ilovegoodbooks.

It's a funny old world sometimes. On my journey back through France three weeks ago, mounds of luggage in tow, I wondered if England would have changed much since I had last lived there a year before. Would my home country have in fact metamorphosed into a foreign country? In poet Carol Ann Duffy's words: "The other country, is it anticipated or half-remembered?" As if in answer, when I turned on to Radio 4, filling the kitchen with the remembered soundtrack of family weekends, the first item I heard featured my friend's brother's band. Then I opened a discarded Sunday-newspaper magazine to find a picture of my soon-to-be-married friend's fiancee. How often does national media pick up and broadcast particles of your life? Stretcher of the imagination that I am, I like to think this was a funnny old world welcoming me home.
Oh, and yes, the "brother in a band" is a cliche, but this time the band is worth a listen. Even a few of your hard-earned pennies. Buy Passchendaele from today on itunes,a song by Kent based band GoodBooks,who were recently described in The Times as "easy to imagine in the Top 10" and "English eccentrics". And if there's one thing that makes the English English, it's being the world's best eccentrics. Details on the GoodBooks website.