Compelling match between Serena and the newcomer Harmony Tan, last night.

As soon as Serena started to claw her way back from a set down I thought she'd win. When she went 4-0 up in the decider tiebreak it looked done and dusted.

But Harmony managed to pull it out of the fire, bravo.

Did anyone else watch The Man from UNCLE as a kid? I don't think I'd watched one since the BBC showed them in the '60s.

I had the Napoleon Solo gun, the Dinky car and of course, the U.N.C.L.E triangular badge. I think it came with the gun, actually.

There was one episode in particular that left an impression on me. I can remember thinking about it the next morning at assembly, at the junior school I attended in Hartlepool.

This one had an especially high cool factor because most of it was set in the secret U.N.C.L.E base, which was not that common. There was a scene where the base was infiltrated, and the two agents go running to an elevator that's about to open, with their guns drawn. That stuck in my mind, for some reason.



So I had a look through an episode guide to see if I could find a likely episode to match, and The Mad, Mad Tea Party Affair seemed to fit my vague recollection. It's available online here:

https://archive.org/details/the-man-from-uncle-s-1/The+Man+From+U.N.C.L.E.+S01E18+The+Mad%2C+Mad%2C+Tea+Party+Affair.mkv

[18 in the list].

I watched it. So very, very much of its time - slightly campy spy-fi with touches of that same wilfully bonkers trippy surrealism that you also saw in The Avengers, for example. There's a fantastic scene where a laser gun is deployed on the roof, to defend the base, controlled from the "radar room", full of machinery with flashing lights. The plot doesn't withstand scrutiny. But it's enormous fun.

I checked the BBC genome project. I must have watched this in May 1966.

https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?q=mad+tea+party+affair

Time to leave, he says.

He had a poor start but he'd started to make his name as an effective manager. Has he got something else lined up? He was linked to the Burnley job but that's gone now.

Footage here of the current version of Yes, in Glasgow on Wednesday night. But click through to the YouTube page and read the comments:

"This seems like an unintended pub tribute band playing at a uni refectory at times"

"I think that Yes should call it a day, this is very sad and empty. This is no longer Yes"

"Steve, please stop. Thank you"

"Sherwood does a decent job, but the rest of the tribute act - jeez"

"I just sold my ticket as I've seen the awful shows on you tube, bullet dodged "

" Doesn't sound very good does it"


To call this Yes is a travesty, I'm sorry to say. It's Steve Howe's tribute to Yes at most. It's no more Yes than Steve Hackett's band is Genesis. But more importantly than that, they're poor.

Paul is 80 today. Feels like a moment. And he'll be playing Glasto in a few days' time.

The future is stranger than I imagined it would be, in some ways.

There's an obvious and clearly correct answer to this, however I'm interested to know how many of my colleagues are aware of it.

I've only just noticed this in the settings, but in case you haven't noticed it either - there's a setting that will make any code tags you use in posts (for images, italics and so on) work in the editor as a preview of what you'll see in the post once you submit it. T-N-M-S had this and since I started this site, I'd wondered if it was an add-on. But it's built in.

To invoke it, go to the little menu at the top left indicated by your username, select 'Look and Feel' - and in the Posting section, tick 'Load editor in WYSIWYG mode by default'.

I'm not particularly a cricket fan but what a inspirational performance against New Zealand today!

https://www.breezyscroll.com/science/radio-signal-coming-from-another-galaxy-detected-by-scientists/

"Chinese astronomers have detected a radio signal coming from a galaxy believed to be nearly 3 billion light-years away"

and

"While their origins are unclear, reports are suggesting it as a sign of alien life".

I haven't invested a lot of credibility in that latter claim, but isn't it gobsmacking to think of a place that's three billion light years away?

The Moon is a bit more than a light second away. Jupiter's less than a light hour away.

This turned up on the PRS Guitar Owners Facebook group:

For security reasons I've made the Politics section private, so that visitors to the site who haven't signed up (or who aren't logged in) won't be able to see it.

To this end there's now a Politics member group and I've added everyone who's posted in that section. However any regular contributor is welcome to be part of the group so you can lurk there if desired, so drop me a message if you'd like to be added.

Conversely if I've added you to the group and you'd prefer the Politics section to be hidden, that's fine too so let me know and I'll take you out of it.

Early this morning, I dreamed that I had a sort of cut, or scar running down the side of my hand, from the base of the little finger to the wrist. Very neat, very straight. It could be prised open very slightly but it was completely painless and bloodless.

