The Specials - two nights of Coventry

There is something,well, special, about seeing one's home town band. Which in my case is the Specials. Not much comes out of Coventry, but the very early Eighties brought the Two Tone label and its top band. Thirty plus years later they are still going, minus the odd member. One can take a view its rather sad going to see a bunch of middle-aged men doing what they did 30 years ago. But actually I enjoyed it very much.

I took along a friend from my era (only seemed fair as I had taken her husband and her eldest son to gigs earlier in the year) and we had a very pleasant meal in Brixton from which I rushed us off to the gig to make sure we were in time for the first support act. Indeed we would have made it in god time - were there actually a support act at all. But there wasn't. I don't think I have ever been to a gig with no support - usually the question is one or two supports. So, we had rather a long wait for any action. And they were very much a stripped down performance, not only missing Neville Staples from the last time I saw them, but also with the most basic lighting effects I have seen for a gig at Brixton. And given that at forty quid we were charged rather more than the going rate for most bands playing here, I would have had the right to feel short-changed.

But I didn't. It was a great night. They play so well together, and the live songs are way superior to what you get from listening to them on cd. (After all, they have had a lot of practice now!) Certainly an odd dynamic, with the shy terry Hall as lead vocalist, alongside the incredible showman that is Lynval Golding on guitar, even at his advanced years (a fact much commented upon, good-naturedly, by Mr Hall).

Ignoring the nostalgia trip element, what makes there music so good is difficult to pin down. of course, its ska music so it helps to like that. there is also a passion in their anti-racism (Terry led a good rant about Luis Suarez). But with most bands, its not that they offer a great critique of any political creed (whatever they might think) but rather get the emotional pull right. They offer good sound-bites, and a memorable hook, in comparison to a well-reasoned article say, which will be immediately forgotten. Their songs stand well after all this time - Ghost Town with its views of disillusioned youth in recession, or Much too much, much too young - one suspects the only number one single there will ever be devoted to contraception.

But what also makes this, and most other gigs, is the crowd. Very wide age range from somewhat older than me to kids (with parents), all just loving it, bouncing around. You can't quite beat being surrounded by a few thousand people having fun, and having no other reason to be there other than to enjoy it.

And then a second Coventry night, but a very different one. A somewhat heated meeting in a pub of the Coventry City London Supporters Club, arranged to give a platform to the Club's Chief Executive to explain what the situation is at the moment. These occasions are always vastly more interesting than one might expect because of the candour of what is said away from the Press.

I won't betray any confidences, but it does put a different spin on what I had understood the position to be - perhaps. But the main message is that, ludicrously, Coventry won't be playing in their purpose built stadium used for the Olympics next season. No one will be. The club don't own the ground, the rent was too high and the club don't get anything out of the match-day income apart from the gate receipts. So a subsidiary which held the lease went into administration, but what else it owns is a bit of a mystery. But the upshot is that the Council own a 50% share of the ground and will soon be left with a ground from which it demands a high rent from, er, no one at all. Truly a white elephant - a football ground with no football. Or indeed anything to grace its grass, unless they can find some sheep to put on it. Plus the odd rock concert. God knows how much money the Council will have to write off for this fiasco, but they always have the Council tax payers to absorb it.

Meanwhile the owners intend to find a nearby site to build a new stadium (luckily enough a decaying industrial area has a fair few brownfield sites to choose from) and seem bloody minded enough to finance it, and leave the team to struggle in a ground share with some other local club in the meantime. And leaving the Council with a nice empty concrete bowl to grow weeds in. More well-spent Council cash. After all, they would only waste it on old people or children if they weren't wasting it on white elephants. Of course the position doesn't make the slightest bit of commercial sense to anyone in the real world, but since when did a Council live in a real world? But I shouldn't complain - this sort of dispute will keep lawyers in the money. But a bit sad for those of us who actually support the football club. A band which will become an ever-dwindling number at this rate.

Barnes to Fulham

Who would have thought it, a sunny if windy Bank Holiday? Clearly a day for an expedition. Ok not exactly talking Polar exploration, but the well-trodden path from Barnes to Fulham. This is a very desirable end of London, big houses and leafy lanes.

Starting off at Barnes Railway Bridge overlooking a rather nice stretch of the Thames, at very low tide.

The brick house on the right below was once lived in by the composer Gustav Holst when he was music teacher. A very nice location, although the wisteria covered house down the road is even nicer.

I had an excellent lunch at the Sun Inn, overlooking the Village Green. Wonderful place this - you do get a better quality pub lunch out here. Indeed, star-spotting, so also thought ex-England footballer and pundit Garth Crooks who was similarly basking in the beer garden. Felt very at one with the world, a condition often brought about by a sunny day and a pint of cider.

Barnes does feel like a village, the Green. the pond and also St Mary's church with its lychgate, yews and well-kept, but not over-tidied graveyard. I like graveyards.

I spent the middle of the afternoon wandering around the Wetlands Centre. Now you have heard of intensive agriculture - this is intensive wildlife. On a comparatively small site there is a range of wetland habitats and ponds, with a large reservoir in the middle. The various ponds house (if that's the right word) various groups of  bird life from Tropical to Siberian. You don't really notice how many people there are in the place because of the neat way it is all compartmentalised with lots of winding paths and screening willow trees. So its a nice enough way of spending a couple of hours if you have a passing interest in wildlife, or some small children to tire out. There are also a fair few blokes with huge lenses about, and several hides to house them, lenses trained in the hope of finding something unusual. Mostly its ducks. So if your pulse races at the thought of spotting a White-Faced Whistling Duck or a sign pointing to the South West Asian Reed-swamp, this is the place for you.

Carolina Duck

Pass

Pair of Bewick swans

Red-breasted Geese

Tough one, but I think a Scaup

Ok, I give up on this one despite its distinctive blue shovel-like beak. I would never make a birdwatcher

Red-crested Pochard

Mallard with  two marbled teals behind

No, can't identify these two either

Pair of Cosocroba swans

Muscovy Duck

European Eider 

Black Swan

Yellow flag

Following that you can then walk up one of the quieter stretches of the Thames (although not on match-day with Craven Cottage football ground just across the river). 

 Putney Embankment leads to Putney Bridge, across which is Fulham. The church here is All Saints, which backs onto Bishops Park and Fulham Palace, the summer residence of London Bishops until the 1970s, when finally perhaps it dawned on them that summer palaces were generally associated with indolent aristocrats. Which might well be a perfectly good comparator, but bad PR in the modern age. So now it is used for wedding receptions, has a very sweet tea-room, a wonderful lawn for running around on (if under 10) or lounging around on (if older), and a beautiful walled-garden. And lots of wisteria at its best just now.

A really picturesque row of almshouses

The moated entrance to Fulham Palace. The moat supposedly dates back at least a thousand years

Courtyard of the Tudor palace