Friday 19 June 2020

Daily Photos no. 56: Famous Last Words

'You'll never see a red squirrel here', said Ben. 'It's the wrong time of day'.

11 seconds later we turned a corner to see one of Formby's red squirrels scampering away from the bin it had been looting. It's the only one I've ever seen. Though my environmentalist friend John once ran one over. With a Nature Scotland land rover. On his first day in the job. That made for an awkward discussion at probation.

And then we saw other lovely things, and I spent the day singing my top 50 favourite George Formby songs and realising quite how many of them are about voyeurism (he's in favour). But at least the Formbys were proudly anti-racist. 'Why don't you piss off, you horrible little man?', Beryl Formby apparently shouted down the phone at Daniel Malan when he complained about George hugging a black girl during one of his deliberately unsegregated concerts.




Also looking for squirrels

Yes I took a monochrome photo of a famously colourful insect.



Formby's very nice by the way. And some George Formby:

2 comments:

Phil said...

A musician friend of mine "does" some George Formby, which has caused a bit of consternation. These days people mostly have an idea of what George was like, but aren't too familiar with the specifics - including how filthy a lot of his material was. A woman came up to my friend after he'd done "With my little stick of Blackpool rock" one night in a state of mingled outrage and incredulity - Is he talking about his penis??? My friend said yes, he probably was.

Anonymous said...

Recommend the botanical gardens in Frankfurt for red squirrels, and comprehensive palm collection, never mind one of the best galleries in the world ...