Jim Granter

Sat on a bench resting in the October sunshine yesterday after a short bike ride up Merelake Way – an old railway track – in Alsager. Talked with a man and his dog about the Way and how well used and well kept it was. He told me of the fight to keep the footbridge over the Way –  a metal and wooden structure on two beautiful sandstone stanchions linking farmland and the golf course – and how the Council had been persuaded not to knock it down several years ago but to renovate it with timber from Germany. It stands now in very good nick, the ironwork having been recently painted, giving pleasure to anyone who passes over it or just climbs up as I did from the Way just for a look around from it. Rode and walked on to Talke, turned round and free-wheeled most of the way back to the bridge.

Carried on home to find the DVD of  The Friends of Eddie Coyle had arrived, from Spain, via Amazon. A great movie, well-suited to the term of ‘classic’ that it attracts. Mitchum the Magnificent. Watched it straight through.

A great two hour discussion and study of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle today at the ‘Liberation Literature’ class, upstairs in The Bank Corner pub and restaurant. Lively exchanges on politics and history, America and Britain, literature and autobiographical anecdotes. Such a weekly pot of gold to be found under five minutes walk from my home, the thought of which while writing this has a similar effect to reading great literature such as, say, any Faulkner, that is, it messes with the breathing slightly.

Started bookmarking websites on delicious.com on daughter Beth’s advice after my Google Chrome browser mysteriously disappeared today – for a while – with all its resident bookmarks!  Inadvertently recovered my original Chrome later, though, with the high tech manoeuvre of switching off at teatime and back on again later. There it was, all safe and sound, restored by the hidden hand of the clever person who is running this internet thing.

Lost iTunes earlier too, but it also “came back” and have been writing this to the accompaniment of a nice bit of Mozart.