Music, travel, and connections: is this the last time?

Back in 1973, the brilliant game called Connect 4, was developed by the toy inventor Howard Wexler. It was a wonderful creation. Some of my grandchildren have spent hours trying to beat me. It is the kind of game that leads to almost compulsive playing. The game’s concept is relatively simple. Both players take turns to drop a blue or a yellow chip into a grid attempting to get four of the same colours in a line. Your opponent tries to stop you making this connection. The game is great fun, but you can lose hours of life playing it. I have thought about some different connections over these past few days.

Some of these connections have been flights. Last Wednesday, I flew from Manchester to Reykjavik and then on to Vancouver. As I write this blog it is 18.30, it is Saturday evening, and I’m sitting in Calgary airport waiting to catch a plane to Paris and then on to Manchester. Manchester is seven hours ahead of Calgary. So, I’m having to post this week’s blog now, as I won’t be back into the UK until Sunday afternoon. That’s if all the connections work. My memories of Charles de Gaulle airport are not happy ones!

In between these dates, I have been reconnecting with the greatest rock and roll band in the world, The Rolling Stones. I have seen them play live many times; the last being a wonderful concert at Anfield in June 2022. I thought that might be the last time (maybe the last time I don’t know – sorry). Quite by accident I saw they were touring again in the US, but I could not find a date that worked, hence flying out to Vancouver to see them, and maybe this will actually be the last time. It was an absolutely fantastic concert and well worth the effort to get here and see them. They connected with the 60,000 folk in the wonderful BS Stadium - there wasn’t a song where the audience weren’t singing along. Most of us men folk were playing air guitar as well. It was Hackney Diamonds all the way and a truly magical night.

The last time (Okay, that’s enough of The Rolling Stones’ references) I was in Vancouver, was in 2006. It was for the first International Nurse Education Today/ Nurse Education in Practice (NET/NEP) Conference. I had just been appointed as a Professor in Mental Health Care at the University of Salford. My paper was entitled ‘Fragmentation and Integration in Primary Health and Social Care’ and was drawn from a project aimed at understanding what factors might shape UK primary care services of the future. The research project was the first one for me where the grant awarded was £750K+. In that same year I also went to Alice Springs, Australia, to present at a conference there. A memorable trip for many reasons, not least of which was me inadvertently jumping into the hotel swimming pool with a USB stick containing a grant application I had worked on for days in the pocket of my trunks. The USB stick didn’t survive and I was unsuccessful with the application.

The other connection with Vancouver was meeting up with a young man called Jozeph Betleham at that conference. He lived in Hungary, and I had met him about five years previously on an EU ERASMUS exchange trip. At the time I was working at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Jozeph was one of my PhD students. We alternated supervision sessions. I would go to Hungary, and Jozeph would visit Manchester. So, it was wonderful to meet up with him again in Vancouver all those years later. While J and I were recently travelling across Eastern Europe on our Grand Train Journey, hitting Budapest in Hungary brought back some of those great memories.  

The two weeks we were away from the UK clashed with both the Lytham Festival, something we have supported for a few years, and of course Glastonbury. I have never been to Glastonbury, but have enjoyed the festival from afar through catch up TV. And of course, the Rolling Stones played at Glastonbury in 2013. Like last night, at Glastonbury they played 20 songs during their two-hour performance. Such energy!!! This year I was pleased to watch Seasick Steve perform, and I absolutely need one of those cigar box guitars to add to my guitar collection.

The Glastonbury highlight for us this year though was the Coldplay performance. We saw them at the Etihad Stadium in June last year. It was a fantastic performance very much like this year’s Glastonbury show. Whilst we like their music, we are also on the same page when it comes to their commitment to working towards a more sustainable future. Their last tour cumulated in them reducing the carbon impact of their concerts by nearly 60% compared to where they were back in 2017. Amazingly, since that time the group have funded the planting of seven million trees. Our three or four trees planted each year pales into insignificance for sure. They do have to use airplanes and big articulated trucks to move their equipment around between shows. They have a lot of equipment. However, the band’s lead singer Chris Martin always tries to use public transport when he can. At the group’s recent concert in Cardiff, he arrived on the train. Which is another couple of connections for me and I guess a cue to finish this blog and get ready to fly to Paris. Normal service will be resumed next weekend.