Sunday Night is... Early November

Doesn't get any earlier than the 1st. Miranda Lee Richards. Sounds and looks sixties, the hair, the fur coat, the dress, the skirt the black and white, the op-art here and there, the cheapness of the video. The song itself. Nice straight song oddly dropping out of the sky.

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Meanwhile back in government world, scientists resign because having been told to form an informed scientific opinion they have been told it's the wrong opinion. What was it Cecil B. De Mille is supposed to have asked people: "Tell me, how did you love my picture?"

In case anyone should ask I can remember the sixties perfectly clearly so I can't have been there. Nor indeed was I. Not properly. I think my experiences with cannabis were extremely restricted. I wasn't really interested. I very much like whisky (and whiskey) but have no difficulty believing that alcohol is more harmful than cannabis, never mind tobacco. And yes, I smoked cigarettes too but never in any great quantity. I suppose I neglected cannabis principally because it seemed the thing to do. I have always hated doing the things it is the thing to do.

Alan Johnson looks like the manager of a League 1 football team. It could have been worse. It could have been League 2.

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And since it was this day in 1611 that the great Shake-scene's The Tempest was first performed, and because there isn't a decent version of excerpts from the play on YouTube, (the BBC production in 1980 was worse than pedestrian), and because the wind was blowing and the rain driving all this morning, and because I have already had the magnificent Lena Horne version of 'Stormy Weather', and because the elderly Elizabeth Welch sang the song in Derek Jarman's hit-and-miss camp film version of the play, I hereby end this brief commemoration with Welch doing her stuff.



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And Stormy Weather also puts me in mind of the great Etta James. Next week is Etta James week, one for each day.