This is today's task. This and finding a wild blueberry western frappe at Brunswick...or Bath...can't remember...at Fat Boy Drive-In. Then poking a stich at rocks to see if there are crabs underneath. Then maybe another wild blueberry western frappe. I don't know why they are western.

Yesterday, zipping through New Hampshire after hissing Bishops's Ice Cream (which was everything promised), I pulled out the newly acquired reissued version of Billy Bragg's Talking to the Taxman About Poetry and was amazed again how good it was. This version has a second CD of alternate versions and other stuff from the time, which is quite good - especially the mandolin stuff - but the real gem is "Levi Stubbs Tears" with its instrumentation of electric rhythm guitar, conga drum and fluglehorn. Who'da thunk? Anyway, don't let the politically correct disuade you that this is music for the dreamy pre-9/11 world. That is pre-post-post-9/11 thinking at its finest and usually the sort of thing said by late converts to the new PC. And is there anything drearier than a convert? So do not accept the saying of nay. There is power in a union and Bragg is one of the better rhythm guitarists out there - a category of praise seldom considered - and this CD has some of his best. I first bought a cassette of it on Oxford Street in London in 1986, must have an lp of it as well and now have this version. It was a mainstay of my post-Jam focused life in the late 80s. Did I mention I met him and taught him how to play bar room shuffleboard in Halifax in '88 as I was hanging out ensuring we had a good seat: ("Oy, it's li' tha' game the Scutttttish people play...cuuuuuuuuurling").

And it may have even inspired me to buy a mandolin on this jaunt.