The Cure: A Forest

Track of the Week - 19 February 2017

I had a birthday this week (another one!) so Mrs Tea at Johnny's and I took a trip out to the Living Rainforest near Newbury,

Their website says that: "The Living Rainforest offers a unique educational visit for people of all ages to learn how the future of tropical rainforests and other ecosystems is closely connected to human lives and lifestyles" and who am I to argue. It also makes you think about the wildlife that could disappear for ever if their habitat is lost.

You brush through enormous foliage as you walk around but the real stars are the animals. Blue poison dart frogs, monitor lizards, mudskippers, pygmy marmosets, toucans, java sparrows - I could go on. (Have your own debate about zoos here - I'm not getting involved.)

It's a cool little place and as our tickets last for a year we might go back when it's not half-term and we're falling over children.

The Cure's A Forest is a much more moody affair. From their 1980 album Seventeen Seconds it was the band's first top 40 single (it got to number 31). It's sparse, atmospheric sound is a long way from their more commercial, later 'Love Cats' period. (Not that there's anything massively wrong with that.)

And does young Robert Smith look like Ben Affleck?