A Yorkshireman of a certain age who likes most genres of music and most makes of old car. Travel is a joy, not least to escape the British winter. Travel by bicycle is bliss and if I’m not lost in music then I’m lost in a daydream about a hot day, tens of miles to cover and the promise of a great campsite and a beer. I like to think I’m always learning and becoming wiser. However, on the latter point evidence is in short supply.
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The good news is that the scenery all started to look more sumptuous but the cycling remained brutal. At single figure speeds I ground up the countless hills that were between me and the next campsite.
I suggest it’s raining over there
I haven’t seen any other cycle tourers so far, whether on the road or at a campsite. I think this may reflect my pioneering spirit. After the tiring ride into Raglan I woke up the next day feeling Jesus had visited me overnight and instructed me to pick up my bed (inside the tent) and walk. I felt leggy but able to embark on the next mountaineering stage. Maybe I was getting my touring legs.
Overnight it had hammered down and after a dry start first thing to the day I was soon reaching for the waterproofs. Cycling along I listened to Coventry City vs Middlesbrough on TalkSPORT radio. I’m still slightly in awe that I can also WhatsApp Anna in a video call as I cycle along. This digital technology is a thing of great wonder. However, it’s a fact that when I finish my call with her the heavens open (every time).
So lushAgapanthus in great quantities by the roadsideNot a bad spot
Eventually the beast that named itself gravel arrived. It was variable in coverage, adverse cambers were common, mud in places and often the side of the road had given way. Being a hero I battled on: I had no option.
Gravel with a view
I emerged a wiser man on to a main road with a run into Kawhia.
Palm trees on entering KawhiaGosh, not for me!
The campsite had a mixture of tourists, in their camper vans, and then some contractors. They were there for the duration and whilst nice lads they left the kitchen a mess and one smoked pot! As they were up from Rotorua for the logging I imagine they were using heavy equipment. Let’s hope the chap with the wacky backy wasn’t working heavy dangerous equipment.
I opted out of catering and a concession van opened up and I bought some fish & chips. I think it was snapper, whatever that is.
A man’s work is never done
I was sooner in my hutch looking at the inside of my eyelids wondering what the next day would bring and would the scenery continue to be delightful.
‘And away…’ Auckland (Manukau) to Port Waikato – 44 miles. Port Waikato to Raglan – 81 miles
So after the visit to Carole and her mother’s grave (see my previous post) it was time to head south. The bike had gone together well. One issue was leaving behind a large cardboard box I had transported it in. (Under darkness I snuck it near the hotel bins.) The departure route was loaded onto my Sat Nav computer on my handlebars and wending my way through the Auckland traffic I soon found the city behind me. My recollection of my previous visit to Auckland was it being a city of a series of short sharp hills, I feared that was to come as I headed south and then west. After the cold and damp of Yorkshire it was truly liberating to be outdoors in morning temperatures of 17ºC with the promise of more to come. An immediate reality was that all my UK winter training had been on a bicycle that weighed a third of what I was now pedalling. The first day must be taken easy so that I still had some ‘legs’ tomorrow.
My Instagram start
Setting off I was making progress through early Sunday morning Auckland. I saw joggers and little else before I was soon in the countryside.
My first stop was Tuakau where I found lunch and also bought a sandwich for later. I think ‘flat white’ coffee was invented in NZ. I had to sample one.
From here I headed west into a difficult headwind.
This flag shows the problem!
The route was fairly flat and briefly another cyclist had joined me for a bit of company.
Reaching Port Waikato I soon had the tent up.
This would be home for most of the next monthDay 1 — 44 miles
In the kitchen I talked with another tourist. This time from Canada. She seemed well travelled and was enjoying the drive around the coast. Soon it was time for bed. Unfortunately being a Holiday Park there were children tearing around. I woke up a couple of times and then found some earplugs!
I woke up early and was soon on my way through this sleepy settlement with just a few drivers off to work.
I and enjoyed the start as I cycled along talking with Anna on WhatsApp with a tailwind. She must have been a lucky omen as when she rang off the heavens opened.
Getting sodden I found a cafe for some sustenance and bought a sandwich for later.
From here I went into farmland. All of it with livestock as it was far too hilly for arable. It looked a little like the Yorkshire Dales or Peak District. Oh, it was so hilly with many 8% hills. as I entered my eighth hour on the bike my buttocks hurt, I had cramp in both feet and my legs were jelly. I was relieved to see Raglan. It was the experience and mental side of my personality that saw me up 1,550 metres of climbing.
The weather was scorching with hot sun when I arrived. In a flash the temperature fell and the heavens opened. All my laundry got wet again: I’d have to pack it wet tomorrow and take it to the next website to dry. I trudged into Raglan where Felicia from Colorado confirmed my choice of the Ledge Burger was a good one.
They don’t tip in NZ. She was pleased when I broke the rule. Back at the campsite Gen X, who had been noisy and excitable, had been rained off and were now seemingly in their tents. I joined them and fell into a torpor.
