Bob Dylan was photographed in another enigmatic ‘backstage’ outfit.
And the only things missing were his leopard skin boots.
His white Godfather-style Homburg was angled to look rakish and a little roguish, his white T-shirt emblazoned the message Godspeed to You across his skinny chest, black too-long baggy pants flapped like black crows around his legs.
And he finished off the impromptu fashion show with a pair of battered lace-up working man boots.
Somebody had actually brought him his boots and shoes… but his Leopard skin boots would have gone far better with that hat…
His gait too – strong, striding-out and determined – belied his deliberately (I think!) doddery appearance at the beginning of his post-covid Rough and Rowdy Ways tour in America.
Right at the beginning, last November in Milwaukee, he held on to his piano for support and looked unsteady on his feet as he crept towards the centre stage mic. He was often bent in the middle, his white David Burn jacket was too big … but juxtaposition was in the air.
Bob was presenting a new voice to the world. He was singing like a good’n, like the musical maestro he is.
Bob, 81 years old, was also using ancient stage techniques. His face, in the first half started to take on a Mephistophelian quality as the under-stage lighting brought a brittleness to the concerts and the images of the rock n roll hero and his band.
But this wasn’t Bob as the geriatric renegade who bashed out off-key piano riffs and major key cacophonies from the ‘safety zone’ behind his upright piano. This wasn’t the Bob who spent the first ten years of his ‘time out of mind’ comeback confirming to world that his voice was a phlegmy, croaky, up-singing mess.
No. This is Bob – as old as a proverbial dinosaur – coming out of his shadowy kingdom of creativity and serving up a smoke and mirrors, rather bonhomie performance where he (deliberately) gets younger as the concert gets older.
Playing the old man and then rising like a hip Lazarus is something Alice Cooper has been doing fabulously for years… but now it’s part of Bob’s act too. And he does it brilliantly.
Yes, he has, now and again, plonked himself on a bench on stage while performing. But a nice sit-down and a bit of sing-song is fine when you’ve already played 75 venues in a few months.
This photo was taken in Los Angeles a few days ago, as he prepared a soundcheck at Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Bob is expected to wrap up the North American leg on July 6 in Denver.
But then there is the rest of the world beckoning to him.
And, me for one, will be standing in line to see him.
Spare a thought for my lost brother, asks Alan Bennett
Alan wrote: On this day, June 16th, in 1964, four days after Keith’s twelfth birthday, he was going to spend the night at our gran’s house… my mother was going to bingo and she walked with Keith to the zebra crossing at busy Stockport Road.
Once he had crossed and they waved goodbye to each other, they went on their way, Keith was only a few streets away from the safety of gran’s house.
He would have passed a small side street that led through to Westmoreland Street where Brady lived. It is now known that Hindley used to park in that street waiting for Brady to join her.
Somewhere along the familiar route Keith took, the vehicle with both Brady and Hindley inside pulled up alongside Keith. Keith was enticed into the vehicle and then driven to Saddleworth Moor, where Keith was sexually assaulted, murdered and buried.
It is, and always will be, very hard to accept that later that same night the rest of us slept safe and sound in our beds. It was not until the following morning that we all discovered Keith had disappeared. When my gran got to my mother’s house the following morning I heard the question ‘Where is Keith?’
Neither my gran nor my mother had a telephone at home, my mother thought Keith had arrived at my gran’s, my gran thought that Keith had changed his mind and had decided to stay at home.
I will never forget the confusion of that morning that quickly turned to panic and terror.
Please, once again, can I ask you spare a thought of remembrance for Keith today.
We are bullied, terrorised, criminalised, traumatised, lost, empty, deflated, exhausted, worthless, frustrated, stressed, depressed, unhappy. Suicidal
BY ANDREW JOHN TEAGUE
Six years ago I opened D.A.D.s having seen the need to ensure children are put first (writes Andrew John Teague).
Ever since I’ve spent as much time as possible helping, supporting and saving poor souls who say: “I can’t take any more.”
