Favourite secular buildings

Like much of our area this place is kinda old dating from 1634 and isn't the oldest thing in our town either!
This rather impressive public house Ye Olde Black Bear part from being half timbered also features a thatched roof and has plenty of tables for sitting out of doors with your drink too.

Giles

Thinking a bit back to when some us grew up,  one of things I loved were Cartoon strips usually printed in the newspapers and then issues in the form of a collection of some 12 months or so. One famous series I recall was the Britisher Giles's done for the Daily Express which usually came with a colour cover and an introduction from a notable personality of the day.
The early 1970's in the UK were a time of unrest in labour relations, unstable politics and unprecedented terrorism and this is a favourite cartoon of that era.

Here we have the school pupils on strike, proudly displaying their banners passing a major employer as  the Chairman instructs his secretary to note the ringleaders so they can be "blacked" (denied employment) should they apply in the future.  Although it's a cartoon, such Blacklisting was endemic in the construction industry until recently where long lists of names were found stored for this purpose.

Favourite buildings

One of my favourite churches in the UK:

St Peter's, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire

Daytime Drama.

I don't know bout you but sometimes it seems as if people on social media or forums seem very much  to leave any sense of civility behind them. Today for instance one person tried to take a pot shot at a person with 20 years experience in their profession just for disagreeing with his personal point of view.If you didn't back this persons point of view you may as well of been in league with the devil.
A person who because of their position ought to know better refuses to resolve their difference with respected peers to the point they are barred from defending their product from ill informed criticism taking three attempts to get a publicly posted explanation from one site to another by members before it is allowed to be published even though the original site is the companies own.
On a third site two people send critical posts of each other that are then re-blogged by supporters and opponents ad infinitum cluttering up the stream making the task of clarifying each others intents and resolving differences all the more harder.
I just tire of all of this carrying on.

CSN Box set redux

It wasn't long after the introduction of cds that box sets started to emerge following on from those of the lp era covering typically a genre or whole artists career and a number of truly worthwhile releases came out from the late 1980's up to the mid 90's.
The common factor between these, the good and the sort you though "and just who is this for?" ones was the large boxes typically 14 x14 inches and equally large booklets as well as mouthwatering price tags.
Over the years some had become out of print as new titles and others repackaged in simpler typically cd sized packages with reduced prices reflecting both the period of time that had elapsed from issuing and that often they were not re-mastered which isn't necessary a bad thing given many how many contemporary poorly remastered cds have been put out.
Over the years Warners have been re-issuing a number and example of which I wrote about in the Rod Stewart entry a few years back and this is  one of two recently re-issued.
What this box set originally issued in 1991 comprises of  selections from all the studio albums Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young) issued including a number of alternative mixes and versions  plus a selection from their respective solo albums, so giving you a wide appreciation of their talent that if you chose to investigate it from scratch would set you back rather a lot. You see how the talents blended and equally what each themselves all having a group past prior to C, S, N, (and Y) brought to the table. Although mastered back in 1991 by Joe Gastwirt prior to the individual albums being remastered in 1994, the sound remains very clear with good dynamics. I should point out Audio Fidelity have done specialty remasters of the First CSN album and CSN (1977).
The booklet is substantially the same but rejigged to fit the cd case with a short history of the artists and track by track narration. It would either make a good bookend to a collection of CSN individual albums or serve well as a inspired selection of their output where their music and vision was apart of our lives. For approx £18 for four cds I'd highly recommend it.
Also reissued is the almost matching Buffalo Springfield box set from the same era.