MAY 24th AGAIN ALREADY...

...which means of course that Bob Dylan is 67 years old today. He's taking very little time off: he starts his European tour the day after tomorrow in Reykjavik, Iceland.

(I went there only once, and that was 30 years ago when I was sheltering briefly from the cold of the freelance writing life and ran the London press office of United Artists Records. We had the Stranglers, and for publicity's sake took a plane-load of journalists and liggers over to Iceland - a novel venue for a "big-name act" at the time - to see them perform in a Reykjavik nightclub. It was broad daylight when we went into this great barn of a building in the very late evening, and broad daylight again by the time we came out in the very early morning. Inside the hall, I was astonished to have a local punter recognise me as the author of Song & Dance Man, more than five years after its publication. This was some compensation for having to put up with the Stranglers.)

Back in the UK May 24th was always Empire Day - everything passes, everything changes - and the day when, eleven years before Bob Dylan's birth, Amy Johnson, daughter of a Hull fish merchant, completed the first solo flight to Australia. Her Gipsy Moth landed in front of an enormous cheering crowd at Port Darwin. (I've never been there.)