The passing of Prince

This started out as a post to Ben on my family blog but has ended up here. This year, the passing of some of our best celebrities has affected us all in different ways. On the one hand I'm fed up with the name dropping (David Walliams actually thanked Bryan Ferry for inviting him for dinner with Prince -yuck) but I'm more fed up with people telling me how I should feel! I'll feel how I bloody well like about it. "But you didn't know him!", "You value his life more than migrants dying on boats!" No and no. Of course I didn't know him, I know I didn't particularly want him to be tainted with the same kind of death as Michael Jackson (he's far better than that) but no, I don't know him.

But I do know how I feel now when I hear his music. From 1982's 1999 album, through Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day, Parade, Sign 'o the Times, Lovesexy, to 1989's Batman soundtrack, then dipping back to 1980's Dirty Mind and the following year's Controversy (I must get For You!), he literally was the soundtrack to my 80s. Sheila E's Belle of St Mark, I love it. Most of those are either on vinyl or cassette. Hearing them is like putting on an old comfy jumper. I know every line of every song. I know which song follows every song. I can't say I listened to the lyrics like I did perhaps The Smiths, but musically Prince took me through my life from age 11 to, well, until today. Everyone loved him. We went to see him on his Lovesexy tour, one of the first times I'd been far away on my own (to Birmingham from Cornwall!). We had t shirts (wish I'd kept my Batman one). We giggled over Wendy and Lisa's Fruit Up Your Bottom, as we renamed it. We loved him. I can still feel that I'm sat on my top bunk in my bedroom, with the Around the World in a Day on cassette, marvellling at the simple tune of Pop Life. Feeling slightly risque years later hearing him talk about "trying horse" (I was 16...). During the 1990s, I bought Come and liked a few things he'd released. I loved some stuff recently about the same time as he worked with 3rdeyegirl and lazily thought I must get round to buying some of it.

Prince, you soundtracked my childhood and to bastardise my friend's quote, I feel like an old school friend has gone. Not someone I'd kept in close contact with of recent, but someone who I loved at the time and helped me grow into the person I am today, musically and personally (not that there's much difference in that in my mind).

So I will grieve. For a creativity that once produced so many fantastic songs and albums and will never do so again. But I often put on Controversy before a night out to get me in the mood. The only joy that can be taken from a musical death is to rediscover all that you once loved.

Prince is dead, long live Prince.

Would I Lie To You board family game review

Would I Lie To You? "The game of believable lies and unbelievable lies ", linked into the TV show of the same name. Purchased: December 2017 in Waterstones, for around £20 In a nutshell: These TV show-affiliated games usually show themselves up (Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Top Gear) but this game is fun and easy to play (if a little modified) as a family. You don't really need specialist knowledge to play, just the ability to lie! Every year for Christmas, I like to buy a board game to play, even though no games better either Ludo (in which my dad is the reigning cheater-champion, and argues to high heaven over the rules about doubling up or how to place your counters in "Home") or Rummikub (which we can now play with two packs of cards lest we forget the game). This year, Would I Lie To You caught my eye in Waterstones (other emporiums - emporia? - for book lovers are [locally] unavailable). It's a game, it says, for 2-8 players; however we dec...

A walk from Portchester Castle to Salt Cafe

Well we just had to choose the worst day of the year to walk. The date had been set weeks before - who knew there would be the worst winds of the decade almost on this very day? But we didn't want to be beaten. We will walk to the cafe. At least it wasn't raining! Parking is free next the castle and obviously, it wasn't busy this day! We set off around the outside of this medieval monument. The sea wall affords views across to Portsmouth and Gosport, and Portsdown Hill if you look behind. You can see the Spinnaker Tower in my photos, but you'd have to zoom in. The sea wall leads to a walk along a path, switching between grass (a much more sheltered area) beside a playpark, and the beach. It is an easy, flat walk, made slightly harder in the wind. After 1.75 miles, you reach the Salt Cafe (@saltcafe66). This took us one hour - that wind did slow us down! I've had a breakfast bap there before and remember it being delicious, but slightly expensive. But today, we...

That's not my Elf, he's too rude and noisy

At nursery drop-off this morning, I was handed part of Elf's transfer to school pack, you know, the bit that the pre-school teacher had completed and also that Elf had drawn in (looking worryingly like a blaze that Fireman Sam ought to be putting out instead of rescuing Norman's head from a saucepan with the "jaws of life"). Reading it, I had a sense of "That's not my child" in the way that the above tractor book is written. Surely, the little angel you've so kindly described here doesn't really exist, and certainly doesn't pretend to be my little Elf? So here is "This is not my child" book, by A Humdrum Mum. That's not my child He's too rude and noisy That's not my child He's uncaring and unkind (to me sometimes) That's not my child He wants to sit in front of the TV not run around in the garden That's not my child He won't help me take in the washing This is my child ...

A Humdrum Mum

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