My earliest recollections as a child are like fragments of broken pieces that lie scattered after falling from what was undoubtedly a large picture. My earliest years were in north Leeds living on a street, Woodliffe Crescent, just off Scott Hall Road and it was here I lived obviously with my parents and sister until I was five years old and from here we moved to a village, Barwick-in-Elmet to the east of the city. Although my memory is piecemeal I remember school in Chapel Allerton and a wind up toy bear who never fully recovered after being sped through playground puddles. The street with our house was a cul-de-sac and safe to play in although Scott Hall Road was busy with traffic and I think we lost one or even two shelties who made the fatal mistake of getting loose onto that road.
Amongst these ‘fragments’ was meeting a young girl. My recollection is in our garden, she’s sat on a three wheeler bike clutching an ice cream cornet but playing with it rather than embarking on my own probable action of devouring it as quickly as I could without brain freeze. This was my cousin Carole visiting with her aunt, May, from New Zealand. I knew, and it was later confirmed, that Carole had challenges. She’d caught meningitis when even younger and this had changed her life. It would be fair to say I hadn’t given her a lot of thought over the intervening 60 odd years but neither had I to the other nine children, my cousins, of my mother’s five siblings. It only has been Anna’s brilliant forensic genealogy that has found cousins and they are all now becoming, with their spouses, fast friends.
In the discussions with the ‘cousins’ any knowledge of the children of the second eldest ‘sibling’, May, were lost. We knew that May and her husband, George, had emigrated to New Zealand in the early 1950s and whilst we could recollect various meetings and the careers of Carole’s older brother, Malcolm, we assumed that due to Carole’s earlier health misfortune maybe she would have passed away by now. In tracking down Malcolm he confirmed she was alive and living in sheltered accommodation in Auckland. She has never met any of her other ten cousins in decades; I was to be the first. In meeting I imagined it would not mean a lot to her but, for me it was simply enormous.
When discussing her with Malcolm, and my visit to Auckland, it was he who suggested I meet her. I so wanted to do this but for him to volunteer this was a great relief. So I met Carole but before that I visited my aunt’s grave. She’d lain here since a heart attack in 1975 took her.
May and George, my aunt and uncle
My uncle, a person I never met, had lived to a grand old age of 99 and in his latter years he had moved to Brisbane to be near family. Clearly he needed some family support himself at this great age.
So I ventured to the northern Auckland suburbs and thanks to the internet (and Anna’s detective work) knew where my aunt laid. It still took some finding due to poor signage in this massive cemetery of many faiths and sections. However after 30 minutes I found her.
For over 50 years it’s been here at Waikumete
So from here I continued a few miles north into a very hilly residential area and found my cousin.
With some flowers I brought
What can I say: for a couple of hours we talked about her family and her life. She loves the church and also her trips to see family in Brisbane where her other relatives live now. I wondered how well we could communicate; her communication skills were fine but a life in a home means her world view is very curtained. Here she’s well cared for, safe and lives with other women who have their mental health challenges. Carole is 74 in September.
I felt I should have been more curious over the years and got to Auckland sooner but, I suppose, better late than never. In fairness it is a long way from Acaster Malbis. A very happy day for me.
Getting to the start of your holiday would never be a blog but getting to New Zealand requires about 23 hours in the air and, in my case, incarceration in a space so small that retrieving anything off the floor would defy the flexibility of a small chimpanzee. It was hard going and glancing at the screen to find that you still had another nine hours to go before reaching Auckland, after leaving Dubai seven hours ago, is not uplifting. I was sat on the second row behind a bulkhead on the second flight. Isn’t that where they seat young children so they can be plonked in a bassinet on a shelf I hear you all ask? Yes. So would a toddler, unaware that he was confined in a ridiculous small space, clamped to his parents for what must feel like most of his childhood not wail and complain? Yes. However, after a crash course in intensive crying and toddler tantrums through our recently becoming grandparents I coped well as I cranked up the volume on the inflight entertainment.
Your hero gets set for the marathon
After being denied boarding by Qatar Airways in 2024, due to a worn passport, I obviously avoided them and selected Emirates. Apart from the route, times and cost the other thing to obsess about was the weight allowance. It was 30kg in the hold and a strict 7kg cabin bag. This would be surely enough for any tourist but remember I’m packing a bicycle and enough luggage and kit to sustain a camping trip. For literally weeks I weighed things and moved them around the bags and got to damn near 30kg for the hold. Turning up to Check-In at Manchester airport they asked me the weight, as well as had I deflated my tyres! They didn’t weigh the box or the other bag with 6kg in it. So much for all that anxious planning. On the 7kg cabin bag they never even looked at or weighed my bag as I boarded. At the Gate they’re handling a few hundred people and the last thing they’re thinking about is your hand luggage. Obviously we’re all scarred by Ryanair whose pernicious luggage policy is all about making a few extra €’s.
