What’s it about this time?

Good morning all. It’s the return of Rambler5319 for his Wednesday guest post. Enjoy!

I was thinking again about LLM’s post last Sunday and a few of the replies. Time is one of those things we can’t stop happening. It’s also one of those things that people seem to try not to think about too much: the fact that it’s getting less every day we’re alive. There are plenty of analogies about life being a never ending circle. Now it is really only never-ending when we speak about it in general terms: people and animals are always being born whilst others are dying so there is a cycle of life and death. However for us as individuals time is linear: it is a straight line from conception to last breath. Try as we may we can’t stop it. We can try and stop ourselves displaying the signs of aging by maybe dressing in a younger way, maybe talking younger and so on but no matter what we do we are the age we are. We can try and fool ourselves but if you’ve lived for 20/30/40/50 or however many years – you are that old.

Many singers have touched on the subject of time. A number of hit records have covered the idea of it and what it means to us. (Apologies for the selection as apart from one the rest are all from my own collection and also the number of vid clips.)

There is no such place as Tír na nÓg (The Land of Eternal Youth)! No matter how many times Van Morrison, on his album No Guru, No Method, No Teacher tells us we can walk there – WE CAN’T. Likewise Xanadu, Valhalla & Nirvana all sound great – but real? NO. They make a good subject for a song; remember Olivia Newton-John (& ELO) topped the UK charts in 1980 singing about Xanadu. I think the expression is “In your dreams” and that’s where they’ll stay. Nice diversion for 3 minutes but if you and I can’t go there don’t spend too much time looking for & thinking about them.

In 1969 Joni Mitchell wrote the song which became the theme for the Woodstock Festival. It was just called Woodstock & covered by a number of other artists including one by Matthews Southern Comfort who topped the UK charts with their version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyTUF5gP2KE

(Check out the two nuns walking past the camera.)

In one verse Mitchell wrote that she didn’t know who she was but that life is for learning. In 1970 she sang about us being “captive the carousel of time” on her Ladies of the Canyon album; but we’re not are we? We’re not on a merry-go-round, we’re on a train and at some point we will have to get off. We can’t take any luggage with us but those still on the train will open our cases and divide up the things we had with us! Others will stay on because they’re not getting off at the same place.

Eva Cassidy (sadly no longer with us), along with many others, sang about life being like getting on a train. Here’s the clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8W9rPxxnP4

A 25 year old Paul McCartney, on The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album (1967), famously sang about when he would be older losing his hair. He asked would he still be needed when he got to 64.

Booker T. & the MGs recorded an instrumental called Time is Tight on Stax Records. It made no.4 in the UK charts back in 1969. Here’s a live vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbBcXvKvB08

In 1964 The Rolling Stones sang Time Is On My Side but of course ultimately it isn’t is it? At some point you might not have much to do so time seems to go slowly. It does that when you’re looking forward to something you say you can’t wait for doesn’t it?

(In 1990 Kim Wilde had a song called “Time” and she sang about something so good it was worth waiting for.) Sometimes you just want time to go quicker so you can have that something without having to go through the waiting period. (If we want things we can’t afford we don’t wait till we have enough money, we borrow the money and pay it back later; you can’t do that with time.)

I suppose one of the best songs about time is the one by Pink Floyd on their 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon just called Time. Sales of Dark Side of the Moon, since its release 40 years ago, are estimated at 50 million (just over 1 million per year)! In the US it is the top selling album of all time (excluding compilations) with 15 platinum discs (meaning certified total of 15 million sales, although it is believed the real figure is much higher). Curiously it held the no.1 spot for just 1 week but stayed in the charts for 741 weeks including 591 consecutive weeks. (Now divide that by 52, and what do you get? Yep that’s right just over 11 continuous years! And all together 14 years in the US album charts, WOW!). Incidentally Booker T (mentioned above) also had an influence on one the Dark Side tracks.

If you’ve got 6/7 mins have a watch of the video. (The intro is quite long so if you don’t fancy it all wind forward to 2 mins and the singing starts at 2.20)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtvC8a3BRlQ

And, if you can, open another tab then window and put the lyrics alongside the vid.

Here are the lyrics:

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pinkfloyd/time.html

Great song that encapsulates lots of those ideas associated with time and its passing.

