Breeze a blowin'

Well, that was the longest we've been without power for a good many years. And then we didn't have internet either.

Irritatingly, I'm trying to work freelance at the moment and I needed to get a lot done on Tuesday, but with no power or connectivity, that couldn't really happen and yesterday and today have been pretty busy, so I'm going to have to play serious catch-up tomorrow.

Of course, there is another storm expected soon, so that may not happen either.

Maybe if we could find enough climate change denialists and get them together into one place they could disbelieve the storm out of existence. That would be convenient.

Stupid artistic challenge 2014

I like to be able to quantify my skill at failure by setting myself challenges sometimes, this is a particularly challenging one, so I have no idea whether I will be close to being able to achieve it but once again, I need your help if I'm going to make the attempt.

My idea is to flex my lyrical muscles a little by writing a song every month. I find it a lot easier to write a song than I do to come up with an idea for one and that is where you come in: I would like some suggestions for interesting historical figures to write songs about. I'm pretty sure that the erudite company I keep will have many suggestions and ideas so I will narrow it down a little:

• Ideally I am interested in people who aren't necessarily well known or who are only well known in certain niches.
• I need people I can research a little- if they are only mentioned in a single line of half-lost classical text that won't give me much to go on.
• I have already written about John Richards La Penotierre and there is no point in writing about James Graham or Scott, Amundsen, Spencer Perceval or any of the other characters and events that I Like Trains have covered as those songs are masterpieces and my endeavours would be laughable by comparison.

Beyond that, please do make suggestions. All will be considered and the ones that catch my imagination and give me something to work from will be built into songs. I will post lyrics here and, if I can get a half-decent version down, recordings of the songs though those will be pretty much guitar and voice unless I have a lot of time on my hands, which I seldom do.