Where does all the Thyme go?

1 Day 13 hour 31 mins 

Well, my sixtieth turned out to be a damp squib of a day, as I expected. It was a Wednesday, it was grey, it was raining, the bowling alley I wanted to go to was shut, there were no shows on in nearby theatres, there were no films on of any merit too see and there was nothing that I had a burning desire to do or see. On top of all that I lost my phone too. That is why I am celebrating my birthday properly on Sat 1st Nov instead, Wednesday was always a non-starter.
What was good though, was all the greetings I got via Facebook and my birthday cards, they were some of a few bright spots in my grey day, thank you.
I was hoping by now to be surprised by the early delivery of my freshly minted kuJenga Society CD, but no, not so far. See, this does show that underneath it all, I am an optimist. 

The Mind Of Valerie.

In this song, I attempted to depict the stresses and strains that striking has on a family and I wanted to highlight the importance of the support from the wives (in this case in the Miners’ Strike) that was essential for the men to stay out.
The essential thing here is solidarity, it is a powerful thing and there will be many times that this concept may be needed to protect what you believe in in life. It is this solidarity which is the target of the right as they recognise that, it is the tool of working people to protect themselves. Solidarity is often found in the public sector and it is no-wonder then that we are seeing the dismantling of the Local Government and the NHS by the Tories, so that those services can be handed over to the ‘individualism’ of the non-unionised private sector. They then help their friends and the boards of companies they eventually join, to make maximum profits without paying a decent wage. GOLD RUSH BABY!

Striking is a grim and desperate thing to do, but the awful industrial relations in this country means that working people need more than ever to protect themselves and I think it is an essential and noble thing to do, to stand by your fellow worker and fight for what is right, even though you may be losing much needed money in the process.
It is this nobility and struggle that I tried to capture in ‘The Mind Of Valerie’


Take a listen, 30 mins and 30 seconds in.