I recently read a newspaper that felt 2016 had been a year of unparalleled discombobulation.
Whatever your summing up, there's no denying it has been a year were we have said farewell to many stars of stage and screen and the world of music. Almost to many to list and unfortunately added to, even in these last few days.
As the year spins slowly towards its conclusion you may find your thoughts turning too and then discussing all those we have lost, stars who will 'live on' forever in our memory.
To take you there this is Snowy White with his 'Midnight Blues'.

Encore (to more): Terence 'Snowy' White had a big hit in the 80s with 'Bird of Paradise' 

Last year around this time we had a slice of Christmas Past in the shape of The Beatles.
This year here's a candidate for Christmas Present. These folks live in Lapland today, in Inari, Finland - 160 miles inside the arctic circle. Vast snowy open spaces, sled dogs, fantastic low sunlight and peaceful surroundings.
The music is provided by German band Faun.  Merry Christmas one and all. 

Rather than leave you wondering I thought I'd incorporate one of my 'Where in the World' features:
As you can see Inari is north of the arctic circle (the dashed red line). The map below that is a closer view of the northern most part of Scandinavia. I've highlighted two places bottom left for future interest - ⧭ Kiruna and Karesuando on the Sweden/Finland border - these will be of note very soon… when we go there!

INARI - Finland (the shaded pink area here)

Football Sports Desk

If you'd told Chelsea fans watching the 3-0 defeat against Arsenal on September 24th that 11 games later their team would be 9 points ahead of the afore mentioned rampant Gunners, AND 6 pts clear of everyone else… they'd have probably thought you completely nuts.
But as of December 20th that is the Premiership picture.

We're Talking Points

In midweek Marko Arnautovic (a forward) was sent of for a nasty high tackle against Southampton. Four days later Moussa Sissoko, with an identical challenge is only booked, and then he provides the pass for the goal that sees Spurs narrowly beat Burnley. 
Marcos Rojo previously had made a couple of two-footed tackles in matches that saw him only yellow carded, when Red could have reasonably been the outcome. On Saturday Jamie Vardy (a forward) was sent off for a similar two-footed lung. Then last night at Everton Ross Barkley was only booked for a dreadful challenge on Jordan Henderson.
Along side these incidents the tame trip on Joe Ledley by Deigo Costa (a forward), which received the exact same punishment as all the mentioned yellow cards does appear to indicate a different attitude from referees towards midfield/defender tackles and those of your strikers.
Oh well, that's football - as they say!

Humour

Had to laugh as West Ham fans awarding the Man of the Match accolade to the 'post' against Hull City at the weekend in their 1-0 win. Three times he (the post) intervened to save the ball entering the net and clear it to safety. Unlike the Everton post who only succeeded in teeing up a tap in for Liverpool's Sadio Mane to score an injury time winner at Goodison. 

Same old

Nice to see some things never really change. Arsene Wenger bleating on about referee decisions that went against his team while completely forgetting the late handball goal they scored at (luckless) Burnley earlier in the season. 

Africa Cup of Nations  

This all to regular tournament kicks off this coming 14th January in Gabon.
A number of players from Premiership teams will be away for a minimum of 3 weeks. For example Sadio Mane wont be there to collect rebounds off posts and West Ham, Everton and Sunderland will lose the services of 4 squad members. While Leicester have 5 players involved in the tournament. For wondering Chelsea fans - somehow Nigeria didn't qualify!

My original 45

As a song title this couldn't be more right for the  FRIDAY MUSIC SPOT . On 17th November 1966 Australian band The Easybeats released "Friday On My Mind' - as you can see, I bought it. The single reached it's highest position on the UK chart just before Christmas on 17th December. 
It was written by lead guitar player Harry Vanda and rhythm guitarist George Young (elder brother of Malcolm and Angus who'd form AC/DC seven years later).

'Friday On My Mind' was a huge international hit and has been covered countless times since, most notably by David Bowie in 1973 on his 'Pin Ups' LP.

When I first saw this video I realised that for 50 years I'd been singing the wrong lyrics to the first line of the chorus. My 'Gonna happen in the city' was actually 'Gonna have fun in the city'!  Sing along now…

TRIP OUT ON THE TUBE

Bill's Tube Challenge

I had originally thought I'd do this 3 years ago, to commemorate 150 years of the London Underground. I never found the time, at the time, but now I have (the time) to do it !

