FROM THE ARCHIVES: AFTER THE INTEREST SHOWN IN OUR ‘CALL TO ARMS’ OVER HOUGH HALL, MOSTON, WE THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED IN THIS ARTICLE ABOUT THE FASCINATING LIFE OF THE LAST MAN TO OWN IT…

LAST YEAR, the sister of the missing artist who apparently changed the face of modern film, contacted us to say that she had found him after a decade.

She had originally called us because she feared for her brother, Roger Barnard, after it was revealed his historic home, Hough Hall in Moston, North Manchester, had become a ‘Marie Celeste’ mansion.

It has been abandoned for almost 20 years.

Martine Barnard-Delaroche saw an internet video on the website showing the interior of Hough Hall, her brother’s ancient Grade 11 listed home in a down-trodden suburb. 

She  was devastated to see his belongings, including art works and his library of books, rotting away.

And she was ‘heart-broken’ when she spotted treasured family heirlooms overturned  and her brothers out-of-date passport on a kitchen table.

Martine said: “I couldn’t believe it at first, but I realised that if he had left everything, even his passport,  then he had to have left in a hurry.
“We haven’t spoken for many years and I feared something awful has happened to him.”

https://leighgbankspreservationsociety.blog/time-to-get-in-a-huff-over-towns-hall-of-sadness/

Then an address for Roger which had been passed to us proved to be right and Martine, from Tyne and Wyre, rang us.

Roger, in his late 60s, had moved to a terraced house very near to the hall he bought in 2005 shortly after his wife, Heather, became seriously ill.

The couple left much of their furniture in the hall because their new home was too small to accommodate it.

Martine’s brother, Roger Barnard, born in 1951, became one of the prime movers  of the  burgeoning  mid-70s video explosion, rubbing shoulders with the likes of controversial film-maker Roger Corman and video guru David Hall.

And in 1976 he helped found the influential London Video Arts organisation.

Roger,  the son of a  Battle of Britain survivor, Martine says, and was brought up on the idyllic Sussex coast minutes from the sea.

https://leighgbankspreservationsociety.blog/hough-hall-an-open-letter-to-the-people-of-moston/

Things seemed to bode well for him and after university he was exhibiting his work at the Tate, Air Gallery and in Glasgow and other major cities.

The early 17 century hall is listed because of its wood wall panels, its gables and its wattle and daub construction.

The couple  had grand plans for it, immersing themselves in the local community and holding open days at their ancient home.

Heather was a member of the Friends of Boggart Hole Clough, a sprawling park ten minutes walk from the farmhouse in Hough Hall Road, next to a local school.

A report in the Manchester Evening News in 2005 said; “Hough Hall in Moston opened its doors to the public on Saturday, welcoming visitors of all ages to see inside its Tudor interior and grounds for themselves.”

Roger said at the time: “We had lots of lovely comments in the visitors’ book afterwards with one person describing it as a ‘perfect autumn evening’ and another wrote ‘so enjoyable we had to come back’.”

Then personal tragedy struck and Roger and Heather to all intents and purposes vanished and the hall was abandoned. Later it went up for sale for £200,000 but there were no takers.

“Hyacinth House”

What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
To please the lions this day

I need a brand new friend who doesn’t bother me
I need a brand new friend who doesn’t trouble me
I need someone, yeah, who doesn’t need me

I see the bathroom is clear
I think that somebody’s near
I’m sure that someone is following me, oh yeah

Why did you throw the Jack of Hearts away?
Why did you throw the Jack of Hearts away?
It was the only card in the deck that I had left to play

And I’ll say it again, I need a brand new friend
And I’ll say it again, I need a brand new friend
And I’ll say it again, I need a brand new friend, the end

TAGS: Manchester, history, hall, art, artist, derelict, shame, Roger Barnard, Manchester City Council, Moston, Hough Hall, Ben Brierley , the Doors, Hyacinth House, Roger Corman, David Hall, London Video Arts, Boggart Hole Clough, Tudor

Bob Dylan is coming to Manchester as demand for his live shows remains never ending.

His Rough and Rowdy world tour is being seen as a new pinnacle in his climb back to glory.