A doctor told me that it was a generic feature.

I have divided loyalties here as I lived in Huddersfield for a brief period, but - I used to support Forest until it became obvious that they weren't trying hard enough to get back into the top flight and when they dropped into League One, that was the final straw. It's a results-driven game, of course.

One nil to the Men in Red at half time - have Forest got one foot in the Promised Land?

Chaos at the Stade de France, I'm listening to the coverage on 5 Live. Fans being funnelled through a single gate, people getting pepper-sprayed and thousands of seats still empty.

Game now due to kick off at 20:36 BST - I worry about fans with tickets stuck outside, I imagine there'll be considerable anger.

This fabulous, inspirational recording is the greatest Rush album of them all, a supernova in a constellation of bright stars.

It caught me quite by surprise, in the autumn of 1978 - I had been nervously awaiting its release when, following an evening of moderate post-adolescent alcohol-related activity at a local hostelry, my drinking companion and I called in at the house of an acquaintance. His dad had just returned from the States, or the Far East - I forget which - where Hemispheres had already been released, and had brought him back a copy. It was already on his turntable when we called in. I listened intently for a few minutes. My jaw dropped, and I felt the sting of tears in my eyes, for I was witnessing a triumphant, spectacular return to form. It was simply fabulous. The dark cloud cast over my life by the bitter disappointment of A Farewell To Kings was lifting at last. This was atmospheric, enigmatic, unmistakably brilliant music.

I hardly know how to begin to describe this album (but I'll give it a shot). The 2112-style, side-length epic which kicks off proceedings is, I suppose, really what this album is all about. Like 2112, it's dramatic and atmospheric - but much more stylised, harmonically ambitious and distinctive. And where its predecessor, A Farewell To Kings, was awkward, flat and ill-conceived, Hemispheres is statuesque, graceful, majestic, spellbinding - utterly convincing.

Peart provides a purposeful, powerful yet subtle (and very nearly jazzy in parts) backbeat while Lee and Lifeson weave a melodic tapestry of sonic splendour. Guitar and bass intertwine enticingly across a luscious, panoramic soundscape in a beautifully choreographed ballet of harmonic majesty. There's so much light and shade - Lifeson's guitar slashes like a maniac's razor one moment, soothes like a lover's touch the next - (witness the intense yet delicate, heartbreakingly poignant guitar refrain which makes its first appearance at 1:20 or so, and which in many ways is the signature of the title piece) - this is electrifying, breathtaking stuff, rock music's equivalent of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Lyrically speaking, Hemispheres' title piece is Peart's very last episode in the grandiose, sci-fi and sorcery style which had been his preferred modus operandi up to this point. However, unlike former works in the same style, (and in particular, Cygnus X-1, to which formally speaking, Hemispheres is a sequel) it's allegorical, not intended to be taken purely at face value. It's really about the balance between the rational and the emotional, not a battle between Gods on Mount Olympus.

So that's alright then.

The three shorter tunes which (used to) form side two are only slightly less accomplished in their own right. Circumstances is a deceptively simple but eccentric and inventive piece and The Trees, of course, is a classic - with an engagingly plucked acoustic intro, a catchy, powerful, thrilling chorus and some delightfully quirky, staccato guitar work from Lifeson. Again, it's a surprisingly simple tune on careful listening, but like Circumstances, wonderfully distinctive and original.

La Villa Strangiato, deservedly a highlight of live performances for many years to come, is an intoxicating cocktail of diverse styles and influences. Their first entirely instrumental piece, it's a patchwork of several quite different short pieces which complement each other superbly and segue together into something even greater than the sum of its parts. Mesmeric stuff, this, and performed with consummate skill. Some absolutely captivating, dramatic guitar work here too, yet it's as lighthearted as it is assured (and more generally, I feel that Hemispheres is the album where an offbeat sense of humour and lighthearted take on life started to be reflected in Lifeson's music - not just here, but in Circumstances and The Trees too - the guitar part seems somehow to be wearing a confident, wry smile in places).

Hemispheres is the new start for chapter two that Rush were groping for, but which eluded their grasp, in the conception and execution of A Farewell To Kings. Yet in a sense, with the benefit of hindsight - and in the context of their whole career, I think it's instructive to consider it the conclusion of chapter one. This was as far as they could possibly come within the progressive rock paradigm whose waters they had charted in the early phase of their career, and they must have known it. For their next album, they would reinvent themselves with a highly-charged, more straightforward sound - but, that's a story for another day.

