Luke's Notes
Luke's Notes
Luke Martell
This is a personal blog and I post on social and green alternatives, education, books, stories of university life since 1990, politics, music, family, and other themes.
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The eleventh track of My Top Tracks When I was doing A levels at my local college in the early '80s the were two groups of students that hung out in the common room. One was the trendy types into Culture Club and so on with floppy...
On the book Half-Earth Socialism, an advocacy of a utopian ecological society that can stop the catastrophe of climate change. Lots of big problems hang over humans and other life on earth. I was born in the 1960s and this feels like the...
These are some of my favourite albums I listened to in 2025; not all I listened to, just some highlights for me. Quite a few were new releases in 2025, but not all by any means. I use the music streaming app Qobuz which doesn't have any...
I hated my very conservative school. At age 16 the other pupils all went on to the sixth form except, I think, one other person who left education altogether and me who left to do my A levels elsewhere. I went to the local further...
These notes on these two books by Fenner Brockway were originally in Books I Read in 2025 Part 2 but I've taken them from there and put them here in their own post. Fenner Brockway, Towards Tomorrow To return to the High Wycombe theme...
Continued from Books I Read in 2025 Part 1 Fenner Brockway, Towards Tomorrow To return to the High Wycombe theme from the Martin O'Neill book outlined in part 1, I met Fenner Brockway in December 1982. When I say 'met', we both spoke at...
Spies, detectives, and terrorists; westerns and Native American life; war and violence; gangs and prisoners; animals and humans; rebels and resistance; women and feminism; autobiography and memoir; racism and sectarianism; music and pop...
Communism and leftists; change and alternatives; colonialism and development; spies and terrorists; psychoanalysis and grief; crime and heroes; climate and sustainability; poverty and survival; football and footballers. 2021? I've been...
The 9th post of My Top Tracks I was depressed as a teenager. Who wasn't? There were probably some hormones going around. But for me it was mainly about society and circumstances. I lived in a suburban-feeling small town where most people...
This is the 8th post on My Top 100 Tracks I had an oud. It's a Middle-Eastern lute-like instrument. Roundabout 2000 or so I was given one as a gift. There are various types and mine was an Arabic oud from Egypt. I meant to learn how to...
This is the seventh post of My Top 100 Tracks When Patti Smith has come up in conversations in the past and people have said 'Oh, yeah, Because the Night, I love that song', I've always felt superior and sneery. It's her most...
The sixth post of My Top 100 Tracks I swim 3 times a week. It's about the only physical or sporting activity I'm any good at. I had lessons through my childhood so know roughly what you're supposed to do. Because of a bad back, swimming...
I first went to see Reading play football in the 1972-3 season aged just 8. They were in the 4th division, now League 2. We lived in Tilehurst in Reading and my dad took me and my brother to home matches. Sometimes my mum came too which...
Here is what Ina wrote about her Auntie Edie who she stayed with in summers in Newburgh in her childhood. There is a bit of overlap with what she wrote elsewhere about Uncle George and Newburgh, but also new things. Edith Mark‘s father...
My mum, Ina, when she was about 60, wrote an account of her childhood, 'Ina's Story' which I have posted here. Later in her life she wrote more about Newburgh in Scotland where she spent her summers in the late 1940s and '50s. The rest...