10th February 2014 - His name was Derek!!

Monday!
Start of a new Week!
Trip to the hospital to check out my mothers ankle, with a possibility of further treatment, and the hire of a box van to start the next stage of the Flat / House Clearance!
Yes. There is a new episode of Box to be seen in the forthcoming weeks. The rental of the Church Hall and the need to clear the flat led me to finally open the storage Container in Pembrey. Contrary to fears, though there is some condensation, the store is not actually wet and damp and mouldy. Several boxes of books were pulled out unscathed and transported - though they need to be transferred from apple boxes to Banana boxes... I think that I will be frequenting Morrisons a lot in the forthcoming days.

So, the chance of my physique improving takes a step in the right direction. By this I mean my back aches from the first day's tasks - and I have hardly started!

But an excellent start - and a trip to the Riverside Folk Club at Loughour Boat club this evening and a rendition of "the Dodo", and "Love Locked out" put me into the "here's a strange one" category. A number of new artists for me, some excellent guitarists, and singer from Portugal, made it a very interesting evening, and one which I think I will have to attend again in future - apparently acoustic only next week  - more my style, so will have to look out some material....

But thinking of various material - I saw this in an article today..   Apparently "The Horse with No Name" did in fact have a name .....Derek!!  Not sure Even I could have got away with that!!!

In a confession that looks set to rock the US singer-songwriter fraternity to the core, the author of America’s transatlantic top 5 hit A Horse With No Name has admitted that the horse in question was actually named by the writer ‘on the second part of the journey’. Nearly four decades after its release Dewey Bunnell broke the news whilst promoting his new autobiography ‘Na Na Naa Na-na-na-na-naaah’ on LA’s KWHY Radio.

‘Face it, the desert is a pretty boring place,’ he said. ‘There really wasn’t much else for me to do, so I ended up considering all sorts of names. ‘I tried singing, ‘I’ve been through the desert on a horse called Keith’ but I ran out of rhymes. For a while the horse was called ‘Ray’, ‘Bryan’ then ‘Alan’ and following a particularly severe case of sunstroke he was a horse called ‘Mighty Zoltan the Destroyer.’

Bunnell also admitted to severe embarrassment when he listens back to the song’s lyrics; ‘I was in a juice bar only yesterday, getting myself a wheatgrass smoothie, and it came on the radio. All that stuff about there being ‘plants and birds and rocks and things’ – sheesh! I really wish I’d packed a decent botanical encyclopaedia now, instead of all that weed.’ The response to the revelation from California’s ageing singer-songwriter community has been swift. Speaking from her mansion in Laurel Canyon, Carly Simon branded Bunnell a ‘fraud’ and a ‘sell-out’: ‘The art of the singer-songwriter is to tell it like it is, with embarrassingly intimate revelations about their personal lives. Mr Bunnell has made a mockery of this with his wanton equine-fabrication. He should consider his invitation to Friday night’s ‘hot tub and bbq party’ withdrawn forthwith’

But Dewey’s confession has given others the confidence to speak out. Eric Burdon of The Animals confessed ‘there really is a house in New Orleans.’ But it’s actually called ‘No 3, The Mews’ while Paul Weller recently performed a re-worded version of that old Jam favourite ‘A Town Called Woking.’

So, there you have it - better think about an earlier night tonight - may need all my strength if the boxes are not to kill me....  well maybe one glass of scotch before turning in... Seems to be a nice Jura Here...  Cheers Arnold!