The Way We Were

A day with Mary & family - and joined by Andrew - in Beaconsfield, while Liz & the girls drove down to Cornwall. We talked through all the funeral arrangements, house and everything and by the end of the afternoon were emotionally drained. Amazing the amount of detail to be considered but good that we did it all now. Meanwhile, Liz is helping settle her mum into her home after her 2 month convalescence in Rome. She seems OK.

I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's State of Emergency - The Way We Were: Britain 1970-1974. Economic gloom, strikes, power cuts, Northern Ireland, the Common Market, Enoch, football hooliganism, Idi Amin, 'Pakis', Benny Hill, Oz trials... blimey, they were some five years. And yet there were great things too: Bowie, glam, prog, and music generally, hard-hitting plays, Mexico 70, Leeds United, Monty Python, Biba...  I guess any formative years (I was 9-13) are going to stand out, but by any standards the early 70s were tumultuous. Good stuff, meticulously fair, but perhaps not the most cheery book to be reading right now.