YELL !
Yell by Gemma Atkinson
in Rowan Felted Tweed and Colourspun
immediate reassurance parcel got there this time without hitch
Milla
After marvellous Milla from The Stitch Shop sewed up, Jane revisited her modeling days along with Jealous, the Jack Russell, aged 17.
This sweater was another for my son - I finished up knitting it very late a few Fridays ago.
* * *
Soon after, I was knocked off my bike … had been tootling along in a cycle lane when (in a scene worthy of Tom & Gerry) suddenly the bike went on without me, handlebar attached to the wing mirror of a car and continuing up the bus lane before careening to a halt by the kerb. Meanwhile, I crashed and bounced a few different ways before settling face down in the bus lane at rush hour, where somehow I wasn't flattened by a double decker bus or a cab.
Solicitous passers-by rushed in, kept the traffic back, called an ambulance, put a jacket under my head and generally reassured me, as I lay dazed... after about ten minutes I began to realise I didn’t need the ambulance - I’m bruised and bashed but can still walk and talk and complain long and loud about the fact that I’m having trouble sitting. And, oh, I absolutely believe I have a guardian angel.
All this occurred right across from a hospital, where I was actually headed to visit a patient already in Accident and Emergency – I'd been asked to leave earlier, and now I was back, looking to be admitted myself… even at the time I found this slightly funny...
Another good thing was when on the following day this arrived...all 674 pages ...which, as I'm a big fan, cheered me up and diverted me as I interspersed hobbling about with reclining, regathering and regrouping.
It's a great read: unsurprisingly well written and entertaining. It's primarily a loving testimonial to his family, and also offers insight into the highs, lows, stresses, strains and permutations of three generations of traveling minstrel. That family saga tracks the evolution of how popular music has reached its public over that time, and amounts to quite a serious 150 year piece of social history. It wears this dimension lightly though, as it's told in seemingly random anecdotal episodes that team with characters and events - world famous and equally obscure - artists and their songs, a myriad of recording sessions, performances, managers, club owners, television hosts, politicians and their politics, all of whom played parts in the lives of the writer, his family and their music.
It's mentioned that a focal point of the narration was 1865, the year the first edition of Alice in Wonderland was published. However this book has its own rabbit hole potential too... You'll read something, then ask yourself, "Which song?", and begin checking it out. "Oh, that", you'll think, and unearth a few more. But that's a happy phenomenon attaching to pretty much all Elvis Costello sleeve notes, interviews and interactions, and will be one already familiar to many of his fans.
Mind you, in terms of the knitting community (which crops up once or twice in passing), I don't sense he's about to cast on any time soon, or that we'll be hearing him sing
"I used to knit just mufflers,
But now I'm having a go at socks"
Ah well.
Do buy the book though.