So there you have it a brief meditation on the subject of time from my record collection. If you’re still alive – congratulations, you’ve just aged another 5 minutes! And remember that Philosopher’s Stone is no nearer.

And do you see what I did with the title of this post?

1st January

I know it might seem a bit odd to be writing a blog about New Year’s Day well after the year’s started but it’s an interesting subject so I thought I’d do a bit on it. Now you know that whilst many folks around the world call Jan 1^st New Year’s Day, there are of course many other New Years with a different date which are celebrated: Chinese, Vietnamese, Sinhalese, Tamil, Mayan, Telugu, Thai, Hindu, Islamic, Ethiopian etc. Each has its own reason for the date it uses.

What is interesting for us is that New Year’s Day has only been on 1^st Jan since 1752; it’s been in use for just 261 years. It was then that the Gregorian Calendar took over from the Julian which dated right back to Julius Caesar in 46BC. In order to make that change they had to “lose” 11 days from the Julian to bring it into line with the new one: this meant that 2nd September 1752 was followed by 14th September 1752. I wonder how you would feel if say on Feb 1^st this year the government said the next day would be dated 13^th Feb; you’ve suddenly aged by an extra 11 days – or have you? What do you do if you keep a diary? What about if you rent a property? Do you get a rebate? What about if you went on holiday for two weeks starting on say 1^st Sept 1752 – when do you go back to work?

The change also brought in 1^st Jan as the date of the New Year. Before 1752 Britain used 25^th March (the Vernal Equinox) as New Year’s Day. For example, the date of say 24^th March 1710 was followed by the date 25^th March 1711; and for any year prior to 1752, it that was the usual practice. For those of you who pay tax in the UK the losing of those 11 days (in Sept 1752) causing the date then to jump forward meant a jump forward from the original New Year (25^th March) by those 11 days (Mar 26,27,28,29,30,31, Apr 1,2,3,4,5). And that is why our tax year runs from 6^th April one year to 5^th April the next. Following the papal bull of 1582, some countries adopted the Gregorian Calendar immediately whilst others did in the years following; actually eight countries had introduced Jan 1^st as New Year’s Day prior to 1582. UK took 170 years to come into line. So now you know.

What about significant events on 1^st January? History has a many but we’ll check out just a few:

45BC – The Julian Calendar comes into being.

1502 – Rio de Janeiro was discovered by the Portuguese. It is believed that Amerigo Vespucci was an observer on this expedition. In 1507 a German map maker named the southern part of the continent America. América (Portuguese & Spanish) is the female form of Amerigo; the words United States of America were first used in the 1776 Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson. Other interpretations & etymologies, of the name America, do exist so if you’re not persuaded by this one you can easily find an alternative.

1781 – The first all-iron bridge opened. It crossed the River Severn near Broseley Wood in Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire. It cost £6,000 then (over £1 million today). Abraham Darby III, a third generation Quaker and industrialist, promised to pay any shortfall over and above the original estimated cost of £3,150. He was in debt until he died 10 years later, in 1791 aged just 41.

PIC 1 (Ironbridge pic)

1856 – Van Diemen’s Land was officially named Tasmania. The first name was in honour of Anthony Van Diemen (the anglicised version of the Dutch name van Diemenslandt), the governor of the Dutch East Indies. It was him who’d sent the explorer Abel Tasman to the area and he is the origin of the present day name – Tasmania.

1962 – The Beatles Audition at Decca Record Studios in London. The group, then, consisted of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison & drummer Pete Best. The record company had also auditioned Brian Poole & The Tremeloes and following the sessions decided to go with them and not The Beatles. Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, was told, “guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein”. Bizarrely the same guy who told Epstein this did in fact sign The Rolling Stones on the recommendation of a certain George Harrison! How about that? (In case you were wondering why people were working on Jan 1^st back then, the date did not become an official Public Holiday in England until 1974 so it was just a normal working day.)

So there you have it. Happy New Year folks.

Written by a future Booker Prize winner. Sort of.

Last week, I went to Liverpool to visit friends and family and thought I’d follow one of Rambler5319’s walks as the recent one, around Woolton, looked really interesting.

I set out in the morning, the threatening drizzle making me worry slightly but I kept going, hopeful despite the obvious. By the time I reached John Lennon’s house, my view through the car window was this….