Marks out of ten? Like Nigel Tufnell's custom-built Marshall amplification, I have no option but to go to eleven. This magnificent record just may be the absolute peak of human artistic achievement in the last millenium.

Spent a long weekend at Penally in South Wales, and we went to see Pembroke Castle. The most interesting thing about this actually was a superb talk given by a guide there named Gareth, a retired history teacher. He told us about the Norman invasion of Wales, and the historical reason that very few people in that part of the country speak Welsh.

The aperture-actuator solenoid on my Pentax DSLR failed a year or so ago, meaning that it can't be used in fully auto (which is my usual lazy habit). However, I've figured out a way to make it usable again with an old 28mm manual focus lens with an aperture ring, that was once partnered to a film camera I had. It's a bit of a faff - you leave the camera in manual mode and choose an aperture for the conditions (f16 works fine for most shots on a bright day). Then you press the green button, the camera stops down the lens, takes a light reading and sets the shutter speed - then you're good to take a shot.

Kiss bass player Gene Simmons was once in the amusing habit of referring to Rush, who supported his band in the mid-seventies, as "Led Zeppelin Junior". It's a very apt description of the band at that time, and nowhere is the Canadian trio's debt to the pioneering English hard rock quartet more apparent than on their eponymous debut recording.

The first Rush album was recorded in a matter of weeks while the band was on tour, using cheap overnight studio time, some of the sessions taking place immediately after gigs. It's not one of their very best albums and it's undoubtedly rather derivative - but it does boast a number of classic tunes, some of which would hold down a place in the band's setlist for years, or even decades to come.

It's something of an 'odd one out' in the Rush canon in that it was recorded before drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, a key protagonist in all the band's subsequent projects over the following thirty years, replaced John Rutsey, who hits the drums here - but the musical contrast in style from subsequent recordings is arguably as obvious as the lyrical. None of the more ambitious, graceful and assured progressive leanings which would later characterise the band's classic period are in evidence; this is unreconstructed heavy rock'n'roll, bringing to mind less subtle moments from the first two Zeppelin albums.

The songs are mostly strong and the youthful exuberance is infectious. It's all good stuff, even if it's peppered with cock rock clichés (ooh yeah I need some love!), Lifeson's guitar dramatics are a little embarrassing here and there, and Lee's screeching vocals sound at times rather like a young Robert Plant on amphetamine-enriched helium.

Working Man and Finding My Way are perhaps the tracks for which this album is generally best remembered, but for me the one which stands out is the scorching What You're Doing, a powerhouse rocker built around a reworked version of Zeppelin's Heartbreaker riff. Pass me an air guitar!

Few things are as awe-inspiring to me as Voyager 1.

When I was 10 or 11, I had a book that described NASA's intention to launch a probe that would take advantage of a planetary alignment that only takes place once every 176 years. This was due to happen in the late '70s and back then the proposed mission was known as the "Grand Tour".



So Voyager 1 was launched in September 1977. it's currently about 14.5 billion miles away and travelling at over 10 miles per second; in the 24 hours or so that it's taken me to get round to typing this it's become another 900,000 miles or so distant from Earth. It left our solar system and entered interstellar space nearly 10 years ago. It is the most distant man-made object.

Despite this NASA still receives data from it, and can still send instructions from Earth - for example to switch instruments off, or realign its antenna. But it's entering the last couple of years of its useful life now - not because of the distance, but because it's running out of power. It converts heat from decaying plutonium into electricity to power its instruments, antiquated 1970s onboard computer and transmitters, and the stuff only lasts so long.

Its cameras were switched off in 1990, to save memory (the onboard computer only has 70k).

I find it a bit eerie to think about it out there in the bleak coldness of space.

This is a really frank, really articulate interview with Steve Howe from 2000, with some fascinating insights into the band politics of Asia and GTR especially. I was also interested to hear his views on the Rabin-era Yes records, which I broadly agree with.

A satellite has never been launched into orbit from the UK before, but this summer Virgin Orbit will launch two MoD satellites from Newquay.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/first-uk-satellite-launch-in-summer-2022

The interesting thing about this is that the satellites will actually be inserted into orbit on a rocket fired from an aircraft - a bit like an air-air missile, except in this case the aircraft is a repurposed Virgin passenger 747.

They should keep a few of the seats and sell tickets, it must be a spectacular sight.