Porty People and Places

I had to search through the house to find this cassette. The clunk of the plastic and the thud of it engaging with the sprockets on my cassette player were notstalgic sounds. Even more nostalgic as I have no means, in the house of being able to play this anymore! Today, as you may have heard is Cassette Store Day to mark the 6oth anniversary of this clever piece of musical conveyance. I blipped the cassette on Portobello High Street in front of the now defunct video chain as I thought both technologies have been the must have items of their day and are now no more .... or are they?

There is talk of the cassette making a comeback as the novelty of giving someone a virtual download is not quite the same as spending hours compiling tracks onto the wafer thin tapes for the one you love. There was also always the worry that it might turn into Pinky and Perky sounds as it snarls itself around the tape head and is only rescued by a cleverly twiddled pencil - or if all else fails is thrown from the car or window to fly mournful magnetic pennants to lost loves and seem to linger forever in the roadside verges and hedgerows.

On the beach all is well after the storm as today's Beach Blip shows. I met a surveyor this morning checking the levels of the sand at low tide. He assured me all was also well with the sands. He taught me a new word for what I had been calling a groyne but was actually a gabion. This is made of caged stones. You can see the gabion in my beach blip today.