Last time at Auckland we’d queued for a long time at Security and read the signs that told you about their bio security priorities in NZ. On this basis I’d decided to declare what meagre provisions I’d brought. So when I wheeled through my big bike box I got asked what food I’d brought? I said some gels and packets of porridge. ‘No meat or honey etc.?’ Well, we’ve all seen these TV fly on the wall programmes where someone has their bag opened to find half a horse’s head (only the edible part of course) and pickled chicken entrails accompanied by a weak explanation that they didn’t know there were restrictions on animal body parts as they feigned to have a tenuous understanding of English! Anyway they scanned my bags and I was free to proceed to the car rental.
I think they meant New Zealand rather than the Sixt car rental desk
If you’d ask me what car would I have no plan to buy it’d be an EV: I have range anxiety and never anything Chinese. I won’t be helping the Chinese Communist Party unload subsidised cars on the West as they destroy car makers in their march to global hegemony. So, of course, I discovered I’d hired a Chinese EV. A Geely, this manufacturer own Volvo as well. Anyway as I shuffled along slowly in heavy traffic it repeatedly told me to concentrate on the road and seemed to be watching me (I later found out it was with a camera on the steering column.) I’d like to think I was occupying a person sat in a bunker in Beijing watching an elderly man seemingly juggling a water bottle, peering at his Sat Nav and singing loudly to The Mothers Of Invention whilst he ruminated on how the British ever had an empire if this was a specimen of their talent pool.
A car with the looks and charisma of a breeze block
Anyway I got to the hotel but couldn’t work out how to switch the car off. So I relied on the well known, fail safe, strategy of opening the car door hoping this would trip something. It did and surprisingly no warning came up on the dashboard telling me that bailing out at speed was injurious to my well being. This all made me think he’d given up on me and gone for lunch.
So for Friday 13th things had gone well and next it was the challenging project of Tony vs. jet lag. I worried this would play out over several days.
It’s 2024 since I’ve cycle toured bar a few short days last May along Hadrian’s Wall with the Magnificent Varley. It’s now time to go again. Winter touring means, in part, the pursuit of better weather abroad and that means quite a long flight. So I plumped for New Zealand. Why ? I once foolishly asked some followers of this drivel where should I go and an old ex-colleague, David Moore, volunteered New Zealand. It stuck in my head that maybe he was right. I had looked at it before but the road system isn’t fulsome and the main roads can be busy and if you seek lesser routes you have to have gravel roads. Gravel roads and trails are the recommended touring routes: ordinarily this is not Tony country. However NZ did seem a gap on the CV. So after a few late nights and a reach out to fellow tourers on Facebook I discovered a way to get from Auckland to Wellington albeit with a little gravel to cover. This trip will be on the North Island and not the South Island. With Anna we’d taken a holiday on the North and South Island in 2023 with a cursory time on the North island before we concentrated on the South Island.
I’m planning to post quite a bit on Instagram and should you be unable to receive enough joy with only my blog then this may truly help you fill your boots. If you can’t fathom the QR Code search for my name (Tony.Ives) on Instagram.
So out came the lists of things to pack, applications for a visa, a bike inspection, route planning in fine detail, accommodation or campsites to research and a ‘pretty please’ to my long suffering wife to deplete her savings and disappear for a few weeks. Funnily enough this latter task was easily accomplished! Coupled to this was getting fit. I cycle all the time and so my buttocks have been broken in many decades ago but I think this ride has some daunting days and in preparation I have gone out in cold and miserable weather to climb up brutal hills in the Peak District and the Yorkshire Wolds to give myself a fighting chance. Amongst the inclement challenges was local Yorkshire flooding where avoidance, with failing daylight, retracing my route wasn’t wise and the option was to get off and walk along roads with icy water up my calves. My carbon road bike, even with mudguards weighs around 10.5kg. When I start touring my touring bike and all the luggage will be c30kg. The touring bike has a lot more lower gears but, as you can imagine, the first few days, with all that weight takes some getting used to.
Some final tuning up at Cycle Heaven
As if by Divine Intervention Anna discovered a cousin of mine who resides In Auckland and the gravestone of an aunt (her mother). I cannot remember having met the aunt. She made a rare trip back to Blighty when I was probably about 5 years old. However, I recollect meeting the cousin on that visit (a very long time ago!) and, for one reason or another, thought she was long dead now. I’ll meet her shortly after landing and then I’ll wend my way slowly down the west coast.
Heading south
In Wellington will be Paul, I hope (!), an old friend from my Manchester Polytechnic days who splits his days between the UK and NZ. I would have posted a photograph of him but the most recent one has of him strangely sat astride a camel. We see each other during the year nowadays, usually at cricket matches, and after the gravel roads and hills I will be ready for a proper bed and that beer.
Bike nicely stuffed into an old bike box I got from a local bike shop.
I have some concerns that this may be quite a daunting ride but as Mao Tse Tung once opined ‘the longest journey starts with the first step’ or pedal stroke in my case. Oh yes and there is ‘maybe more’ but you’ll have to wait.
