UK Grim

I read some of The Guardian every morning - at least the main headlines, and a lot of the football stories (the best sports journalism I know of appears on those pages. Take this exhilarating recent piece on Tottenham Hotspurs’ frustrating form, for example). It’s odd, this far in to my life in Canada, to still be looking back that way for my news, my footing. I’ve wondered a lot about that and what it says about me.

I feel the same way about the landscape: it’s vital to me. Show me some small, verdant farmers’ fields from around Oxford, their perimeter marked by rampant oak trees, or lay on me some purplish Lake District vista, and it’s as calming, as familiar, as a favourite glass loaded half-way of whisky from Islay, or a good night’s sleep. That despite my real enthusiasm for the Canadian Shield landscapes just north of Kingston, the pink granite busting through thin skins of soil and hillock like a compound fracture.

Same thing with music.  When I look back over what tunes pleased me most last year, the list is weighted heavily with English bands and singers, usually from the noisy end of the spectrum. Sleaford Mods, a punk (?) band from Nottingham, have been there for me for ages. I turn to them for confirmation of my own politics, for a laugh, for a reminder that bracing vital, different music is still being made out there, and some of it (gasp) being made by artists not all that much younger than me. There is some reason to be hopeful, some reason still to rail, is how I feel after listening to one of their records, usually late into the evening when the kids have disappeared upstairs, and the incoming emails have slowed to a crawl.

This morning Sleaford Mods released the first video from their next album (out in March).  It’s everything I hoped it would be.