Ginny - the accordion is still alive and well in Scotland - or at least in the west, where traditional music is very popular. BBC Alba (Gaelic channel - but with subtitles) has many music programmes, and even in the modern 'sessions' with young folk groups and suchlike, the accordion features regularly. I do wonder if it's becoming a bit of a cool instrument again - they had a fad for playing some kind of 'loop' thing a while back, and now that has fizzled out they are no doubt looking for something else.
I do love Alba, it has some brilliant prorgrammes, a lot about Scottish history, often quite recent so that they can interview people who still remember whatever it is they are investigating. They also buy in syndicated programmes, mostly documentaries that never seem to see light on the main channels. There was an excellent one about how children get to school in different, remote, parts of the world, and it was fascinating - little boys in Tibet (I think it was) who rode on horseback, alone, for days to get to school, young children who were swung across gaping ravines on ropes to get there, little ones in Siberia who were packed into a minibus so tightly that when it stopped you thought the stream of them getting out would never stop. There was one boy in some faraway place whose father gave him all of the family's savings, in cash, to take with him to school (where he would stay for weeks), and off he rode into the unknown, his father accompanying him for only part of the journey. I've never seen these programmes outwith Alba, which is a shame when you consider the plethora of rubbish that surfaces on so many of the smaller channels.
We are still watching Our Friends in the North, this is my third viewing of it since it first came out in 1996, and it is still outstanding. Gina McKee is such an exceptional actress - in this, she plays Mary, who starts out as the first in her working class family to get a place at university, then has to give it up when she becomes pregnant (by the over confident friend of her ex boyfriend) and has to get married. Their married life is fraught, they are poor (though he does have a job, and will ultimately do very well for a time) and are housed in some new high rise flats being put up by the local council to replace terraced back-to-back slums. These flats turn out to be a disaster, built by a corrupt company, whose owner is hand-in-glove with the extremely corrupt city council. Bribes and back handers everywhere. The flats are dripping with mould and damp, and are dangerous structures. Her husband is a temperamental man, though fundamentally a good soul - but the pair are ill matched, Mary soon becoming involved in local politics while he is content to lead a simpler life of work, home, children, pub, and has no interest whatsoever in the wider world. When he comes home to find her hosting the women's section of the local Labour party in their kitchen, he is not a happy man.
Meanwhile both of the other main characters (played by Christopher Ecclestone, who would go on to be Dr Who, and an unrecognisable Daniel Craig [yes 007, but a very different persona in this], are both involved in politics in their different ways - Ecclestone becomes an anarchist on the fringes of a terrorist organisation, and Craig ends up in London working for a porn king. The Met is corrupt almost through and through, with senior police officers having far too close a relationship with the sex shops and strip bars of Soho. And of course each main character also has his/her own personal issues.
It's so skilfully written, and so well acted - a record of the sordid local and national politics of the day (not that they've got much better), and almost certainly a true reflection of what went on in the vice and drugs squads of 1970s London (an aunt of mine had a civilian job at Scotland Yard and she used to tell me about what went on.) And because it's based largely in Sunderland and Newcastle, we also see the 'old guard' - the main characters' parents, who were involved in Old Labour, the Jarrow Marches, who work in traditional industries that are now being superceded, in particular the pits. The Miners' Strike will feature in later episodes.
And I've just seen he 4th programme in the current Great Pottery Throwdown, in which the challenge was called 'naked raku' and seemed to involve throwing pots then firing them in incredibly hot outdoor furnaces before dipping them in items of one's choice (one potter cut off and used his own hair, another used feather dusters) to create amazing patterns. It's quite terrifying when they have to remove these works of art from the kilns with tongs that resemble ones you'd see on a barbecue.
Still reading Verily Anderson, who has just announced that any joy she felt in the successful fighting in France (this is the second world war amd she is im a 10 bed farmhouse in the countryside) has been diminshed by the arrival of a letter from their bank manager, saying that their overdraft is quite out of proportion and must be paid off immediately. People who are used to wealth always seem to worry far less about racking up huge borrowing than lesser mortals like me. Verily is more rattled than anxious, and clearly thinks the bank is being utterly unreasonable. It's a different world.
I'm also still listening to Anna Karenina and enjoying it very much. Not sure about Anna - is she a victim of society or not? Has anyone else read it? It certainly was a man's world in 19th century Petersburg - but the women in this book can at least float off to their vast country estates when they get fed up. Growing up as I did in the shadow of the Cold War, I have to admit that for years my only idea of Russia was of a Communist state, full of intrigue and spies - I've only relatively realised that, pre-Revolution, parts of it were as sophisticated and decadent as much of Western Europe. I do wish I knew more.
Rosemary
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