Summary: The song I have sent you this week is one I wrote for the Welsh album I composed for Paul Damian and tells the legend of Beddgelert. I’m sending this one because we have just spent a few days walking in the heart of Snowdonia and it doesn’t get any better….we also visited a Slate Museum in Llanberis which was incredible…it is built on the site of a Quarry and is mind blowing…and is FREE!!...it is a credit to the Land of Song. The news has been covering the terrible tragedy in Napal….and the journalists have been at there usual mindless interviews with families worried about there relatives caught up in it all…”how did you feel when you heard the news etc……”….how do these fools get employed?....it was good to see the response form rescue and aid workers….the power of nature brings everything into perspective….we moan about such trivial things…let’s hope everything that can be done is done. Michael Flatley is about to retire and has created a “painting”… by splashing paint on a canvas and rubbing his hands all over it while river dancing….it sold for 70 odd grand …maybe I’m missing something here but to me it looked a complete mess…talk about the kings new clothes. It reminded me of an art exhibition I went to in Liverpool by Rolph Harris…before his dilemma…and I couldn’t believe the prices they were asking for thumbnail cartoons which couldn’t have taken more than a minute to draw….when he comes out of jail he should be thrown back in again for ripping us all off…..I can’t imagine they would be worth much now. Bear Grylls has got yet another survival programme on the TV….I fail to see the point of all this….apart from Bear proving how hard he is….it’s an accident waiting to happen…and for WHAT?...so you win the competition and prove you could survive in the jungle…skills you are NEVER likely to use…I find it very uncomfortable viewing......and on the subject of fitness Paula Radcliffe has run her last race….what a great example to the world of sport….I don’t know how anyone can run that far…count me out. I enjoyed the clip you sent me with Penny Page and various co-incidences….You mentioned Marvin Rainwater who had the 50’s chart topper “A whole lotta woman”…Monty Lister interviewed him at the time when he was on the Liverpool Empire and asked him if he would come over to Wirral to meet some of the patients in Clatterbridge Hospital….Marvin not only did that he took the whole show over and entertained them all…and I did a gig in Finland back in 2001 and got chatting to this guy who was a local and asked me to listen to some rock and roll on his car radio….so on goes the CD and on comes Monty Lister interviewing Bill Haley in 1956…the guy couldn’t get over the fact that had I not been there in the Arctic Circle I would,at that precise moment,be on the radio with him….how’s that for a co-incidence?....and back in the 60’s I was on holiday in Palma in an apartment…next door was Jack Charlton who I got quite pally with (great guy) and he asked me if I was related to Ray Wood (who worked in leisure services in Wirral council)…because he was the brother of Roy Wood who played for Man City and who was a good friend of Jacks….I told him I wasn’t but I knew Ray very well and his other brother Charlie was the bass player in my first band…all creepy stuff…
