Another long tale

This afternoon I was organizing and cataloguing my record collection (mostly vinyl). It's nothing spectacular; about 170 rock and jazz albums and about 40 classical. In the process I discovered that in the rock/jazz group, just four artists (Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin) account for a quarter of the entire collection. Add to that David Bowie (a hangover from university), Dire Straits, Genesis, Judy Tzuke, Miles Davis, Rush, Al Stewart, Donald Fagan and Joan Armatrading, just 13 artists in all, and that's half the collection.  The other 83 discs are divided fairly evenly between 66 different artists with only one example of 50 artists work. The modal average release year is 1975 and the median 1979. The most recent album was Continuum (John Mayer) released in 2006. Over half were recorded between 1969 and 1980. Clearly my listening tastes got stuck in the 70s. It's at this point you might rightly suggest that I need to get out more.

Trajectories

My paternal grandparents owned a textile shop and a small factory. They had a chauffeur, a cook and a live-in maid. My maternal grandfather worked in the city - he was company secretary of a marine cable-laying firm. My mother's parents had a cook and a maid.

My parents didn't have live-in staff, but someone came in twice a week to help my mother clean the house and help with the laundry and the ironing. They also had a gardener, a retired policeman called Mr Fullagar, who came once a week.

We have no staff, no one cleans and the house is perceptually messy, and the garden is a jungle.

Given this trajectory, it's a good job we don't have children.

Role reversal

Britain, the country of the village bobby, where policemen carried truncheons not firearms, and relied on social capital to maintain order, is turning to Bill Bratton, an American, who hails from a society in which there is often a hostile relationship between the public and law enforcement, to provide advice on community policing. What an ironic reversal of roles.
In the same vein, perhaps the Brits might return the favor by offering some suggestions for reforming the American political system?