The car park was full at the Newbald Village Hall or as the branding would have it, Newbald Live. The venue has had a considerable makeover since I last visited and it now provides a great room for visiting artists to play. There was a full house to see the latest Americana/Country act booked for the delectation of the folk from East Yorkshire. Richey is no stranger to our shores and it’s a treat to find her out in the country at lesser stops to play her selection of songs to new and old audiences. Her catalogue is one of the strongest I know and it has been consistent over nearly 30 years of recording. She played a selection of songs from her 1995 debut Kim Richey through to her 2024 release Every New Beginning.
The voice is still a tour de force that’s a beautiful instrument. To accompany herself she played chords on an acoustic guitar although the ‘pin drop’ numbers were when she put down her guitar and left the playing to her accompanist, Luke Brighty, on a restrained electric guitar. Take The Cake, off her last album, was one such song along with Girl In A Car all the way back from 2002. Between the songs stories came thick and fast, she looked back on her early years with amusing self-deprecation. She was asked by her record label about her ideas for a title for her debut LP? Without missing a beat she volunteered ‘Child Of The Wild Blue Yonder’. They heard her out and then called it Kim Richey! Over her long career she’s mixed with many bright lights in the Americana/Country firmament but she only name dropped Aaron Lee Tasjan, a neighbour in East Nashville who’s worked and toured with her. Joy Rider was one such collaboration where she sings about the childlike curiosity of a young boy who explores the world on his noisy motorbike.
The hits or singles were ticked off as she played Those Words We Said, Come Around and The Way It Never Was. Then it was time to play her last two songs and quickly promote her merch including tea towels (that she’d spent a lot of time lugging around various gigs with little success!) These songs were the fabulous Chapel Avenue and then a singalong I’m Alright. We all shuffled into the dark chilly Yorkshire night with a glow after a very special evening.
The dynasty was increased by one when Maximilian Theodore was delivered in Wythenshawe on January 27th to parents, Sophie and Harry. Both mother and son are well and safely back at home. From having no grandchildren 25 months ago we’ve now got three. After having had two daughters and then two granddaughters (Isabella and Elodie) it was a pleasure to welcome a boy into the family (although I will love the girls no less.)
I hate doctoring the images to hide the child’s identity but this is the instruction of the parents
I did quip that I now have a challenge ensuring that he didn’t grow up to be a Manchester United fan given his birth place. A friend sagely pointed out that most Manchester United fans have never been anywhere near Manchester and so I should be safe in that regard!
An old person being stupid with a box on his nose whilst a granddaughter attempts to grab the box. Happy days!
Our flat near the respective parents will be now busier as his sister and cousin come and go. Given Anna’s trailing across the other side of the Pennines for childcare on the busy winter M62 motorway or unreliable train service it’s a very timely acquisition. Around Bramhall we know where the playgrounds, cafes, ducks (to feed) are . This includes the pet shop to enjoy the guinea pigs, rabbits, budgies and hamsters at a safe distance behind glass! I’m sure by the time Max gets on this circuit his big sister will be very smug and showing him the ropes.
Now widely in the public domain it does seem appropriate to publish a blog that confirms that Moores Furniture Group has shut. This happened during January after the existing management were unable to continue trading despite seeking a new investor/s to sustain the business.
Firstly, this is a considerable blow to the 450+ employees who must now seek alternative employment. Many have been employed at Moores for decades and this will be quite an upheaval for them and their families. Even to the casual observer after the previous owners, Hilco, stepped back in September 2025 it seemed that the firm would fail. The company needed their financial support to continue sustainably. There would be no takeover as there is considerable capacity in the kitchen furniture industry as well as more efficient and profitable operators who are all happy to absorb any business that would now become available. The administrator did find a buyer for the intellectual property and, presumably, immediate order book in the form of Wren Kitchens. Wren is a massive retail kitchen operation with manufacturing and showrooms. However, they have what the industry calls a ‘contract’ division that supplies directly to business, rather than retail customers. No doubt Wren Contract saw Moores’ demise as an opportunity to take over their existing order book with house builders and maybe other b2b customers. I know nothing of their plans but I’d assume that after offering the existing customers continuity of supply on building sites already underway they would then seek to substitute Moores’ cabinets and designs with Wren products?
In the wider locality there are other cabinet manufacturers and some of the skilled operatives may find employment along with sales people and installers who may find a home within Wren Contracts? Moores operated a ‘final salary’ or defined benefit pension scheme that will now shut and ‘fall’ in to the government run Pension Protection Fund (PPF). The PPF will mean that all those who were in the scheme, whether retired or yet to do so will receive pensions. The level of the pension is dependent on age and value of the pension prior to the scheme closing. It has a number of variables that can be explored by looking at the PPF website. The PPF will pay existing pensions for as long as it takes them to take over the old scheme and integrate it into the PPF. This could take up to two years.
So what happened for the company to fail? It really, in my opinion, has nothing to do with the existing management who attempted to make the company competitive and increase sales on a shoestring budget from too small a sales base. I watched the organisation from the proximity of being a pension trustee for many years and, to me, the size of the factory and its attendant cost meant that it needed considerable sales and volume to break even. The early years after the 2008/9 financial crisis saw the company jettisoning business from customers who were deemed to be too hard to service or marginally profitable.
