Rolling Stones...

I read, on the Guardian website, about the latest Rolling Stones mega-tour. Bloody hell, they’re still going! It seems like a generation ago that they were written off as being too old. The Beatles sang “When I’m 64”, picking that age, presumably, because, at the time Paul McCartney wrote the song, 64 must have seemed inconceivably ancient. Though some of the Beatles’ songs will live on, John Lennon and George Harrison didn’t live long enough to collect their pensions. On the other hand, and despite years off dissolute over-indulgence, the Stones refuse to vacate the stage. They will no doubt carry on until, one by one, they fall off their perch. Jagger will probably be the last: still marrying women young another to be his daughter, still fathering children, still preening and posturing.

According to the Guardian article, “it is 37 years since the Rolling Stones more or less singlehandedly invented the latterday mega-tour. Huge artists had toured huge sports arenas before the Stones’ 1981 jaunt around the US, but not on that scale, not with that profit, and not with corporate sponsorship – courtesy of Jōvan Musk, an aftershave one suspects Mick Jagger was no more likely to wear than he was to spray himself with manure.” That left me feeling rather chastened, since Jōvan Musk is my cologne of choice: ideal after a shower (or, on occasions, instead of a shower). It’s cheap and cheerful, just like me; I’m wearing some today. Mmmm, it smells good. I just can’t imagine that Jōvan makes enough money to sponsor mega-tours by superannuated megastars…

Birders at Lakenheath Fen...