There's a story about the origins of the song in the 1964 Mary Poppins movie, 'A Spoonful of Sugar' by the son of one of the Sherman brothers, that they were trying to come up with the song, and he came in from having his polio vaccine on a lump of sugar, and, BINGO! there was their song.

Okay, they changed it to spoonful....

The concept of ' ( Read more... )

I was going to post Sir Noel him very own self doing Bad Times Just Around the Corner, but looking for that, I see somebody has cleverly updated it to the present predicament:

Click to view

(I was wondering about the Divine Mr Coward's Why Must the Show Go On, but in the present parlous position of the performing arts, no, I think not: I was hoping it was ( Read more... )

This evening to a concert which included Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem (1936), which, besides various Biblical texts and quite a bit of Walt Whitman, includes John Bright's 1855 Angel of Death speech: The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born ( Read more... )

I hand round the usual virtual rich dark ginger cake (including virtual gluten-free version and any other suitable accommodations) and Madeira (Duke of Clarence Rich Malmsey - I think I have a case under the Trade Descriptions Act for the lack of dead duke in the bottle).

There is one rather obvious song I could post for today, but instead, I'm ( Read more... )

A couple of friends have been making ecstatic posts on FaceBook about dining at a Certain Upscale Restaurant where I have also been with partner (Project Posh Food Lunching), and, besides waxing lyrical about the food, have massive praise for the wonderfulness of the front-of-house staff.

And yes, that's been pretty much my experience too, fairly ( Read more... )