The dilemma to Rent or Bury

A recent radio broadcast drew my attention to the common practice in 19^th Century France for burial graves to be rented rather than bought outright. 

In some cases, if those liable for payment of the rental defaulted, whether a Bequest Arrangement or simply an arrangement with surviving family or relatives, then there was a perfect entitlement for the freehold owner to exhume and dispose of the contents. 

This situation has persisted in other parts of Europe with, in 2016, the same situation arising in Greece with the very real prospect of incumbents being removed and relocated forcibly or with dependants being requested to take back the bones and make alternative arrangements. 

If you want your grave to be your final resting place or indeed to be a family plot then you would be best avoiding getting buried in the Netherlands.

Graves in the Netherlands are typically rented for 10 or 20 years, with remains being cleared out once the lease expires. 

Interestingly, this has nothing to do with burial rituals. It is actually because there just isn't enough cemetery space in the country. 

The combination of poor soil conditions and high ground water tables slow down the skeletonisation process of the bodies and preclude the Dutch from building up enough cemeteries.

It is technically possible to tackle or at least mitigate these bio-geological and climatic issues by artificial means but the required actions are expensive for cemeteries to consider.

This detail may be specific to Dutch cemeteries and is an interesting fact on its own, but it is also worth considering the demographic issues facing many European countries.

Many of the countries in western Europe, including the Netherlands, have an ageing population that is becoming significantly larger than it was in previous generations.

This in turn will have an upward impact on mortality rates and numbers throughout the EU. The ten most populated state of the EU as of 2004 will all experience a negative natural population change, i.e. the total number of deaths in the period 2004-2050 will be higher.

For the Netherlands specifically researchers on the subject have calculated that the expected number of deaths in 2050 will be 65% higher than the number of deaths in 2004.

The implications of this trend is that the inevitably larger population of older people will eventually result in a larger number of deaths than people saw in the past.

In turn this lead people to address all sorts of small daily life problems such as finding enough cemetery space for everybody.

As an interesting end note grave leasing is not actually always done due to the labour-intensive nature of tracking down surviving next of kin and that many graveyard organisations or local communities are reluctant to even think about or attempt to clear graves for reasons of respect for the dead.

As they say, watch this space.

Source; Business Insider Article by Elena Holodny 2016

Empty Vessel

It was nice while it lasted. 

One of my favourite parking up spots for the purposes of paperwork, lunching and perhaps a power nap or two is on the Foreshore just in the shadow of what was, when it was first built, the longest single span suspension bridge in the world. 

It is now just about hanging in there in the top twenty of such structures. 

For me it is in equal proportions a productive and relaxing spot, the former when getting to grips with some report writing and the latter when I feel that I can idle away a few moments in a busy schedule. 

However, just today my hard earned respite on the river front was rudely interrupted by my own curiosity. 

The tide on the mighty estuary/river, which incidentally drains one fifth of the country, was rising fast giving an opportunity for smaller coastal ships to make a dash upstream to reach inland ports and quays or start the long haul out into the North Sea. 

In the far left extremity of my vision, as I sat slumped in the drivers seat in a half doze, a ship had appeared making good progress in smooth water to make a pass under the bridge. 

On a whim I found my binoculars through which I could make out the name on the bright red bow, ATLAS and also a fluttering National flag of Norway. I should have been happy at that discovery but no, I idly entered the name and nationality into my smartphone. 

First up was the website entitled Vessel Finder and there was a photograph of Atlas and a whole lot of facts and stats about it. Built 1993, General Cargo Ship, 88 metres long and 12m wide beam, Gross Tonnage 2561 tons. 

Interesting indeed and usually enough to satisfy my thirst for new knowledge but then…….the web page had a short, almost throwaway entry under “Current position”. 

This took me to a map of my immediate location together with blue depicted river, yellow shoreline and the distinctive line running north/south of the bridge. 

Sure enough there was a tiny ship-outline on my screen and amazingly it was doing exactly what Atlas was doing in front of my very eyes. There was even perceptible tracking motion up river. 

I was by now overwhelmed with the versatility and adaptability of technology and over the next twenty minutes I carefully followed the virtual representation and also the physical stern of Atlas as it swept around the curve of the river and out of sight. 