Still I continued to Woolton and thankfully, by the time I wanted a photograph of me at the highest point in Liverpool, the rain had stopped….

I then got out and visited the church graveyard where two gravestones bear the names which gave inspiration to the Beatles song, Eleanor Rigby.

Over the road from here was, what looked like, a community centre which was part of the church and I realised in a flash, I came to Weight Watchers here when I was 17! I had been a teenager with some extra ‘puppy fat’, I would like to call it. And my friend Nicki and I came to Weight Watchers together. We would drive into the car park and in front of it was the entrance to the Weight Watchers group while behind it was the hall where John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met! And I’d had no idea all that time. I was big into The Beatles as well. That is a fact I would have liked to know.

There is so much interesting history at your fingertips in Woolton. For example, just the little hall where I went to Weight Watchers had been there for almost two hundred years…

(I don’t know if you can see but it was built in 1823.)

There was also, at the furthest point on this walk, a little school which was build in 1610….

I also realised, with fond memories, that as I walked along a small path with two quarries falling away either side of it, I had walked this way many times before when my brother and my Dad and I used to walk to my Nanna’s house every Sunday for lunch. I remembered my brother and I having nettle stings and finding some really good dock leaves at the end of the path to rub on the stings to stop the pain.

As an aside, I checked in the window of a small shop which had been on Rambler5319’s walk and, sure enough, they’re still looking for a paper boy/girl, if anyone’s interested.

I walked back to my starting point through Woolton Woods, from where there is a fantastically clear view over Liverpool, (it’s hard to see it on a photograph though).

On my way back from this walk, I stopped off at 192 Booker Avenue, where the Liverpudlian writer of a book I’m currently reading grew up.

Her name is Linda Grant and her novel, The Clothes On Their Backs was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. And no, it not just a coincidence that the name of Booker is the road where she grew up and the prize – it’s the same man! He was a business man based in the area who, among many things, had spent time in Demerara in the West Indies and was responsible for bringing Demerara sugar to England.

I grew up in a little cul-de-sac off Booker Avenue and spent eight years of my life attending Booker Avenue Infants and Junior school. I think that means, by default, that I will have a Booker Prize-winning novel out soon?

P.S. Due to my slight telling off by a fellow blogger, for not having any Christmas decorations up, I asked my favourite 5 year old to make me a Christmas tree, which is now in living room. See?

A walk in Woolton (part 2)

Good morning all! Today it’s time to get back to Rambler5319’s walk around Liverpool. Enjoy….

You remember we finished last week (21.11.12) having come along the narrow path called Mill Stile and were just about to turn right into Church Road.

There wasn’t time to visit but, if we’d turned left and walked just over a quarter of mile up the hill, we’d have come to Reservoir Road. No prizes for guessing what is there – yep a storage reservoir, one of a number around the city. Liverpool’s water requirements, like many other expanding & industrialising cities, grew substantially during the 19^th century.

Sadly, in this case, the residents of the village of Llanwddyn in North Wales were forced out of their homes in 1889 to help satisfy that need. They’d had to watch the dam across the River Vyrnwy being built knowing the end was coming.

The reservoir formed behind the dam was named Lake Vyrnwy which then became a water source for the city. Calling it a “lake” makes it sound just like a natural feature of the landscape. It gives no hint of what had been sacrificed in the name of progress: the village parish church, 2 chapels, 3 inns, 10 farmhouses & 37 houses had disappeared under the water. (The 1851 Census shows there were Welsh people living in the Woolton area. I wonder if any worked on the reservoir building and its tower not realising the background to it.) The lake can hold 13 million gallons of water when full and its surface area covers the equivalent of 600 football pitches; and it still supplies the city today. If the water in the lake was petrol and you got about 35 mpg you could drive from Venus to the Earth and all the way out to Jupiter and still have some left over! Anyway, back to Earth, and after turning right, a little way down the road we come to St Peter’s Church.

A chapel was first built on the site in 1826 but, after population growth over the next 60 years, a number of wealthy merchants gave the money for a new church building which opened in 1887. Sandstone from the quarry was used as it was literally on their doorstep.

We’re visiting the church hall across the road first as this is famous for being the place where, at a church fete on 6^th July 1957, Paul McCartney met John Lennon and the Quarrymen.

There are a couple of photos from that date (showing the group on the back of a lorry) at this website http://www.beatlesbible.com/1957/07/06/john-lennon-meets-paul-mccartney/.

