What To Say

Sometimes you just have nothing to say, although that's not quite true, because if you say you have nothing to say then you are actually saying something. I am quite aware I have set myself a target and need to average eleven posts every nine days to hit, so it's hardly an impossible task, like say the Twelve Labours of Hercules.

Today is a particularly grey day and after yesterdays wonderful waterfall walk which was great countryside and chatting with some great people as I walked, often overtaking them, then lagging behind them as I took video and photographs.

Today I lunched with my dad at The Talbot and had turkey and pigs in blankets pie (here on Instagram) and learned about him "avoiding" National Service by going down the mines, sort of avoiding being run over by a car by diving under a train. We were talking about lift mechanisms and he said that the lift wasn't lowered , it just dropped and scared the hell out of him until he got used to it. That would have really done my head in.

Another thing was a comment by a Royal Mail manager who said if you want a job doing get Michael Singleton to do it. It's funny that a number of people I work with say they ask me do do things because they know it gets done quickly. So we obviously have a few common traits.

So what music should I choose for this one, on Tuesday at Skipton Sound Bar I bought a few 12" singles , one was "Naked In The Rain" by Blue Pearl. For some reason the song or band meant something to me, maybe it was one my girls liked but when I played it I didn't recognise it, but it is rather good electro dance, so definitely worth sharing with you, in the M-People / toned down KLF universe.

The Eyes Have It

For some reason this song title has mean going through my mind.As far as I know it's a one hit wonder (actually it's not Karel Fialka had another hit with "Hey Matthew" which my mum loved because it reminded her of my nephew) and while it is a decent pop song, very rooted in the eighties (not necessarily a bad thing) , and I probably have a copy of it.

The thing is the title got me thinking of how impressed I am with how contact lenses work, they're flexible plastic , stick to your eye (sounds horrible when you have never had to do it but becomes very easy and natural once you get the hang of it) and sometimes they don't go on properly but then slide round until your vision becomes perfect. How amazing is that,it does amaze me every day.

So this post gets this out of my head, and allows me to share this song with you,I know it's fairly short, but that's the nature of a diary you write what you need to.

I said that I had to do 46 posts to hit 366 for this year but this is post 331 so I only have 35 more to do, so that's probably about nine thousand words which is less than I expected.

So I'll leave you with "The Eyes Have It" by Karel Fialka which is almost impossible to track down is physical or digital form these days.

Connect

There are lots of ways to instantly connect with people today and most of the time it is instant only determined by whether who you are connecting with are not doing something else. Tonight in Settle I saw an impressive sunset which I shared on Instagram and therefore Facebook and my eldest daughter saw and loved it.

Sharing photographs with friends and sharing them with the world can introduce you to more people and potential friends. Although I lose count of the amount of social media options that we have, but as a kid my options were phone call, letter writing and face to face and that was about it.

I have friends in Scotland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, The USA and Canada and probably lots more countries, and now the ability to instantly contact most of them if I should want, and they can contact me, and this option is open to anyone who embraces digital channels.

We can still write letters and call via landlines, and face to face is still the best way to communicate and is my preferred option.

On the blogging front I'm hoping to hit 366 posts by New Year's Eve ,if I don't do it this year I probably never will. I know I used to post some one line things but now I tend to do 250-300 words per post so that's going to be eleven thousand words before the end of the year, though if I could start writing the novel I want to write I would be producing that many words a day at least.

So what song should I share with you? Given that we should treasure our past and embrace the future I'm going to go with "Five Years Time" by Noah and the Whale which I love every time I hear it.

Start Again

Surprisingly this month is already the highest monthly hit rate for a month since I started and effectively this seemed to be kicked off my the demise of Google+ , because I looked for another way of sharing my posts and tried MeWe that doesn't really seem to have taken off but provides an easy way to copy the link post which I shared on Twitter. That then seemed to kick it off. Under google posts, generally a good visit count would be 100 , average about 50 but when Google+ went I was lucky to get 20. Facebook doesn't really seem to help although a few of my friends visit via that link.