In the course of a few more minutes two other ship icons had come on line adopting the same deep water channel in what is otherwise a treacherously navigable river of sandbanks and strong currents but not yet in view. 

H&S Prudence , a Dutch Registered cargo carrier was a bit shorter and lighter than Atlas but some 10 years younger. 

She was followed by a Polish ship, Bienville another 1993 vintage and 78m long. 

At that point I had to leave my vantage point to go back to work and it may have just been a case of ships passing in the dusk (night) but such is Vessel Finder that in the comfort of my own home later on I could see that the small flotilla had safely reached their destinations with two berthed alongside each other in a dock on the River Ouse some 20 miles farther west and the third at a quay on the tidal River Trent, one of the main feeder rivers from the English Midlands.

I will never be able to just lounge about on the Foreshore any more, unless I make sure that I get there at the lowest tide when the river is just not passable by interesting ships. 

I had not really thought about how busy that maritime corridor was but then again those supermarket shelves, builders merchants aisles, cereal mill hoppers and brewery maltings have to be restocked somehow other than by magic.

Till Death do us Work

There is a lot of nostalgia and "ye olde worldliness" about the occupations of our ancestors. 

The old standards and attributes of honest hard work, stamina and knowing your station in life were core beliefs of previous generations. It is only when talking with the senior citizens in current times that these qualities and characteristics are still revered although in reality that job for life entitlement that even I was expecting in my early adult years is long gone.

We have a rather idealistic image of our Victorian ancestors largely based on TV and Movie Period Dramas with ruddy faced, chubby bellied and rather raucous men and their delicate, nervous yet ambitious women folk.

Dickens portrays a good cross section of English Society in his writings which has perpetuated a rather stereotypical image of those life and times.

Personalities in those pages are largely happy, of reasonable financial means and generally healthy (apologies to Tiny Tim).

There are however many great tracts and papers from contemporaries of that era which paint a very different picture of the troubles and strifes of, in particular, the working class.

One great piece of social history is the scholarly book by a Yorkshire Surgeon, Charles Turner Thackrah entitled “Diseases of Occupations”.

In it he recounts the illnesses and conditions befalling those employed in industry and commerce, from those working the land to factory and process workers. It is a fascinating study, not so much in the often debilitating medical health brought on by a particular job but in the actual job titles, many of which have now disappeared from our modern manufacturing and automated operations.

Thackrahs’ is a weighty discourse which shows very extensive canvassing and research as well as references to other practitioners and writers on the same subject. “Diseases of Occupations” was published in 1832 with, in the preamble, what is almost a lament on the fast pace of change at what was the peak of the British Empire and its global influence. “Wilderness converted to towns and cities, roads cut through mountains, bridges carried over rivers and arms of the sea, ships traversing the globe, lakes into cornfields, forests into pasture and barren rocks covered with timber”.

Thackrah is very sympathetic to the plight of the manual workers of his era and states that employment serves to “reduce his character, weaken his frame and bring on him premature decay and death”.

Born in Leeds, Yorkshire the Surgeon relies on a lot of regional examples in his study rather than what will have been quite a Londoncentric academic bias behind findings and theories.

He expressed his own shock and dismay that in the three Ridings of Yorkshire and specifically in the manufacturing districts of West Yorkshire many in employment failed to reach beyond the age range of 40 to 50 years.  There were reported to be some 450 deaths annually just in Leeds from the injurious effects of manufacturing, the crowded population and what he alludes to as “bad habits”.

The book does cover all aspects of employment with sections on operatives (manual workers), Dealers, Master manufacturers and merchants, independent men in labour and business and also the Professional Class.

The individual entries for the hundreds of job descriptions are most interesting and cause you to radically rethink the widely perceived representations of tradesmen and women in Victorian England from literature and modern drama.

Take, for example a Husbandman, or rural worker. Whilst there will have been health benefits from open air working there will also have been exposure to common medical ailments including inflammation of the lungs, cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery, pleurisy and rheumatism. However, if managing to survive these conditions then there was some potential for longevity.

