The Ebor, Freddie Mercury, and Boudicca

The reason why the selections aren't explained.

The reasoned arguments behind my selections typically cause absolutely no conflict, provided that I am allowed the time to research without distraction.

I have to try to ignore the daily prompts to generate a few well-chosen words on the meaning of life, the stupidity of the Conservatives, the very real dangers of this particular bunch of radicalised Bollinger Bolsheviks, the politics of envy inherent in the current demography of anyone under the age of 30, a pithy insight on 100 uses for Ras-El-Hanout, or even my loathing of Haloumi.

But today, I hit several mental buffers, which conspired to steal my time and thought processes. I had news that will require the dispatch of notes of genuine sympathy which always seem so cliched, but which please God cushion the next weeping step. Then, conversations about the installation of solar panels and battery storage. Then I became incensed by an article in The Torygraph - proper angry incensed - not just minor ranting. Then, whilst I pondered my reaction and what level of vitriol I could summon, there was a global outage of this very platform on which I am currently writing. Then, just after it came back to life, BBC4 ran a series of retrospectives on Freddie Mercury, including the documentary The Final Act, which was gripping and profoundly moving and which you should watch if you possibly can.

I watched (and that noise you can hear is the name dropping from above you) because I had met Queen when I organised the launch party for their album News Of The World in October 1977 in Camden Lock. I can’t claim that we had been lifelong friends, merely that the head of A&R at EMI was a mate, for whom I had arranged a whole tranche of launch, signing and release parties, each more leary than the last. We met, we spoke, I drank with them and many, many others, they left, and I tried to stop my Maitre D’ from having sex in the store room with someone from Tom Robinson Band.

By then, however, it was/is very late, and I still need to read the form. Before I explain my dilemma, I think it would be best if you read this piece, published by The Torygraph, which now appears to have been taken over politically by Circa Starmer PLC.

An incendiary Telegraph article - possibly causing thrombosis!

Once you have done so, and perhaps later this weekend, I will try to explain my attitude to Boudicca’s piece (and more importantly, the views of those she sought out), and my pain at seeing the awful suffering the Freddies of this world went through when the Aids epidemic was at its height. The contradiction and my dilemma is this: how can I believe A and yet support B? I am conflicted because, on one level, Brian May is a very decent man in his representation of the phrase “the Milk of Human Kindness” - and yet with whom I'm afraid I have to disagree on almost every view he holds about my world. I shall have to wait and work it out once I’ve found the other, more important words.

Full oft we see,

Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

Talking of getting wisdom and folly mixed up…