Settling into a Saturday

There is a glorious luxury to settling in to a lazy Saturday. Not a Saturday full of tasks around the house, no chores, no pressing need to battle the great unwashed in the shopping center. Saturdays waking slowly, slightly hung over from the relief of Friday evening, drinking in the sounds of the birds, soft light of Spring through the silk of the curtains. Saturdays rituals, reading Blind Date in the Grauniad app, debating whether to get up and get croissants from the bakery down the road, pondering the culinary choices for the weekend. Looking forward to the Fulham game, this year has been odd, not just because we have to get used to the expectation of winning but because success brings the attention of Sky and games moved to Friday nights, Sunday lunchtimes and 1.30Pm kick offs. Today is a treat, a normal British Saturday 3.00pm kick off which fills the end of my French afternoon nicely.

I dont want to go all Nigel Slater and confessional but one of the other treats is wandering through the cookery tomes to find inspiration. I have flétan, Atlantic Halibut, from the football loving fish guy at the weekly market. I also have the last remaining cabbage that survived the winter, or survived me harvesting them too early assuming they were struggling, sweet potatoes and a large cauli to do something with. Coffee and one of the French biscuits that they call “Petit Dejeuner”, which are whole grain and have chocolate nibs and nuts, accompany a catch up with Private Eye. I know my biases are just being confirmed but the journalism of the Eye is the one consistent investigative effort holding the despicable and corrupt ruling Conservative party to account as they undermine or destroy what is left of the England I had the good fortune to grow up in. It’s ironic that at this very moment, across the plagued island there are many of my peers reading through their Saturday’s Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph feeling the same disgust and distaste but about whoever their target of their privileged ire is today, likely some part of the woke, liberal elites that are in their eyes undermining their world.

Tomorrow France goes to the polls to elect the President for the next 5 years and by the time you read this we hope that we are not reliving that sense of bewilderment that we felt when the desperate and angry elected Donald Trump and voted to leave the EU. There are many desperate and angry French people who Marine Le Pen has spoke to with resonance about their cost of living, their frustrations when they fill up their battered old Peugeot 208’s with diesel to drive the 40 minutes to their poorly paid job. They blame Macron. They blame the establishment. They blame them for their lack of the piece of the western liberal pie they feel they deserve, they blame the dark skinned people for taking their jobs, for causing crime, for not being French and Mme Le Pen nods along with them and smiles in agreement when they vent their spleen. She promises France Unicorns like all populists, “tous et n’importe quoi’, no taxes for the under 30’s, reduced VAT on diesel, no hijabs, no benefits for foreigners, standard stuff. The divisions across Europe and the Western World that are exploited by the Populists are thanks in no small part to the efforts of Mr Putin aided and abetted by the uncontrolled greed which powers social media to be such a sustained force for evil. However, globalisation and capitalism has failed all but a moderately sized slice of French society and that is reflected in the polls where over 60% has voted for either far left or far right candidates. If there were such options in the USA we would probably see that kind of reflection too.

Saturday is also a day to reflect on what music have I been listening to or newly discovered this week, new vinyl arrivals have been slower of late as I am trying to be less compulsive. I got the quite lovely Wet Leg album this week and its no surprise they are the darlings of the rock media currently, as well as the new Jack White which is a nice and quite surprisingly good return to form. It’s also a day to dig through the back catalog and revisit old favorites. I consume vast amounts of music but quite a lot of it blends into itself. I definitely have different preferences for different moods and contexts.

As my Saturday moves sleepily at first it gathers pace and then late morning the coffee kicks in and energy levels go up so this playlist brings its game from folky to funky to just fun, enjoy!

Listen here to:

• Who Knows Where the Time Goes – Fairport Convention
• Cigarettes out the window – TV Girl
• VCR – Antlers
• Furry Sings The Blues – Joni Mitchell
• The Melting of the Sun – St Vincent
• Debris – The Faces
• White Rabbit (remix by Marcel Dettman) – Jefferson Airplane
• Superman Lover – Johny Guitar Watson
• Cosmik Debris – Frank Zappa
• Who The Cap Fit – Bob Marley & The Wailers
• Slipping Into Darkness – War
• Could Heaven Ever By Like THis – Idris Muhammad
• Bicameral – The Range
• Magic Mountain – Eric Burden
• Ooh la la! – Goldfrapp
• Into the Twilight – Jack White
• Ohh la la (Mexican Institute of Sound remix) – Run the Jewels
• The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore – PJ Harvey
• The Turning of Our Bones – Arab Strap
• Fluorescent Adolescent – Arctic Monkeys
• Feel Like A Girl – Coach Party
• Ur Mum – Wet Leg