Anyway after sharing on Twitter I was picked up by Feedburner and since then I have had more than a thousand visits a day, still very few comments, so maybe it's all robots, though I would love to see comments from friends. Yesterday I had 2,600 visits , that's more than one a minute which is impressive.

I finished "The Secret Commonwealth" by Philip Pullman and although I am a very slow reader I always have a book on the go, and while my last few books have been fiction, I have a lot of music biographies and commentaries still unread. I briefly considered "Tarantula" by Bob Dylan which I have read several times, and for me is an easy enjoyable read being a stream of consciousness based narrative by Dylan. I decided to take "On Some Faraway Beach" by David Sheppard , the biography of Brian Eno.

When I opened it I immediately baulked, 450 pages of of tiny unrelenting text, books like this really do initially put me off and need to be special to keep me on board. I'm on to chapter two so it is actually a goer and will be my book for the next few weeks.

Today I am also going back to contact lenses so that's another restart for me, and at the moment the lenses feel absolutely fine.

Looking out the window it's still dark grey and featureless, but every day is another day of potential to discover and do new things. The David Sheppard book opens with a quote from the brilliant Edward De Bono who's books and methods taught me a hell of a lot:

"“The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all. ”"

... and I suppose that just hooked me into the book. Many of the chapters are named after Brian Eno songs and pieces, so we will go with the creepily ominous  "The Great Pretender" from "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" a truly wonderful album.

Enjoy your Monday, Make it special.

Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do)

I am not a fan of Strictly Come Dancing but caught a bit of it tonight in which Kelvin Fletcher and Oti Mabuse danced to a cover of Frank Wilson's "Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do" which is one of the greatest singles ever, and a staple of the Northern Soul circuit.

At one point this was the most expensive vinyl single ever sold worth over £25,000 according to this article although thanks to digital such as MP3, CD and Youtube anyone can listen to it and thanks to reissues anyone can own a vinyl copy a;though not the Motown copy of which only three copies may be in existence.

Part of the reason I am writing this, is that although I have the song on several compilations and can listen to it on Youtube I think it might sound great on my record player, so I am considering buying a copy. The cheapest I've seen one is £3.49 plus postage but I will decide whether to do it after posting this. I can get it from Amazon by Monday but that will be a bit more expensive.

On a separate not the visits to the blog are slowly increasing and think that this month will be another record and expect to easily hit 400K visits by the end of the year and maybe half a million some time next year.

So you know what record this is, enjoy it , and below are links to buy from Amazon plus some Northern Soul compilations. Listen to it and I am sure you will want your own copy too.

A Record - Godbluff

This is post 317 this year, that surpasses last year's total of 316, so any more posts this year will just cement 2019 as my most prolific posting year ever. I have no need to actually surpass that, and this year I wasn't actually trying to surpass last year, but I just did.

This, for some reason reminded me of "Godbluff" by Van Der Graaf Generator, another of my favourite albums, which consists of four songs and is an incredibly atmospheric album punctuated by Peter Hamill's staccato stabbing words and vocals. The NME reviewed it favourably but commented that it needed a format that allowed it to be played non stop (this was mid seventies, 1975). Obviously CD facilitated this but there was the option of recording it to one side of a C90 cassette or if you were posh a cassette player that had autoreverse. Classical music had the same problem, but I play vinyl now and don't mind turning the record over, and also think that twenty minutes is a fine length to listen to a piece of music.

I found a copy of the album, so you can also listen to it non stop now thanks to digital technology or you can buy it on the link below.

This morning I was getting my weekly tablets, and one of the things is that tablets have their own boxes and colour scheme. This morning I notices that my Metformin have changed from a blue compact box to a green long box, the same a s Doxazosin. I had mistakenly pulled out some new Metformin instead of Doxazosin. Now I know we are resistant to change, even when it benefits us, but this is not a good change, I could have been double dosing on Metformin and not getting Doxazosin. Now I spotted it but there may be many who don't do this. I think I may go to chemist and feed this back, you can see here. on my Instagram feed.

It's minus 3 degrees centigrade, cars are iced up, so will be a cold walk to work.