We are an open group for a number of reasons – it’s far easier for anyone to find us and post if they need help as a matter of urgency.
A dad or mum lost is devastating for anyone. And the children left behind.
There is nothing almighty about personally saving hundreds of parents life. It is FACT!
During the times gone by we have been made aware of so many who, along the way, have taken their lives.
Sadly. most never even knew there are groups willing to help and support.
CONTACT DENIAL
What is contact denial for me? I see it possibly the worst way of ill-treating the absent parent and child/children.
Often the aligned parent is looking for attention CONTROL with no regard or remorse.
Being told you can’t see your child/children is barbaric and defies the meaning family.
CONTROLLING PARENTS GAINS
Tax credit
Benefits
Cms payments
Ultimate control
WHY OH WHY
CONTROL
REVENGE
BITTERNESS
ANGER
RAGE
JEALOUSY
DRAMA
FACT
Often I see posting with the word ‘fact’ yet see that it’s simply not, it’s self representation by some.
Six years of being on the horrific side of the child abuse gives me enough knowledge and proof to state contact denial kills.
Even after gaining what our daughter longed for – her dad – I have still been helping supporting in court and out of court.
1000s and 1000s of parents desperate for hope, a little faith as the clutches of ex partners and a broken system rain down the hurt and pain on the first unexpected mums and dads.
After all the hope of family court fills parents at the start with hope.
FAMILY COURTS
The judges expect the courts to be the ultimate last resort when it comes to CAO (contact arrangement order).
Yet it is more common for them to be the first port of call. Absent parents have exhausted all methods before entering into the family court Arena
FAILED ATTEMPTS
The ex
Family members
Friends
Mediation
Often some of these fails can end up with the active parent seeking contact having a stay away order placed on them causing even further delays.
ABSENT PARENTS POSITION IN FAMILY COURTS
The absent parent comes into the family court on the back foot. More often than not the absent parent feels targetted not only by the obvious the aligned parent but also others behind the secret family court doors.
ABSENT PARENTS FEEL
BULLIED
TERRORISED
CRIMINALISED
TRAUMATISED
LOST
EMPTY
DEFLATED
EXHAUSTED
WORTHLESS
FRUSTRATED
STRESSED
DEPRESSED
UNHAPPY
MENTALLY DRAINED.
SUICIDE
Many parents feel suicidal when going through the trauma of contact denial/family courts.
The reality is there is not a shred of care from anyone within the draconian barbaric family courts.
We can never forget the feeling of utter despair when the contact denial gets more and more painful.
There is never a truer saying the only way anyone will ever know is if they have been in it .
I have and I will never forget how it tortured our daughter and myself.
Our daughter got through it because I fought for her every time and kept my focus
Learned researched and was able to challenge
It’s not easy parents emotions are all over the place causing the PTSD.
WORSE
The times of the year we have to be on guard even more
Christmas
Birthdays
Mothers day
Fathers day
Any special occasion
They are all triggers
Even a specific song, film, store, holiday place can be a trigger
There have been so many times I have seen or heard I can’t take it any more, so so many.
FAMILY COURT TIME
Sadly and the reality family courts take far to long extinguishing time time children don’t have.
We do our best to help parents get through and back in contact as quickly as they can.
Time is of the essence
We have seen many many children reunited with the absent parent as parents learn
Most parents so eventually regain contact
Sadly there are some who don’t and many come into it the newbies
Never give up your children need you DON’T turn things onto your children (often unknown to the absent parent)
Keep your focus on your child/children
Reach out don’t hesitate remember we have been there we are on the same journey
Does a writer have the right to write about their world gone wrong?
A few days ago I wrote a short piece looking back at Like a Rolling Stone by the never-ending Bob Dylan. LRS is a song that changed the world … six minutes of angst, anger, vitriol and viciousness.
Bob was a wild skinny foppish wisp of will-and-determination who brought a tortured voice of poetry and accusation to a world slopping its way through the mud and the blood of war, violence and hatred.