Butchers in 1832 were similarly tough and durable with access to fresh meat and a comfortable living but were prone to living perhaps too highly suffering congestion of the blood.

Cattle and Horse dealers were described by Thackrah as sickly fellows and although again active and exercised still susceptible to stomach and liver issues although mainly self inflicted by an irregular lifestyle and frequent debauchery.

Low wages were seen as a major contributing factor to ill health and shortened life expectancy in that poor diet and working conditions were inevitable in this sector.

Hard manual labour in the life of Dray or Wherrymen (cart drivers) caused problems with feet and muscles, in particular in the loins although again physical exercise could alleviate the problems to some extent.

Brickmakers, often stripped to the waist around the kilns may have been strapping in their half nakedness but could suffer catarrh, pneumonia and rheumatism.

Even sedentary occupations such as coachmen, either in service to gentry or nobility or in what could be called public transport were susceptible to curvature of the spine, aneurisms and not being able to take exercise due to long journey hours there was potential for rapid weight gain.

Gentlemen's Coachmen, hanging around at the beck and call of their Master, usually ate a lot out of boredom.

Others in domestic service of the time could suffer stooping and loins pressure through such activities as gardening or lugging about house coals and kindling to make up the many hearths in a well to do home.

All of the above had some element of access to fresh air and activity to get the muscles and bloodstream pumping but what about the millions engaged or trapped in  industry and manufacturing?

Thackrah’s conclusion that less than 10% of those living in urban areas were in full health is shocking indeed. This was down to air quality in a fossil fuel powered world as well socio and economic factors. It was proven that for those sleeping in a room with many others, as was a typical family unit in the 1830’s working class, the poor atmosphere produced giddiness, drowsiness, mental confusion, headache, vomiting and that was before the influences of dampness in promoting bronchial and other respiratory illnesses.

Indoor workers producing goods and products for the wealthier in Victorian Society experienced problems relating to bad posture (Tailors and Dressmakers with squashed organs from a bent upper body), eyesight (watchmakers), lungs (inhalation of flax dust by Hecklers), poisoning (printers and engravers from white lead, Prussian Blue and turpentine) and noxious inhalations. In this latter category spare a thought for the humble bookbinder who used the putrid serum of sheeps blood as a cement agent.

Lost occupations which would now be considered hazardous included Staymakers, Milliners, Sailmakers, Cork Cutters, Leather, wool and silk spinners, Weavers, Burlers, Frizzers and my favourite, Shoddy Grinders (as in those who hand stripped old cloth and rags to be added to yarn).

Working environments could also be enough to do you in before your time.

A waiter in a hostelry would die young because of irregular and dissipated habits. Starch Makers were breathing in fetid acetous vapours from fermenting wheat with no perception of wearing a face mask or other protective clothing. Those working in many occupations of a wet, hot or badly ventilated nature were at risk. Wire Drawers inhaled tallow and oil, Varnish Makers a mixture of alcohol, turps, gums and tar, Lime Workers the Lime Dust which caused ophthalmia and cutaneous eruptions, Glue and Size workers a heady cocktail of ammonia and boiled up bits of animals.

Clay Potters seemed to be particularly prone to constipation. Chimney Sweeps were exposed to sulphurs and soots. Grinders in industrial processes, in their inhalation of dry stone dusts very rarely lived beyond the age of 50 years.

Then what about those working down the mines, either coal, lead or other minerals. Colliery fatalities from tunnel collapses, gas explosions and flooding were bad enough but even after surviving a life down a pit there were the inherited health problems such as fire damp and choke damp. Boys as young as 6 to 7 years started their working lives underground in such a perilous environment little aware of what would befall them in later life.

Military personnel were no less likely to suffer ill health than dying in the many campaigns of the Empire although there was an increasing awareness of medical monitoring of the ranks.

Accidents in the workplace were hardly recorded or investigated and even where fatalities occurred, even multiple ones, the wheels of industry barely slowed if at all.

So it appears that Empire was built on the sweat and bones of the working classes after all. 

Life Outside the City Walls

The smart town houses on South Parade in York, UK are amongst some of the most expensive in that beautiful and historic city. Their path to such a status is most interesting.