At 81 Bob is painting, writing a book on top songs, welding iron art, creating artful stage performances, playing piano like Les Dawson, mugging to his audiences like a Cheshire cat and singing like he’s never sung before.

He has also added a new show in Oxford and Bournemouth after the original end dates due to “popular demand”.

Bob will now play 12 dates in the UK October and November 2022 as part of the tour which began in December in Milwaukee.

In July, he announced his first UK tour in more than five years.

He is playing four nights at the London Palladium before visiting Cardiff, Hull and Nottingham for arena shows, as well as two nights in Glasgow.

He will now also be performing at Manchester Apollo, Oxford New Theatre and closing at Bournemouth BIC.

All the shows are “non-phone events”, with the audience required to lock their phones in a Yondr bag for the duration of the performance.

Tickets for the new shows going on sale on Monday September 5.

Chronicler of ‘Judas’ Dylan dies at 70 … RIP CP Lee

Infernal memories of Manchester – a city most foul and fabulous

#bobdylan #roughandrowdy #neverending #rollingthunder #manchester #appollo #freetradehall #bobdylantour

Volunteer medic in the Ukraine Craig Stanley Mackintosh, aged 48, has been killed in an ambush.

Craig, a landscape gardener, from Thetford Norfolk, is said by witnesses to have been shot in the neck outside the  city of Kharkiv as he tried to save a Ukrainian fighter.

He had been refused entry to the armed forces because of an inoperable cist near his brain. But he decided to go to the ‘front line’ anyway.

Craig had two daughters and two step-daughters.

His sister said he had “died in action saving lives as a true hero”.

“It had always been his dream to serve in the armed forces, and watching the conflict unfold and seeing the devastation, he decided he wanted to go out to help people.”

#ukraine #armedforces #craig #putin #norfolk

In an excerpt from his soon-to-be-published memoir, Boy in the Ravine, Leigh looks back on the horror, tragedy, mystery and confusion surrounding the death of Diana

News was my lifeblood and because of stress I’d started taking it subliminally.

I had the radio tuned to the World Service throughout the night taking it all in as I half slept. It worked too, I knew about everything in the morning like a vast old fashioned ticker tape machine playing in my brain, ticker tape behind my eyes.

And that’s how the next big story of my career percolated into my head. The news of Diana’s death in a dirty dank Paris underpass broke around 01.15am.

And of course I missed it. Slept through it.

It was actually about 5.30am, four hours after the event, that the news jolted my brain awake and I opened my eyes. All I knew at that moment was that a member of the Royal Family was dead – the Queen or Philip? It couldn’t be any of the younger ones – but any member of the Royals dying was the news of the decade.

Then I heard that Diana, Princess of Wales, had been trapped in the back of a black Mercedes after the crash … she opened her eyes as she lay in the wreckage and watched her lover Dodi Fayed die. A policeman swore he heard th Princess whisper:”My God”.
I felt sick.

****

It was 6.45 when I reached the office at the heart of Birmingham after a 37 mile drive in torrential rain. Most people were there already, many had arrived before 2am and had been putting out special editions through the night and were already preparing early background pages for the first main edition which had been rescheduled for 11am. The place was buzzing and hung heavy in a fug of cigarette and cigar smoke.

The front page headline was already written DIANA DEAD. It was enough. It’s funny isn’t it how two words with just three syllables between them could shock the whole world.

At about 5.30am Buckingham Palace lifted their own news blackout and issued their confirmation. As the story unfolded we all got it stuck in where we could, rewriting PA and Reuters copy, subbing and editing, putting up headline ideas and sifting the wires for photographs. The presses were parked for a couple of hours but the whole building was buzzing, filling the void left after their rolling and thundering had stopped.

We came across what came to be known as The Last Photo, a heart-rending moment captured by a relentless pap.

One of those interminable newsroom rows about the correctness of publishing certain pictures broke out. The pap had taken it moments after the crash and it showed the Princess being given oxygen crunched in the well between the front and back seats.

I argued vociferously for it to be published but the opposition was massive. In fact that particular photo wasn’t published anywhere until nine years later when it appeared in a French magazine called Chi under the headline “World Exclusive: The Last Photo”. The world was furious – but I maintain until this day that it should have been published immediately… this was the horrifying and graphic truth of what had just happened to somebody of immense political and social importance, the most beautiful woman in the world. That picture was real life and it was our job to present real life to the world no matter how shocking or unpalatable.