That was back in 1965 – the era of short melodic a-doo-ron-ron two minute love songs to your girl, your mum, your car and your dog.
But LRS launched itself out of the mono-speaker in dad’s valve radio like a banshee in shades, howled, melted the wallpaper, came on at your girl, boiled your car, licked your mother and kicked your dog in the b*llocks.
And it shocked, mystified, appalled and frightened your parents, particularly those who extolled the virtues of their working-class background yet aspired to the middling mordancy of the middle-classes who are bit squiffy in Torremolinos and down the Tory club.
The six minute song was based on a blues standard, glistened like a Christmas tree of Phil Spector’s wall of sound, had the hip-ness of The Beats, the arrogance of rock ‘n’ roll and was searingly honest – telling things just how they were.
And that’s the point … writers are told to write about what they know.
So, does that include members of your family or friends, warts and all?
I say yes.
I am first and foremost a writer, but my mainstay has always been journalism and I have always told the truth. That’s my job. And like 95 per cent of my colleagues I have never knowingly published anything untrue.
That’s what writing is about … publish and be damned.
Well, I was damned – by somebody who should be close to me – and they have never spoken to me since.
My literary crime?
I used a figure from their lives to creative the tension of juxtaposition between a Bob Dylan figure and the regular bloke on the street back then.
My memory is clear. I was brought up in a noisy laughter-ridden sometimes brutal big beer drinking back street town of pubs butchers and scruffy terraced houses. Big men, beery men, dripping Park Drive from their bottom lips, proud of their beer bellies that turned the belts of their work-pants into wobbly slings.
Real men liked to look pregnant way back in the 60s.
Real men in the 60s drank and smoked too much, admired celebrity drunks like John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, saw women as things to be shouted at and ridiculed regularly… treat’m mean, keep’m keen.
Real men gauged each other’s worth by how much beer they could drink, how many cigarettes they smoked and how many husbands they claimed to have cuckolded behind their own wife’s back.
I wrote about a real man just like this … a man I watched go apoplectic when out-of-the-blue Dylan’s anthem burst from the airwaves. His re-action was madness. And terribly frightening for any child already flying head-long into the exotic horrors of puberty.
This man was the juxtaposition … Bob, spooky, androgynous, mysterious, artistic. Skinny as a rake … on the other hand, our 60s artisan was a big general construction worker, bluff, inarticulate, angry, uncomprehending, humourless and dark, dark, dark.
And he drank cider on the privacy of his own couch.
I mentioned this in the LRS piece … I mentioned it because men – and women – drank to excess back in the 60s, it was just a way of life. Men got drunk. Women got migraines.
And this is where the conundrum raised its hyenic head. And screamed at me.
I had apparently betrayed this man by telling the truth about him.
I hadn’t said he was a sober, even-tempered, witty, caring, loving, intelligent, articulate, gentle, thoughtful, generous, spiritual or even demonstrably loving person, because he wasn’t.
No. I’d taken the essence he showed to the world and depicted him on his couch with a glass of cider in his hand objecting in words of no more than four letters about a song on the radio.
That’s the way so many working class, drinking class, bad tempered class men were in the 60s. I never suggested he was a drunk or a bully. But so many men were way back then.
So, as a writer, a man who delves invited or uninvited in to other peoples’ live for a living – a man whose job has always been to challenge liars, cheats, thieves, conmen, politicians, businessmen, princes and kings – I was being ‘spiked’, edited by a member of my own family for telling the truth.
A truth they didn’t want to come out, despite the fact that this man who drank at home and had a vile temper was a secret all over the place. Also, let’s face it, he chose to be a drinking man and never bothered to address his vile temper.
A member of my family was asking me to tell lies about a man I hadn’t even insulted as far as I was concerned. Yet, he had insulted me all his life.
So, should writers write about the rights and wrongs in their own families?
I say yes.
It is honest.
