Today I went to find a robin.
The low, late autumn sun shone bright and the sky was blue. The breeze was light, and the few remaining dry, crisp leaves rustled loudly as they fell to the floor like autumn snow. In just a few days it will be December.

Today I went to find a robin.
The teazles grew tall and fierce in the harsh sun at the lakeside. In the shelter of the riverbed, the light was softer, diffused by the trees. A broken willow attempted to bar passage, but its heart wasn't in it and I slipped by.

I will have to find my robin on another day.

Oh yes indeed, it has been a musical weekend...
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LM Cooke Music has been a little quiet in public since the release of first solo choon, 'Poor Jenny' (still available for free download on Bandcamp - just name your price as Zero). But that doesn't mean it hasn't been quite noisy behind closed doors. Especially this weekend, where against a backdrop of lashing rain I've been putting together the first edits of another three (that's three!) tunes.
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Recording has paused on at least one because it appears I need a horn. Not just any old horn either, a big, pointy Viking style horn. And not just for drinking from - It's actually a blow-y type horn that I need. Similar to this, seen at Glastonbury last month. Maybe a bit smaller. A bit (no, that man doesn't have one very long fang).

What manner of music could require a Viking horn, you ask? Well, actually, this isn't for a Viking type song at all (ha, fooled you!). To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what genre it would fall into, but what's a genre between friends? You're savvy enough to choose your music based on whether you like how it sounds, rather than whether it falls into one particular box or another, I'm sure.

And what of the other things in progress this weekend? Well, there is a reworking of a traditional nursery rhyme on the cards, and also a song about a wolf. There *may* be more wolf songs coming up soon. Maybe even a whole wolf cycle. But not a wolf on a cycle. That would be weird.

Excitingly, LM Cooke music has been asked to be part of a forthcoming musical project in the new year, so what with all the new music in progress, 2017 is looking bright, despite today's rain. Don't forget to like the Facebook page to keep in touch with the latest info. And if that's not enough:

• Mediaeval Biaetches are in secret discussions to bring your more biaetch for your buck (or at least, more biaetch). Shhh!
• The late Crimson Clocks have 2 tracks included on Steampunk Records Volume 4, along with a host of other steampunk artists. It's available now from Steampunk Records - it's limited edition so get it before it's gone... 

Today is a full moon. Not only that, apparently it is going to be the biggest full moon that we've seen in the UK since 1948, and it won't be this close again until 2034. Tonight's moon is a supermoon. That doesn't mean a moon with a big 'S' on its chest. It means it's big.

It's cloudy here at the moment, so I don't know whether I'll get to see the great, big moon. It will be rising here at 16:48 GMT, so I shall do my best.

It's interesting the effect the moon has on people. I remember a customer at a place I used to work who would always appear with ruffled hair when the moon was full. His behaviour at those times would match his hair; fractious and disturbed. It was an interesting coincidence, if coincidence it was. Of course, the word 'lunatic' comes from the root 'lunar'. Today's Telegraph newspaper carries an article that states that in 2011, over 40% of medical staff believed the moon had an impact on human behaviour, while in 2007, Sussex police placed extra staff on duty when the moon was full following research that showed a correlation between full moon and violent incidents.

Of course, there are other explanations. A full moon provides more light in the evening - the very reason Birmingham's 'Lunar Society' - great men such as Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin and others - chose to meet on a full moon, so that there was sufficient light for them to make their ways homeward in the days before streetlights. Perhaps it's also easier to commit crime if you can see what you're doing. And if you already have some mental health problems, perhaps the presence of huge, bright eye in the sky, preventing you from sleeping, could temporarily make those worse.

I like the moon. I find her reassuring. No matter what happens during the day, the moon endures. Even when you can't see her for clouds. One of my new musical compositions, Moon Song, is all about her (there might be a clue in the title). And the list of other musicians, writers, poets and more that she has inspired goes on and on. May she never crash, or be devoured from within by space fungus. And most especially, may she never be privatized. Sing for the moon!

Tonight I return to my academic background with a visit to Ridware History Society to give a talk on my Masters dissertation subject: Prostitution in Victorian Lichfield.

Lichfield, a small Cathedral City in Staffordshire may not seem the most obvious candidate for a study of prostitution. However, in its heyday, when the city was filled with a surfeit of single clerics, records of prostitution abounded. In later years Lichfield's strategic importance declined and visitors reduced, but in the latter half of the Victorian era, a new barracks for the Staffordshire Regiment was built on the outskirts of the city. This, in a time when debate was focusing heavily on the fairness - or otherwise -  of the Contagious Diseases Acts, was what prompted my study. The Contagious Diseases Acts were intended to reduced incidences of VD among Her Majesty's armed forces by detaining and treating women identified as prostitutes. Just the women. Not the men. The debates turned into the first female-led campaigns, and paved the way for the later suffrage movements.  

My study included case studies, including one particularly formidable lady. 
Sarah was Lichfield's most prolific offender during the period of my study. Her ‘career’ stretched the full length of the study, from age twenty-three until  forty-one.  It is likely that she had been arrested before then too -  as early as April 1879 she was called “a shameless woman who has figured many times in court.” On her fiftieth occasion before the court, the newspapers called it her “jubilee”

Sarah was married, which research suggests is unusual for a street prostitute.  It isn't impossible that she turned to prostitution to supplement her family’s income.  She also had a child. She experienced periods of homelessness, which included a time where she and her husband separated – and she wasn't averse to resorting to physical violence to settle disputes with her husband.

Her periods of homelessness are perhaps a good indicator of the poverty of some women who turned to prostitution. Studies have shown that prostitutes were generally from lower paid occupations, working as domestic servants and agricultural labourers, where employment might be seasonal. Sarah's husband John was recorded as a labourer.  This, too, may have been seasonal or poorly paid, and in one occasion where Sarah was reported as homeless, her husband having been sentenced to three weeks gaol for sleeping outside only days before.  Sarah and her family were then recorded living at various addresses in Lichfield for the next few years, during which time she served at least eleven gaol sentences - one of four months in 1889 - and received eleven fines.  In November 1889, John was living in Sarah's home with another woman and Sarah, recently released from gaol, was no longer welcome. She spent some time living with her mother, and ‘working in the fields’, and was also arrested several times for sleeping outdoors. She clearly lived a chaotic lifestyle, and her income may have fluctuated greatly over the years.

 Sarah scandalised the court, and her antics were reported in some glee by the local newspaper. On one occasion she told the court to laughter that the arresting Police Constable was a 'respectable friend' of her; while on another, when sentenced to one month imprisonment with hard labour she told the magistrate, 'Thank you very much, sir, I can do that standing on me 'yed'. Again the court laughed.

Despite her entertainment value and her seemingly poor circumstances, very little was done to actually help Sarah. The Victorian focus was on keeping scandal from the streets. It really didn't matter too much what they got up to behind closed doors, including whether they starved. The ruling classes generally considered working class people to be undesirables, people who were necessary but only if they could be kept from sight, and not spoil the everyday aesthetic.
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In Sarah's case, nothing they did seemed to stop her. She was arrested numerous times for vagrancy, drunkenness, fighting and public disorder (prostitution itself was never made illegal). She took 'the pledge' (to abstain from drink) many times, but always returned to the bottle. The punishments imposed on her did nothing to help her, and certainly did not control her - and her uncontrollable-ness may have actually been her biggest crime.

Isn't it interesting to think that over 100 years later, we're still debating how women and working classes should be controlled?