Intro: The Plan

To visit the 'End of the Line' places I've always seen, but never been !  While in the process passing through every station on the Underground system: (all 270, some obviously more than once).
We've all seen the destinations Upminster > Hainault > Cockfosters > Uxbridge > Amersham - but unless you live near these 'End of the Line' stations you may never have visited.
Wimbledon and Morden are my neck of the woods, while Epping certainly isn't. The idea is to get off the train have a quick look around, take a picture as evidence. It's the 'End of the Line' but is it the be-all and end-all ?  Enough quoting Shakespeare: "I'm here, but should I have come?"

This is not your traditional 'do it in a day' Tube Challenge, more a leisurely version to seek out the outer limits of the London Underground. Armed only with the modern day equivalent of a 'Red Rover' (an Oyster Freedom Pass), Harry Beck's tube map and a packed lunch. 
I've vaguely estimated how long this might take me though not the chances that tube tedium sets in and I run out of steam quicker than the old Metropolitan District Railway trains.
I've done a trip planner but I may spend more time at places and making connections, so will suck it and see. This will tell me how realistic my estimates and as I want to see these 'End of the Line' places in daylight, whether my spreading the travel over 4 days is about right.

In theory this should not cost me a penny(*see brown panel at very bottom). Which'll be something!
I'll also try to keep a track of time and see how my leisurely, cool calm but inquisitive tourist approach adds up along side the 'Tube Challenge' record of 15hrs 45 mins?

© Harry Beck's Tube map

I wrote the above introduction before I'd started. What follows is the actual day-to-day :

Day One

I start at Wimbledon station (my 'home' town. With the plan being to finish up at the very end in my other 'home' town of Morden). 
Departing at 9.54 on a District Line Upminster train I arrive 41 stops later at 11.23. Not to much to see in Upminster and by 12.12 I'm back at Barking and changing to the Hammersmith & City Line. It's underground mostly through London until Paddington, arriving at Hammersmith just after 1.30pm.
Richmond on the branch of the District Line is next before returning to Turnham Green and on to Action Town to switch to the Piccadilly Line. Uxbridge is my final stop at 15.20. I take a good look around and as the sun sets I take the train back to Ickenham and walk 15 minutes to West Ruislip for the Central Line back into town and Notting Hill Gate.
I decide, though it's dark, to tick off the Edgware Road branch and return to High Street Kensington to walk to Olympia. Almost 6pm - completes 8 hrs of travel.

Day Two

I feel on reflection that yesterday was too long a day. I revaluate my time and decide rather than cram so much in I'll take an extra day. 
It's another cold day as I get myself to Brixton on the Victoria Line. 10am, Brixton is busy and interesting and I walk down Electric Avenue. The Victoria Line then takes me North under London and out again to Walthamstow Central, it's underground all the way. A short walk round before returning to King's Cross by 11.52 and the amusement of going round on the Circle line. Which these days is not a circle as I must change at Edgware Road to complete the round trip.
Finally getting off at Moorgate, I walk to Bank to take the 3 minute journey on the Waterloo & City Line to Waterloo station. It's not even 2 o'clock and I'm done. Only 4 hrs of travel today but I've done what I hoped to and tomorrow will now be less hurried.

Day Three

The day starts slowly, it's pouring with rain and grey skies up above. 
I pick up the final District line section to Ealing Broadway at 9.55. Take a few photos and then sit down for the Central Line journey across London and out to Essex and the curious tale of the Hainault loop. I arrive at Woodford were my train terminates at midday. Unsure where I'm going I miss a train to Epping and have to wait 11 minutes, eventually getting there at 12.27. Uphill walk to the town in the miserable weather isn't worth the effort, but I don't know that until I've done it.
Within half an hour I'm travelling back down the Central Line to Stratford and catch the Jubilee Line at 13.30. It's a line of two halves. The brand new modern east end and the ageing west section that was once the old Bakerloo Line. Arrive Stanmore at 14.26.
I walk 35 minutes to Edgware to save repeating stations and take the Northern Line via Charing Cross to Kennington. At 15.46 I'm finish for the day. A much more manageable under six-hour day.