And why should family not be looked at through the arrow of light in a prism?
Your life is made up of good and bad, angst and fear, love and loss, unfairness and luck … but it is also made up of the influences of those around you, the good, the bad and the ugly, the cousins, the uncles and the aunties, the vicar at the local church, the teachers and the lawyers.
Write about those who have done you good and those who did you wrong.
Tell the truth as a writer, always.
And never ever be afraid of showing the world about the truth of your life and of those who influenced you … these people are the teachers.
Those who need to know the truth about how their lives affected the lives of others.
And that’s the truth.
#writers #writing #honesty #truth #secretsandlies
Short Shark Redemption…Leigh gets his teeth into going home and Rodney hits the road
Average price of a litre of petrol at UK forecourts reached 185p
Average price of diesel also reached 190.9p
Filling up a family car hit £100 for first time in UK
Do you know, Britain’s home fires are still burning – but in these, the cyber-technic Noughties, they are incandescent with shock, horror and fear.
SHOCK that our lying politicians – like bouffanted buffoon Boris and that simperingly limp lawman Sneer Starmer – partied while the rest of us sweated, vegetated and wasted away in the gently settling detritus of our coronavirus prison homes.
Two years of living locked away like we were kow-towing to Maggie’s Protect and Survive pamphlet on how to live in a nuclear war … it was a dress rehearsal rag.
And a red rag to those of us whose lives had been burned down to the ground by an incendiary little blobby greasy bug.
Talking of blobby greasy bugs, there is always the HORROR of the blobulous, snake-eyed monster man … the man who was even willing to lose Moscow’s McDonald’s franchise so that he could see his final days out wiping a neighbour off the face of the Earth over a boundary dispute.
And as he contemplates his naval – and his army and his air force – we wait with growing FEAR that Mr Put-it-in will press his nuclear belly button and simply f*rt the world away in a Red cloud of stinking air and trembling haemorrhoids…
Talking of f*rts – Boris is actually pumping up the volume on that other major thing that’s putting the wind up us too!
Fuel prices…
Boris and his fellow buffoons are thinking about setting a “pumpwatch”. Yep, a pump watch! They’re not ‘f*rting’ about are they!
No, in fact the scheme will target the absolute ar*oles who are swindling drivers on the forcourts.
It will point drivers to cheap petrol stations and avoid the twisted rip-off merchants.
Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said: “We are looking at all possible options and transparency may have a role to play in that.”
Transparency may have a role to play?
Well, that’s some ground-breaking statement from a Boris bozzo eh? Tranparency…
The move comes after twisted, uncaring petrol stations failed to pass on the 5p fuel duty cut.
And now, petrol has made its biggest daily jump in almost 20 years.
It now costs me an £129 to fill up my diesel saloon – and apparantly Downing Street is furious that garages are ‘taking the p*ss …’
Petrol stations have only passed on around half of the 5p fuel duty cut to hard-pressed motorists.
The Pumpwatch option is a website where drivers can look at a map showing them the average price for petrol and diesel in every town.
This would be run by the Competitions and Markets Authority.
Well, let’s keep our fingers crossed that this Shocky Horror Show we are all have bit parts in will soon play to the world and we are given all the transparency we deserve in our journey through democracy and downright lies.
When that bloated Grim Reaper Putin invaded the Ukraine he spun the world by its tail.
And the gut reaction of many global property speculators and ex-pats was that, `particularly the Spanish market, would fail as Russian money was frozen in the world’s air like black ice.
But far from it.
The market in Spain is actually still booming – although house prices in places like Marbella, Torreveija and many parts of the Costas are so inflated that it can be cheaper to buy a house in the leafy suburbs of the UK and an expensive sunlamp.
Yep, the country which has been a favourite with Brits, Irish, Swedes and Russians for decades is no longer the cheap bunfight of wine women and thong.
Many of the sunny resorts are becoming oases for elderly couples moving in to Moorish retirement homes close to the beaches or pinned on a mountainside near a fly-blown lake.
