During preparation camp my working days are very long, but I hope to take time out to watch the torch relay myself.
E.L.: To be honest, I haven't shone a torch inside myself to really get to know my reaction to all of this.
Interpreting Arlen's classic torch songs, "I Had Myself a True Love" and "The Man That Got Away," Ms. McDonald goes against custom by making each an expression of private sorrow instead of public kvetching.
It's another song about the downsides of marriage, seen from the beginning, or what the narrator remembers of it: "But I was a romantic kid / I found myself a torch and a book and I hid / but nothing ever scared me like a wedding did".
Since recovering for the rush of the Citizen Relay: a project that attempted to capture alternative voices and stories of the Scottish torch relay, our research team (David McGillivray, Matt Frew, Gayle McPherson and myself) are now setting our sights on London.
"You Pulled Me Through," "Giving Myself" and "Invisible" are the kind of slow-burn torch songs that Ms. Hudson calls "power ballads" and claims as her specialty.
It takes the introspective themes we've loved so well in American literature — from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" to A. M. Homes's "Music for Torching" — and points them in a different direction.
Taking an off-topic break from Baltic macro-economics, I find myself pondering the European press coverage of the Olympic torch relay through London, Paris and other European cities, and the demonstrations being mounted by pro-Tibet activists.
At some point, along the outer perimeter, I stopped before each tiki torch and held my palms on either side: "I honor my power," I found myself saying, not quite sure why.
A few years ago, myself and an old soulie called John O'Brien, who used to work at The Torch, approached Stoke council about getting a plaque put up where the club used to be, but they weren't interested.