Day Four

Today is the unknown quantity. There's lots of changes of trains and no knowing how long this may take but the sun is out which is good.
I make my way to Elephant & Castle and the Bakerloo Line. No trains are going the distance, only to Queen's Park, so I change at Baker Street for a through train going to Harrow & Wealdstone and arrive at 10.30.
I plan to walk to North Harrow on the Metropolitan Line but get hopelessly lost and find myself nearer West Harrow (which I'd intended to include later in the day). It suits to do it now and I take a train to Harrow-on-the-Hill to connect to the stations further west on the Metropolitan.
Fairly confusing with trains going so many places my preferred destination of Watford arrives and by 11.42 I'm out there walking around.
I then need to go back to Moor Park for the other branches of the Metropolitan Line and catch a train to Chesham. There's a bit of a wait and I finally get to Chesham at 12.45. The station's not much but the town is lovely and the scenery, all Chiltern Hills and valleys is beautiful.
Rather than backtrack again I'd decided to walk to Amersham. It proves a brilliant idea and  in the sunshine and autumn colours it's a great walk, if uphill a lot of the way.
Amersham is the highest and most westerly point on the London Underground these days. I depart at 13.45 and get back into London at Aldgate just before 3pm.
A great day, it's taken me 5 hrs and 15 mins - with just the final two lines to complete tomorrow.

Day Five

I'd been counting stations in my sleep. Today's the final leg (or branch).
Getting myself out to the western end of the Piccadilly Line without going all the way there and back again, means I take an overground train to Hounslow and walked a bit.
As you engage in some back and forth messing about at Heathrow I need to go via Terminal 4 before starting out from Heathrow Terminal 5. It's 11 o'clock before we pull out on a Cockfosters Train.
Not as many stops as Day One to Upminster it is the longest single journey without change: as 90 minutes later we eventually get to Cockfosters. 
The walk I set myself to save time going backwards today was debatable at best. But with a combination of hilly hiking and a local bus it was less than an hour from Cockfosters to High Barnet. 
The Northern Line train departs 13.21. At Finchley Central I have to get off to 'do' the Mill Hill East spur. An oddity of this branch is that they use the same train to go up and down this short section, as I have to change once again back at Finchley Central on my return.
Finally at 13.49 I'm away on a Morden via Bank train, as we desend into the tube's longest tunnel south of East Finchley. It always feels so long. But it's far from my longest journey and we reach Morden at 14.46. I calculate that's about an hour five mins from Barnet.
A final 4 hrs 16 mins travel time today - a total over the five days of 27 hrs and 15 mins - and 270# stations later!  To 28 End of the Line stations!

NB: 270# - to explain this total, there are really 268 different stations (Hammersmith & Edgware Road) are counted as two stops on the system.

The End of

Remarkably I achieved all this without any delays due to faulty trains, line closures, cancellations, signal failure, leaves on the track or any industrial action. It all went very smoothly.

Conclusions to the 'End of the Line' question "should I have come" ?
Certainly Chesham and Amersham are very nice. Uxbridge is worth a second visit and Aldgate puts in the heart of the City of London. But generally the final destinations were not all that.
What was interesting was comparing a 1960s tube map to the present day. The Metropolitan, Bakerloo and Central lines all extended beyond their final stops today. The Northern and Piccadilly both had spur branches that now don't exist.
More Tube trivia? Click here

Enough said, I'll end with a few photos (from the many I took) and if having read this you think me a tad mad or a bit of nerd - I'll reply:
"Not so much an 'anorak' as a fluorescent Vietnamese North Face Gore-tex jacket. You'll not sum me up in one word ! You labellers you."

Day One the start: Wimbledon on the District Line.

The curious tale of the Hainault loop.

As if in some strange time warp (or maybe an episode of Dr Who) I appear well and truly stuck in the year 1976. I'll try to break free by next week, but not before this:
On the 8th December 1976 the LP "Hotel California" was released. This is my favourite track from the album. The video does a great job of interpreting the lyrics of this great song: this is 'The Last Resort'. 

Sports Desk - Crazy Weekend !

Anyone watching the first hour of the Man City v Chelsea game may have wondered how the score remained only 1-0 to City. Chelsea had rode their luck a little with some wayward defending and had contributed an own goal in the process. The final scoreline including three Chelsea goals and two sending offs for City was the first of many crazy comebacks over the weekend. 

A big change of fortunes 

As a glance at the Premiership table from 12 months ago indicates: Leicester and Chelsea have virtually swapped places:

Then there was the Bournemouth v Liverpool game where the home side 1-3 down came back to win 4-3 with Agent Nathan Ake (on-loan from Chelsea) scoring the last minute winner. Big smiles at that one.

And then….

There was AFC Wimbledon, losing 3-0 at non-league Curzon Ashton in the FA Cup, with 80 minutes on the clock. 162 seconds later it was 3-3 and in the last minute of time added on Wimbledon scored a winner. You have feel a bit sorry of Curzon and their fans and in particularly Adam Morgan who'd scored a hat-trick for the them. But the signs had been there and the stats say Curzon had only 4 shots all game compared with Wimbledon's 33 attempts. > http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38121168

As today is my birthday I'm sure you'll allow me a certain indulgence. I have a story from 40 years ago. As today's video is largely abstract you may want to listen and read as it plays.

