Plus one from today's paper

[shewhomust]

Laura Barton's column Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll is the cherry on the top of the Guardian's Friday supplement. She writes about why music matters so much to us, in concrete examples, not in abstract assertions. Sometimes I connect with her examples, sometimes they send me off to discover what she's talking about, and sometimes they leave me cold - but the writing's always a pleasure. Today she is in - of all exotic locations - Staithes:

... a little town where the mist droops low beneath the cliffs, as if curtseying before the land, and where the waves break wild and grey against the rocks and the boats sit bonny in the beck We turned off the radio, listened to the gulls and the waves, sat at the kitchen table drinking tea. And then through the window pressed the sound of the fishermen's choir rehearsing in a nearby garden. "And it was Haul boys, Haul/ Haul boys, Haul!" they sang.

I suspect her conclusion paints too rosy a picture of the past, and too gloomy a picture of the present: that communal singing was never as common, and is not now as rare, as she thinks. But it's a lovely piece of descriptive writing.