Desert Island - Discuss

Bob's on his way to Cardiff, and I am looking forward to it. He's not popular in my house (younger people seem to hear a grumpy old man, or, not having actually listened to him, just think of him as some has-been old Sixties protest singer). They don't know he has a great sense of humour, and gathers the best musicians around him, to play an eclectic mix of every music style of the 20th century, really well. Blues, Gospel, Rock, Folk, you name it.

It's weird to me, but not very weird. While people talk of cars, I talk of surrealists; while people talk about pensions, I talk about silent movies; when people talk about diets, I talk about Neuro-Linguistic Programming (the secondary gains); when people talk about mortgages, I talk about mysticism; when people talk about soap operas, I talk about astrology; when people talk about money, I talk about anything else....

Bob's been like an older brother to me, he's always going through stuff a year or two ahead of me. And no, it's not all parallel (I was never born-again) but there's stuff you go through at certain ages, whether you are a millionaire or a peasant.

I am sure that my mother would have preferred that I had more Shakespeare quotes in my head; my school teachers might have preferred more Bible (who knows?) Those were base texts for education in the UK for so long that they are a 'given' if you go on Desert Island Discs, a long running radio show which says "if you were on a desert island which 8 records would you take with you?" Of course, that dates back to windup gramophones, and single tracks. It all got a bit confused when you might now want to take album sets. Still, they give you a luxury and a book (and they throw in The Bible and Shakespeare).

Weird, again. I might want Shakespeare, but I'd trade the Tao Te Ching, or Catch-22 for The Bible, and then choose the Greater Oxford Dictionary for my book. And no, don't ask, I don't know what my luxury would be, but I'd lean towards a bag of really good grass seeds fnord... ya gotta have a nice lawn to sunbathe on....