#31for21 #themmlinky Les Horribles Cernettes and the Hardonic Concert / International Games Week

Hello everyone!

There are so many happenings. I intended to originally #rickroll you with my new green-shelled polarised sunglasses, and that song is indeed a good reminder of values:

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna desert you

especially when the roses are growing and the compost is fermenting.

I have been outdoors colouring in Tomislav Tomic's New York from the Echo company - especially the picture of the Statue of Liberty, studying about fish for Nicki Palin's The sea and reading Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen.

It is International Games Week. There have been lots of powerful interviews with wonderful women, and Genevieve Bell has had another illustration drawn for her about Tamworth and its pioneering electricity in a municipal area - in the 1890s!

And here is a good concert for an hour - the Cernettes - who until July 2017 sang as part of the Centre for Nuclear Research singing group.

One thing you may not know about the Cernettes - their band pic was responsible for the very first graphic which was distributed on the World Wide Web.

The Hardonic concert was really fantastic.

People commented on how the Cernettes had barely aged even though they've been in the public eye for some 25 years - since the founding of the World Wide Web, in fact.

This is a song I remember during the 30th anniversary of Black Monday and Black Tuesday [19 October and 20 October 1987].

And I remember it even more because I heard it a lot in September and October 1999 while I was in consavelence and rehabilitation.

This clip comes direct from Jefferson Starship VEVO. I will admit to confusing VEVO and VIMEO.

I'm so glad I found you
I'm not going to lose you
I'm going to stay with you
[...]
through the good times through the bad times
[...]
they say we're crazy what do they know
let the world around us just fall apart
we can make it if we're heart to heart

Live through this thing together
Stand strong forever
If this world went down without us
we'd still have each other

this is a free translation/transcription.

Hold you forever and ever and ever.

And because it's become a #mondaymotivation tradition, here is the obligatory Chess clip.

A little story about this clip/song I know him so well.

I only discovered this song in January 2001 after going to a well-known discount music store and finding Elaine Paige and her greatest hits. Other favourites of mine include Heart don't change my mind and Memory.

And I would play it a lot - probably one of the three.

No-one in your life is with you constantly
No-one is completely on your side.

And it's this constancy and completion which is really important.

And though I'd give the world to be with him
Still the gap between us is too wide.

Learnt about the man before I fell

I was ever so much younger then.

Isn't it madness.

And that line about he needs his fantasy and freedom was probably a guiding line.

And I may even remember writing the Strzelecki scenes [of The sorrows of young Wladek].

This is my writing space at that time: brown chair with extenders; stable table with folded pages; manuscript on the left; music at the back; or sometimes even at a desk.

Trying's not enough is that crucial second line.
It's time we stopped pretending / time to turn the page / all stories need an ending
Living our life in yesterday / I'm leaving / I'm leaving

Heart don't change my mind
Heart be strong this time.

The above lyric is by Diane Warren.

Something for International Games Week which brings the 1990s and the 21st century together.

The fractured but whole - new SOUTH PARK game

And I wish everyone good luck for examinations and scholarships and assessments and evaluations at this time and over the next weeks.

Ben Grubb went to Las Vegas to learn about consumer encryption and why it is important

And I learnt a hard lesson this last week too. And, yes, it was about encryption.

Also People have the power, Frederick and 1959 as in Wisdom was a teapot - good thing for me in March/April 2002 - and even now in 2017 I find wisdom in lemon myrtle and this Tielka company who make Fairtrade tea! -

The wheel is the song I sing when anyone asks me questions about Albania and Kosovo, and of course all the secessionist movements which are going on in Spain and Italy at the moment.

Arty Boy is the one I tried to remember on Love that Max when Seidman was writing about parties.

Somehow there's this David Bowie tribute/concert coming up in my circles. And there are 6 ways to experience Berlin. Talk about dreams deferred.

Here are two Jann Arden songs about dreams:

And two Joan Baez songs about travel:

And two Kim Wilde songs about the gap between past and future:

In between on the Singles Collection are Love Blonde; The Second Time; Rage to Love; You Keep Me Hanging On which was my first Nowels song. Other songs I have enjoyed - apart from the first four or five - would be Never trust a stranger; Love is a four letter word; In my life and the one which has

I tell ya
It's hell - ya.

Later on I came to enjoy Love in the natural way, European soul, and Everything We Know. I enjoyed them so much I had them on MIDI files.

View from a Bridge and You came are still my Kim Wilde favourites since I discovered them in mid-August - early September 1994.

And another way MIDI files manifest - I first discovered this in 1991 - was through chipmusic especially in Tetris which is the one game I enjoyed a lot which had music. And Golden Axe of course.

It is probably inevitable in #31for21 that we remember those who have died - and their contribution to industrial relations and arbitration.

This is what I remember Michael Ashford for - the strike is mentioned about 7 or 8 paragraphs in. 1960-2017 were his years. Written by his sister Aileen

Forgotten and Found: Kim Walker's memoir about herself; her work and her love - for her sister Lorraine; for her mum and dad; for her friend Faye and everyone she worked with inside and outside the intellectual disability and advocacy worlds she moved in until 2011

And I have just read You'll grow out of it by Jessi Klein.

Still reading Beatrix Potter - a life in nature; a book by John Grisham which is set among a scene of South American crime characteristic of the 1990s; another one by Meg and Tom Kenneally.