Here’s the Church Hall:

And here is a close-up of the plaque under the middle window. This is the actual place where the two guys met:

Now cross over the road to St Peter’s Church. It is also famous because in the graveyard is this headstone:

Just read down the names on the headstone. Can you see it? Now you know where they probably got the idea for the name Eleanor Rigby which appears in the lyrics of the song. McCartney later admitted the choice of names in the song was probably a subconscious remembering from the times spent in and around the graveyard. This was half of another Beatles double A-side with Yellow Submarine on the other. It reached No.1 in Aug 1966 and stayed there for 4 weeks.

Can you see the name John McKenzie in this next picture?

(There is no suggestion that he was a priest but I think poetic licence took over when McCartney wrote the lyrics.) If you know the song Eleanor Rigby, there are a few lines in it about a Father McKenzie:

a) Writing the words of a sermon that no-one will hear

b) Darning his socks in the night when there is nobody there

c) Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave.

You need to look left and up slightly, in between the vertical stems of two crosses, for the lightish brown stone. (It’s 3 rows back and the only other one you can see with an inscription.) That stone has the Eleanor Rigby name if you can enlarge the pic.

Continuing down the hill the first turn left is Mason St. Here we find a cinema called the Woolton Picture House. You can just about see the name above the doors although the protruding metal framework prevented me getting a clear pic of it:

It has a very interesting history dating back to 1927. In the world of films, The Jazz Singer released in Oct 1927 (starring Al Jolson) is considered the first talking picture film; and the first words spoken were, “Wait a minute, wait a minute! You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” I wonder if it was shown here in Woolton after the place opened in Dec. Here’s the close up of the plaque on the wall just to the right of the cinema entrance:

It is one of the old-fashioned style single screen cinemas and as you can see from the pic, “the oldest surviving cinema in Liverpool.”

Downhill again from here and turn right at the bottom. Just along on the right is something which looks a bit strange. Here it is:

It seems to be a sunken car park but the sign, just inside the sandstone post at the other end on the left of my pic, tells us we’re in what is called Lodes Pond. It did have water in it at one time which explains the stone banks around the U-shaped floor. Apparently, after a dispute with the Lord of the Manor the local district council ordered that the water had to be, “kept in perpetuity for the use of cattle”. So essentially it was a huge cattle watering trough.

Check out the pic on Flickr from 1936 (taken from a similar position) when it was full of water: http://www.flickr.com/photos/68767304@N03/8121915910/sizes/l/in/pool-1435847@N20/

I noted one of the small terraced houses behind where I took the photo from has called itself Lodes Pond View. With the absence of any water in the “Pond” I suppose its added value potential in any future sale will be somewhat limited as it actually looks out on to a car park.

Crossing the road and heading towards the traffic lights we come to a pub called The Coffee House. On the side facing us is a date stone showing 1641 as you can see in this photo below. Jeremiah Horrocks, the famous English astronomer, with connections to Liverpool’s Otterspool Pool Park (just 4 miles away) died the same year it opened; the future Charles II was just 11 years old; The English Civil War started the following year; and Liverpool itself was under siege by the Royalist Prince Rupert in 1644 so perhaps Woolton’s two known Catholic supporters at the time would not have gone in for a drink.

We continue walking a little bit further and on the left we come to a small shop on the corner called The Liverpool Cheese Company.

Naturally it sells cheese but there are so many types it’s hard to know what you might like. Here’s just one of the display cases.

Some years ago the owner recommended a particular type for me to try. Now I’m not a blue cheese person especially after trying some Danish Blue once but he convinced me to try a piece of Shropshire Blue. It’s sort of not quite what you expect a blue cheese to taste like and I was pleasantly surprised. Anyway I tried some and have returned a number of times to get more of it.

Here’s the piece I got today:

In addition to cheese, a number of other products are available. A few years ago the shop posted an order for me which was a present for someone. It was a piece of a cheese called Stinking Bishop. The Telegraph newspaper reported it had been voted Britain’s smelliest cheese in 2009. It was mentioned in the Wallace & Gromit film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit(2005) and apparently sales rocketed by 500% following the film’s release.

