When the mountains and canyons started to tremble and shake

Spent my days with a woman unkind

Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine.

Made up my mind to make a new start.

Going to California with an aching in my heart,

Someone told me there's a girl out there,

With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.

Took my chances on a big jet plane

Never let them tell you that they're all the same.

The sea was red and the sky was grey,

Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today.

The mountains and the canyons started to tremble and shake

As the children of the sun began to awake.

Led Zeppelin, Going To California

Has anyone ever asked you what period of history, if time travel was possible, you would want to visit? No, me neither. But if they did, my Tardis fantasy would be to return to the year of my birth, 1967. Not for that event, which would be just weird (“Paging Dr. Freud!”), but to a bucolic corner of California where a particular sub-culture of the free spirit flourished in the Summer Of Love. 

My interest was piqued when Barney Hoskyns, ertswhile rock scribe and founder of the Rock's Lost Pages website, brought out his wonderful (and lengthily titled) 2005 tome Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters & Cocaine Cowboys In The LA. It not only captured a remarkable time, but also a remarkable place - the seismic valleys of the Hollywood Hills, and the incredible body of music that nestled within amid a haze of drugs, bed-hopping and hippyish idealism. Covering the denim-clad years that were the first nine of my own existence, Hoskyns charted the fortunes of, frankly, an incredible group of musicians living, mainly, in and around Laurel Canyon, a semi-rustic community barely a ten-minute detour from the gaudiness of Sunset Boulevard. 

With Mulholland Drive running through it, the canyon has always attracted Hollywood royalty, seeking escape from the bright lights of Tinseltown, but in the period in question it became the epicentre of artistic idealism, exemplified by the presence of Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Steven Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne (who shared a house with Glenn Frey, with the two of them writing early song for the Eagles, like Taking It Easy). Another figure in this internecine cauldron was Linda Ronstadt, who would run into the likes of Frey and Don Henley ‘down the hill’ at West Hollywood's Troubador, a legendary venue that played a huge part in the careers of Mitchell and Taylor (with whom she had a relationship, as did Crosby), the Eagles themselves and sometime member JD Souther, The Byrds, Elton John and Carole King. Another figure inextricably linked to this web was David Geffen, a prominent figure in Hoskyns’ book for his own colourful life, as well as the ambition that made him one of the most powerful figures in showbusiness.

Five years prior to Hoskyns’ book, Cameron Crowe stepped back into the same place and time with his semi-autobiographical Almost Famous, recalling his own experiences as a teenaged Rolling Stone writer, mixing with the likes of Poco, the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin and [again] the Eagles during their wildest period of LA hell-raising. This was clearly a time of arch decadence and louche behaviour, but it should never be forgotten that there was also some sweet, sweet music that came out of it. 

Which brings me to a new film (well, a new film in the UK), that celebrates the countrified rock (or folkified pop - take your pick) that poured out of LA’s canyons from the mid-60s onwards, becoming known, invariably, as ‘the California Sound’. Echo In The Canyon, directed by former music journalist and record executive Andrew Slater, captures the fertility of both the time and a locale that intoxified so many rock luminaries, many of whom came to stay and enjoy Laurel Canyon’s various pleasures.

The film features interviews with the late Tom Petty (in his last filmed interview), Brian Wilson, Eric Clapton and Graham Nash, all of whom fell under the canyon’s spell (a “legendary paradise,” - Petty, a “heavenly place,” - Clapton). Crucially, it examines the "avalanche" of music that poured down the mountainsides from the likes of Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas And The Papas and the various bands and artists they were associated with. "The music that came out of the Laurel Canyon scene was inspiring to my generation of songwriters," says Jakob Dylan - Bob’s son and both the film’s anchor and executive producer. "The best test of songwriting is that it transcends its moment in time," Dylan explains, "and there is no doubt that the songs we explore in this film are as powerful today as they were in 1965."

The documentary, which has finally appeared theatrically in the UK, two years after I first came across its US release, also includes interviews with Stills and Crosby, ex-Mama-and-Papa Michelle Phillips, The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and even Ringo Starr, who became enamoured by the canyon scene’s romanticism himself. Indeed, critics have claimed that the film spends too much time in the company of the Beatle and Beach Boy Wilson, under-representing many of the names and actual residents of the LA canyons that contributed to the richness of its musical and artistic output. But, in fairness, it only takes the canyon story up until the year in which I popped into the world. In the process, it also revisits the richness of canyon’s musical output, with new recordings of Pete Seeger’s The Bells of Rhymney by Beck, Norah Jones’ interpretation of The Association’s Never My Love, Stephen Stills and Eric Clapton covering Buffalo Springfield’s Questions, and a couple from Canyonite, Neil Young. 

Plenty of distinct geographies have been responsible for musical genres - from New York to Liverpool, Nashville to Manchester - but there was something about Laurel Canyon and the bungalows and hippyish spirit that fermented there which led to some of the most interesting fusion of folk, rock and pop the 1960s and 1970s produced. And Echo In The Canyon captures it all, in highly entertaining form.

