Archive for ‘February, 2024’

Do You Like Rock Music?

I had the privilege of seeing my favourite band, Sea Power, twice this week. First in Bristol’s Trinity community arts centre and then, closer to home, at the Islington Assembly Halls. There were no moshing polar bears on this occasion, but everything else was as it ought to be: lyrics welcoming Eastern European migrants (“Are you of legal drinking age? On minimum wage? Well welcome in”), a stage full of trees, stirring instrumentals of pounding drums, jangling guitars, hypnotic violin and rousing brass, celebration of the night’s sky, and an open-armed salutation from the stage that had everyone in their dedicated fanbase smiling all evening.

The Lost Rainforests of Britain

In the winter months I look for lichen. That habit, which I started because my binoculars are made temporarily redundant by reduced bird numbers on the uplands of the Bannau Brycheiniog during January, has developed new purpose since reading Guy Shrubsole’s magnificent ‘The Lost Rainforests of Britain’. Now I understand that the abundant varieties of these plant/fungi collaborations across the Welsh hills are not just distraction from the absence of something more exciting, but something incredible and historic in their own right – evidence of the last remaining fragments of the temperatre rainfrorests which once covered these isles.