The land was earmarked for building in the late 18th century at a time when York was expanding quite rapidly because of its thriving industrial base, strategic importance to the North of England, its central location with good access to all parts of the country and, oh yes, it was (and still is) a very nice, genteel and civilised place to live.

This fact had not been a recent revelation of the inevitable urbanisation that followed the industrial revolution, in fact the Roman invaders had selected York or Eboracum as it was named as a vital stronghold and forward base for their campaigns up towards the Barbarian territories which would be those beyond the physical barrier of Hadrians Wall some 200 miles distant.

South Parade is close to but just outside the imposing Micklegate entrance in the historic city fortifications. Lost in the passage of time but excavated in the 20th Century was the site of a Roman Cemetery within the curtilage of the street as an indication of the size and calibre of York in that volatile era.

The Romano-British period was followed by a number of dominant occupiers of York including the Vikings and the city mirrored the regime changes of the country in the Dark and Middle Ages.

It took until the first quarter of the 19th Century for a consortium of York businessmen to raise the funds to start building on South Parade. Any optimism in making some money out of a proposed development of 20 houses would be surely tested as even in the 1820's it was a case of having to speculate to accumulate. There was a tremendous stigma attached to debt and even a rumour of bankruptcy would be ruinous for those involved. In a gamble, the residential terrace was thrown up.

Those attributes that are valued and revered by today's architectural historians and the discerning house buying public such as Flemish Bond brickwork, stucco rendering, sash cord windows and slate roofs were the basic requirements for Victorian construction and where savings and economies in the build could be made they would be greedily exploited.

Though now regarded as fine examples of Period town houses they were in their day nothing special.

Sales were apparently slow for what will have been the equivalent, then,  of a Barratt Homes type estate.

The actual rectangular plot of land on which the twenty properties was built was long and narrow. The original landowners appear to have been a Religious Order of Sisters who still occupy today the St Bedes , Bar Convent to the east.  Extensive grounds were still important to the seclusion and privacy of those in Holy Orders and the strip of land for South Parade may have been a reluctant sale to raise funds.

The north western end of the block fronts Blossom Street presenting a three storey elevation for the first house.

As the terrace developed the gently sloping topography allowed successive houses to have an habitable cellar and four upper floors although, again, the restrictions of the the landed area meant a house depth of only two rooms per floor or, in Imperial terms about 10 yards and a width of about 7 yards.

The buyers of the houses, when brand new, were not the wealthy or influential of York but more the middle class, urban professionals and upwardly mobile. There would be no real space for live in servants which a middle income could not anyway justify although a cook and housekeeper might be employed on a daily basis and just commute in from working class areas. The families would live from the first floor upwards with the lower ground floor providing kitchen and basic amenities. Coal fires heated the rooms culminating in an elongated chimney stack with eight pots above the same number of active flues.

The 1852 Ordnance Survey shows South Parade fully built and in fact the twenty houses had swelled to twenty one with a smaller structure tacked on the end (this was much later to be demolished). The mapping has symbols for landscaped forecourts with flower beds and at that time with an open front aspect onto further possibly public pleasure gardens.

The rear elevations were onto very small enclosed yards which will only have received sunlight for only a few hours in the morning. A number of the houses are shown to have outside toilets which to equivalent middle class modern sensitivities may seem very backward

York flourished in the 19th Century pioneering the Railway revolution and the manufacturing of chocolates in particular and the former open space in front of South Parade was rapidly developed with small and tightly packed terraced dwellings for workers.

It would be possible to completely overlook the existence of the block as it only now presented a public face onto the Blossom Street frontage.

Socio and Economic factors and pressures over the first part of the twentieth century, not untypical for the nation generally, saw South Parade deteriorate swiftly.

The houses, which as family homes could provide up to four bedrooms were capable of accommodating considerably more persons as hostels for single males and cheap boarding establishments for travelling salesmen and labourers. Many were sub divided for multiple occupancy and became very run down and dilapidated.

Commercial uses included offices, Gin shops and one or more brothels. The criminal fraternity of York frequented a particularly notorious drinking den on South Parade in Sunday sessions, so much so that the Police could be assured of the whereabouts of the troublemakers on that day and could relax a bit on their duties and even swing by to verify alibis.