Red Rain

Picture: Getty Images

This is going to sound bitter and twisted, but saturated media coverage this morning of Liverpool's first league title in 30 years - and their first of the Premier League era - comes across as a birthright fulfilled. There's no doubt that Liverpool have deserved this season's title: the 23-point margin (currently) between them and chasers Manchester City, with seven games still to go, is testament to the clever football Jürgen Klopp has been applying at the Merseyside club. But, much like England addressing its own 54 years of hurt (and counting), no one is entitled. Blanket press today of Liverpool being crowned champions without, last night, kicking a ball feels a little overblown, especially when you read The Times' chief football writer Henry Winter's report on Chelsea's win over City last night, which handed Liverpool the title. It took Winter at least the first quarter of his piece before it even mentioned Chelsea, let alone that they'd won what was an entertaining and, unlike many in this restarted season, engaging game.

We Chelsea fans will be accused of pettiness when it comes to any suggestion of dismissiveness. In the 1970s and 80s, when Chelsea were, frankly, nobodies, Liverpool's hegemonic presence in domestic and European football gave them a regal air. Even in my native pocket of south-west London - surely prime Chelsea country - there were Liverpool fans aplenty (along with Ipswich fans at my junior school due to that club's brief period of supremacy). When the 90s arrived, along with Sky's first mega deal with the-then new Premier League (in which I played a teeny-tiny part, working on the presentation to the BSkyB board that secured agreement to propose a £304 million, five-year contract), the balance of power shifted. Football was in a fragile state, especially post-Heysel and post-Hillsborough, the double stadium tragedies that Liverpool and its fans had been sadly caught up in. With the Premier League and football's new money, Manchester United became the new power with Surrey its minted, middle class fanbase, as had been the case during Liverpool's previous years of authority. With this historical context, there is still no real reason why Chelsea fans should bear any animosity towards Liverpool, any more than any other team you could mention. There is certainly no geographic proximity, unlike Tottenham or Arsenal. But there is, though, form. Lots of form. 

Let's start with a certain Jesper Grønkjær, the Danish winger who, on 11 May 2003, changed the lives of Chelsea fans forever with the "billion pound goal" - cutting in from the right and beating at least three defenders to blast past Liverpool keeper Jerzy Dudek. It was a goal that rather stunned us in the Stamford Bridge East Stand. It would be a while before its impact sunk in. Grønkjær's goal secured a 2-1 win and a fourth-place finish for Chelsea, at Liverpool's expense. Chelsea qualified for Europe. Legend has it that this convinced Roman Abramovich to buy the club, and not Liverpool, prompting a period of unprecedented success, not to mention unprecedented resources, a core element of the story. Liverpool, the working class representatives of English football tradition, Chelsea, the now arriviste club from a part of London associated with poshness.

We move on, then, to the era of greatest niggle, with José Mourinho - and his particular brand of toxicity - in the blue corner, and Rafa Benitez in the red corner. To some, it became a tiresome clash of egos, to others, pure box office. Chelsea, under Mourinho, were mounting a blitzkrieg-speed assault on English football, in a way never managed in their golden phases of the mid-'50s and late-'60s. In the Portuguese coach, we had a Special One who could never be accused of lacking confidence. His capricious rival, Benitez, like predecessor Gérard Houllier, couldn't help feeling he was battling ghosts from the club's past. First blood was drawn in February 2005 when Chelsea beat Liverpool 2-3 in the League Cup Final at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. To say it was tempestuous is understatement: Riise put Liverpool ahead after a minute, but it wouldn't be until the 78th minute that the advantage would be reduced by a Steven Gerard own goal. Tee, and indeed, hee. Three goals followed in extra time: Didier Drogba and Mateja Kežman putting Chelsea in the lead, Antonio Núñez giving Liverpool faint hope by a goal in the 113th.

Battle lines were crossed next later that season in the Champions League semi-final. By then, Chelsea had won the Premier League by a record-breaking 95 points, and all in Mourinho's first season in English football. It was also Chelsea's first league title in 50 years. Before drawing Liverpool, Mourinho had also dispatched Barcelona and Bayern Munich. The semi-final was, thus, deliciously set up, though this wasn't matched by the first leg, at Stamford Bridge, which ended 0-0. The second leg at Anfield, however, was a different affair. Mourinho stoked things before kickoff by saying that the pressure was on Liverpool ("We’ll go back to London as heroes, independent of the result"). Febrile from the start, within four minutes Petr Čech brought down Milan Baroš only for referee Lubos Michael to wave play-on. Luis Garcia caught on to the loose ball and scored...or so it appeared. In a time before goal-line technology, William Gallas looked to have cleared the ball, but Michael awarded the goal regardless, perhaps convinced by the emphatic celebrations of the Liverpool players. Even to this day, it's not clear that it was a goal. Mourinho still goes on about it. Garcia has since trolled Chelsea by dressing as a ghost for fancy dress parties. Liverpool went on to a final with Milan in Istanbul, arguably producing the greatest comeback in European football history. Liverpool and Chelsea went on to develop an even greater rivalry, meeting a further 20 times in domestic and European competitions within the next four years. In fact, at one point, the number of times the two clubs met in both league and cup competitions became yawningly tiresome for both sets of fans.

