IT'S surprising just what a difference a week makes.
And a lot of rain and quite a bit os sunshine, too.
I'm thinking of the humble spud and the fields that have oh-so-quickly turned from barren drills into colourful mosaics.
The tiny wisps of green peeping from the top of the drills have within a week or so really bushed out and pushed up. While there wouldn't be much in the way of tubers underground yet, there is an awful lot of growth going on.
This current weather will really suit them. The sunshine currently encouraging people to walk out without their jackets and coats is doing just the same for the potatoes, powering it and encouraging it to get out into the open air.
Elsewhere, cabbages are being planted in impressive blocks on some fields, with other crops being given the benefit of a plastic coat to keep them ever warmer.
All this is giving the rooks a good reason to rummage round the fields. And am I right in thinking that flocks of wood pigeons are more prevalent this year than last? They seem to be everywhere.
In Lord Sefton Way lapwings are trawling the new corn with partridges, looking particularly handsome when you glimpse them from the road.
Music on the Moss: It would be remiss not to refer to yesterday's sad news about the death of Bo Diddley. I remember saving up to buy my first record player and having no money left over to buy any records! After two weeks of silence I'd saved enough to buy my first LP. It was Bo Diddley's In The Spotlight. For 21/- [or twenty-one shillings, or £1 1s 0d, or a guinea for those who love old money] it was a really good buy. I still have it and still love the music on it.
While at school we had thrilled to the old red-and-yellow Pye R&B label records that featured Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, the latter apparently playing bass on many of the former's hits. They even recorded an album together, Two Great Guitars, with tracks like Jaguar And The Thunderbird.
Diddley's home-grown and much-copied rhythm - say "Shave and a haircut, two cents" and you have it - kept British groups going in the sixties r&b boom when rhythm and blues meant something entirely different to what it does today.
With Billy Boy Arnold on harmonica, Jerome Green on those trademark maraccas - and sly reply vocals on Say Man, reputedly the first rap song even though it was recorded in 1958 - Diddley had a fiercesome stage act. Many people still believe Elvis the Pelvis took his leg moves from the man the called "The Originator."
He was out on his own in employing women guitarists in an age when that didn't really happen. His half-sister The Duchess and then Lady Bo all helped power a catalogue of songs and sounds that kept up with musical fashion and electrical wizardry. Diddley was turning knobs all the way round to maximum long before it was fashionable or psychadelic.
And if you were to ask me to name the real rock-n-roll guitar, it would have to be Diddley's square Gretch. A killer instrument in sound and looks, although he had a stable of similar instruments built by various makers.
His music will live on. You'd be surprised at how many people have covered his songs. My particular favourite cover is Quicksilver Messenger Service's set of variations on Who Do You Love? over a whole side of their Happy Trails album.
A great musician who was under-rated by many people but a legend nonetheless.

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