The dramatic increase in the offer of installation had been catastrophic as the company struggled to do it successfully and get paid in full or on a timely basis. Installation didn’t enjoy the efficiencies and systems that ran a factory. This was all about taking the cabinets etc to a muddy field (building site) and fitting it and then waiting until the property was at a stage that the builder determined before you could invoice. There was a lot of steps and hurdles to overcome before you got paid; not least as other trades visited the kitchen and may damage the installation for which you were still responsible.
However, it’s a known statistic that it’s seven times more difficult to get a new customer than retain one. The then management had the belief that they were ridding themselves of ‘problems’ and it would put the company into profit. From 2008/9 the company lost approximately half the workforce (c500 people) as the directors embarked on enormous redundancy programmes. I fell in one of the earliest programmes.
I think in the years since 2008 the company only made a profit once. This desperate situation didn’t close the business as the ultimate owners of Masco and Hilco either kept injecting cash into the operation or underwrote loans and debts. So the seeds of its demise go back a long way and eventually money and time ran out.
I grieved some time ago and was surprised that it staggered through to 2026. I still have many true friends and wonderful memories of my time at Moores. Those work memories include private jets around the USA, launching a kitchen furniture range at the NEC, meeting the then Prince of Wales with Anna, export trips to China, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Abu Dhabi and other exotic locations. Leading the public sector salesforce to grow sales by 50% to deliver sales of over £30m in 2006. Whilst there I had the positions of Purchasing and Design Manager, Commercial Director, Marketing Director, Public Sector Sales Director and then running the Installation division: a job I was parachuted in to turn around. It was an operational disaster. There were then 500 building sites nationwide. With hard work by many people this went well, calm was being restored but the company decided it could all be done more cheaply and wanted to change the whole management structure and process. By the time I was tapped on the shoulder and shown the door the house building industry was gripped by a downturn as a result of the global slow down and shedding cost was a priority.
At Moores I learned all about business, which informed my politics, personal values and character. It was influential in forming me as a person. I was there over 23 years, whilst there I married, had a family and (if I could track it all) had many milestones in my life whilst turning up to Thorp Arch for so many years.
Buchanan is the vocalist with, rockers, Rival Sons. This outfit has been Grammy nominated in the rock category and Buchanan’s sonorous yet powerful tones are a key reason. For those unfamiliar with his vocals David Gray has a similar attractive voice in timbre and resonance (but not possessing Buchanan’s 747 roar when he unleashes it.) After Buchanan sojourned in the Mojave Desert to find tranquility and space to pen a solo album he turned to Cobb to produce and craft this debut. Cobb has produced several Rival Sons releases.
The excellent and poignant ballad, Caroline, opens the album and is an introduction to his powerful story about loss, grief and reflection (about her illness and health.) Buchanan says the emotions could be applied to other scenarios; the video is well worth a look. High and Lonesome, is a co-write with Cobb and this languorous bluesy waltz allows you to wallow in his beautiful achy tones. Sway, written to his wife, is an intimate ballad that has him swoop and soar in expressing his love. With a floaty John McVie type bass line Great Divide comes across as less pensive and earnest albeit about an ending relationship.
Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love gets a soulful rendition sounding like one of Buchanan’s heroes, Van Morrison. Here the vibe and tune overtakes the words as the take away. Cobb has deployed many arrangements throughout including strings and it’s this variety that complements the voice that repeatedly dazzles. Buchanan’s articulate profundity comes to the fore on Weapons of Beauty – “Give me the songs to sing in the fight / these weapons of beauty will destroy the night / it’s been so long. Give me the words / to say what I feel / I could speak this dream, for to make it real…”As an overall sound it’s not a long way from The Red Stray Clays with its pace, lyrical ruminations and sound. The Clays’ Brandon Coleman sings his songs like he’s holding court and Buchanan similarly dominates. On this latter point it can’t be a coincidence that Cobb has produced both. This is a glorious release
Tylor Ketchum’s country rock band is based in Boise, Idaho up toward the Canadian border. It’s around here that the band tours bringing their tight and pulsating rhythms to some original lyrics. For those unfamiliar with their sound then The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers and a little Tom Petty comes to mind. If you like your rock guitars then fill your boots. One of my eternal regrets after becoming aware of their catalogue was finding that I was two weeks early to a gig according to a bill poster I saw in Jackson, Wyoming. For all that this live recording compensates as the band work through 23 songs mainly from their four studio long player releases.
The hiring of Adam Odor to produce is a masterstroke. Odor’s been behind the desk on the Silverada and Mike & The Moonpies releases. All those releases ‘sing’ and, not least, because Odor finds the instruments behind the vocalist and promotes them into a palpitating rhythm with pedal steel and lead guitar always doing something interesting. The band have some killer cuts including The Of Ballad Black Jack Ketchum, a seven minute epic about a relative from the 1800s who was hung after a career of robbing banks and trains. This is followed by the title of their 2021 album Non-Typical Find, where a sun’s glint off a rib cage draws, way down in a valley, a walker to find a human skeleton and the tragic story of the woman’s demise after some perilous and then fatal hitchhiking.