Rich Russians have for decades been big buyers of swish and not so swish holiday homes in the Costas – Mad Vlad himself owns a 4.5 acre compound in La Zagaleta in the mountains outside Marbella.
It was thought that the freezing of Oligarch-ish fortunes in a panic response to the blood and destruction in the land of the sunflowers and corn would take the boom out of the market.
Certainly there were reports of deals falling through because of the big buck sanctions but the market held on to its hopes and prices more or less remained.
Actually. one reason Spain may have been seen as a safe haven was its initial inability to freeze any Russian bank accounts, despite detaining at least three luxury yachts linked to ‘blacklisted individuals’.
In fact after weeks of war even neighbouring Portugal has blocked only one account owned by a sanctioned ‘individual’, with just 242 euros in it.
So, there are many reasons people – including Putin and his lot – still love to be beside the seaside, soaking up the sun and the vodka-laced sangria.
And despite the war speculation and investment in the Land of the Bull – and nobody can deny how much ‘bull’ has gone in to boosting the price of homes in Spain over the last decade – it still seems the way to go for people looking for a cool new life in the sweltering heat.
The Russian Federation against Ukraine was bound to affect the foreign real estate market in Europe. And the world.
Well, after the Russian invasion, interest in countries that, due to geographic location or neutrality, can be considered safe for the foreign real estate market, has gone up.
“After the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, there was a shock that meant a decline in purchases of foreign real estate,” Jan Rejcha said. He is a foreign real estate specialist.
However, the invasion brought an immediate positive response and interest now continues to grow month by month, in Austria by 68 percent, Croatia 72 percent. And in Spain 45 percent.
In Switzerland the hills are alive with the sound of cash tills… interest increased by 210 percent! In Italy, it is 168 percent.
In 2020 the Costa del Sol property market suffered travel restrictions, But 2021 was totally different. The market has seen strong growth in all areas. And people who work in the property sector say the second half of 2021 was one of the busiest periods ever.
By the end of the second quarter, sales had picked up by 5.4 percent. But as summer hit, the Costa del Sol property market moved into top gear. By the end of September, sales of all property types went up by 23.6 percent.
Madrid stands at the top of the leader board with real estate values in the region going up by 11.3% between January and March.
Property went up by 8.4% on the islands of Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza, and by 7.7% in Andalusia, home to the Costa del Sol.
Just 7 of the total 52 provinces in Spain saw price drops in Q1 this year and all were below 2%.
Keep on keepin’ on Ma’am in our LAND OF SOAP AND GLORY
UPDATE: The Queen was advised not attend today’s (Friday) Jubilee service at St Paul’s Cathedral. She is said to be have suffered discomfort while watching Thursday’s parade at Buckingham Palace.
The decision was made with “great reluctance” after considering the “journey and activity required”, the palace said.
Meanwhile, the telly soap about Manchester – Coronation Street – has become Britain’s land of soap and glory as we celebrate the Queen’s Platinum jubilee.
Street veterans Helen Worth and Antony Cotton have received ‘gongs’!
They are among dozens of entertainers — including MasterChef hosts John Torode and Gregg Wallace — honoured to mark Her Majesty’s 70 years on the throne. Helen, aged 71, has played Gail Platt for almost 50 years.
She said: “To be honoured for doing something I have enjoyed so much for so many years is truly wonderful, and I am particularly delighted to receive this award in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Year. Anthony, aged 46, made his debut on the cobbles as Sean Tully back in 2003, said he was “overwhelmed” with the same gong as Helen — for his acting and charity work with troops.
By Leigh G Banks: Grooming gifts, craft beer, a chocolate tool set, new socks. And a gift set of ‘vintage cut-throat razors’.
We’ve already got the meal tickets.
For many decades Father’s Day was just like any of my birthdays, bank holidays and Christmas’s.
I had drawn blank again.
