It's Always More Complicated

And in Dept, il ne manque que ca, for this week, I was obliged to make a phone-call to my GP practice because there is significant delay on getting a repeat prescription going on. Their site not helpful. Apparently my designated pharmacy has submitted an order which is awaiting approval. It would help if this sort of thing was indicated.

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While in Dept, price of everything, value of nothing: Claude Monet's 'Iris' becomes most expensive artwork sold at auction in France, Sotheby's says

Yes, I am earwormed with Money and copy/pasting Monet to the words.

I observe that a) some of those links are dead and that b) horrors, I did not include the stonking version by the divine Smokey Robinson and the Miracles:

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Dept of, author has form for being cringe-makingly awful: He has clearly done lots of research, but has chosen to put it at the service of creating a Wilde who is fatally less interesting and moving than the original.

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Dept of, What, ONLY ONE: that thing (can't find it online, was in today's Guardian Life and Arts section about The Book That Changed Your Life. Let me sit down and start working on a list....

(Kipling, A Song to Mithras, whose feast this presumably is: 'Many roads Thou hast fashioned: all of them lead to the Light'.)

Playlist for the returning sun:
Turn it on:

Which I concede we need at this particularly lowering time of year, and falls on a day which for personal reasons has Connotations.

Well, I will make an effort and here is (naturally) the divine Smokey with More Love and More Joy:

Let's get into that Soulful Dress:

Maybe we could do this with Ginger and Fred, backward and in high heels:

Join The BeeGees Stayin' Alive through a vaguely 70s version of an Apocalyptic Wasteland movie:

So, Let's Have a Party:

Twist and Shout:

Jump:

And take some Time Out for Love:

Among my people we do not have Thanksgiving (just as we do not have Independence Day, for we were that from which independence was being sought...)

And it occurred to me to give thanks that we do not, because it seems to come along with a lot of associated stress and tension and potentiality for draaaaaammmaaaa. I daresay there are people who are coming together in family groups whether related by blood/DNA or not and having a peaceable and enjoyable, even harmonious, time together, but the impression one sometimes gets is that (though it is far from the only occasion involving obligate bringing together of potentially ill-assorted persons because FAMILY and TRADITION) Thanksgiving is when everybody gives thanks at the end of the day that nobody has done murder or very extreme mayhem.

I.e. my vision, and I may be entirely wrong, is quite the reverse of any lovely Hallmark/Norman Rockwell depiction.

Nevertheless, have some Sam and Dave:

I was thinking of doing one of my dance party music compilation posts and then I realised that very few songs about autumn or September are boppable.

Okay, I am pretty sure I remember doing something that would approximate to bopping to the Kinks' 'Autumn Almanac' ('Yes, yes yes yes yes yes') when I was but a young thing:

Anyway, wotever, it is that slumpy bit of January, so here are some jaunty numbers with the hopes of perking you up.

I wasn't looking for this version of Nothin' Shakin' (But the Leaves on the Trees) but it is a fun retro take - though as it was recorded in Westgate on Sea, my memories of that seaside town are that it was caught in a time-warp well back in the 60s...

Northern Soul dancing to Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache:

The Breakaways, That's How It Goes:

Challenge: Jump for My Love: (is he good enough is he keen enough? is he worthy?)

Or, at least Take Some Time Out For Love:

Because it's the rules, something from the divine Smokey:

And cool down a little with some Slow Slow Twistin':

I am grateful for all of you, who light up my life.

I am also grateful for The Hedgehog Highway That Knits a Village Together:

Hedgehogs need space to create territories, forage and find mates. The compartmentalisation of land into private gardens is one of the causes of their disappearance from our landscape – they have declined by 90% since the second world war. More than 12,000 hedgehog holes have been created as part of the UK’s hedgehog highway network, and Kirtlington has one of the most creative routes on the map. Miniature ramps and staircases thread between gardens in this higgledy-piggledy place[.]

Because I have further thoughts, and I've seen versions with new categories, and also I don't have any other ideas at the moment:

Something to wear: Sugar Pie Desanto - Soulful Dress
A place: The New Vaudeville Band - Finchley Central
Something to drink: John Lee Hooker - One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
Something to eat: Booker T. & The MGs - Green Onions
An animal: Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog
A colour: The Scaffold - Lily The Pink
A girl's name: Little Richard - Lucille
A boy's name: Sweet - Alexander Graham Bell
A profession: Smokey Robinson And The Miracles - The Composer (because there always has to be the divine Smokey)
A means of transport: The Beatles - Drive My Car
A day of the week: Blondie - Sunday Girl

But this morning, Gold Radio woke me up with, after the monstrously depressing news headlines, Fontella Bass going 'Rescue Me':

So then I thought, well, what else might be on that play-list?

Aretha exhorting 'Think'?

Maybe, The Beatles suggesting that 'We Can Work It Out'?

Canned Heat saying, 'Let's Work Together'?

The Walker Brothers pleading 'You Don't Have To Tell Me Goodbye'?

Maybe, the hope offered by the Four Tops, 'Reach Out, I'll Be There'?