Locked down with my Ukulele 45

These are strange times and my thoughts turned to toilet roll.

Right at the beginning of lockdown people swooped into the supermarkets and cleared the shelves. What was one of main shopping items that held a prime place of desire, toilet roll! WHY!

The story I’ve heard is that it was started in Australia. Most toilet paper there comes from China and as Covid was affecting exports there was a scare that it would become unavailable.

I puzzle over this because when I was a child outside toilets were common and soft toilet paper was not for the masses. It was too expensive. In the cold damp mid winter today’s toilet tissue would disintegrate on first pass across the crescent moon. There were relatively few options. To my mind the most common was the use of left over newspaper. This was torn into strips and hung on a loop of garden twine. I can imagine that the salt glazed drainage pipes had trouble digesting most of a good sized deposit.

A more up market (and softer) alternative was the use of a neatly stripped yellow pages. This was a book (provided by the only telecom’s land line telephone provider, British Telecom) of people & businesses, names, address and telephone numbers in the locality, listed alphabetically. This was updated every year and was a publication that had some heft. These were dished out to properties that were hiring a telephone line. Not every home could afford a phone. Calls were charged by the minute. So it was a coup to land a directory.

The public building option was a paper that was more like baking paper. This came on a roll and was marketed as hygienic as it was impregnated with disinfectant. My personal view was that this paper scrapped and scratched you to a point of cleanliness rather than absorbed any biological debris. Izal medicated toilet paper. This was able to survive in the afore mentioned “outside toilet” because it was impervious to moisture. I am convinced that this “paper” was the conception of the idea of the three shells in Stallone’s Demolition man.

Foxes & Fossils cover of Neil Young’s Harvest moon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA0Vl0gre6U

Foxes & Fossils are an American group formed by Dad and resulted from some down time as a professional musician who’s band were going through a lean patch. He was sulking and picking out some Simon and Garfunkel tunes, played it to his daughter and they started singing together.

He had heard another associate of his daughter in the local choir. He was having breakfast with his daughter and noticed his daughter’s friend with a bunch of her friends. He approached her and asked her if she’d like to be in the band. A rehearsal was arranged, lyric sheets handed out and the sound was magical. The Fossils were made up of musicians that Dad was aquatinted with and evolved over the years.

The cross generation nature of this group gives the harmonies such a great range. This version of Harvest moon demonstrates the mix beautifully. I love this version. I hope you enjoy.

Neil young I find can be very love it or hate it. I’m very much I like what I like. But, Mr Young, to many, has cult status.

I had a friend who arranged to take a highly religious lady to a Neil Young concert. He played the "out there" songs from his catalog. She wasn’t hardened to that kind of folk music and it was a bit of a shock to her senses. She wasn’t too taken with the sweet odour coming from the roll up’s most at the gig were smoking. I think he spent a month apologising.

Stay safe