We are such stuff as news is made on…

****

By 08.15 the news is going by in a rush – Trevor Rees-Jones. Diana’s bodyguard, had been admitted to the same hospital. 08.45 President Chirac’s wife Bernardette paid respects. 09.20 Sir Michael meets Chirac when he arrives at the hospital after assurances were given to Balmoral ‘ that these visits were ‘conducted with the utmost discretion’.

Diana’s butler Paul Burrell and another member of her household were asked to go to the Ritz to collect her personal belongings – ­particularly a dress which could be used for ;the preparation of her body’. But, when they got to the Ritz, they were told all her belongings had already been packed and returned to the UK. It was actually Ambassador’s wife Sylvia Jay who gave one of her own dresses and a pair of shoes for the body of Diana to be laid to rest in.

Later that morning Prince Charles, it was announced, was preparing to fly out to bring his wife’s body home. The wires were bouncing off the walls and the first edition was about to hit the streets.

We took a break. That’s when Joyce called. I walked to the underground car park while I listened to her, she was devastated like it was one of her own family who’d died. She asked me if I would call round to see her on my way home from work. I said yes.

Then it was back to work. 14.00 one of Diana’s friends, the minister of health Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of the Medicins Sans Frontières charity, was photographed visiting the hospital. He was weeping.

The big news rolled again as, at 17.00, Charles arrived at the hospital with Diana’s s sisters Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes. They were given a guard of honour on the steps. The paps did a good job and snatched a lot of film of his arrival but we used only one, the Prince looking devastated in the back of a limousine. The official line was that he was ‘clearly very upset’. However, when he was introduced to hospital staff he spent more than 40 minutes talking them before spending only a matter of minutes with his dead wife.

At 18.15 the Royals left with police outriders for Villacoublay airport. At 18.45 ‘the coffin was taken from the hearse by Royal Air Force bearer party and was marched to the aircraft in the presence of Charles and a small party of other dignitaries’ and by 19.00 They Royal party flew home’.

It nagged away at me why everything was happening so quickly and when you analysed all the millions of words and pictures available to the press, it was painfully clear that all we were being allowed to know, and publish, was this – that the Mercedes driver Paul Henri , who was a drunk, died with Dodi at the scene after the car hit a pillar at 70mph. Bodyguard Rees-Jones suffered ­multiple injuries but survived.

I was about to set off for home finally when it was announced that if they wanted to, key members of staff – I was secretly pleased that I was numbered amongst them again – were offered the chance of moving into a nearby hotel until Diana’s funeral was held five days later at Westminster Abbey.

I drove back to the Village of the Damned explaining that I had to ‘nip home’ to make arrangements for my dog. My boss Mike Hughes was a dog lover and agreed.

****

The days in the newsroom became interminably long, copy and pictures, copy and pictures, change pages, features, picture specials, biogs of the Royals, analysis, it never stopped. Food and drink was being constantly delivered into the office. We were all imprisoned by the biggest story most of them had ever worked on.

More than 2.5billion people across the world watched as Prince Charles, William, Harry and Diana’s brother Earl Spencer walked behind the coffin on the four-mile journey from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey. Diana’s casket was simple.

At the service Lord Spencer delivered an address that praised Diana and then turned this tragic emotional world event into a platform for his belief that it was the media that was resposible for her death.

****

It wasn’t until sixteen years later that the concerns most journalists expressed as Diana’s final drama unfolded began to be officially confirmed. The Sunday People – my old happy hunting ground – was handed an official log detailing the hours ­after Princess Diana died in Paris – but only after Whitehall had massively censored it.

The log, typewritten on three tatty foolscap pages, had 65 deletions including any reference to the names Charles, Diana’s sisters Sarah and Jane and France’s then-president Jacques Chirac. And amazingly civil servants had deleted “his” and “her”, claiming they had no choice ­because they had to protect all individuals’ rights to privacy.

All this proved in fact was that authorities had been desperate to maintain a shroud of secrecy over Diana’s death. A six-month inquest into the tragedy ruled only that the princess had been unlawfully killed due to the gross negligence of chauffeur Henri Paul and pursuing paparazzi.