Another fissure became Mourinho's relationship with Liverpool's Steven Gerrard. As Scouse as chip butties and Brookside, the midfielder handed in a transfer request in the summer of 2005, barely weeks after that night in Istanbul. Chelsea tried to sign him (Mourinho would attempt again at Inter Milan and Real Madrid) after the Reds' skipper had decided to "roll a hand grenade into the Liverpool boardroom" when contract talks broke down. Gerrard was eventually won round by Liverpool, but the episode made its mark on Mourinho, who would later describe the midfielder as "one of my favourite enemies". The Mourinho-Gerrard axis remained part of the clubs' rivalry: on Mourinho's return to Chelsea in 2013, the away fixture at Anfield led to Manchester City winning the league title (an ironic twist on last night's fixture). In a Mourinho tactical masterclass, Chelsea monstered Liverpool, despite them being on an imperious, 16-game unbeaten run. Title denied. The cherry on the cake - celebrated seven years hence - happened on the stroke of half-time: Gerrard mistimed a routine pass which fell for Chelsea's Demba Ba. To make matters worse, the midfielder fell over while trying to recover the ball, freeing Ba to score. Blues supporters have never let Gerrard forget the slip. "I’m not going to get drawn into wishing the Chelsea fans well," he would later say, adding "it was nice of them to turn up, for once today". Ouch. 

"I’ll be honest. I couldn’t stand you as a club," another dyed-in-the-wool Liverpool figure, Jamie Carragher, would tell Frank Lampard, now the Chelsea manager, and ever-present in this enduring period. "It surpassed Everton and Manchester United as our rivalry for a period." With Chelsea and Liverpool being drawn, yet again, in the 2008 Champions League semi-final, the Londoners ended up winning 4-3 on aggregate, with Lampard scoring the conclusive goal with a penalty in extra time. His mother, Pat, had died of pneumonia just six days before, leading to an emotionally charged goal celebration. The clubs would meet again in the following season's Champions League, this time in the quarter-final, and again with Chelsea winning the tie, 7-5 on aggregate. No one could say these encounters were anything less than value-for-money.

Another twist of the knife came in 2011 when Fernando Torres joined Chelsea from Liverpool in an end-of-window January transfer. The conventional wisdom is that any major name switching clubs in January will not, usually, be all that much (if you're of value you'd surely stay for the duration of the season). And thus it proved. Some revisionists have claimed that the Spaniard's time at Chelsea wasn't that bad - he did, at least, play a role in the 2012 Champions League title, after all - but for the most part, Torres was torrid. In that initial half-season he scored once in 18 outings, hardly a return for a striker of his repute. Despite twice being Anfield's record highest scorer, the magic never moved with him to Chelsea - 45 goals in 172 appearances, as opposed to 81 goals in 142 appearances for Liverpool. Some might say, cheekily, that offloading Torres was Liverpool's ultimate revenge. Some might counter that by saying that, by joining Chelsea, he achieved his ambition to win titles, something he'd felt had eluded him in the north-west. Champions League, Europa League and FA Cup winners medals gives some credence to that theory.

There is far more richness to the Liverpool-Chelsea story than one blog post can convey, even one as lengthy as this. Chelsea's role in Liverpool's first league title since 1990 is, really, one of happenstance. "I don't think this game decided the title," Lampard said after last night's win over Manchester City. "That was decided a long time ago by Liverpool's consistency and wins. We need to congratulate Liverpool. Fair play to them, give them full credit. They deserve to win it." A moment of understated diplomacy in the history of Chelsea and Liverpool, a rivalry I've always equated with Subbuteo - the quintessential reds-versus-blues match-up. 

For a while to come, there will be Chelsea fans begrudging Liverpool's victory, challenging the cult of Klopp and the belief of many on Merseyside that a title was overdue. I won't deny my own "meh" response this morning as breakfast TV seemed to cover nothing else. But having queued along the King's Road in 2005, 2006, 2010, 2015 and 2017, to watch an open-topped bus bearing a victorious squad, it is a delicious feeling to be champions, and I can understand fully the desire for it to be restored. I didn't expect it in 2005, and the novelty hadn't worn off in 2017, either. Liverpool may have only just added a 19th league title, worthily, even in this strange season, and it would be utterly churlish to claim Chelsea's help, but as smouldering red flares are still being doused in the streets around Anfield, it should be reminded that the hard work is still to come. The title defence next season will come against determined opposition. One particular rival amongst them.

Back in the saddle

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

And, so, the ninth Premier League fixture of Project Restart and the first in which I had more of a vested interest than simply the opportunity to laugh, Nelson Muntz-style, at the misfortunes of rivals. Aston Villa-Chelsea was also the second game of the new order I’ve watched featuring the struggling Brummies, but of course, it was the Blues I’d come to see. Sort of.

The jury is still out, as far as I’m concerned, as to whether this glorified contractual obligation to get the season over and done with is actually any good. Every game I’ve seen since last Wednesday night’s re-opener between Villa and Sheffield United has been flat, mostly the result of empty stadiums rendering players somewhat unsure of themselves. We viewers may, of course, be able to tune in to audio options that provide artificial crowd noise, but it will always be a sound effect and no more. I’ve actually come to the conclusion that only hearing the players and coaches shouting at each other gives an on-the-ground authenticity you wouldn’t normally hear with 40,000 yahoos in full bait mode. Must be a nightmare, though, for TV censors hoping that the pitchside microphones don’t pick up the inevitable F-bombs that drop in the heat of battle. Must be a nightmare, too, for the extended scrutiny of players, such as Chelsea’s Mateo Kovavic, caught by Sky's all-seeing eyes spitting from the substitutes’ bench, clearly in breach of the coronavirus health-and-safety protocols. 

