My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It

“Only connect” is EM Forster’s best known adage about writing, though he didn’t mean it in the context of a “shitty WordPress blog”. Nevertheless I do find it fun sometimes to connect disparate things, so here goes. I was doing a turn in the garden this afternoon when I noticed that an old bucket left here by the previous occupant had corroded enough to develop a hole: This reminded me of the old song My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It and especially this very enjoyable version of it by Humphrey Lyttelton’s 1954 seven-piece live at the Conway Hall in London. It’s hard to believe that it’s 18 years since Humph passed away, but it’s great to hear his voice again in the introduction to the track which ends the A side of the album Humph at the Conway. The cartoon on the cover is by him too. The record features Humph on trumpet, the clarinet by Wally Fawkes (who plays the first clarinet solo) and Bruce Turner on alto sax who switches to clarinet for the second solo but plays sax in the ensembles…