The first three houses from Blossom Street were at some time knocked together at ground floor level and operated as a Car Showroom with premises above.

In the post war years there were proposals by the City Council to demolish and clear South Parade to make way for a new link road to relieve congestion arising from the upsurge in motor vehicle ownership that even to this day causes frequent gridlock around the perimeter roads of the City Walls.

It was touch and go whether the terrace would survive against what would be in the public interest for a better infrastructure for a progressive city.

A campaign to save the block led to a Grade 2 Listed Status in 1958 and the twenty houses joined the other 1568 Listed Buildings that characterise York.

It would be a few more decades before consistency returned to the occupier profile of owners and residents. The car showroom was returned to residential use.( In the foreground of the photograph below the contrast in brickwork from the alterations is clearly visible)

There is a well developed sense of Bohemian individuality in the street. Rare for York is that the road to the frontage is of Private Status, owned and maintained in common by the householders, some of whom bought out the shares of the others and built a courtyard garage block on the land cleared through demolition of the parasitical end house at the far end.

A few longstanding owners keep their houses sympathetic to the  character of Victoriana but recently sold examples have been given the full contemporary make over to rival the bling-palaces of Premier League Footballers and at a hefty price tag to match. Number 8 sold in January 2016 for £815,000 after being marketed at £850,000.

The survival of South Parade is testament to the enduring nature of inner city housing of its era and should be celebrated. It's story is typical to many older streets and streetscapes in UK cities but many have not been so fortunate having been lost forever to the relentless pace of development.

How not to hate a Monday

Ahh,Monday. 

It can be a long and tiring day especially if the weekend before has been a round of domestic chores, visiting relatives and friends, taking the youngsters to football, shopping amongst the heaving crowds, late night TV and perhaps, if time permits, a little too much indulgence in food and drink. 

There is nothing more tedious as Monday tea time approaches than thinking what to make and cook or just buy in and heat up. 

We, as a family want for nothing and we do appreciate the many blessings under our roof and at the table but sometimes Mondays menu can be a bit samey and uninspiring for all of the reasons above, and more. 

So, imagine my excitement when, at about half past four my meal dilemma was solved by the arrival on the doorstep of a prepared and ready to eat Tahchin (pronounced tar-cheene).

It was the result of at least 3 hours of hard kitchen graft by our Iranian friend Mehdi. 

If you are not familiar with this Classic Persian Dish then get on and Google it in its many incarnations and variations. It is certainly a thing to behold. 

My first reaction to the dish a couple of years ago was one of confusion. 

In translation from Farsi the word Tahchin means “layered in the bottom”, referring to its unique structure of baked, crispy top layer and softer saffron, egg and yoghurt infused rice with choice of filling. It is customary in Iran to throw on a serving of warm Barberries to give a fruity, sour tang.

The distinctive crust is formed from rice cooked at the bottom of the pot, this being Tahdig and fought hard for by Iranian diners as a bit of a treat and reminiscent of centuries of home cooking.

When cooked and set, hence the visual appearance of a cake, the Tahchin is carefully but often ceremoniously inverted onto a serving plate or platter leaving the tahdig at the top ready for slicing into individual portions. 

Some cook books refer to the recipe as an Iranian upside down cake for this very reason. 

The preparation requires considerable time and effort and some skill is required to bring the ingredients together into the colourful and delicious layering.

Mehdi’s tea time gift was chicken based although there are recipes for lamb and vegetable making it a very versatile dish for meat eaters and those who prefer not to. 

I do not want to go into the actual preparation as I leave that up to you to explore and enjoy as it can be quite an adventure if you like the sound of Tahchin. 

There are many Persian cook books available and the recipe also appears in wider Middle Eastern menu ideas and mainstream western cuisine. 

As for the taste, well, it is certainly a Persian Fusion and my only regret…..my donated portion was a generous wedge but never enough.


Mehdi is quite a cooking talent and here are a couple of things that he has introduced us to over the last few years-

goo.gl/Hzihvn

goo.gl/qy5KmH

goo.gl/M1wUiZ

Gin Craze; The Return of The

I have lost count of the number of Gin Palaces in my home area.

