Standing On the Corner . . .

En route to visit La Virtuosa on Friday afternoon, I drove to the road-end at Moota. Before me, a magnificent panorama of the north-western fells, from Skiddaw round to Grasmere and Melbreak, cloaked in the checkerboard remnants of late snow. As I paused at the junction, the radio played the Velvet Underground's Sweet Jane, quite the most concentratedly gorgeous plea for release into a remembered past produced by rock'n'roll. Those were different times - when poets studied rules of verse and ladies rolled their eyes. Quite why I've never managed to understand, but they must have had their reasons . . .