Anyway, back to Villa-Chelsea. An altogether better game than any I’d seen previously in this strange reappearance of the national sport (though the BBC set the benchmark high by showing the Wales-Belgium tie from Euro 2016 immediately before the 4.15pm kick-off, providing a vital reminder of what football excitement can be when enriched by a profoundly impassioned support). This was also Frank Lampard's 100th game as a manager, though I had to think about that stat: 57 were as Derby boss last term, meaning that the Chelsea head coach, who turned 42 yesterday, still only has 43 matches under his belt at the club where he remains record top scorer. 

Like Project Restart, the jury is also still somewhat out on Lampard as a head coach - having won 46 of those 100 matches - even if his mostly positive run until the lockdown gave some indication of the youth-driven project he is building at Stamford Bridge. It would be harsh, though, to put the blame for Villa opening the scoring on anything strategic. It looked to me like pure rust: Mason Mount, Andreas Christensen, Antonio Rudiger and César Azpiliqueta all getting in knots with their respective marks leading to Kortney Hause sneaking in. It was a good goal, though, and against the run of play that Villa should have built on in the second half, given their precarious position second from bottom in the Premier League.

But no. On the hour of play, substitute Christian Pulisic smashed Azpiliqueta’s exquisite pass into the roof of Villa’s net, two minutes before the newly re-contracted Olivier Giroud piled in a second from distance. I’m going to be biased, but having endured dire 0-0s in recent days, seeing two good goals in as many minutes from your own side was enough to restore some faith in the whole shooting match. Smugly, it strengthened the Blues’ fourth place and creates a little comfort between them and Manchester United. That said, the rust still needs the wire brush treatment. 19 attempts on goal, of which only two were converted, is something for Lampard to worry about in the remaining weeks of this truncated and revived season.

The night football came home...and no one was in

"The ambient noise is hideous. The overall spectacle melancholic. Maybe I will get used to it. But I have not enjoyed the game, and not just because it is same old Arsenal." So tweeted Robert Peston, ITV's verbosity-prone political editor. Normally Pesto is to be found asking excruciatingly long questions to whichever stooge has been put up to front the daily No.10 press conference. But here, in the succinct confines of Twitter, he nailed it: my worst fears confirmed - football returned to stadia bereft of fans, noise or atmosphere.

As I watched with low expectation the lifeless spectacle that was the evening's first serving, Aston Villa against Sheffield United, I couldn't help feeling it was all just an experiment: some sort of exhibition by a chemicals company to test out a new type of ball, a new form of artificial grass or that it was an Under-17 practice match behind closed doors. It certainly didn't feel like a team trying to fight its way out of relegation (Villa) or one trying to clamber into fifth place (United). The sterility of a Villa Park shorn of all but essential personnel, and the awkward moment of managers Dean Smith and Chris Wilder not knowing whether to shake hands or elbow-bump at the start (sensibly, they opted for the latter), gave the fixture a surrealism. I've seen televised games before played in front of an empty stadium, but they've usually been European matches operating under crowd bans. This enforced absence was different, and not even the Sky Sports option of a crowd sound effect audio channel could make a difference.

Players taking a ten-second knee before kick-off, followed by a minute's silence for victims of COVID-19, provided two moments of theatre. But for the 90 minutes of play that followed, the only drama was referee Michael Oliver's smart watch proving to be not so smart, and failing to signal a goal when the Villa keeper Orjan Nyland fumbled Oliver Norwood's free kick over the line. Cruel for Sheffield United, but even more cruel for the football-starved viewer hoping for something more than an anodyne encounter to herald the return of competitive football after a three month absence in which we focused on other priorities. Not dying, mainly. If the failure of Oliver's watch was a major talking point in the otherwise so-so 0-0 draw then so, too, was the lack of intervention from VAR on what - regardless of the game itself - was supposed to be a prestige moment in this weird season. "We were waiting for somebody at Stockley Park to show a bit of courage and say they will make that decision," Wilder said afterwards, "but if they've not seen it and seven cameras haven't seen it I suppose they will say that it was not their decision to make." Fair point. For once, you could hardly say the crowd saw what the referee didn't.

If the Villa game was meant to be the warm-up act, the main event - Manchester City-Arsenal - hardly delivered the goods, either. Like the preceding fixture, there was plenty of effort but suspect quality. I know it's going to sound mean-spirited for me, a Chelsea fan, to pass comment on Arsenal, and do so objectively, but it's fair to say that the Gunners barely turned up to their opening engagement of Project Restart. David Luiz's brain didn't turn up at all. The Brazilian, always a subject of mixed opinion while in Chelsea blue, is yet to win over anyone in N1. After last night's performance, it's unlikely he will now. Coming on for the injured Mari after 24 minutes, it didn't take him long to let Kevin de Bruyne gift Raheem Sterling for City's opening goal. Worse was to come when he ridiculously brought down Mahrez to give away a penalty. The subsequent red card received from referee Anthony Taylor might well be the last red thing Luiz sees as an Arsenal player: his contract runs out later this month.

