Ahead of Sunday’s post-Pride soul session, here are 26 songs on a CD that may appeal…

It Was a Very Good Year - Della Reese
From A Whisper To A Scream - Esther Phillips
Hard To Handle - Patti Drew
Hot Rod Poppa - Marsha Hunt
Rain - Dorothy Morrison
Let Me Down Easy - Bettye LaVette
Nothing But a Heartache - The Flirtations
California Soul - Marlena Shaw
I Can’t Stand The Rain - Ann Peebles
If You Can Live With Yourself - Dale Dennard
Fever - Marie Queenie Lyons
The Clapping Song - Shirley Ellis
He Called Me Baby - Spanky Wilson
Too Many Fish In The Sea - The Marvelettes
You Got To Be A Man - Helene Smith
90% Of Me Is You - Gwen McCrae
Nowhere To Run - Martha Reeves & The Vandellas
Son Of A Preacher Man - Bobbie Gentry
Chained And Bound - Alfreda Brockington
Feeling Alright - Lulu
You Can’t Always Get What You Want - Maxaynn
Suspicious Minds - Dee Dee Warwick
In Between Tears - Irma Thomas
Tainted Love - Gloria Jones
Take Yo’ Praise - Camille Yarbrough
Gone With The Wind Is My Love - Rita & The Tiaras

Post if you want a copy…

“Take that historic inferiority complex! Take that Spanish victimism! Take that Buffon and Cassano! Take that 22 June curse! Take that 88-year jinx against the unbeatable Italians! Take that pessimists! Take that disbelievers! Take that Tassotti! Take that Pagliuca! And long live King Juan Carlos of Spain!”

AS columnist Tomás Roncero

Almost as good as:

“Vi er best i verden! Vi er best i verden! Vi har slått England 2-1 i fotball!! Det er aldeles utrolig! Vi har slått England! England, kjempers fødeland. Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana–vi har slått dem alle sammen. Vi har slått dem alle sammen. Maggie Thatcher can you hear me?

“Maggie Thatcher, jeg har et budskap til deg midt under valgkampen. Jeg har et budskap til deg: Vi har slått England ut av Verdensmesterskapet i fotball. Maggie Thatcher, som de sier på ditt språk i boksebarene rundt Madison Square Garden i New York: Your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!”

“We are the best in the world! We are best in the world! We have beaten England 2-1 in football!! It is completely unbelievable! We have beaten England! England, birthplace of giants. Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana–we have beaten them all. We have beaten them all. Maggie Thatcher can you hear me?“

“Maggie Thatcher, I have a message to you in the middle of the election campaign. I have a message to you: We have knocked England out of the World Cup of football. Maggie Thatcher, as they say in your language in boxing bars around Madison Square Garden in New York: Your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!“

Bjørge Lillelien

is but a twenty-minute hydrofoil or hour-long ferry journey from Corfu Town. Never being one to turn turn down the opportunity of visiting a former Communist state, and despite the fact that Tirana is and was a step too far to travel, Saranda was added as a day trip to the recent sojourn in Corfu. So much so, that even getting up at 7am was not too problematic.

Saranda is a smallish port and resort at the southern end of the Albanian Riviera - its population has doubled in the last 5-10 years as the tourist trade has taken off - as far as our guide could tell, it is most popular with Greeks, Italians and other former Communists (although it may just be that they want to leave their resorts to Westerners and holiday somewhere cheap). In Saranda there is nary a sign of Communist influence - the city has expanded massively since the early 90’s, and is still doing so - indeed, all of the new building are hotels, and the town is expnding both vertically and horizontally to encompass both the foothills and the whole waterfront of the bay. The hotels lend the resort the air of Spain in the 80’s, or Malta or Cyprus a little later, as characterless concrete hotels in myriad pastel shades spring up. The only hint at the Communist past was, to my eyes at least, a single restaurant on the promenade that resembled so many ‘Houses of steelworkers/tram drivers/any other profession’ to be found in any for Soviet town. Beyond that, everything was very new, Western, and typically Mediterranean - a mass of photos can be found here.

Following a quick coffee, we were taken out to visit Butrint(i), a huge archaelogical site comprising Ancient Greek, Roman and later remains that are undergoing excavation and conservation, and is a UNESCO world heriatge site. Anyway, it is an incredible place to visit - I am no expert on these things, so please take a look at the site and visit if you ever get a chance.

