January 23rd 2010 was the centenary of the birth of Django Reinhardt. Django's music has been part of my life for over 55 years and I can't imagine how that time would have been without him, so Happy Birthday Django ! Here's a wonderful clip from UTube showing him in action (with Stefan Grappelli on violin) with the Hot Club de France. The song - J'Attendrai - is one of my all time favourites. I first heard it about 25 years ago (though it's much older than that) watching the movie aboout WW2 German U-boats: 'Das Boot'. In the movie it's sung by Rina Ketty, but my preferred version is by Jean Sablon. Download my mp3 of this song and enjoy it. If you like Django you'll also like Oscar Aleman, who was a contemporary of Django's and was in Paris at the same time as the Hot Club. They were good friends, but never recorded together. Here he is playing Hoagy Carmichael's Stardust. And if you are still with me, you'll love "Spats" Langham. He brilliantly re-creates this music and being at one of his gigs will bring tears to your eyes if you like this sort of thing.
Since the last report we've had a few days down in the south west of France visiting friends in Condom. We went via Angers and Perigueux on the way down and via Saumur on the way back. It rained pretty much most of the time which made the sightseeing a bit soggy - but the wine and food were still excellent I'm pleased to say.
Trish has been recovering from a broken ankle for the last 12 weeks. Falling off the stairs is not a good thing to do. But she's making good progress and can walk a little way now without any mechanical aids.
My favourite bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, is back in the news. Less than 12 months after having been bailed out by the Government (i.e. us, the taxpayers) to the tune of 70 BILLION pounds, the board of directors are threatening to resign if their plan to distribute nearly 2 billion pounds in bonuses is blocked. The feeling in the country is "fire them before they have the chance to resign" but I doubt that Mr Brown has the balls to do that.
Our allotment page is receiving a bit of attention at last. I'm going to try and do at least one update
per month from February onwards (nothing happened in January !) and group the pictures such that it will be possible to see the changes taking place throughout the year. You too can see the slugs crawling out of
the potatoes and watch the brassicas wilt and die as clubroot takes hold. But there should be some happy news as well.
Have a look at my page about photo albums I have just bought( yes you heard right - bought) a licence for a
really cool piece of Flash software called SlideShowPro. I think this one and JAlbum (also used on this site) are probably all I'll ever use.
Fed up with waiting for Adobe to call home yet again to see if there's another update for it's amazingly bloated PDF reader ? Try
Foxit Reader. It loads PDFs in the twinkling of an eye. It's free.
Have you seen Panoramio? It's a YAGS (yet another Google site). You can post your pictures and have them located on a Google Earth map or photo. Search for Warsash on the home page of Panoramio and see Tumbleweeds ! And here's one I did featuring our allotment,
which is on the Warsash site of the Western Wards Allotment Association.
Check out our list of attractions. These are all within an hour's drive of Warsash. Many can be reached on public transport. Portsmouth and Southampton both
have rich maritime histories. Many sites mark our (ongoing) battles with the French. RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton on her only voyage. The D Day invasion was controlled from bunkers built
deep into the chalk cliffs above Portsmouth. I think NATO still keep a presence there, so no vists for this last attraction.
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