Alcohol Eight Miles High - Coronavirus Blues (IX)
Greta Thunberg, God bless her, would not approve of the bitter-sweet moment of happenstance that I encountered this week. It had been a while since I'd listened to a favourite song, and needed a prompt from Guy Garvey - the lead singer of Elbow - to recall Here We Go Magic's paean to enjoying a drink on an aeroplane. The Brooklyn band's 'Over The Ocean' is a dreamy yet restrained slice of moodiness that lulls you back and deep into your headrest.
Over the ocean
We'll have a vodka
Your card is left open
So nothing can stop ya
Not so much the tyranny of rhyme, rather the gorgeous, can't be arsed, laziness of it. I love that lyric and love this hazy, hypnotic song. Along with REM's 'Half A World Away' - which is probably nothing to do with air-travel, but for me it's only about air-travel - I invariably line up this song on any overseas flight.
The coincidence lay in my choice of screensaver for most of April, one of William Eggleston's most evocative photographs, and, indeed, an ode to drinking whilst flying. Grounded and immobile as most of us are, the image of a hand gently stirring a refreshing looking orange concoction, clouds and blue visible through the window, cannot help but sound a wistful and melancholy chord.
It's a reminder that it isn't just the little things that we are missing: such as craving that cream cheese bagel from the Bagel Bakery Bar in Old Compton Street, accompanied by the perfect cup of takeaway coffee from Bar Italia, consumed amongst the giant, overarching London Plane trees in Soho Square. It's the big things, too. The miracle of intercontinental flight: to hop on a plane bound for Copenhagen and visit my youngest brother, or jet across the Atlantic to, once again, walk the canyons of Manhattan. Or indeed, some long cherished destination - for me that might be Costa Rica - and give flight to the wanderlust that we have all taken for granted.
Not so much the tyranny of rhyme, rather the gorgeous, can't be arsed, laziness of it. I love that lyric and love this hazy, hypnotic song. Along with REM's 'Half A World Away' - which is probably nothing to do with air-travel, but for me it's only about air-travel - I invariably line up this song on any overseas flight.
The coincidence lay in my choice of screensaver for most of April, one of William Eggleston's most evocative photographs, and, indeed, an ode to drinking whilst flying. Grounded and immobile as most of us are, the image of a hand gently stirring a refreshing looking orange concoction, clouds and blue visible through the window, cannot help but sound a wistful and melancholy chord.
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| William Eggleston, Untitled (1971) |
It's a reminder that it isn't just the little things that we are missing: such as craving that cream cheese bagel from the Bagel Bakery Bar in Old Compton Street, accompanied by the perfect cup of takeaway coffee from Bar Italia, consumed amongst the giant, overarching London Plane trees in Soho Square. It's the big things, too. The miracle of intercontinental flight: to hop on a plane bound for Copenhagen and visit my youngest brother, or jet across the Atlantic to, once again, walk the canyons of Manhattan. Or indeed, some long cherished destination - for me that might be Costa Rica - and give flight to the wanderlust that we have all taken for granted.
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