The band keep it interesting with changes in pace between songs and I Got You starts with harmonica and some picking by Antonio Vazquez to a rhythm where you could imagine the audience dancing. Sat on a galloping drum beat Ketchum’s nasal tones advise that he and ‘his baby’ are Good At Bad News with sparkling pedal steel from Rider Soran that appears like shards of sunlight appearing between trees as you pass by them at speed. Hum Of The Road, another album title track enjoys harmonies on the chorus as Ketchum’s brothers, Tommy Bushman, on drums and Jason Ketchum on bass propel from the back of the stage. There are a handful of covers and the most attractive is Feel A Whole Lot Better from The Byrds where Soran and Vazquez exchange licks and the brothers lean in to provide harmonies behind Ketchum.
This is a long album with maybe too many tracks but it’s a reward for a loyal following who long wanted the live experience on record; for me it was time well spent.
Andrews’ current, considerable, stature has been achieved through consistent quality records since her 2016 breakthrough, Honest Life. Parallels with early Joni Mitchell may seem too easy to conjure up but she has a dream of a voice that draws you in like a siren, a considerable talent on guitar and piano, sophisticated arrangements and the regular mining of her own personal life for lyrics. Inspiration for these songs came from relationships and the stress of seeing someone close struggle with ill health. These experiences took her to a plight, she calls, limerence: a mental state of being madly in love where reciprocity is uncertain and from here all sorts of insecurities, mood swings and emotions kick in. To deal with such turbulence, she says, the last year has been one of a lot of writing, hiking and travel.
With brutal honesty she wades into a selection of intimate lyrics that often reflect an observant and defiant mindset yet with compassion and support – “Close the curtain, say your confession / My lips are sealed at your discretion / It’s a scary world full of cons and clowns / A lot of bad people who will tear you down / Not me, no way”. The haunting Cons & Clowns comes replete with angelic harmonising, muffled snares, chiming piano chords and flute. Outsider with its plucked guitar chords and resonating bass sits on a foundation of sweet extended strings. Here Andrews is on the defensive seeking a place where she won’t be hurt “as it’s too painful looking in”. Little Picture of a Butterfly explores the helplessness of things we can’t control, again with relationships to the fore – “Guess your love is not a cure / Guess I should’ve known better / Guess I’m throwing out that sweater / After all that time went by / All I get is a butterfly”. With her voice to the fore we have fragments of jazz flute before a striding insistent beat grows and Andrews starts to become assertive of where she’s now headed after the heartbreak.
With, her producer and contributing musician, Bernhardt she’s created interesting arrangements and varied instrumentation that give up more on each listen. I find her voice compelling and capable of making me absorb all her heartfelt sentiments. I think this may be my favourite of hers to date.
So goodbye 2025. It was a fun year of new family, property moves and travel. Here are some memories:
I must start with our second granddaughter, Elodie Mabel, who appeared in September to Katrina and Matt. All babies are loved but Elodie came after a wait and we were so happy that both daughters had started families. Frankly, for me, it was a ‘bucket list’ moment. It goes without saying that this is another child care project for the grandparents or in reality the grandmother whose talents still amaze me, although being married to me for 38 years has fine tuned her skills in dealing with seemingly independent and demanding people. Coinciding with Elodie’s arrival we had swapped a property in York for one in Bramhall, which Anna reminds me is in Cheshire but in reality, is part of the Greater Manchester conurbation. This property is a great bolt hole as Anna floats between both households.
Elodie (with some retouching to protect her identity) and Grandpa
Holidays are always able to conjure up great memories and a trip to Texas in April was the gift that kept giving. First there was the country music: seeing Ashley McBryde outside on a sweltering night as we clutched a cold beer and sang along. This was in San Antonio and was just the best.
Visiting NASA at Houston was a boy’s dream come true especially as the tour included a visit to the Mission Control room of all those Apollo launches and landings.
Add to this the beaches, a tour of a WW2 aircraft carrier, a ride in a driverless taxi and delightful towns in the Hill Country were terrific but as if by some divine intervention our trip provided the opportunity to catch Bob Sanders on his epic bicycle ride across the USA to achieve a world record of being the oldest man to ride to do this. My admiration for such physical prowess and determination cannot be overstated. This record should hold for decades.
Jack (Bob’s support driver), me and the legend in Del RioOur certificate for helping Bob, by completing a form (!) to verify his ride through Del Rio, TX
My own cycling exploits included few endurance events but cycling Hadrian’s Wall with an old school buddy, John, was fabulous. This wall was a Roman structure to keep the Picts (Scots) out of civilisation. The weather was kind, the history remarkable and the company grand. We have another adventure penciled in for 2026.
The Mighty Varley
Despite the lack of an overseas cycle tour I still clocked up nearly 3,500 miles on two wheels and to my great pleasure this was mainly in the Yorkshire countryside.
