Somebody asked me yesterday to name my four greatest loves in life and put them in order. What an impossible task. Of course number one would always be my family, but excluding them and thinking more along the hobby lines they would have to be (in no order) - sport, music, reading and writing.
Trying to put them into an order is virtually impossible as it's difficult to separate them. I read about music and sport, I write about music and sport, so they are all intertwined. Suffice it to say they all give me incredible pleasure.
But of course each of those can be sub-divided. Name my four favourite sports. That would have to be football (soccer if any Americans are reading this), cricket, tennis and golf - all of which I have played to various degrees of success. Then there's reading and favourite authors. Well one would have to be Dickens but where do you go from there? As for writing well I like writing about virtually anything whether it be in diary form, poetry form or prose form. Give me a computer keyboard and I'm happy (probably might be a tad happier if it is attached to a computer).
That takes me to music which is obviously subjective and open to personal taste. I was very interested in the comments made by violinist Nigel Kennedy on Radio Two yesterday when picking his favourite pieces of music for "Tracks of My Years." Kennedy is renowned as a spiky haired classical violinist with rock music leanings.
Ken Bruce asked him about his favourite music and his reply was interesting. He basically said that to pigeon hole people and musical styles is wrong as tastes differ and most people have a surprisingly open mind about what they listen to with a huge variety of styles on their Ipods and MP3 players. As he pointed out, many people categorise music as either classical or pop whereas in reality there are two much more distinctive types of music - good or bad - irrespective of whether it's classical or popular.
In other words keep an open mind and listen to all styles and types of music. Today I have listened to English classical composer Patrick Hawes and Swedish alt country/folk duo First Aid Kit whose music is better than their name. It's a kind of swingalong harmonious country. Well worth listening to.
Interestingly the two tracks played by Kennedy were rather unexpected. - Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple and the sublime River Man by Nick Drake. You can't get two more different tracks than those.
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