Luiz has inevitably provided the lightning rod for Arsenal fans' wrath, but at the end of the day, this was a clinical Pep Guardiola result for City over an team Mikel Arteta clearly has an uphill challenge to improve. That, though, is to look at the game through the myopia of normal football engagement. Widen the focals, and we had a match, like the 6pm kick-off, that resembled a pre-season friendly with less-than friendly intent. Across the park, fitness looked predictably suspect, and this actually underpins the arguments of indifference to the Premier League resuming. Playing before soulless, empty stadia is one thing, but if the season's remaining, contractually-obliged fixtures are in any way similar to these first toes dipped in the cold sea of revival, then even the most starved fans are going to go wanting.

Players often talk of crowds as being the "12th teammate", and the absence of supporters is clearly a factor. Sure, football can be played as a mechanical exercise, but last night's attempts at blowing puffs of breath into a dying season demonstrated just what a pointless exercise it really is. I've said before that the season's stumps should have just been pulled up, and we restart in September or whenever it's safe to do so, and my view hasn't been changed by last night's morsels of live 'elite' football. It might be back, warts and all, but elite quality - on this first evidence alone - is a long way away. Many will no doubt be relieved: we're all craving normality - holidays, going to the pub, not having to wear face masks to post a letter, and no one will disagree that 'normal' will come at a price, for the time being. I'm not, however, convinced that football so vacant of atmosphere is the normal we want.

Scots missed: The Blue Nile's High

These are sulphurous times. You don’t need me to tell you that, of course. Just turn on the news and see Neanderthals making up for the lack of a summer football tournament abroad to bring their particular brand of knuckle-dragging nationalist mayhem to Westminster. Then there is the relentless death march of the 'other' virus, plus rancour over gender politics and myriad other social disagreements chewing up life still (mostly) in lockdown. Never has there been a greater need of a soothing balm like The Blue Nile.

“The Blue who?”, you ask. Tinseltown In The Rain or The Downtown Lights? No? A shame, then. OK, the Scottish trio’s reputation was hardly strengthened by a somewhat indolent output of just four albums in 21 years. But in that quartet there was more than enough to justify the critical acclaim from, admittedly, a cognoscenti that included music luminaries and musos alike who fell in love with their somnolent mood music. 

In each of those albums - A Walk Across The Rooftops, Hats, Peace At Last and 2004’s High - The Blue Nile set a benchmark for an unashamed romanticism, channeled through ruminatory songs laid over beds of synths blended with singer Paul Buchanan’s sonorous voice (invariably described as “haunting”). Theirs was vibe music that went boldly against the brashness of rock and pop throughout the course of the decades their output spanned. Despite an apparently fractious denouement, the band have been progressively re-releasing their catalogue with audiophile remasters befitting a band whose first album was issued on a label owned by Linn, the high-end hi-fi people. That brought The Blue Nile to the attention of Peter Gabriel, himself no sonic slouch and one of many big names to champion their cause (Gabriel would go on to involve Buchanan in his OVO album and show for the Millennium Dome's opening in 2000). High is therefore the last of the reissues, available both as a double-CD package containing four new songs (Wasted, I, Big Town and Here Come The Bluebirds) plus extended remixes of The Days Of Our Lives and She Saw The World (two of the album's standouts), and for the first time on vinyl (and in the super-duper 180g format, too). 

Although I've always hated the American term "adult oriented rock", High's adult orientation veers more towards the wistfulness of reaching a certain age. I suppose another way of saying this, is that - from my perspective as a 52-year-old man - much of the imagery is reflective of the things someone of my age pays attention to: weather and the state of things, for example. Like it's predecessors, High carries a gentle melancholy. For some reason, I've often associated this with The Blue Nile's inherent Scottishness. I know it's not wet and grey the whole time in Scotland, but the sparsity of the band's music invokes a palette of cool sonics. Some might find this dull. I, personally, have always found it refreshing. Coming eight years after its predecessor, High hardly moved the band's oeuvre onwards, but then that was never going to be an issue, such was the standard that they'd set on their previous outings. The music remained luscious, Buchanan's voice remained...er...haunting, but there was a subtle change in lyrical tone as songs tackled the world-weary topics such as the passing of time and the passage of relationships. 

This reflection might be borne from the fact that Buchanan was laid low by an ME-like illness for a couple of years between High and Peace At Last, but may even be the result of tensions between him and bandmates Robert Bell and P.J. Moore which made the album's gestation somewhat fractious. That turbulence could have manifested itself in the shear size of the task Buchanan, Bell and Moore had in whittling down "hundreds" of songs, according to the singer, that were candidates for High before settling on the nine committed to record. Nothing - or at least, very little - is left to waste. All nine tracks land and land well.

The fractiousness that coloured the recording of High can be seen as the part of the fuel that made it. Clearly, from a musical and lyrical point of view, there was much pondering going on. Buchanan himself has admitted as much, describing High as "stoic" and "to some extent a record about ourselves", implying that the band had reached their limit. "We showed up, we went into the room and worked, and whatever drift had set in we were loyal to each other and we knew we had to form the wagons into a circle," he told The Quietus in 2013. The subsequent album tour was made in the late spring of 2006 without Moore, even reducing The Blue Nile billing to "Paul Buchanan sings the songs of The Blue Nile", albeit with Bell on board (who remains to this day featured on The Blue Nile's reissues website, along with Buchanan). 

To this day there has been no definitive word on whether the group exists or not, though the renewed commercial activity with the reissues has lit a faint fire of hope about new material. Perhaps, though, we must be resigned the fact that sometimes a candle simply blows out in its own time. We can bemoan The Beatles' mere decade as a functioning pop group, or the seven years between Jimi Hendrix's US Army discharge and his death, but those brief windows gave us so much. The Blue Nile, in a way, can be viewed similarly: four albums, four gems. That'll do.

A duty of care

One Saturday night, early on in the lockdown, we binged our way through the second series of Ricky Gervais's brilliant After Life, his customary awkward moment-inducing dark comedy about a widower struggling with the loss of his wife. One of its many sub-plots is that of Gervais's character, Tony, and his bittersweet, will-they-won't-they relationship with his father’s care home nurse, Emma. This storyline is laid over the top of Tony's dad, Ray, gradually disappearing into the tangled mists of dementia. With apologies in advance for the spoiler, when Emma tells Tony that his father has died, I was instantly silenced - transported back to the identical call I received from my brother on a Sunday morning last August. The subsequent scene in Ray's care home, as he lay motionless in bed, took me back further, to the sight of my own father, finally at rest.

Dad's passing was my first up-close experience of death. Older relatives had died before in my lifetime but even in the case of my grandfather, who died when I was 15 (and had been my only living grandparent), I was somewhat distanced from his ultimate demise, due to him ending his days in a care facility my family felt it best that I avoided. I remember the day he died, though, looking out of my west-facing bedroom window and seeing a theatrically symbolic shaft of sunlight breaking through the cloud over where my grandfather had been living. 

With my dad's death, however, I'd seen it coming in real time. At 90, when he went, he'd had a 'good innings', as they say, but his later years had been blighted by prostate cancer and, ultimately, Alzheimer's, along with a suite of ailments associated with them both. Dad died in the care home he'd been a resident of for the year or so since a hospital stay the previous summer, after which it was concluded that it was no longer safe for him (or for my mum) to return to home. While tragic, he died 12 months later with some dignity and at apparent peace (although I later learned of the gorier, scatological detail of what his carers had to deal with as Alzheimer's gradually destroyed the wiring connecting his mind and his body. Their professionalism and their stoicism will remain with me forever). 

Ten months, almost to the day of my father's death, care homes could not be any more on the frontline of consciousness. Nearly one third of all COVID-19 deaths in the UK have occurred in care homes. The growing suspicion is that care patients and care staff have been the country's cannon fodder in the battle against the coronovirus, with a chronic lack of testing and widespread shortages of PPE, plus the knowing release from infected hospitals of patients back into care homes, almost guaranteeing asymptomatic transmission of the deadly bug. Damningly, the first independent report into the care sector's preparations for the pandemic has concluded that care home residents were, scandalously, "an afterthought". I can't speak for how my dad's facility in Kingston has fared, but if it's anything like thousands of others across the country, I shudder to think how he and his fellow residents would have survived. The National Audit Office report has revealed that 25,000 hospital patients were discharged into care homes as the pandemic reached its peak in the UK, with one in three homes suffering outbreaks of the virus. The report points to a lack of testing of hospital patients being discharged into or back into care homes as major cause of the infections that have wreaked tragedy amongst some of our oldest and most vulnerable citizens.

Meg Hillier, the former journalist who is now an MP and chairs the House Of Commons public accounts select committee, said of the report: "Care homes were at the back of the queue for both PPE and testing, so only got a small fraction of what they needed from central government. Residents and staff were an afterthought yet again: out of sight and out of mind, with devastating consequences." This, the report said, was nothing new, highlighting the "problematic" relationship between the NHS and the social care sector. "We have reported on successive efforts to integrate the two sectors," the report said, citing the numerous reports, consultations and independent reviews on this over the past 20 years. "Going into the pandemic, meaningful integration was still to occur, however, and the lack of it has made responding to the crisis more difficult in a number of ways," the report added, highlighting a lack of data and the most critical factor of PPE from government stockpiles not being released to care homes - including only 20% of gowns, 33% of eye protection and 50% of aprons that had been identified from scenario planning as being needed.

What leaves a bitter taste in my mouth is that while the government has been bragging about the record time it took to build the NHS Nightingale hospitals, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock boasting of his own achievements in reaching testing targets (which peaked, then fell back, and as at time of writing, his much vaunted test-and-trace app is still not fully operational...), care homes and carers have been making the ultimate sacrifice. It's almost as if this was planned that way. We've read  heartbreaking stories of carers succumbing to COVID-19 with their patients, bravely sacrificing their own lives to be with those they've devoted themselves to, rather than being at home with their families. 

My recollection of Dad's care team is one of a group of remarkable patient individuals, dealing with the weirdness and the grim hazards as car mechanics deal with engine grease and oil. And, yet, it's taken weeks of attrition before the government would even recognise the death rate in care homes as part of the official statistics of COVID-19 infections. Figures show that care home deaths tripled between the end of March and mid-May, passing the 7,000-per-week mark at a time when the national total was still only 21,000. Now it is above 40,000. Throughout this period the official advice has changed: on 19 March the NHS guidance was that: "unless required to be in hospital, patients must not remain in an NHS bed". On 2 April, the rules on discharging to care homes were clarified, saying "negative [coronavirus] tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home". By 15 April, the government said all patients discharged from hospitals would be tested for coronavirus. Now, more than 14,000 care home residents with coronavirus have died in England and Wales alone.

