John Le Carré; Count Basie & Credo

(A day in the life of Lance).
Saturday afternoon I popped into our local Marie Curie shop on the off chance I'd find something worth reading. Bingo! John Le Carré's first George Smiley novel Call For the Dead.
Well worth a pound.
Usually, I avoid the CD shelf - I've enough of them awaiting review without buying discs that I want to listen to for pleasure. However, as I'd once found a Marian McPartland CD here, I did give them a cursory glance and, what did I find? Basie in London!

This was the classic 1956 band with Newman, Thad, Wendell, Reunald, the two Franks, Marshall, Bill Graham, Charlie Fowlkes, Sonny Payne, Eddie Jones, (who has a couple of great bass features), Joe Williams, Coker, Powell, Matthew Gee and, of course, Freddy Greene. I parted with another pound and left the shop a happy man.

Strangely, despite the album title and the cover shot of Basie with a pearly king and queen, the concert actually took place in Sweden where pearly kings and queens are somewhat rare!

Location became irrelevant when, later, I played it. Magnificent! This was the Basie Band at its finest - I'd even say, every bit as good as the Atomic album.

To make my day complete, The Ben Lomond had Abbot Ale on draft.

This was Shangri-la; supping Abbot Ale, reading Le Carré and Basie to come home to with the prospect of a visit to the Globe in the evening...

Visits to Shangri-la are short term.

Tumble dryer went on the blink and I had washing piled up even higher than the review CDs so I didn't make it to The Globe - sorry Debra. But I did have Basie to compensate as I spread the unmentionables over radiators and towel rails and turned the heating up...
Lance.