For decades Dodi’s father Mohammad Al-Fayed claimed his son and Diana were killed by the British military at the behest of the Royal Family because they wanted to ensure the couple would never be married. Al-Fayed, the former owner of Harrods, alleged that Prince Philip had instructed MI6 to carry out the hit.

The sad thing is that once again the Press had been muzzled by news black outs, political pressure on editors, the rewriting of history and once again nobody has ever been able to uncover the real truth.

#Diana #Charles #Royals #Buckinghampalace #harry #PrincePhilip #thequeen #Harrods #Paris

OPINION:

I have known the drunks, the cheats, the liars, the corrupt, the womanisers, the thugs, the racists and the downright dishonest.

And I have known good coppers too.

But good, bad or just plain ugly, these people are put on this earth to protect us.

And in a real crisis they do it very well indeed.

In fact, at the police bravery awards earlier this year there was a Lincolnshire officer who arrested a double murder suspect despite being stabbed himself, 

There were four Merseyside Police officers who disarmed armed and violent young men.

A North Yorkshire officer had been nominated after she risked her own life to rescue both her colleague and a member of the public from a river.

Bravery Award Nominees 2022 (polfed.org)

Yep, hero cops still walk our streets at night and jump headlong into the mire of our lives to pull us back to shore.

And they do it for an average wage which wouldn’t make a McDonald’s manager look twice… better to toss burgers than people in jail for that kind of money.

The average for a copper is around £36,000 a year.

Burgers or b*st*rds then? Which would you choose to put in a little box?

So, let’s compare coppers to hacks!

Over the decades I have known many drunks, cheats, liars and womanisers within my own profession. However, not many thugs, racists and liars.

I have also known many good hacks.

We are put here to protect people, just like coppers. And we go out on a limb, go to war zones, riots, protests, boardrooms – and we go undercover to tell people what is going on.

The average pay for a journalist in the UK is around £26,000 a year…

Journalist salary in United Kingdom (indeed.com)

What price security and truth heh?

At least us coppers and hacks work together for the betterment of our society don’t we?

I worked closely with them on everything from the Yorkshire Ripper to Fred West. And those dogs from hell got what they deserved by law.

The law took them to court, they were sentenced and they were EXPOSED.

Yes, the media told the world what they’d done.

But now the police have decided that people like me should be treated like dissidents.

A police guidance has been found telling officers to look on journalists as criminals and extremists.

This edict can only serve to undermine police-press relations and obliterate the public’s right to know about crimes and how they are being investigated.

Look at Merseyside Police, they held briefings to escalate the hunt for the killer of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel.

Yet this advice to forces says officers should regard professional journalists as a potential ‘corrupting’ influence.

The College of Policing advises that officers must declare whether they have friendships or associations with people such as criminals. 

Today this includes recommendations about journalists. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary has recommended police officers disclose associations with ‘journalists and extremist groups’.

Because of complaints the inspectorate has agreed to change the wording. But that doesn’t change the sentiment.

It is clear that the dogs of law are attacking the pack that roams the streets day and night looking for the bits of lives that make people happy, sad and angry. We write about everything from Golden Weddings to twisted prime ministers and the horrors of war.

The police are deliberately undermining the freedom of the Press in the UK at a time when, because of the size of the job and the lack of people to do it, their backs are up against the wall and they are seen on the streets less and less, unless they are nipping across a car park into MacDonalds or Gregg’s. .

Earlier this year, this was reported: “HUNDREDS of serving police officers have been convicted of criminal offences – including assault and robbery, an investigation has revealed.

More than 300 cops currently serving in forces across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are guilty of crimes, according to data released under the Freedom of Information Act.”

Ruth Smeeth, the chief executive of Index on Censorship, said “The tendency to see reporters as a threat rather than an asset is something we are more used to seeing in authoritarian regimes than advanced democracies.”

The Society of Editors said: “ A successful working relationship between the police service and journalists is vital to policing legitimacy in the UK.”

So, there we have it … the police authorities – our government – want to treat people like me as if we are politically motivated activists. And they are advising a powerful organisation, the police, to ‘snitch’ on us and enforce it…

So, dog eats dog and the very bones of the truth are turned into nothing more than sh*t.