Another long hill, this time out of Thixendale
As much as I would love to detach myself from Leeds United and the attendant anxiety it generates, they provided a wonderful year. We firstly got promoted to the top tier and now appear to be surviving. We got to a few games and they were all exciting but the demolition of Cardiff City will live long in the memory.
Anna’s father had Norwegian ancestry and so it’s a special place for her to visit again. I was reluctant after an earlier visit and had often stated that ‘Norway was nice but not for a whole weekend’. This time we, troublingly, enjoyed a heatwave and after spending some time in Oslo took the train to Bergen before taking a Havila ferry cum cruise ship up the coast to beyond the Arctic circle. We enjoyed a leisurely trip close to the shore where we saw stunning scenery, ate well, absorbed the culture including the Sami and their reindeers and lots of WW2 history.
We were so taken it’d be worth doing again! On returning via Oslo we found a very old gravestone of Anna’s grandparents and great grandparents in a city cemetery.
In other long lost family stories Anna found three of my cousins who I’d either never met or not seen for over 40 years. We have so much in common that is a true delight to meet up again and we do now quite regularly.
Whilst talking of holidays I got to drive ‘Samantha’ in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. Samantha is my 16 year old Morgan Plus 4. Anna flew out to join me and with the hood down we enjoyed the food, sun and looking down a long bonnet.
The rest of the year I continued to write record reviews for Country Music People, had a 70th birthday that everyone wanted to celebrate (I’m more of the Kenny Rogers mindset – ‘never count your money when you’re sitting at the table’), enjoyed concerts, watched some cricket, repainted a telephone box, spent a week on Gran Canaria, got a new car (which was the same as the old car but new!), bought lots of vinyl records including driving to Stuttgart to buy several, saw a nephew married in a grand affair, accompanied Anna on some of her welfare visits to folk we know and pushed a swing with a toddler in it an infinite number of times.
It’d be remiss not to post a photo of the other little thief of my heart
There was inevitably some tricky moments. I approached a crossroad as a driver, opposite, inexplicably drove in front of another car, probably motoring at over 50mph with right of way, driving between us. Both cars were written off and the perpetrator shunted her wreck into my car rendering it undrivable. Fire engines, an ambulance and many police cars converged on this accident. Frankly, I could have been a heartbeat from death. Which just goes to confirm that life isn’t a rehearsal. Get stuck in…
I have more adventures booked for 2026 either on two wheels or a fly drive and so stay tuned. In the meanwhile, I hope you all have a healthy and happy new year and thank you for reading.
This troubadour has released 10 songs that burst with tunes, sumptuous vocals and a variety of arrangements that defy them being easily placed in a genre. I’d say it’s a singer songwriter dalliance with lots of bright pop sensibilities. Bluhm says the recording “is a reflection of where I am at now in my life, which is contentment, a really fun place to be.” This assessment comes after many wearying years touring but now, she’s less peripatetic; this was recorded live in five days at her ranch just north of Nashville, hence the album title.
The timeless song selection might have graced a Linda Rondstadt album where a melody and a variety of styles were typical. Bay Laurel Leaves sits on shimmering strings with an earworm of a tune and talks of her current settled blissful state in Tennessee after earlier years in California. Long Time To Make Old Friends, a cover, is a modern upbeat blues redolent of Randy Newman, Cumberland Banks is an easy rolling country song with acoustic instruments inspired by her considerable touring with The Infamous Stringdusters. Falling Out Of Dreams is late period Fleetwood Mac in its bright rhythm and Stevie Nicks vocal with harmonies. Taking Chances is personal: an acoustic rhythm has her relating her time on the road and missing her own bed and friends at home. The melody grabs your attention and the chorus with lush harmonies make this a highlight.
Each song is a delight here and the delivery, arrangements are vibrant and energetic. Bluhm has a siren of a warm pleasing voice that draws you in with its personality, occasional sense of fun and range. Most of the song writes are a collaboration as is the playing throughout. She found the whole recording experience a joy and this vibe spills out into the music. A special mention must go to her partner, producer and bass player Noah Wilson who has done a terrific job.
I write as the weather has turned decidedly wintery in Yorkshire. Snow nearly settled today and temperatures fell to freezing. As a weekly cyclist this is a blow and so I went to the gym to ‘get my fix’. As I usually ride outside in the countryside thinking I’m doing myself good there is, frankly, an absence of science to confirm this. However, the gym static bikes all have metrics to measure your efforts. So after 40 minutes of grinding through Singapore and Sardinia I was told I had burned 285 calories. My relief at learning that after this workout I could now have half a biscuit conscience free was not motivational. I look forward to better weather.
Reminds me of her mother…
In my journey of learning to be a grandparent I need to report on two challenges. The first is the car seat. When our daughters were young there was a lightweight seat that snuggly fitted onto the backseat held in place by a seat belt. No one’s kids, that I know, were jettisoned through the windscreen like an Exocet after sudden braking. However, in the 30 years legislation has moved on such that the child seat has a similarity to a brick sh*thouse in its construction. The fact that it weighs a lot is not the only problem. Its installation in the car has it plugging into two ISOFIX fittings (buried in all modern cars’ rear seats). It is so difficult that a parallel with docking with the Space Station seems apposite. It took me 10 minutes. I had wondered what kept Elon awake at night and now I know.
