Calne (Sunday 27th December 2020)

Emergency supplies were needed today so I sauntered into town to Sainsbury's and am now £2.20 over my December groceries budget. All was quiet in Castlefields Park and all I could find were these few ducks.

A day or so on from the Brexit deal and now the cracks are beginning to show: The return of border checks, the return of roaming charges, no more frictionless trade, no full participation in the “Open Skies” policy and no automatic recognition of professional qualifications by the EU, not to mention our (meaning Boris and his cabinet of clowns) capitulation over fishing rights.
Furthermore there is an end to financial services passporting where, according to the press ‘retaliatory arrangements’  have been averted. Instead we have ‘rebalancing measures’ (i.e. tariffs), which led the New York Times to comment, “That loss is especially painful for Britain, which ran a surplus of £18 billion, or $24 billion, on trade in financial and other services with the European Union in 2019, but a deficit of £97 billion, or $129 billion, on trade in goods.”
Hard to see what good has come of it for the UK, in contrast to the many gains for the EU. Meanwhile HS2 symbolically ploughs through the backbone of the country and a tunnel under Stonehenge is set to destroy ancient burial sites in deference to our transport system.

L.
27.12.2020 (1830 hr)

Blip #3342 (#3092 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #005
Blips/Extras In 2020 #192/266 + #075/100 Extras
Day #3928 (841 gaps from 26.3.2010)
LOTD #2485 (#2326 + 159 in archived blips)

Calne series
Ducks series
Wilts and Berks Canal series
Canals series

Taken with Nikon Coolpix P900 (24-2000mm equivalent bridge camera)

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Supremes - I hear a symphony (recorded 22-29 September 1965, Hitsville Studio A, Detroit MI)
This song was inspired by the Toys' single A Lover's Concerto which was in turn an attempt to sound as much like the Supremes as possible. It was written by the Holland-Dozier-Holland team and rush-recorded when Berry Gordy heard an early version with a guide vocal and insisted on its immediate completion. Two versions were fully mastered with the same Funk Brothers band track with Mike Terry's sax solo, but with different lead vocals from Diana Ross. The mono version came out on a single, while the stereo one appeared on the album that was quickly put together to capitalise on its worldwide success (the mono pressing of the album had the single version on it). So rushed was the album that the stereo pressing contained a number of tracks left in mono or converted into a fake stereo that sounded dreadful.
This is a stereo mix created in 2012 of the mono version that had the alternative vocal, and is a minute longer than previously.