#police #policedog #news #newshounds #journalists #society #truth #honesty #thugs #lairs #cheats

OPINION, from Terry Kevin Charles

This isn’t me right now but it has happened to me and many others since this whole thing began.

Doctors won’t see you so what do you do?

You call 111 or 999 only to be told, get yourself to A&E.

You get to A&E and wait four hours only to be told, you need to book an appointment at your doctors surgery and ask your doctor to refer you to see one of our specialist physicians, neurologists etc.

So back you go and so you once again call your doctors surgery only to be told “our doctors are extremely busy they’re not seeing patients at the moment so it’s best you call 111”.

And the whole thing starts all over again.

It’s like Dèjà Vu.

It’s like the magic roundabout only this one is called “The Tragic Roundabout” and it’s not funny…

Clown world.

#NHS #DOCTORS #PATIENTS #HOSPITALS #WAITINGLISTS #a&e

Russia launched a rocket attack on a Ukrainian railway station killing a number of people including an 11-year-old child. 50 others were injured. It happened six months to the day since Putin sent his invasion of the country.

Independence Day was marking 31 years since the former Soviet country broke away from Moscow rule.

Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN Security Council that a Russian missile strike hit a passenger train and nearby vehicles at the rural train station in Chaplyne, a a town of about 3,500 people in the Dnipropetrovsk region – the scene of intense recent fighting between Ukrainian and Kremlin forces.

EARLIER: The Band of the Scots Guards played Ukraine’s Eurovision Song Contest winner, Stefania, on Horse Guards Parade in London,marking the 31st anniversary of Ukraine independence.

The moving video was posted by the UK Ministry of Defence and the Ukraine embassy to the United Kingdom.

At the same time Boris Johnson said Ukrains were “fighting with steel” to preserve their right to decide their own destiny.

It is 31 years since the Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union and six months since Russia first invaded on February 24.

Public gatherings have been banned in Kyiv, there are curfews in place in some cities but on this anniversary the real fear is of “repugnant Russian provocations”.

In the Ukraine, Independence Day is seen as the most important holiday of the year dedicated to the rebirth of the state and of freedom.

This celebration is different though, soldiers and equipment are on the frontline and will be misssing from parades.

And civilian gathering will put people in danger. Putin has indicated airstrikes will punish those celebrating.

But ignoring the day would be defeat.

#putin #ukraine #russia #independence #war #scotsguards #Chaplyne

Russian strike on Ukraine rail station kills 15 and wounds 50 | Daily Mail Online

An introductory outline of an original outlaw motorcycle club … by Eric Lastick

Intrigue and encounter, if so bold, with mayhap to that highway…southern California leather riders…Mojave hot sands—and rough baked-on tattoos shoulder vested to every hardened road…and pirate band accomplishments . Rides and riddles of the fine tokes of home-grown actions. Chains and ugly smiles…say of reactive miles. The bare minimum drive of anything less than freedom. Passion this motorbike and of it’s feel for the-roads. A sense of being alive. Club chapter’s—style their sights to the highest honours. The rugged cut and holds of embroidered #13…and rightly follow to it’s inception of this original disgruntled road bandit, now on a west wind excursion run, going northbound, the Oregon sails—yet of no long lost too his brothers (brethren) Just taken what he needs; if only a mama sail-cat,,,and in the motion of the motorbike, as far as the lawlessness will allow. Relinquish with no tames.

(Storyline) NOMAD’S HOARDS…of a solitary sunset. Motorcycle on the strengths of the highway—moves…as lone rider rapid spans from town to town. Rough leather as a nomad albatross on a single run. Mood,mode…and cloud cover in the-daylight daydream reserve. Hiawatha tobacco lulls…song long sober, as the lone wolf sits— sets fast as one. High gear, as his body stay in the very motions of the roads. Nomad ole’ pack run it’s rides in the late day flash—too the ties of how time flies. Motorbike revs as he wolf decree—his long hair hang-in down…moustache lengths the silver streak handlebars off the glare of the sun. Rip tide winds of yesterday’s themes and arms…calls of disasters in full pack deep seated solitary sodden—while setting motorcycle with the sprawls of the winds, and of these currents of it’s owns. To that of altitude…and of attitude.

