Odes to Essex

Enjoyed listening to Radio 3's Odes to Essex series. Would any other county have got its own radio series? Billy Bragg had a lot to say about childhood games on the liminal marshland around Barking, an area full of rusting cars, old sofas and girlie magazines. Excellent Essex author Gillian Darley take on mid-Essex, poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw looks at the refusal of place through her childhood in an Essex village and night trips across muddy fields trying to get somewhere, while writer Ken Warpole speaks of the Canvey Island floods and Essex's radical past. Well worth a listen. Click on the link to play.

Stag do in Harold Hill

Oh deer. Thanks to Billy Bragg who has retweeted these pics of deer who have colonised the empty streets of Harold Hill (in East London, though formerly Essex). The goats in Llandudno are getting all the publicity, but it seems deer are now born free in Harold Hill (which incidentally also features in an Ian Dury song).

Barking bard Billy Bragg woos Islington

The revolution is just a tea-towel away…

Great to see Billy Bragg at the Islington Assembly Rooms, along with my daughter and a contingent of Brentwood Bragg fans enjoying the beers in the Highbury Brewhouse and Kitchen. Thirty years on he still ends his set with "My name's Billy Bragg, I'm from Barking, Essex. Good night!" So I think Mr Bragg has sided against the pedants who insist that Barking is now part of a London borough — spiritually it's Essex. There were several requests for A13 Trunk Road To The Sea, but sadly Billy said he only plays it in Essex. He did play much of the soundtrack of my youth, a brilliant body of work including Greetings To The New Brunette, Must I Paint You A Picture, Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards, Sexuality, St Swithin's Day, The Man In The Iron Mask and of course New England. Bragg managed to mention everything from Victor Hugo to climate change and bring West Ham's departed gaffer Slaven Bilic into the intro to Accidents Will Happen. A great gig and do check out Billy's new mini-LP Bridges Not Walls.