I really love finding out something about a period of history that I never knew before. Sometimes it's the large things that I perhaps didn't pay enough attention to when I was studying at school and University. More often it's the small but significant things that tell in their relative obscurity a broader tale of the age.

So.....I've been doing a bit of reading up on the Battle of The Atlantic this last few weeks trying to gain some insight for a song I want to write about the Artic convoys sent from Britain and America in 1941-44 to aid Soviet Russia - who at that time was an ally against the Nazi's. What I found out was that rubble from the blitz in London was loaded up on out-bound merchant ships to the USA in 1940-41 and used as ballast to help them through the journey - most regularly to New York. What was fascinating to me was that then this same rubble was off-loaded in New York and used by the city municpal services as hardcore in the building process for the city's roads and state buildings. It's almost too poetic. Perhaps it's the wreckage of the old world propping up the new or from another perspective maybe it was an early transfusion of suffering from Europe to America in advance of her entering the Second World War at the end of 1941. We do seem a bit pre-occupied in the UK about the 'special relationship' between Britain and the US but .....here it is in a small piece of history tucked away in an old beaten up book from the 1950's about an increasingly forgotten sacrifice.

Ho-hum. Next time .... less about conflict and more info about my forthcoming single release and where you can get it !