The shop also can make up presentation baskets with wine, cheese & other items they stock. Check out their website: http://www.liverpoolcheesecompany.co.uk/. It’s really worth a visit to see everything on offer including advice on how to wrap & store cheese.

Click on the cheese section and there are 13 pages of the different types on sale. There have got to be loads there you’ve never heard of. Anyone know these: Allerdale Goat, Snowdonia Pickle Power, Sykes Fell Ewe, Inglewhite Smoked Goat, Gabriel Blue EweorShorrock’s Strong Lancashire Bomb?Just looking at the names conjures up a desire to try them. Imagine that after dinner conversation when you say, “Have you never tried Snowdonia Pickle Power?” and, following blank looks all around, you then launch into a glowing report of how wonderful a cheese it is.

Btw I wouldn’t recommend the Stinking Bishop variety unless you have a very strong constitution. Also it needs careful storage as the smell can affect (infect?) other items in the fridge as the person to whom I sent my gift told me what some other items tasted like after the cheese had been in there.

Despite the presence of a large supermarket just at the back of this shop and another one close by there is a dedicated bunch of loyal customers who keep coming back here for the service they receive and the varieties on offer which they can’t get elsewhere. I have on occasion had to queue outside on the pavement as it’s been packed inside.

Over the road, just beyond the traffic lights, we come to the village cross. Local history records say the cross was erected around 1350AD by the Knights Hospitaller; they also built a water mill in the area early in the 14^th Century. These men were a group of monks and knights, recruited from Western European nations, who protected the routes to Jerusalem used by pilgrims to the Holy City. They took the monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. However, they added a fourth vow which bound them to protect pilgrims and fight any attackers.

They had been given the village of Woolton and its lands, around 1180, by the constable of Chester under whose control the area was. This land was rented out to tenants but upon their death the heir would have to pay the value of one third of that person’s “moveable” possessions; that would be stuff like cows, ploughs, stools and cooking pots.

Basically it was a form of death duties but at 33%; and all, even the poorest, had to pay them to the Knights. It’s interesting to note from history that in 1187, following the siege of Jerusalem and its eventual surrender to Saladin, they and a number of inhabitants were allowed out of the city provided they paid a ransom. The Hospitallers & the Templars led the first two columns of people to leave having been given a promise of safe passage by the conquerors.

Here’s the cross:

Just across the road in the window of a newsagents shop was this sign:

I wonder how much you were paid when you did your paper round. I bet it wasn’t anywhere near £20 ($32) for 6 mornings (7am-7.45am)! Would be interesting to see what the paper boy/girl rates are like in other countries. Anyone from US/Canada or rest of the world help with info to compare with UK?

We continue walking along Speke Road until we turn right into School Lane. Keep walking along the lane until you come to a place where it narrows. You will see this building on your left although I had to go to the other end to take the picture looking back the way I’d come. Unfortunately undergrowth and tree branches obscured both ends:

What is interesting is the inscription over the door and here’s a close-up.

If you can’t make it out, it says: “Much Woolton Old School. The Oldest Elementary School Building in Lancashire” with the date of 1610 also inscribed in the stonework. It is believed that the actual building may pre-date 1610 as there is a reference to a bequest made in 1606 to provide a schoolmaster at Woolton. However this and other tangential refs don’t identify this particular building just the area; records from 1608 suggest an estimated population of 130 (29 households) so I’m not sure how many pupils there might have been when it was up and running.

From here it was back into the village and out on the road which would return me to my start point. On the way I saw this establishment:

Now I confess I know almost nothing about spas; I’d never even heard of one of these. Have you got one near where you live? The website for one in Bangkok advertises a number of treatments that work out to about £60/hour so I guess the UK rates could be higher.

They also offer what seems to be a most luxurious treatment called The Botanical Refresh lasting, if you can spare the time, 5 hours 15 mins!! It consists of the following: Pebble Foot Bath (10 mins), Herbal Steam (20 mins), choice of Let’s Relax or Body Reviver (120 mins), Reviving Foot Massage (30 mins), Two Course Healthy Spa Cuisine & Healing Drink, Aromatherapy Facial (60 mins), Spa Manicure or Spa Pedicure (75 mins). (And yes, it does add up to 315 mins or 5 ¼ hrs.) In Bangkok it will cost you 14,500 Baht (that’s approx £295/$473, so again roughly £60/$96 per hour).

