Jazz. And all that.

Marmite? I can take it or leave it.
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Jazz? Bit like Marmite they say. I have spent the afternoon watching a bunch of teenagers play jazz. Not just jazz but the modern stuff. And improvised.
It's my daughter Naomi's fault. She's in the Essex Jazz Youth Orchestra, Jazz Essex Youth and The Judean People's Popular Front, I think. For some reason it was in Suffolk. Quite beautiful but a long way to go.
So an earnest and, on occasions, quite talented bunch of kids, mostly with strange hair and under the guidance of a grown up called Martin who looked a bit like Jesus, they went through Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and some of that World Music stuff that Radio One used to play after John Peel's show in the old days.
I've nothing against jazz. My old man played double bass in a jazz band, though he was a classically trained violinist, so the music in our house included a lot of Oscar Peterson and Brubeck, Grappelli and even Chris Barber to stay patriotic.
I grew up listening to songs by men with nicknames  - Blind Willie Fishsticks, Fats O'Hoolahan, Bleeding Gums Murphy, Stripes McDonald, One Eyed Solly, Arthur 'the Accountant' Smythe-Watkins.
Or something like that.
But the sound of someone going 'skit skat scooby' or Django's distinctive three fingered guitar playing was a regular part of my growing up.
I happened to mention this, just once, soon after I started work at my local paper, the Ilford Recorder.
Within weeks, the 'entertainment page' included 'Scene with Mark Solomons' which was all about pop music in the area, 'Mark Solomons' Jazz Talk' which was basically anything remotely jazz-like within a 20 miles radius of Redbridge and 'Folk Focus' in which I'd ring a bloke at the Eagle and Child pub in Walthamstow and ask him to tell me anything half resembling folk anywhere in the Home Counties (but mostly the line up at his pub's Folk Night') Usually some bloke in a woolly jumper with a finger in his ear singing songs about boats to Liverpool, as I recall.
So throughout my life, jazz has haunted me in one form or another, whether it's part of my home environment, my working life and now, through my musically talented children.
When they have grown out of it, as they surely will, all that will be left will be my funeral. I've asked for The Smiths but the jazz Gods may intervene and I'll end up with one of those New Orleans' style jazz funerals like they had in that James Bond film.
Or knowing my luck I'll go out to Kenny Ball playing Midnight in Moscow.
Nice.
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Right, everyone's now seen that John Lewis ad with the Elton John cover and the Xmas message that we should all show someone we care. In it, a boy puts a stocking on a kennel for his pet pooch. The dog, like the kennel, are outside and it's snowing and clearly freezing. Shows how much they bloody care.
What's the number for the RSPCA?
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Yes, yes, I know. Bleeding Gums Murphy is a saxophone player in The Simpsons. And I"m pretty sure One Eyed Solly is a character in a Damon Runyon short story but I can't find it on Google anywhere so you'll have to believe me.
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There's been a fair bit about Ed Balls in the paper recently.
I'm reluctant to dislike Ed Balls but for a peculiar reason. He was one of the last people to speak to me and my missus before the birth of the aforementioned Naomi. I know, bizarre. But we were at a party he was at and he went out of the way to make my pregnant wife comfortable and chatted to her outside, in the cold, for ages while she sat down away from the party.
We got home and the next day, whoosh, straight into hospital, long labour, me on the gas and air and nipping out for a cigarette and then beautiful baby girl. And the thing my wife remembers more than any is how nice Ed Balls was the night before.
I know I know. If he ever becomes Prime Minister and totally f***s up the country, this isn't a justifiable reason for liking him. But then that's probably not going to happen, so I'll like who I like for whatever reason I like.
Take Five...Solly