2018 – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

Epitaph of Bernard Fry, surgeon, in St. Mary’s graveyard, Stafford

Resurrectional doggerel for these dark days.

For drone-hunters, a walk westward from Gatwick airport to Ockley station

Dedicated to those at Gatwick considering tracking down and killing the source of their stasis. Features two good drinking establishments, the villages of Charlwood and Capel and the River Mole.

Organ-grindish twitterings for November

Dominated by a sojourn in the Czech Republic.

A steam locomotive at Zaječí, Southern Moravia. In the background, the Hodonín express.

“Virginity is an overrated virtue”

Granddad’s Armistice in letters and recollections. Glimpses ante hoc of Cameronians & Royal Scots (52nd Division) in the Eastern Mediterranean and on the Somme; of ambulance trains in Northern France; of 6th Battalion York & Lancaster Regiment (11th Division) during the terminal Hundred Days Offensive to Mons, Belgium; and post hoc of base hospitals, influenza, and an exchange with one Wolfram Sterry regarding his brother Karl. Introducing Kandy the Maltese terrier.

No early photos so far from the steel boxes, so here's grandpa with grandma at Winchester Cathedral in 1972.

The Singing Organ-Grinder’s tweets for October

More rubbish.

Organ-grinder in courtyard - Bruno Schulz illustration to his story Księga, The Book, 1937.

Several Viennese musical curiosities

Karl Nagl’s claim that, unlike the Germans, Viennese organ-grinders are musicians, because they have “crank-sense.” And female yodelling with Dudlerinnen Trude Mally and Maly Nagl.

The Russian folk song in the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona

I thought it was a recent version of Stravinsky’s Petrushka theme, but it turns out that Pete Seeger is the intermediary. Plus an East End Jewish version of Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance.

The Singing Organ-Grinder’s tweets for September

A rubbish heap in which a Ukrainian nuclear fireman finds romance with Willie Nelson.

Hell in Cornwall, and Brisola the organ-grinder from Brisola

Two favourite anecdotes from Maisie & Evelyn Radford’s musical mission to the Cornish and thence to the English.

A Radford production, perhaps Rossini's Moses in Egypyt.

“Organ grinders to sleep in the wash house”

How a mass-produced 1960s joke sign for bars and pubs became evidence of historical authenticity before being censured as a hate crime against tinkers and thinkers (or organ-grinders, as we are often known).