But my soon-to-be ex-wife’s family didn’t. No. They all got to spend time with my children on ‘special’ days. Aunties, uncles, cousins, my soon-to-be ex-wife’s boyfriend.
Even the maternal family’s dogs and cats got more access to my children than I did.
Do you know, on these ‘special’ days, I deliberately tried not to even think about them.
Yeh, that’s right. It was Father’s Day and I was deliberately avoiding thinking about my son and my daughters.
If I did, the cracks would show and the darkness would creep in and I found it hard to cope.
And in some ways I was glad that they were banned from ringing me on these ‘special’ days. Not by the courts! Not by any rule-book spouting, big bonus earning, juniper juice smelling social worker. Not the police. Not child protection …
No. I was banned by the self-righteous, pompous maternal family’s determination to take satisfaction in convincing my children that I was the Monster from the Swamp of Deceit and Debris of the Heart.
My children’s uncles hated me because I’d ‘dumped’ their sister after being together for more than a decade. There was no violence between us, no smashing of things, no threats, no cheating, no lying.
No, none of those.
It was just that we didn’t get on any more. We didn’t really like each other when we woke up in the mornings and certainly despised each other by bedtime.
Ours wasn’t a good marriage. Two hormonal and rampantly excited kids made a mistake. They both thought they’d fallen for the their ‘forever person’ but got it wrong,
My soon-to-be ex-wife regularly spouted superciliously ‘if it wasn’t for the children we wouldn’t be together any more’.
After a decade I took her at her word and left.
And for the next twenty years I became the most hated man in my own extended universe.
Eventually, I got my three children back in my life and things are good, on the whole, and we spend time together whenever we can.
Walking back to happiness is a long road and too often it feels like a mountain.
But those mountains are there to be climbed. If you don’t climb them you’ll never know what’s on the other side.
The mountains of despair, which, stand like silhouetted sharks teeth against the sky’s canvas will obscure your future unless you get on top of them.
There is a Fathers Day Climb for Kids in Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons soon …
Andrew John Teague, founding member of D.A.D.s and NAAP, has climbed at least 50 peaks in the last few years.
And all for our children and us.
Andrew wrote this almost pastoral piece about the achievement he feels every time he makes that long arduous journey up the mountainside.
By doing what he is doing, he has created a metaphor for all our lives…
Andrew wrote: Located in South Wales the Brecon Beacons at Pen y Fan are surrounded by beautiful mountains and scenery.
And they are very popular with people from all over the world.
The Beacons are the training ground for the armed forces – and the SAS.
My favourite mountain to climb – and to date I’ve been up approx 50 times, including on my knees! Ouch!
This time of year the weather is normally extremely hot. Although the weather can change in the blink of an eye.
The sense of achievement when reaching the top is satisfying and the cause a worthy one…
Depending on the weather use suitable clothing. Always remember the weather can change.
Water to keep hydrated. Remember it’s not a race… enjoy the climb and take in the scenery. There are often burger vans for refreshments on the way up!
From the top of Pen y Fan on a clear day the scenery rolls on for miles.
Robbie Robertson announced the sad news on Facebook.
He wrote: “The story of The Band began with Ronnie Hawkins. He was our mentor. He taught us the rules of the road.”
Hawkins was born in Arkansas, but loved Canada. He was singer and band master Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks which rose to fame in the early 60s.
“Hawkins himself was practically Toronto’s answer to Elvis Presley,” The Band said on their website.
Roberston said on Facebook, “Ronnie was the godfather. The one who made this all happen. He had us rehearsing constantly into the wee hours. We balked about it, but we got better and better. Our goal whether we knew it or not.”
“After the Hawks left Ron and went out on our own, we joined up with Bob Dylan. Next the Hawks became The Band and the rest is history, as they say. All starting out with Ronnie Hawkins.”
Robertson said “He was not only a great artist, a tremendous performer and bandleader, but had a style of humor unequaled. Fall down funny and completely unique. Yep, God only made one of those. And he will live in our hearts forever.”