The journey to and from Butrint was also fascinating, as I had precisely no idea what to expect from the Albanian countryside. I knew it was mountainous, and that it would probably be lacking greenery, being a Southern Mediterranean country. It is dry, and mountainous, although we only travelled through 20km of foothills, but it also full of lakes - in fact, water is one of the major exports, along with freshwater shellfish - there were large mussel nurseries in both of the enormous lake we sped past.

The villages on the route (I would say suburbs, but Saranda is not yet quite such a large conurbation) were also full of spanking new houses and construction work - many Albanian expats are now returning home from Western Europe and building themselves either homes or holiday homes in the area - a sizeable villa within 20km of Saranda can be built for around 80,000 EURO - including the purchase of the land. And all the taxis are Mercedes (again, in a bizarre fusion of post-Communism and 1980’s style Mediterranea). In caught a glimpse of just two multicoloured redecorated bunkers (rather disappointingly) as we passed, and they were slowly being buried in the rubble from the new developments, and the only statue with a vaguely Hoxha-esque hue had a newly-painted Albanian flag without the golden star, and was most likely a memorial to WW2.

So, would I go again? I think Saranda (and the rest of the Riviera) needs to be taken separately from the rest of the country, much as any area with enormous income from tourism cannot be seen to be indicative of either Spain, Italy, or indeed Poland or the Czech Republic. I am sure Tirana seems a world away from the palm trees and promenade, and the towns and village further north and deeper into the country can only begin to imagine the standard of living on Saranda. But I am pleased to have seen it before all vestiges of the past have been erased and it becomes another (albeit cheaper and newer) resort-by-numbers.

Back from a week in Corfu. Many things to write about, including Albania, cormorant-shaped weather vanes, the pain of horse fly bites and holiday resorts. My body clock is completely ruined, despite the fact there is only a 2 hour time difference. The football has been rather wonderful on the whole, and I would dearly like to see a Spain/Netherlands v Portugal final. Or Croatia.

at the moment - I am 6 days into my holiday, and without a foreign sojourn (for two weeks at least), I have slumped into the apathy of early British summer. The weather has reverted to type, with grey skies and mild drizzle, so any efforts to wander around London have been curtailed - so much so that on Tuesday, British power stations conspired to cause a black-out in the Museum in Docklands - but it did mean that there is free entry on Sunday. And to the Jack the Ripper exhibition as well. It was the first time I have been to Canary Wharf in years (maybe even a decade) - it is still as inhuman and business-orientated as ever, but having been to both Hong Kong and New York in the interim, the tall buildings and fully-paved plazas with the merest sprinkling of plants seem to be the functionalist-impressionist dream of the architects of these modern centres of capitalism.

Since then, not much else, I’m afraid. Shopping. Listening to music. Watching daytime TV in 10-minute bursts. Cleaning. Cooking. A hint of reading - mainly odds and sods of Russo-Soviet history and culture inspired by Dimbleby in Russia - as he wandered through Samara, there were odd glimpses of murals and mosaics that still linger from its days as one of the centres of Soviet arms manufacturing - manna from heaven for me, as they lacked the finesse of the standard north-western Russian propaganda.

I have also been revisiting the Muppet Show on DVD - the first series so far, and, childish as it may seem, it makes me laugh. A lot. I think that may say more about my sense of humour than the quality of the jokes, but still. I have even almost forgiven them for selling out to Disney.

have a new album out, “Sunday at Devil Dirt”.

I have to say that as it plays in the background whilst I type, it is rather good. It certainly mines the same seam of Southern fried gothicism as post-Birthday Party Nick Cave, and Lanegan’s warped and world-weary tones are not a million miles away from Mr Cave, but there is a far clearer jazz and blues, rather than gospel influence on both the music and the lyrical concerns.

Will I ever manage to remember the declensions of Czech nouns? Was my nocturnal nosebleed symptomatic of some as yet undiscovered ailment, or was it simply due to hayfever? Why did I wake up as it started to bleed? Why is Jonathan Dimbleby doing a show about Russia? When will my book about the vestiges of Celtic tradition on the Western periphery of Europe arrive? Why do I loathe dressing up my meagre achievements in a veil of recruitment jargon on my CV?

- and it is one shared by most insomniacs. They are far too lively minded. They are the opposite of passive. They do not want to be bored. But boredom is, actually, exactly what they need. And, I’d tentatively add, acceptance. Chris Idzikowski says that to ‘try’ and sleep is worst of all. Sleep dislikes scrutiny. It is shy - like a nocturnal animal. Perhaps the clue to surviving a long night’s journey into day is not to try at all.”

Interesting article on insomnia by Kate Kellaway in The Observer

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