Instrument of torture and yes it turns on its base!
My other challenge was a defective somersaulting tiger. It should land on it’s feet. After reporting the issue another one followed quickly. Isabella isn’t as excited by the leaping cat, as I am, quelle surprise. The investment was made to hopefully distract her whilst her grandparents have a cup of coffee. I will report back.
Somersaulting perfection
In an earlier blog I advised we had bought a place physically between the two daughters to provide child care. It takes about 100 minutes, by car, to get there from York. So rather than battle through the traffic I thought I’d let ‘the train take the strain’. I also got to the railway station from the bottom of our street by bus. A complete surrender to public transport. The result was that it took 5 hours! Firstly, it is a slow journey but when you add that the train from York was delayed by 37 minutes and then I missed a connecting train in Manchester it became comical. Being of a certain vintage I’d have to admit that with bus passes and concessionary train fares (plus the partial refund over the delay) I got to my destination for diddly squat. However, you couldn’t seriously maintain a job schedule or anything time sensitive with such a tardy operation. I’ll have to ride my bike over there and see if I can beat the train? It’ll be close.
Flooding in the centre of York but we still have a hosepipe ban!
Lastly my brother-in-law, Jeff, invited me to an evening of folk music at one of his local pubs. The two guitarists were Mark Radcliffe and David Boardman. They worked their way through some engaging tunes over the night but the between songs banter was epic. Radciffe had, and still has, a radio presence presenting many shows for the BBC; with this came a wealth of stories about his life. He’s a cheeky chap with a ready wit. So it was sobering when he recounted the recent funeral of his mother. She was an old lady and whilst sad her death wasn’t unexpected. Afterwards he was approached by the vicar who observed that he was now the head of the family. Radcliffe hadn’t realised that and was a little surprised. The vicar noting that he was taken aback volunteered some help and said did he have any questions? Radcliffe momentarily pondered this and asked ‘Do you have the wi-fi password?” The vicar was appalled at this and blurted out “Your mother has just died!” Radcliffe absorbed the blow and then clarified “Is that upper or lower case?”
I was listening to a podcast about football when in the introduction the presenters were asking each other about their week so far? One mused that on a walk he’d seen a selection of conkers (brown seeds of the horse chestnut tree) lying on the ground.
This pile filled him with some boyish glee and transported him back a few decades to when finding them would have enabled him to play ‘conkers’. You drill a hole through the centre, thread string through and in alternate swings/shots you and your opponent attempt to demolish the conker. The most intact conker wins. He concluded that this was surely more interesting than today’s boys holding a game console? This year I was too tempted to walk past them on the ground, collected a few and deposited them on window sills. Anna is now surreptitiously disposing of them!
An envelope was unearthed by Anna’s sister, Cath, that was used by my father-in-law, Eric, to write his wedding speech for our nuptuals in September 1987. In fairness, he was not a man given to talking unnecessarily but this was admirably on the brief side. As I wrote recently weddings are now packed with various participants making dreary orations. Maybe the issue of white envelopes to those inclined to talk might shorten matters?
On June 30 2021 I pedalled through Lockerbie as I was completing the bike ride from Lands End, Cornwall to John O’Groats, Scottish Highlands over a couple of weeks. It was a sunny day and the ride since crossing the Scottish border had been quite easy bar the very rough road surfaces. Lockerbie was a distant memory as a disaster as it had happened 32 years earlier and this small town seemed unremarkable except for a large Tesco supermarket in the centre. However the scale and audacity of the atrocity hung over me and I cycled a little way out of town to the memorial.
With these memories I embarked on watching Sky TV’s Lockerbie: A Search For Truth that follows the tragedy from before the flight until the conviction of the Libyan, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the death of 270 people. The story unfolds following one of the parent’s children boarding the flight to his pursuit for the truth including meeting Colonel Gadaffi, British Cabinet members and attending the trial in The Netherlands. The acting with Colin Firth is breathtaking and the story is not as straightforward as you might expect. Brilliant television.
Climbing out of Thixendale in my beloved Yorkshire Wolds
Since I last wrote quite a bit of time has been spent in Greater Manchester with my daughters and their offspring. Anna has a weekly schedule but due to my lack of child care skills I’m in attendance less frequently. There is considerable cost running two properties but that nice man, the Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, has tried to alleviate some of the strain. As a Council Tax payer I can get a free travel card for the buses and if I pay £10/year it can be extended to trams and local trains for all of Greater Manchester.
My resemblance to a Nazi who escaped to Argentina in 1945 is as coincidental as it is unfortunate.
However, whilst a bargain it does require Andy to ensure that they don’t cancel the trains at the last minute, as they did on our last trip. Clearly ensuring that they’re manned must be part of his Phase Two plan.
