Freelance London-based violinist. Crossword enthusiast. EUROPEAN.
London, England
Joined August 2019
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Christian Halstead retweeted
Keith Jarrett’s solo performance of “Over the Rainbow” in Tokyo in 1984 is widely regarded as one of the most outstanding and moving piano solo covers of all time. Rather than simply restating the familiar melody, the legendary pianist infused the piece with new life through his brilliant improvisation, refined harmonic structure, and profound emotional depth.
Christian Halstead retweeted
In 1996 the BBC put two large women on a motorbike and sidecar, sent them round Britain cooking with lard, cream and butter by the block, and twelve million people a week sat down to watch them refuse to apologise for it.
Jennifer Paterson was sixty-eight, a Catholic who had cooked for the staff of The Spectator and been sacked for throwing the crockery out of the window. Clarissa Dickson Wright was a barrister who had drunk her way through a fortune and come out the other side. Neither had been on television. Both had been told all their lives that the way they ate was going to kill them, and both had decided they would rather be fat and fed than thin and lied to.
If you watched it you remember the sound of it. Jennifer scraping an entire pack of butter into a pan while talking about the war. Clarissa holding up a lump of suet to the camera and saying the word with relish. Game pie, kidneys in cream, bacon fat poured over cabbage, a pudding made with a pound of dripping. They cooked for monks, for lifeboatmen, for the Women's Institute, in country-house kitchens with the Aga going.
And every episode had a moment where one of them turned to the lens and said what nobody else on television would. Low fat was a fraud. Margarine was a chemical. Vegetarianism was for people with something wrong with them. Clarissa said if God had not meant us to eat animals he would not have made them out of meat.
It went out in forty countries. The BBC had expected a curiosity and got the most watched cooking programme it had ever made.
Jennifer died in 1999, of lung cancer, with a tin of caviar on the bedside table that she had asked for. Clarissa went in 2014 at sixty-six, having spent her last years defending the butcher, the gamekeeper and the dairy farmer against a country that had forgotten what they were for.
They were never right about everything. They were right about the one thing the nation was being lied to about, and they said it with a sidecar and a block of butter in front of twelve million people at a time when every other cook on television was holding up a tub of spread.
Christian Halstead retweeted
The Old Cornish Accent:
This video is a wonderful view into the old Cornish accent and spirit. This fascinating interview of 77 year old Cornish maid Emanda Billings in 1964 is a great insight into the everyday life of our recent ancestors. She was born in Victorian England (1800s), a world in which we've lost all connection.
The Cornish accent (also called Anglo-Cornish or Cornu-English) developed as local Celtic speakers shifted to English between 1300 and 1750, adopting regional West Country English while keeping a strong Brittonic language substrate. ⏳️
Christian Halstead retweeted
If there were a British "Siberia", all those responsible for this act of cultural vandalism should have been sent there
The original Imperial Hotel in London's Russell Square was designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll, designer of the dining room on the Titanic
It was demolished in 1967 allegedly because it was structurally unsound. This was a tactic to avoid a preservation order
The hotel was a victim of changing fashions. It was replaced by the current brutalist monstrosity (pictured).
And so London lost one of its most deliciously eccentric buildings, a glorious blending of what has been called Tudor Art Nouveau & Gothic Art Nouveau. 1/2
Christian Halstead retweeted
Hahahahah! Just seen this on FB:
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Have you found yourself in the hideous position of having a Reform councillor?
Here’s how you can help your brand new councillor settle into local government properly: email them this week with an actual council problem to solve.
Got rubbish piling up? Email them.
Bus vanished from existence? Email them.
Streetlights dead? Email them.
Care package delayed? Email them.
Pavement like the Somme? Email them.
Send them in by the hundred. Make sure they’re made very clear on what their job is.
Being a councillor is not standing in front of the Union flag shouting about dinghies on GB News. It’s reading committee papers at midnight, attending meetings nobody enjoys, holding surgeries in church halls, and dealing with the endlessly glamorous world of drains, social care budgets and recycling disputes.
Welcome to local government.
The boats are in Kent. The bins are in your ward.
The email address for your ward councillor can be found on your local council website as soon as it’s updated.
Feel free to copy and paste to share wider.
Christian Halstead retweeted
*One month before her 95th birthday, Patricia Routledge wrote something that still gently echoes:*
**“I’ll be turning 95 this coming Monday. In my younger years, I was often filled with worry — worry that I wasn’t quite good enough, that no one would cast me again, that I wouldn’t live up to my mother’s hopes. But these days begin in peace, and end in gratitude.”**
My life didn’t quite take shape until my forties. I had worked steadily — on provincial stages, in radio plays, in West End productions — but I often felt adrift, as though I was searching for a home within myself that I hadn’t quite found.
At 50, I accepted a television role that many would later associate me with — Hyacinth Bucket, of Keeping Up Appearances. I thought it would be a small part in a little series. I never imagined that it would take me into people’s living rooms and hearts around the world. And truthfully, that role taught me to accept my own quirks. It healed something in me.
At 60, I began learning Italian — not for work, but so I could sing opera in its native language. I also learned how to live alone without feeling lonely. I read poetry aloud each evening, not to perfect my diction, but to quiet my soul.
At 70, I returned to the Shakespearean stage — something I once believed I had aged out of. But this time, I had nothing to prove. I stood on those boards with stillness, and audiences felt that. I was no longer performing. I was simply being.
At 80, I took up watercolor painting. I painted flowers from my garden, old hats from my youth, and faces I remembered from the London Underground. Each painting was a quiet memory made visible.
Now, at 95, I write letters by hand. I’m learning to bake rye bread. I still breathe deeply every morning. I still adore laughter — though I no longer try to make anyone laugh. I love the quiet more than ever.
**I’m writing this to tell you something simple:**
**Growing older is not the closing act. It can be the most exquisite chapter — if you let yourself bloom again.**
Let these years ahead be your *treasure years*.
You don’t need to be famous. You don’t need to be flawless.
You only need to show up — fully — for the life that is still yours.
*With love and gentleness,*
— Patricia Routledge
Christian Halstead retweeted
13. In 1972, Italian singer Adriano Celentano released a song titled Prisencolinensinainciusol, featuring nonsensical lyrics designed to mimic the sound of English.
The song was created to prove that Italians would love any American song.
It was a hit.
Christian Halstead retweeted
That's it. That's the tweet.
Sold by selfserving conmen for the good of our enemies to weaken us and our allies.
A photo from last Friday, performing the Barber concerto with the wonderful @stpaulssinfonia conducted by @Andrew_C_Morley
Berlin Philharmonic @BerlinPhil on phenomenal form tonight at the @bbcproms !