Now go this nomad—as a free flow of the ride—yet motorcycle heavy of his old biker club. Wolf-pack lay-off…and sway so long away—with tooth dusted path of one lone rider. ”Could the pres of this club, in rightful scold—send this member to the drowns of lower receives? Likened of  clay based ultimate, in corridors where the ancients means to an end. All that was?” Trespass and all hates, fears…and now a nomad lathe on a tray—and right too the runaway highways. There, visions jumping jacks” past old school yard days—rightful the kid in him. Now, in the unknown loans—-and straight into the fury, and off every beat, too the turns, specs and spats. Still he keeps of the patch…and it’s cut, expect another place…another club—yet all in it’s same owns. For now, his amorous club of hunting wills…motion sickness clear this single body of vacant rescue forgone, as other than all the flack and disproportionate—while lifted and thrown of it’s stripped and stripes—-too the fodders of all highways—-off and all alone. ”And what often fateful wisdom…sleeps over it, as the grunt curtails in a depth of mind’s fire. Nomad sees of a gift—right in his inner lobe path. Ash no shame, his burnt of a cigarette…to a GAS AND GO…shopping sight. There, so spellbound, standing on 2 moist moccasins and beaded long frills, is a native American girl…so long and lean—as a gas station attendant with an attached smile like riches…Indian ways that flourish in the cool winds of new justices. Silky long straight black hair—with her double fixed on smile, as she stares to a handful of toasted smiles. Hot of the sun. The finds of trust in a stranger…yet somehow no stranger. They instantly fall together of teas and journeys in the nightfall as one. Nomad finds his new subset equal of 1 “Hop on, he says. A long ride back home. 

As the start date for Bob’s return to UK stages in October gets closer, we take a look at how he is coping with the rigours of age … we also re-publish recent reviews of his dates, this time from Philadelphia…

A while ago we met up with friends from Spain in Bratislava … we’d been doing it for a while, meeting up in different cities in different parts of the world to see old rockers perform.

This time we were about to witness Alice Cooper’s bizarre theatre of rock and the macabre.

After all the prempatory pomp and circumstance of a rock show that had become so polished it should have been on the skids Alice rattled old bones on to stage … his hair was lank, his make-up looked sweaty, his knees were creaky and his voice was pretty weak.

But worst of all he was using a walking stick.

There’s a reason for telling you this about Alice in a compendium dedicated to Bob |Dylan. And this is it…

Just at the right moment when his old man act was beginning to wear and his big scary dolls were fed-up of bouncing off the scenery, Alice transformed … he became a young man. He posed, he threatened, he screamed, his trashed his air guitar and strutted like the madman he has always been.

And surely, this is exactly what Dylan’s been doing! It is a simple fact that he is finally the Ol’ Blues Man, who’s been singing the blues since time began ,,, but is he geriatric, like so many have been saying?

No! Of course he’s not!

He is made of smoke and mirrors and since the rough and rowdy tour began he might have appeared to be badly built and walk on stilts … but look hard in to his shadowy kingdom.

Like Alice, Bob is doing it through a looking glass, a whole mirror of art, invention, thought, brilliance and power.

Bob is still on his feet, bending the knee, glowering, using his joker smile and tripping lightly over the snake-pit tangle of stage wires, he just kept it all hidden for a while..

Yep, sure there is the Ol’ Blues Man, the elderly man, the grandad of music, but there is also the young man who never went away. The performer and the artist.

Look at the Mephistophelian grin, the lighting from the bowels of the stage, the tall red curtain and the men in black with lyrics like “Twelve years old, they put me in a suitForced me to marry a prostitute…”

Just like Alice the fire is still there in his heart and his eyes. And his soul is dancing in the stars…

Here are some reviews below, this time from his recent shows in +Philadelphia

Alexander Leik writes:

“There are no changes to the set list. This is the direction in which our
hero has been headed for some time now. A show, performance, theatre of
sorts. It’s no longer about “what song is next, can I surprise the
stalwarts?” But it has become “I’m playing to the multitudes that I
contain, F the stalwarts!” And it is brilliantly done. The 8 new songs
(out of 10 possible) that are the foundation of this show are delivered to
near perfection nightly. When is the last time our hero played 80% of a
new album for us on tour?! 

The show will continue, I hope our international friends are able to
indulge in early 2022. I’ll sign off after The Anthem in DC. Very
curious to hear what our hero has to say about “the swamp”  . And
the cheesesteaks … well you don’t have to eat for the rest of the
year, no doubt! Yummy indeed!”

Laurette Maillet again!

“Bob is right on time. Dressed the same as last night but with the red shirt.
The few first words of "watching the river flow" are lost in the air. But the 
sound will improve for the best.  

The ambiance is festive. The public reacts to the songs. 

Some fans are dancing on " You've gotta serve somebody " and the entire 
right section of the floor is dancing on " Good bye Jimmy Reed ".
I have the feeling Bob is looking in that direction and he is impressed.

Joking about the Philadelphia cheese-steak (Something like 'if you eat one , 
you don't have to eat for the rest of the year!') before introducing the Band.

Great show. Close to the second one at the Beacon.”
 
David Mendick writes: 

“Dylan says “yummy” for the first time on stage ! Nobody was enjoying
this show more than Dylan himself. From beginning to the very end he was
in as good a mood as I’ve ever seen. It’s strange cos I felt this was
going to be a disappointing audience - it was a little slow to fill and
seemed somewhat quiet until the lights went down. And then - oh boy - the
place was brilliant all night long and Dylan fed off the superb
atmosphere. For instance Serve Somebody has been ok for most of the tour
but tonight was a highlight. As for Dylan stuck behind the piano and all
the talk of he can’t walk and can barely move - well he’s heard the
talk. I Contain Multitudes he’s center stage with his arms outstretched
telling all the world “here I am” And he kept coming back for more. I
wouldn’t dare say “like Rocky” - there, I just did.”
 

Barry Gloffke writes:

 “It was a crowd pleaser. Bob looked good, sounded good, seemed happy and the
audience responded in kind. We cheered, yelled, danced and sometimes stood
awestruck at the sheer sincerity in Bob’s singing/playing. The Band was
muscular and tight tonight when necessary, light and airy when needed.

Thanks Bob for a string of excellent shows and a lifetime of memories and
lessons. Hope to see all you Bobcats on the next tour!”

Stephen Goldberg writes:

“Last night was our third for this tour after Hershey and one night st the
Beacon. Surprisingly, many unsold seats in the Loge. I guess Philly
isn’t his town. I mean the side sections except for the first few rows
were completely empty. Dylan stood at the mic center stage for the entire
I Contain Multitudes. I have to admit I prefer it when he doesn’t play
piano. To me his piano playing muddies the mix ( not counting the
clunkers). False Prophet as usual was a standout as was My Own Version If
You. The crowd really responded to Serve Somebody. Bob flubbed part of Key
West and you could see him turning the pages on his piano. Key West seems
to be getting faster and harder each time he plays it.”

Thomas O’Halloran, the elderly busker fatally stabbed as he drove his mobility scooter in west London was raising money for the Ukraine.

The musician – locally famous for he played accordion in Greenford every day – was stabbed on Western Avenue in Greenford and managed to keep going for 75 yards on his scooter before asking a member of the public for help.

Police had released an image of a man seen running away from the scene armed with a knife.

Mr O’Halloran, who was originally from Ennistymon.

Local councillor Martin Conway said he left there more than 70 years ago but would regularly return for holidays.

The Metropolitan police west area commander, Chief Superintendent Sean Wilson, said: “Yesterday an 87-year-old grandfather on a mobility scooter had his life needlessly snatched away in a shocking act of unprovoked violence right here in Greenford. I understand that our community will quite rightly be shocked and appalled at this incident, as I am too.”

he killing of Mr O’Halloran follows an attack on Monday morning on a man stabbed to death at a Korean restaurant on Poland Street in London’s West End. That afternoon a 58-year-old woman was stabbed to death at an address near Acton Town tube station.

On Sunday a 60-year-old man was fatally injured during a fight in Dagenham on Sunday, and a 25-year-old man was shot dead in Walthamstow on Saturday.

Grandfather stabbed to death on his mobility scooter played accordion to raise money for Ukraine (telegraph.co.uk)

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