It is a funny term for, well, a bar or a bit of a posh pub over and above the former not so posh public houses which have had to reinvent themselves into foodie or fun establishments after the realisation that smokers as former patrons just used to hog the bar, nurse a solitary pint and eke out the kick from their fag for as long as possible. 

These are hard economic times for business and none more so than for those in the traditional licenced trade. 

We are told that home drinking, cheap supermarket booze and smuggled stock is continuing to threaten or actually close down what were once valued venues for community, company and relationships. 

So the return of Gin drinking is the next latest thing to hopefully keep hostelries going a bit longer. 

Consumption is not, I stress in the same manner as it once was in the late 17^th and 18^th Centuries when it was seen as a pastime, a plentiful and inexpensive tipple for the working classes and even see as a patriotic drive in reducing brandy drinking which was, after all, a source of income for that very regular adversary, the French. 

In the national liquor cupboard, this nation of ours being well known globally for its fondness for drunkenness, Gin is actually a relatively new arrival. 

It was an import from Holland in the late 17^th Century and made popular by the similarly imported King William, he of Orange (the place, not Trumpesque skin tone). 

The Dutch product was a distilled blend of wine and Juniper Berries, the latter coming from their Far East Trading Empire. Gin became a shortened Anglicised name from the Dutch word for Juniper which was Jeneva or Geneva. 

By the 1730’s there was a Gin Craze. 

It was estimated that Londoners drank, on average, 2 pints of gin per week, this being the product of some 1500 mainly back street or sole proprietor distillers who had taken up the Government initiative to allow such trading in return for licencing fees and taxation payments. 

Gin drinking was becoming a matter of concern for lawmakers and those with a social or philanthropic conscience who observed its worst excesses on the city streets across the nation. 

There is a very graphic illustration by the artist Hogarth of the sheer chaos of a gin swilling populus under the description of "Mothers ruin".

Some claimed medicinal and aphrodisiac benefits to the tipple but evidence suggested it contributed to ill health and sloth as well as being seen as the primary cause of crime in London. Stronger than brandy it could also cause the blood and temper to boil easily with resultant violence and other misdemeanours. 

The UK Government was however enjoying considerable tax revenues from the distillers and had progressively increased the rate in the middle part of the 18^th Century which by 1743 actually led to riots and disorder. 

This culminated in the 1751 Gin Act, to give its colloquial name, which eliminated the small gin shops and restricted trade to larger distillers and retailers. It was probably too late by then anyway as gin drinking was a serious rival to beer consumption. 

The drink did go out of fashion and decline in volumes consumed until the 1840’s when there was a popular upsurge attaining the same levels as the halcyon mid 1700’s. 

To some extent this was explained away as a symbol of new found affluence in the emerging Victorian middle classes who had excess funds to expend on spirits. The Gin Palace emerged with particular emphasis on the attraction and palatability of the drink to the fairer sex. 

Fast forward to 2017 and the resurgence of gin drinking by some 12 percent from previous years. 

We are by all accounts a nation of cocktail drinkers. Government coffers have been swelled by around £3.4 billion in revenues from spirits of which at 76% in tax take per bottle price gin is an important contributor. 

There are now some 80 brands with fancy blends of herbs and spices to make the good old G&T seem positively boring.

In this weekend’s Times colour supplement whole pages of advertising were dedicated to Gin brands and from the buzz and activity around the plate glass doors of my local Gin purveyors we seem to be open quite easily to suggestion and persuasion of this nature.

There may be parallels to the historic Gin Crazes in today's slick and upmarket operations whether it is a feeling of more disposable income in our pockets, a desire for a bit of bling and glam on an evening out, peer pressure from film and tv depictions of sophistication or, full circle, an expression of British Patriotism in uncertain times. 

Solid State Revisited

It is a bit of a family joke that if I am pushed to answer a question about when something happened or was supposed to have happened I always say “1979”. 

Statistically there will be some accuracy in this pure guess. 

It was actually quite a momentous year for things going on around the world. 

