Ballroom Blitz

This visit to Blitz by Jack Charlton is fantastic. Aside from Charlton taking all in his stride, though, my favourite part is how it completely demystifies Blitz itself. “It’s the hallowed ground where New Romantism was born!” becomes “Oh, it’s just a disco in a very typical run-down British hall. Look at the state of those plugs.”

It occurred to me this week that I last filled my car with petrol back in March. And it’ll probably still be fine into August. Remain indoors!

(Having said that, I will be on the coast of North Carolina next weekend. Cook Out time! And maybe, maybe a sneaky stop on the way back Sunday afternoon for taking pizzas away from IP3. We can but dream. And wear masks. And disposable gloves. This is how we travel in 2020.

My weekend archive viewing was Secret Society, which included hilarious scenes where people on the high street were shocked to see their names come up on a private copy of the voting roll database via a teletext-style linkup. Oh, those innocent, halcyon days. You can also tell how I’ve been co-opted by the system, as the programme’s fierce line against machine-readable passports generated a big Alan Partridge-sequel shrug from me. “There’s a big book of names that the passport agents are supposed to check, but they don’t! This is bad! The machine-readable passports will make that viable! This is also bad!” A little odd.

And I think that’s it for this week. Except this wonderful clip from Gillian Gilbert where she casually reveals that nobody else in New Order could read/transliterate music and how she and Stephen wrote the backbone of World In Motion as a Reportage end credit theme. I am really glad that she was back in the band when I finally got to see them earlier this year.

And this, as “The Other Two”, watching one of their early BBC live performances (content warning: Bernard’s shorts):

(This blog stans Stephen Morris & Gillian Gilbert)