But the Wichita Lineman is still on the line...

And I need you more than want you...

And I want you for all time,

But the Wichita Lineman is still on the line...

Romance, rural living, excess, loss and the love that can never be...

Courtesy of Mr Glen Campbell...

Merci monsieur...

And more than thirty years on...

And, omigod, the originator of so many wonderful country songs, written in his twenties, and still stunning today, Jimmy Webb:

What am I going to reminisce about today, with this song? Where does it take my mind back to?

I don't really know. I remember listening to the radio quite a lot when I was younger. I used to record the Top 20 onto a Soundhog cassette tape, after my weekly bath, trying to time it just right to cut off the inane DJ's chatter from spoiling my favourite songs, like this one.

...Except I would only have been a tot when it was first released in 1968. Love of it must just be in my blood somehow. I probably saw Glen Campbell on TV, Morecambe and Wise or Des O'Connor's show...

What would we have been like in those days if our generation(s) had had the luxuries and distractions of Youtube and I-Tunes?

I can scarce imagine it.

We didn't even have Central Heating at home when I was a nipper. I still have the tiny pale scar on the top of my milky-white thigh where a spark flew from the coal fire and singed through my (highly flammable) nylon nightie one evening while I was warming myself before bed-time with a cup of hot milk. My childhood staple. If I'm feeling icky or wanting to see myself off to sleep, a cup of frothy hot milk with one sugar can still do the trick for me...

If you could pick any 'luxury' item, product or thingie from the current era and take it back with you to when you were a Teenager, what would it be?

Fhina is on the line and she's listening...

Bright Star - Keats' Letter to Fanny Brawne February 1820

I just discovered - Yeah, I'm something of a Culture Vulture, but occasionally I lag a little behind the times! - that Jane Campion (director of my belovedly cinematographic, The Piano) has set her sights on one of the greatest and most poignant love stories (to my mind) of all time...

That of John Keats and his one-time neighbour, Fanny Brawne. The film is called Bright Star, and I really long to go and see it.



Much has been writ about their love affair. It was controversial, with some of Keats' friends blaming Fanny for the illness (attributed at times to heartache) that carried him off... Fanny's family probably felt that Keats should be in a better financial position to marry their eldest daughter, so he worked feverishly on his writing and poetry, when his growing tuberculosis permitted, to enable himself to become a published (and paid!) author.

Given the social mores of the times, requiring courting couples to require a chaperone, often Keats could only get a glimpse of his love through a window, while she promenaded past the end of his garden of an evening...

His letters to her remain and, of course, his beautiful and revelatory poetry.

This letter offers, I feel, something of a tangible insight into their youthful feelings:

'My dearest Fanny,

I read your note in bed last night, and that might be the reason of my sleeping so much better. I think Mr Brown (Keats' best friend) is right in supposing you may stop too long with me, so very nervous as I am. Send me every evening a written Good night. If you come for a few minutes about six it may be the best time. Should you ever fancy me too low-spirited I must warn you to ascbribe it to the medicine I am at present taking which is of a nerve-shaking nature - I shall impute any depression I may experience to this cause. I have been writing with a vile old pen the whole week, which is excessively ungallant. The fault is in the Quill: I have mended it and still it is very much inclin'd to make blind es. However these last lines are in a much better style of penmanship thof [though] a little disfigured by the smear of black currant jelly; which has made a little mark on one of the Pages of Brown's Ben Jonson, the very best book he has. I have lick'd it but it remains very purplue. I did not know whether to say purple or blue, so in the mixture of the thought wrote purplue which may be an excellent name for a colour made up of those two, and would suit well to start next spring. Be very careful of open doors and windows and going without your duffle grey God bless you Love ! -

J. Keats-

P .S. I am sitting in the back room - Remember me to your Mother -'

P.S. (Fhina-Spoiler) Given their biographies, the film can't have a happy ending!