London Times: Condi goes on magical Beatles mystery tour

[DeepModem Mom]

Condi goes on magical Beatles mystery tour
Sarah Baxter

THE long and sometimes winding road from Birmingham, Alabama, where Condoleezza Rice bought her first Beatles record, to her friend Jack Straw’s door in Blackburn, Lancashire, covers 4,200 miles. But the American secretary of state will have another figure in mind when she visits him there later this month.

Could somebody please explain why there are “4,000 holes” in the foreign secretary’s Blackburn constituency? Along with millions of others, Rice was puzzled as a youngster by the lyrics of A Day in the Life on her copy of the album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band:

I heard the news today oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes
To fill the Albert Hall...

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She is due to visit Straw’s constituency as part of the special relationship they have developed in office. The foreign secretary toured Rice’s childhood haunts in Alabama last October — and sealed the visit with a kiss in front of the cameras....Rice is expected to give a talk to an invited audience in Blackburn organised by the Chatham House foreign policy think tank and the Today programme. As in Alabama, where she compared the struggle for civil rights with the Iraqis’ desire for democracy, her speech is likely to have a local flavour.

“The fact that Blackburn has a 20% to 25% minority population is fascinating,” she said....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2092618,00.html