🎶 My Crucial Track for 20 July 2026 - The Mickey Dam by Damien Dempsey
What’s a song you’d want your best friend to hear for the first time?
Three or four times a year I find a song I get a bit obsessed with. This is the current one, and I have sent to a couple of people. None of them seem quite as enthused as I am to be honest.
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🎶 My Crucial Track for 12 July 2026 - The Rocky Road to Dublin (Live) by The Dubliners
What’s your go-to song for getting ready in the morning?
I like something a bit stroppy-sounding in the morning.
I borrowed this LP from Salisbury library on vinyl…the librarians used to inspect the records for new scratches when you brought them back. It was always a nervous moment
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The few days between a semi-final loss and a third place playoff, that many people don’t care about must be a real drag. The players probably just want to get on home ⚽
#TodayILearned the word ouroboros
The ouroboros… is an ancient symbol depicting a snake or dragon[4] eating its own tail. Ouroboros - Wikipedia
via this bit:
And if LLMs end up training on blogs made by AI slop and having as their basis this ouroboros of generated text, then it’s possible that a Wikipedia-type thing — written and curated by a human — could become even more valuable. The Depths of Wikipedians—Asterisk
Pic: anonymous medieval illuminator; uploader Carlos adanero, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
England may be out of the World Cup, but Chelsea are still World Champions.
< takes cover…>
⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc
I don’t know one end of a tennis racket from the other but it seems like the women’s game has longer rallies and fewer games in the match. More fun on both counts
I didn’t like Ann Widdecombe’s politics, but I am impressed that she visited every one of the UK’s 131 prisons in her two years as Prisons Minister.
🎶 My Crucial Track for 10 July 2026 - In My Life by Johnny Cash
Share a song that captures the moment when seasons change.
This popped up on my streamer this morning. It fits with the prompt a little in a ‘seasons of life’ way.
It’s on the same LP as ‘Hurt’ and tbh I haven’t really noticed it before. It’s a bit like a much lower key companion to Hurt in that it’s Johnny looking back on life through someone else’s song
It’s maybe my favourite Beatles song, as it happens. There’s some interesting stuff about the song on the Beatles Bible page
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I’ve been learning Brazilian Portuguese on a well-known language app for over a year now.
The fact that I often can’t tell whether a piece of text is in Portuguese or Spanish doesn’t reflect well on my language skills.
Pic: Tonyjeff, based on national symbol., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
🎶 My Crucial Track for 09 July 2026 - Fisherman Dub by The Congos
What song makes you feel like you’re floating?
Anything dub-by would perhaps work for this prompt.
As I said when I posted the non-dub version of the song, I’ve got a lot of affection for this song because it helped us get our eldest to sleep when she was little.
Our eldest features in other posts, including this one
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🎶 My Crucial Track for 08 July 2026 - Youth (Remastered 2023) by Soft Cell
What’s your favorite song about growing up?
If you only know Soft Cell from ‘Tainted Love’, this song shows another side of them. I’ve seen Marc do this with just piano and voice - it was rather good.
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To be fair to Mr Trump I expect the army did, in 1776, take over land that would later become an airport
“Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory.”
Flight of fancy: Trump claims 1775 revolutionary army ‘took over airports’
🎶 My Crucial Track for 06 July 2026 - Three Little Birds by Kate Rusby
What song would you dedicate to your younger self?
I think all of us at some time need to be told not to worry, to know that everything’s going to be alright, and to take the time to enjoy those three little birds on our doorstep.
I didn’t properly listen to this when it came out, but I saw Kate and her band do their cover of this at Salisbury City hall last month and it was lovely
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Is there nothing the man cannot corrupt?
BBC News - Trump confirms he asked Fifa to review Balogun ban
For the “Hand of God” goal the majority view is that he did it intentionally but in my opinion Maradona, wary of being thumped in the head by the onrushing Shilton, who was a little slow off his line, raised his arm and the ball struck his hand and nestled in the net. After seeing no linesman’s flag and hearing no referee’s whistle, he happily took the glory for a clear piece of cheating.
My Mexico 1986 memories of Maradona, the Azteca and a commentary faux pas - David Pleat
⚽
It does tend to get parky alright — there’s a rumour that one day on Achill Island the wind stopped blowing and everybody fell over.
Made me laugh
The counties of Ireland and their nicknames – from Antrim to Wicklow | The Irish Post
Pic: National Library of Ireland on The Commons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons