he was a Wagner conductor without equal, he was also a champion of Britten’s music who conducted the first performance of Peter Grimes , yet he flirted with fascism and alienated himself from many who tried to help him during a career that lasted more than sixty-five years. Goodall...
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