Close to home Maggie Thatcher was elected as Britain's first woman Prime Minister. Idi Amin was deposed in Uganda. Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq. Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to Tehran and a siege of the US Embassy began. The USSR invaded Afghanistan but at the same time signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) with the United States. There was a nuclear incident at the Three Mile Island Reactor, it snowed in the Sahara Desert for 30 minutes, Sid Viscious died and China implemented a one-child policy. 

I must have been a bit of a geek at that time, aged 16, as most of these events made their way into my pocket diary with a few lines of immature comment. I seem to recall that I was fearful of an end to the world at that age, although that sense of mortality is all part of growing up as a teenager, as I am now (aged 54) informed by Psychologists. 

It was a busy year for me personally with schooling, a developing interest in serious cycling and some cash in my pocket from a few weeks of hard toil working on a local farm in the summer holidays. 

That new found affluence should have been put to use in a savings account in anticipation of college and beyond but no, I blew most of it down the record shop. 

It was closing down and I could not resist regular browsings ,when in town, through the clearance racks. Up until that time my collection of vinyl was pitiful and this was an unrivalled opportunity to boost credibility amongst my peer group, in a very short burst of purchases and at knock down prices. 

One such acquisition, in fact just released in the September of 1979, has now assumed the status of a pioneering album being regarded as a trailblazer in synthpop and the foundation of techno music. 

I cannot really say why I paid a couple of quid for that album. The cover was interesting in a lurid lime green tone with 5 seated figures of which three looked to camera and were human, the others being mannequins with one female in a sheer and see through electric blue dress. Dressed in red one of the figures wore a military forage cap with a Communist Red Star. This was exciting to me at a time of the Iron Curtain and the emergence of China onto the world stage. 

Across the top of the front cover of the album was the band name. I had not heard of them before - Yellow Magic Orchestra. The album title was similarly intriguing in a sort of retro-fashion. Solid State Survivor. Perhaps it was that terminology that helped in the purchase as the words “Solid State” were firmly lodged in my subconscious from contemporary electronic appliances around the family home. 

The album was the bands’ second release and in 1979 it won the top accolade in the Japan Record Awards. In all some 2 million were sold worldwide although surprisingly it was not released in the huge US market. 

On my first play of the 8 tracks I was a bit confused. It was certainly a new high energy sound which would become known as new wave synth rock. I had dabbled a bit with the likes of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream but this was revolutionary stuff and so far detached from the rather ponderous electro offerings in vinyl with which I had spent many moody teenage moments. 

It was happy and joyous. You could dance to it but of course I was not to know that this was techno in its infancy and so just had to hop around from leg to leg. 

Solid State Survivor, the album is under 34 minutes duration but packed with great sounds and in a deep and rich mix with a real depth in production. The opening track, Technopolis starts off with a computerised voice before erupting into a thumping melody. It is a good track to drive at night to. There may be some loss in translation from Japanese to English in the track titles but Absolute Ego Dance just gets you going mindlessly. The third track Rydeen has become one of YMO’s most widely covered and sampled by other artists and faetures in the soundtracks of many video games. Castalia, the fourth track is lyrical and mysterious giving time for a breather from the fast paced music. 

Perhaps the best known track, Behind the Mask, was covered by Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, Brian Eno and The Human League amongst others. Originally written by band member Ryuichi Sakamoto and English lyricist Chris Mosdell for a Seiko Watch advert it is a joy to listen to. Jackson made a funk dance version and Clapton a rock anthem out of it. 

Track 6 is the Beatles’ Day Tripper as an homage to that songwriting duo before the albums finishes on Insomnia and the title track. 

The three piece YMO also included Haruomi Hosono and a name that will be familiar to music fans, Yukihiro Takahashi. 

Hosono                Sakamoto-            Takahasi

Sakamoto appeared in the movie Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence with David Bowie as well as being co-writer of the iconic "Forbidden Colours" with David Sylvian.  He most recently scored the soundtrack for The Revenant. 

I have been playing Solid State Survivor on my travels this week and have been excited all over again by its fresh and unique sound. If asked by family what was in my opinion one of the best years for music I would have no hesitation in answering- 1979.