Peter Green RIP

There was a time, in my 'knowing very little about popular music' period of late 1969 that Peter Green was my favourite guitarist. He was the leader of Fleetwood Mac, named after his drummer and bassist - there's modesty for you. During 1969, they had quite a few hit records, where the music was certainly not pop but also not blues.

"Albatross" is probably the most well known and also the least typical; there was my favourite "Man of the world", along with "Oh well" and "Green manalishi". Green seemed to be making his own furrow with songs that stand up well 50 years on. I wrote about these songs and their effect on me many years ago.

But then something happened; Green became an LSD casualty and dropped out of the music scene. Although he did make a few records after leaving his own band, nothing much came of them. He certainly dropped off my radar, and I adopted other favourite guitarists: at first Mick Abrahams and then Richard Thompson.

He died a few days ago, apparently "peacefully in his sleep". May he continue to sleep peacefully.

Swimming pool reopened

There was an absurd situation over the weekend when public swimming pools (and as such, the kibbutz swimming pool) were closed, but swimming pools connected to hotels were open (and even allowing the entrance on non-hotel guests). As many people pointed out, the chances of getting infected with Covid-19 whilst in the swimming pool is almost zero, and is certainly zero for those who are seriously swimming (as opposed to loafing and playing around). Finally the special Covid-19 task force/government committee has made a good decision and is reopening the pools. I don't know what else is being reopened and what is being closed, but the pool is the only thing that interests me.

So it's back to swimming on Friday.

Judy Dyble, RIP

I have just read about the death of Judy Dyble, who was the first singer in Fairport Convention, way way back in 1967, when she was Richard Thompson's girl-friend. She wasn't a distinguished singer, in the same way that Sandy Denny was, but she did make an instrumental contribution to their first album, playing recorder and electric autoharp, as well as singing. She reprised her freaky recorder in the instrumental break of 'Jack Of Diamonds' at Cropredy 1997.

I got to meet Judy at Cropredy 2000: she was a nice enough person. I also have her autobiography which I bought a few years ago when it was published, which gives an alternative view of the beginnings of Fairport.

She also had a connection to the nascent King Crimson: for a while she was the girl-friend of Ian McDonald who was playing with Giles, Giles and Fripp before they metamorphosed into KC. As such, she appears on a demo recording of 'I talk to the wind', a song which changed greatly from its original arrangement to the one on ITCOTCK.

Judy made a return to music in the last two decades; I have on my music players a modern version of ITTTW in which the chords have been mucked up. She sings with little expression and I don't really like that track.

Funnily enough, whilst walking the dog this afternoon, I was thinking about how old the current Fairporters are, and when they intend to give up playing. What is rewarding is the prominence that the notice of her death received: I saw it on the Guardian website, but the same announcement appeared also on a BBC website as well as other places. I wonder whether Simon Nicol or Ashley Hutchings will publish something on the topic.

Swimming pool closed

The high number of new Covid-19 infections in Israel in the second wave (over 1000 a day, which is more than the peak during the first wave) has lead to certain restrictions being put back in place. Most of them have no effect whatsoever on me, but the one specific restriction which will affect me is the forced closing of the kibbutz swimming pool (surely the chlorine in the water will kill the virus?). 

Due to the virus, the OP hasn't been at work for the last four months, and so instead of spending up to two hours with her on a Friday morning, we have a short chat and then I head to the swimming pool for a brief swim - this is in addition to Saturday mornings. So even I though I am deliberately swimming less in each session as compared to last year, I am actually swimming more. I even purchased a new waterproof mp3 player which seemed to be better than my original machine, but since copying files to it, my computer can't identify the player when it is connected.

Last week I had my blood pressure measured a few hours after swimming: 120/77, which is very good. On Monday I underwent an ergometric stress test, which means walking on a treadmill while being attached to an ECG machine. At first, the treadmill moved slowly and was flat; every few minutes the speed would increase automatically as well as the angle. After several minutes, the treadmill finally got to a speed at which I felt comfortable, walking very fast - I could have carried on at this rate for quite some time. But then the speed changed once again and simply became too fast for me to walk so I asked to stop. After all, the name of the game is not to show how much stamina I have but rather how the heart performs when under stress.

Why did I do this? During the lockdown, I noticed that my feet - especially the right foot - were swelling up, and it was painful to move them. Although that extreme swelling has not returned, I still see every evening that my right foot is somewhat inflexible. The swelling is due to liquid leaking from somewhere in the body, and so my doctor ordered a few tests. The first was ultrasound of the veins in the thighs - nothing wrong there. The stress test was next, and I have an echocardiogram examination in another two weeks. I had one of these four years ago which didn't show anything noticeable.

And it turns out that because of these tests, I was once again denied the chance to give blood. I had hoped that there would be no more problems, especially considering my last haemoglobin test which was relatively high for me. But no.