Back to Mull

We're going back to Mull tomorrow to see if it's as gorgeous at Easter as it is in high summer. Given that today we've spent the day in the garden, all the French windows flung open, for all the world like an August day, I suspect it might be rather wonderful. Having said that, the Western Isles seem to have their own micro-climate, and not in a good way.

So for once my absence will be justified. I'll have lots to say when I get back.

The picture was taken by Martin while walking the dogs in July. Makes your heart soar, doesn't it? God's own country indeed.

Old rockers don't know when to stop

From the BBC news website this morning: "Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has claimed he snorted the ashes of his late father during a drugs binge.
"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow," he told NME."

Now I've always had the suspicion that behind the hard-living, high-rolling, head-banging facade of most of those 70s dinosaurs of rock lie some really mind-blowingly stupid people and now I think I have the proof.

What was he trying to prove with this? "I am more decadent than anybody else"? Perhaps "I don't adhere to the small-time taboos of the little people"? How about "Hey, look at me - what a raging twat." The NME readers will surely be bemused. Will there be many who aill applaud him "Yeah! Go Keith, you old rocker!"? Some, I'm sure. But probably not many.

Maybe he did it, maybe he didn't. His publicist, who's probably scanning the appointments pages or leafing through her contacts book as I write, insists that she can't believe anyone took the claim seriously. If he did it, he's as addled as the most addled addled thing in the history of being addled. And frankly, if he made it up, that really smacks of desperation. A pensioner, clinging to the remnants of his bad-boy reputation; a pensioner who falls out of a tree when drunk or stoned. Frankly it's very disappointing. I remember Keith Richard when I was a child, when he was gorgeous; etiolated and wan but wiry and devastatingly glamorous.

I went to see the Stones at Wembley years ago and they were already past their best. My brother made jokes then about Zimmer frames. And here we are, some fifteen years on, and they're still churning out music, going on tour and bragging about excesses. I have some sympathy with the Who's position. But I don't want them to die - I just want them to retire. The music's rubbish, the debauchery is embarrassing and they're not fooling anybody.

Hang up the leathers and the headband, Uncle Keith, and have a nice cup of tea.

To work or not to work

Read the Times 2 section yesterday and became totally incensed by an article by someone caled Leslie Bennett in which she advised women "don't give up the day job" and then went on at some length (she's actually written a book on the subject) about how women don't know the financial cost of giving up work and the difficulties of getting back to it years later and Him Indoors might drop dead or lose his job at any moment and then where would you be, girls?

Well to be honest, if you haven't discussed it with your partner beforehand and agreed what needs to be done in ensuring that he has enough insurance to cover you in the case of his death or his redundancy or his critical illness, then you're a bloody idiot. As is he if he doesn't ensure that your life is covered in the event that you kick the bucket and he has to carry on without you. REALLY! Don't people talk to each other any more?

As to the financial consequences of giving up work, well...duh. Of course you suffer financially. Of course you can't stroll back in ten years later as if nothing had happened - if you could, how entitled to yell would those loyal souls be who had continued to work all that time? It's a decision that you need to make as a couple, and it has its costs and its benefits much like any other maor decision you're going to make in the course of a lifetime. Frankly, to suggest that it will be taken by women without basic consideration of the ramifications is insulting to my gender. And his actually.

How can she spin this guff into a whole book? I'm almost, but not quite, curious enough to read it and see.

Luckily I can read this stuff and become irritated but never will anyone succeed in convincing me, or my partner, that we made the wrong choice. It's right for us. Doesn't mean it's right for everyone, but it's right for us.