And that was the end of the visit to Woolton – time to head home and a bath (not a spa) for the tired legs. It had been a good walk and a good day. Woolton is definitely an area of great historical interest. Even one guy I met who lived there didn’t know about 2 or 3 things I’d found. There’d been stuff from the 12^th century to 1610, from the Victorians to the Beatles sites and right up to the present day. I’ll definitely visit again.

D is for…

DEFINITION!

Today, a guest blogger is going have a little look at some words he feels need closer examination…

CAN I HAVE A WORD? (Part 3)

“Nothing to breathe but air,
Quick as a flash ‘tis gone;
Nowhere to fall but off,
Nowhere to stand but on.” (Benjamin Franklin King, 1857-94)

Can I have a word? – Again? Yes it’s part 3. We’ve done authors using words we don’t know; we’ve done us trying to beef up our vocabularies; now we’re going to look at a difficult, some may say impossible, couple of words to define properly: nowhere & everywhere.

Have you heard people (often children or teenagers) answer the question, “Where do you think you’re going?” with that innocent sounding, “Nowhere”; someone asks you where you are and you say, for example, “in the middle of nowhere”. That’s a rather longer answer than a simple “I don’t know” which, it seems to me, does the same job. You could shorten it to ‘ITMON’ if you wanted to invent a new word (for something that doesn’t exist anyway?). Not sure that’ll catch on.

First, let’s investigate “Nowhere” and the whole concept of it. Let’s start by checking the dictionary: it means either ‘in or to no place, not anywhere’ or ‘out of the running’. It’s an adverb so you can’t actually go to nowhere or come from nowhere. It’s not a noun like a place name would be. What I want to know is how can you be ‘not anywhere’? In other words how can we define a place that doesn’t exist by using a concept that also doesn’t exist with words that actually don’t make sense? Now there’s the problem. Perhaps we are moving into the realms of philosophy here. However, Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913) pulls the rug from under our feet by giving us this quote: “Philosophy: a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing”. Not a great deal of help there then. Hmm…. Ok, so maybe philosophy isn’t the way to go.

Remember, though, it’s physically impossible to be nowhere because, when you think about it, there is always a latitude & longitude for wherever on the Earth’s surface you stand; if you’re underground (or under the sea) there is still a location simply with an added dimension of “X” no. of metres under the surface. The same is true if you’re above the ground even right to the top of Mount Everest except you don’t need the extra dimension because the latitude & longitude cross at the particular height where you are.

Therefore you must be somewhere! You might not be in an actual place that’s named on a map or even known locally by a particular name but you just can’t be nowhere. Also it’s important to remember nowhere is an adverb. That means Talking Heads got it wrong when they sang about being on the Road to nowhere (1985); Dusty Springfield got it wrong when she sang about being In the middle of nowhere (1965); and the Beatles got it wrong when they sang about a Nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans, for nobody (1966); and perhaps the most confusing lines on the subject come from Jeff Beck in the opening lines of his song Hi-ho silver lining: “You’re everywhere and nowhere baby…” (1972). Now, just in case you were totally confused as to where that might be, Mr Beck helps us out by explaining that you’re (probably), “…..going down a bumpy hillside in a hippy hat.” Ah well, that’s a lot clearer then, eh?

So why do we use it? Is it to sound cool? Or to convey the idea that we are some kind of free spirit? Is it to emphasise the fact that you’re in a desolate place? – The middle of nowhere. Or is it because, really, we don’t understand what we’re saying? So why not stop using it or say it a different way. Go on you know you could. In the song Cotton Avenue, Joni Mitchell said it this way: “If you got no place special, well then you just go no place special”. Not nowhere just a “not special” other place.

I’ve tried looking for Erewhon but there’s nowhere so mixed up as that place!
However, I know what you’re thinking: will he be joining in after he’s heard those distinctive, foot-tapping, opening bars of the Jeff Beck song on the radio by singing along with “You’re everywhere and nowhere, baby, that’s where you’re at……….”? Course I will!
But hang on a minute…… I’ve just had a thought – where’s everywhere? How can anything, let alone a person, be everywhere? Is it all places……. except nowhere (or including nowhere)? And what about ITMON? Einstein gave us E=mc2; the Rambler has come up with E=E-N, (where E=everywhere, N=nowhere). Will it catch on? I doubt it but have a serious think about it!