As much as life in my dad's care home resembled the Cuckoo's Nest, I can't stop thinking about the team who looked after him for those 12 or so months or, indeed, those people who lived there. Those carers brought dignity to my dad in his final days, even when his own body was denying him of dignity.

Behind the mask

It occurred to me this morning that COVID-19 is just the pandemic Britain needs. I don't mean this flippantly, of course - 40,000 people have now died of this thing here, after all. No, what I mean is that if any country was attuned to social distancing, it's us. We're an island nation, for starters, and when taking the famous British reserve into account, probably more comfortable keeping a measured space between each other as anyone.

The reason this only occurred to me today is that I ventured out for a doctor's appointment, wearing a face mask, and I don't think I've ever felt so self-conscious. It was hard enough wearing it and sunglasses, with the latter steaming up as I pegged it down the road to a last-minute appointment that had opened up suddenly, like a coveted Ocado delivery slot. I must have looked like Griffin in HG Wells' The Invisible Man. Actually, I did. Thankfully, I was not alone.

On the rare occasions I have ventured out into my local high street during the lockdown I've been struck by the number of others wearing face masks. New Malden has a sizeable Korean community, so pre-coronavirus, someone wearing a mask wasn't all that unusual a sight, given the cultural popularity of facial coverings among Asian nations, dating back to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. But whereas we might have once looked upon our Korean neighbours with the wry smile once worn while watching Clive James's Sunday night observations of life in Asia, the bandit look is fast becoming de rigueur. In fact, it's conceivable that for the forseeable future, this is how we'll be looking at most people we encounter. From next Monday it will be compulsory to wear face coverings when travelling on public transport and for all staff and outpatients visiting hospitals. Wearing a mask might, too, become a condition of entry to shops as they start to reopen from next week.

Slowly but surely, Britain is losing its chin - literally. The lower halves of our faces are retreating behind a layer of cloth as the price to be paid for venturing into the community again. Soon, we will be recognisable only by our eyes, eyebrows and whatever state our newly-bouffant hair is in. Throw on the Wayfarers, as I did this morning, and we're almost in the realm of The Who's Tommy - "...put in your earplugs, put on your eyeshades - you know where to put the cork". However, despite health secretary Matt Hancock's claim that COVID-19 itself is "in retreat", it is not. New infections and deaths in the UK may have come down considerably, but as it stands, there is neither a cure or a vaccine, and people are still dying, which in my view means that it's still out there.

There are two issues with this: firstly, there is still no consensus amongst experts as to whether face masks, of the kind most people have managed to acquire privately, do any good. A German study has suggested that the mandatory wearing of masks has coincided with a drop in infections, but there is still some doubt as to a direct link. The coronavirus is a tricky bugger and unlike any other when looked at from a micro-biological point of view, which means that all the masks and anti-bac gels in the world won't do a damn thing unless social distancing continues to be rigidly applied. Although the medical and scientific community does agree that masks - even if just fashioned crudely from your once-favourite tour T-shirt - do offer some protection (to you and to others), it's still only limited.

They might stop virus-laden droplets from spreading out into the 'cone' of dispersal after you cough or sneeze but, apparently, they're not so good at preventing the tiny particles from getting in from other people. Then there's the false sense of security they might give: even masked up, the high street this morning was full of foreboding - some wearing masks, some not, some observing two metres' social distance, some not. One man I encountered, almost immediately after I left the surgery, came out of a newsagent coughing copiously, albeit into his mask, which must have been pleasant for him. He certainly showed no sign of concern that he was right in front of me and others as he went.

Masks are, therefore, not shields. I may not fully understand the epidemiology at work here, and I may also live in one of the London boroughs with the lowest number of coronavirus cases of all, but I still view the world outside my front window as being a hostile one that could kill me. My mask, this morning, would have only offered a limited amount of protection. So what's the alternative? Are we now only to venture into exposed environments wearing hazmat suits? Well, it's a thought. Ever since I was told to stay home or stay alert, whichever government doctrine was in force at the time, I have consistently looked at 'outside' as a danger, as if Chernobyl had moved in across the road, and anyone out there was suddenly glowing like the kids in those Ready Brek ads in the 1970s.

The message from government is, increasingly, give up your fears. The economy is on its knees and won't return unless we get out into the great unknown and start putting ourselves at risk. "Some risk," the experts might say, but still a risk. No doubt soon we'll be told that the risk is no more than that associated with crossing the road, though with the number of idiots using the lockdown to speed up and down suburban backstreets, that's not such the low-risk experience it once was. Others will say that the face mask is a small price to pay for freedom, but think of what - and who - it cuts off. My elderly mother, who has been losing her hearing, struggles at best to hear what you say to her, let alone from two metres away. Not being able to read my lips will cut her off further.

But, as I opened this post suggesting, perhaps the country being forced to look like The Lone Ranger for the foreseeable future will not be so bad. Maybe we'll just get used to it. Maybe, until this thing gets beaten, we'll just have to get used to walking around with only half our facial identity visible. Some, I'm sure will like that. Others, like me, will have to accept it as simply essential.

Shields down!

