FraserWords

IS there a mightier affirmation in rock’s rebel history than Heroes? I’m not sure that there is. When the German Foreign Office, no less, took the trouble to Tweet the link to a YouTube video of David Bowie performing it live in its birthplace, Berlin, in 2002, I thought it rude not to watch. You try it, too, and see if the hairs on the back of your neck don’t rise righteously up.
https://youtu.be/YYjBQKIOb-w

Is there a more famous F chord in this or any world than in Starman? I don’t think so. Didn’t you want to be Mick Ronson, playing it, Bowie’s thin arm draped round your shoulders?

Two such moments would make any lifetime; Bowie offered more still. Even if you weren’t a devotee – and I’m not, really – your life was dramatically affected by David Bowie, whether his breaking down of cultural and sexual barriers, or simply his great rock songs. Changes, Sound and Vision, Major Tom, All the Young Dudes, Young Americans, Ziggy, Low… what a catalogue.  And there was much else to admire, not least the fact that he twice turned down honours.

So, this: he did, said, wrote and sang lots of good things. Things he was, or stood for, became the mainstream. He said we could all be heroes, and he was right.

Just desserts

I WAS pleased to read in the Mirror that the lying liar Iain Duncan Smith, on a visit to a Job Centre, was confronted by a protester yelling ‘Murderer’ in honour of IDS’s butchery at the Department for Work and Pensions, harrying the disabled and cutting their benefits, casting them adrift in despair for the sake of a few quid.

It’s one of my fondest hopes that one day, Duncan Smith will scarcely be able to move from the freebie home he inhabits thanks to his rich father-in-law, such will be the utter loathing in which he is held. I hope that one day, the man can’t even go to the loo without somebody waving a placard at him.

Briefly…

I’ll be brief. I am in the middle of my tax return, which is bad enough in itself, but has also meant my Annual Office Tidy, which is a world of woe.  For example, every year I tidy away my financial affairs, such as they are, paying particular attention to my online tax portal password so that I do not face my annual frustrating search for it. Every year, of course, I forget which safe new haven I have chosen for it, and this is once again the case. I gave up swearing about this about five years ago. Now I just sigh. So I have to look for that now.

But I can’t concentrate. A story is trying to get me to write it, which makes me anxious. Every minute my fingers are not flying eats one of the few precious minutes granted the likes of me by the pitiless gods of creation. Moreover, I am surrounded by words and music; they want me for their own. Like the rest of the world I have been listening to Bowie but I have also been drawn to the great and godlike Cohen; the children want to watch another episode of Fawlty Towers, which is no hardship but eats more time.

So a day-long bitter fight for time draws to a close and you shall have to make do, just like me.