Are you sitting comfortable?

At the end of January 1976 'SOUNDS' music weekly introduced a competition. Called 'WAX FAX Contest '76' it boasted "Over £5000 of prizes to be won!" featuring 12 different prizes ranging from musical instruments - guitars, keyboards and drums to albums and headphones and a weekend trip for two. All you had to do to win one of the fantastic prizes was to answer the three questions in the coupon each week. There would be 9 coupons in all, which meant you had to find the answers to 27 questions.

Each week I wrote down my answers > I recall struggling with one and having to go into a big bookshop to find the answer in a music encyclopaedia. Anyhow I got all the answers and on week 9 at the end of March SOUNDS announced that you could select which of the 12 prizes you wanted to win and then in no more than 25 words say why you wanted to win this particular prize. The dreaded 'tie-breaker' - make or break I thought. The 'Win a weekend trip to meet Tangerine Dream' was my choice, partly because I saw it as not necessarily one of the most popular prizes on offer. My answer to the tie-beaker (after grappling with it for a time) was to write "The chance to see and meet one of my favourite groups, even after nine weeks, still seems like a great idea". I sent off my coupons to the appropriate address, reasonably confident I had all the answers right, but so might many others.

About a month later I received a letter in the post to tell me I'd won the all expenses paid flight/trip for two this summer to meet Tangerine Dream 'live' on tour in Europe.

And that was the last I heard for some months. So I wrote to SOUNDS to find out what was happening. Some summer concerts in Europe has been cancelled but a Tangerine Dream Autumn Tour was scheduled. Eventually one of those dates at the end of November in Madrid was organised by SOUNDS and I was instructed to contact the bands London record company - Virgin - and they'd supply tickets and all the information necessary.

On Friday 26th November a mate and me flew out to Spain, checked in at the hotel in Madrid where we'd been told to make contact with Tangerine Dream's manager. However the group were in Barcelona and wouldn't be arriving until the next day for that evenings concert. We wandered around rather lost until a few hours before the concert the manager showed up. He told us what would be happening and asked what we'd been doing? "Waiting for you" was our best response, where upon he handed me a wodge of spanish pesetas and said make sure you have yourselves a great time. It was rather like the movies.

A short while after we were in a taxi with him on our way to the Pabellón Deportivo Real Madrid* - a large indoor sports arena. We're handed back stage passes and find ourselves just to one side of the band a matter of yards from the stage.

After the show was over we were taken further back stage to meet Tangerine Dream - Edgar Froese, Chris Franke and Peter Baumann. We were offered drinks and food and naturally they asked if we'd enjoyed the music but after performing for two hours they appeared 'out of it'.

It was mentioned that the local press wanted the band to go to a nightclub and would we like to go along. Only Peter Baumann seemed interested, so off we went with him in a taxi to this disco in town. The unreal was about to get surreal. We walked in, the three of us, and immediately a group of reporters whisked us off into the club, sat us down and handed us drinks. Suddenly the music playing was Tangerine Dream's 'Ricochet' (Part 1), not your standard disco music scene, and virtually impossible to dance to. We were outnumbered by the press and while they'd spotted we were not german keyboard operators they did however begin asking my mate and me some in-depth questions about the evenings music. All we could do was nod our approval at what they asked, but that Peter was the best, indeed the only, person qualified to answer them.

Fairly soon we all departed and back at the hotel we had a final drink and chatted some more. Peter Baumann, who'd been good company, informed us he'd just finished a solo LP, which would be out very soon, while hinting he may leave the group in the New Year.

Both facts proved true. Today's music is from his solo album 'Romance 76', opening track called 'Bicentennial Present'.

The next morning over breakfast Peter Baumann and Tangerine Dream and their manager said farewell as they departed for France and yet another show. We had a great story to tell and more pesetas in our pockets than we knew what to do with, but we'd think of something. 

* I am indebted to Michael Berling and his 'Voices In The Net' website database for this information. I honestly couldn't remember where we'd gone.

You Tube  literally has mountains of Tangerine Dream stuff, some tracks last an hour or more! Go explore if you've a mind. I'm just going to add this (Live in 1976) as it reminds me of what I remember mostly from this concert and that is Edgar Froese on guitar, like your typical rock band, which they never really were. Very good quality video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqjdgwg7qMs

Too weird ? Try this then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ00QzOMBZs