It's the first of June. How did that happen? One minute we're in the depths of winter, hearing news of a nasty bug in China, the next, we've barreled through the sunniest, most relentlessly blue-skied spring in living memory. In that time, I have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, started a new job, lost over a stone in weight and watched the world go by, mostly through the living room windows. I have diligently stayed at home, protected the NHS, and saved lives. My own, probably.

There was a time when COVID-19 was seen as a mere irritation affecting somewhere else. "The Chinese," we scoffed, "and their wet markets." And then it came to Europe, and we cast a concerning eye on News At Ten as alarming reports emerged from, first, Italy and then Spain. On 24 March, a few days after HMG's chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said that keeping the COVID-19 death toll below 20,000 would be "a good outcome", I received a text message from the government itself (whom I didn't remembering ever giving my mobile number), telling me ominously: "New rules in force now: you must stay at home". This was followed by a helpful reminder of Dominic Cummings' latest slogan: "Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives." Well, I was, already, doing just that. A week or so later I received another SMS, this time from my GP surgery, telling me that I'd been "identified as high risk" and to "STAY at HOME & avoid contact with anyone except your carers or healthcare workers for at least 12 weeks". So I have. I've been pretty diligent: my girlfriend, to her infinite credit, braves the supermarket so I don't have to, and on the few times that we have gone out for exercise since rules on how far you can go have relaxed a little, we've done all the right things about avoiding proximity to others. But even then, I've been nervous. Actually, I’ve been scared shitless.

The shielding programme gave the impression that the coronavirus was out there, ligging about in the air, stuck to pavements that would end up on shoes you brought into the house, thriving on door handles and embedded in fabric, just waiting for you to brush past or even walk straight into it. This probably hasn’t been the case, but then again, how do we know? I live in a borough with the least number of coronavirus cases in London. What has made us different from, say, the north-west, where the dreaded ‘R’ rate remains stubbornly high? Even if cases in this locale have been low, I’m not going to assume it’s any safer. Frankly, my diagnosis coming around the same time as COVID-19 announced that it was here in the UK rendered me paranoid, and I’m not easing up on that point of view just because the lockdown is.

Even though diabetes wasn’t specified as an "underlying health condition" when the pandemic arrived it has certainly proven to be one of the highest risks to mortality since. Of the 39,045 deaths recorded up until today, one-in-four have been attributed to diabetes. Britain’s place in the COVID fatality league table is nothing to be proud of at roughly 10% of the worldwide total. True, the rates are coming down, but with the daily average still around 300, we're still seeing the equivalent of a fully loaded Boeing 777 crashing every single day. That's better than the three 777s coming down per day that the coronavirus death rate peaked at here in Britain, but still. 

So, forgive me for being a bit of a Negative Nelly at news that, from today, everything is, apparently, back to normal, but if, like me, you regard the death rate as the key metric of this virus (let's face it, if you know something is capable of killing you, you're going to do your level best to avoid it), I don't share the enthusiasm about lockdown restrictions being lifted. I get it that we need the economy to be restarted, but that shouldn't mean hundreds of people packing themselves onto beaches and into parks (and buying Pringles and gallons of Pepsi from Tesco Express for picnics does not constitute the economy being brought back to life). My other half is a primary teacher, and even if children are less likely to pass on the virus, their clothing could. Exponentially, the risk goes up with every potential encounter my girlfriend has with anyone or anything from outside our house. Now scale that up with all the other activities returning to some semblance of normality.

We can all understand the desire for it but I'm still not convinced that now is the right time. In fact, no amount of colour-coded terrorism alert-style Government charts can convince me that the time is right. I don't think the Government's own scientific advisers are convinced, either. On Saturday, the well-respected Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, warned of the "potential dangers if we go too fast," adding that if people didn't behave sensibly, there was a high risk of the pandemic worsening. He’s not alone: members of the UK’s SAGE committee of scientific advisers have also expressed the concern that easing is going too quickly. Interesting, then, that on Saturday night at around 10pm news leaked from 10 Downing Street to a conveniently primed Sunday newspaper that the Government was about to ease the lockdown on 2.2 million of the most vulnerable who'd been under virtual house arrest "shielding". In principle, that includes me. Firstly, I was surprised that there were 2.2 million people in this category as, since shielding had begun, we'd been told that 1.5 million came under this regime. Secondly, the leak of a feelgood story on a Saturday night to a Sunday tabloid is a classic piece of spin. By the time Robert Jenrick, the communities minister, fronted yesterday's No.10 press conference (and he was already under a cloud over allegations of cronyism related to a property deal he sanctioned), we were already in the midst of the surprise news that those who were medically shielding, having spent weeks cooped up in bedrooms and unable to even mingle with other members of their households, were suddenly going to be allowed out into the fresh air. Clearly, that nasty little virus, with its trumpet-like horns, was no longer lurking right outside the door. I've worked in the media my entire professional life, and I can spot a confected story when I see one. I can smell one, too.

So here we are, first of another hopefully gloriously sunny month and suddenly everything is looking up. Schools have reopened, street markets have set up shop again, and you can now test drive a car you still won't be able to go anywhere in. We can also gather in others' gardens, guilt-free. Millions of people who have been forced to live hermit-like for almost three months can now get outside for the first time, as long as they follow the rules. Ah, yes, the rules. They're all open to interpretation, right? Just tell that to those evil, microscopic droplets still ligging about, even if they're not ligging about as much as they were...