This is Gan Canny. (It’s by Ray Lonsdale, the same artist who conceived Tommy at Seaham.)

Seemingly inspired by a poem:-

On a plinth at Seaham’s harbour there is a memorial, titled The Coxswain, to the Lifeboat crews of Seaham:-

Head-on view:-

Reverse view:-

Memorial Plaque:-

Verse, “The Coxswain’s Cry.” Like Tommy, the memorial was sculpted by Roy Lonsdale:-

Seaham’s War Memorial is also on Terrace Green, near the statue of Tommy.

It’s a Celtic Cross with the column inscribed, “In grateful memory of our fellow townsmen who fell in the Great War and the World War,” and on the plinth, “for past, present and future conflicts.”

From seaward:-

Inscription on the War Memorial’s base. To, “The immortal dead.”

Underneath the “for past” inscription, “1914-1918” (or “1914-1919”) – the wreath obscured the last number:-

Second World War:-

Seaham is a town on the North Sea coast in County Durham.

The statue of Tommy is on the seafront in an area known as Terrace Green by Seaham’s War Memorial. It was erected in 2014 to mark the 100^th anniversary of the Great War.

Detail:-

Side view:-

Reverse:-

Its sculptor was Roy Lonsdale:-

Dedication plaques. The sculpture’s proper name is 1101, to reflect the minute of peace at the Armistice which ended the war:-

Other side view:-

There are more pictures of Tommy here.

The Pretty Things (whose member Phil May died last week) were a presence in and around my consciousness in the 1960s. I caught them on TV once and my father of course remarked they were far from pretty. Chart success mostly eluded them, though. However, I do recall vaguely that they were the first British band to sign to Tamla Motown in the US.

Like most early 1960s bands they started out playing the blues but they soon evolved. The were the first to produce a rock opera in the concept album (one of the first of those) S. F. Sorrow where they indulged psychedelic tendencies, but its release was messed up and it therefore appeared after The Who’s Tommy.

Below is an appearance from French TV in which they play a song from S. F. Sorrow. The introduction to this has pre-echoes of Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas and the visual styling and antics of the guy in the tricorne hat could have inspired The Alex Harvey Band.

The Pretty Things: Private Sorrow

Philip Dennis Arthur Wadey/Kattner (Phil May:) 9 /11/1944 – 15/5/2020. So it goes.

I’m afraid I can’t do anything but flinch when members of the UK’s present Government wax lyrical about our suddenly “wonderful” NHS. Pass the sick bucket.

(Especially egregious was the spectacle of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak applauding outside 10 Downing Street. A derisory photo-op if ever I saw one.)

This is the same NHS they cynically used to win a referendum on false pretences, that their political persuasion has been denigrating at every opportunity for almost as long as I can remember and that their Political Party has been deliberately running down for the past ten years in preparation for saying that it’s broken and must be sold off. Run down and underequipped so much that it’s not now in the state it could have been to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

Their attitude irresistibly reminds me of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, Tommy:-

O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s, “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s, “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play.