In The Middle Of The Night ...

Sometimes you just wake up and feel you want to do something. I can't concentrate enough to read read, and I can't really pick up an instrument an play because it makes noise and disturbs others, I can't put a record on ar watch TV because when I feel like this it's not a headphones moment, so I find that writing I blog post can satisfy the need to do something vaguely creative and run my mind down a bit so I can then slip back to bed and get some sleep.

It is now five am on Sunday morning, but middle of the night can be any time between going to bed and getting up. It's black outside the window, but not particularly cold so I didn't have to get dressed to write this (but I'm sure you didn't really need to know that) but it is also very peaceful.

This week I will hit my annual record for blog posts which will be 317 (this is post 315 and last year I posted 316 times) . That's like 17 posts every 20 days or 26 posts a month which is fairly close to being daily, although some days I have done multiple posts (like yesterday).. I should actually try to see if I can do a lot of posts in a day, although I don't think it would be possible because all these posts are on the fly  about things that interest me, rather than to hit a target, although if a target is achievable I am often tempted towards it.

So I am starting to feel a little tired so I think we simply go for "In The Midnight Hour" by Wilson Pickett and I found this great performance by him and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform "In the Midnight Hour" at the 1999 Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, when Bruce Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Comedy (and a Smile) is Good For You

This is post #300 this year. Here is Post #300 from last year, which is basically a list  of reasons that I have come to love being in Settle.

I've known a lot of people who are only happy when they are miserable, and are always looking for something to complain about. The glass is always too full or not full enough ensuring there is always something to complain about.

You should always smile at people, more often than not they will smile back and then at least two people are happier than before you smiled. Smiling release endorphins and takes much less effort than frowning, so a smile will just make things better.

Share a joke, or in our digital world share a funny video, YouTube is full of things that will make you laugh, but sharing it with friends just makes it better. Smiling is good for you , search Smiling Benefits on google and you find articles like this

Now I wasn't intending to write anything tonight ,  but things happen and you just want to share and smile. Seven Days In  has had over 340K visits since I started it twelve years back and last month there were 43K visits that's about one a minute over the last month.

I wanted to use this to share one of my favourite songs , "Comedy" by Liverpool band Shack , which I play often and it always raises my spirits. So go out there and SMILE .

>

Chart Plan - #Oktoberfest #36 - Janelle Monáe - I Got The Juice

I think tonight I will put together a chart of all the drinks mentioned in my #Oktoberfest sequence. Normally when I do things like this I plan them to ensure I know what's coming next and ensure I don't repeat myself.

Early last year I heard what has been my favourite and most played album over the last two years , "Dirty Computer" by Janelle Monáe , and I often listen to it when walking to work. I thought about buying it on vinyl (which I could do) but it is naturally digital and here is my original post about it. This features the Dirty Computer Emotion Picture and fifty minute science fiction story / music video based on the album well worth watching on your big screen.

So #Oktoberfest continues with "I Got The Juice" by Janelle Monáe and again I am stretching the nature of drink, but you can drink any form of juice , even from Janelle Monáe so it does fit into my definition for #Oktoberfest and I am way over the 31 I expected for October (on 36 now) and will probably do two more.

Janelle Monáe also appeared in the Channel 4 Electric Dreams episode "Autofac" based on a short story by Philip K Dick.


The last couple of days the number of visits have increased from 1200 to 1800 a day , an increase of 50%.  October has had over 40K visits which is the highest ever (39K last month) so I don't know if 400K visits before the end of 2019 is a possibility as it stands at 334K now.

Nothing To Say - #Oktoberfest #25 - Whiskey In The Jar - The Dubliners

I keep toying with the idea of doing a one or two word blog post just to see if anyone notices or not as they are all robots (I know they are not because although I am virtually unfollowed, and I'm not sure what benefit following gives the follower in the case of this blog, friends leave comments about posts on Facebook) but in 2010 I was on holiday in Oswaldkirk and posted this. It had a link to a to photos from the holiday but , really, thirty words, but the cat picture is good and the photograph link has some decent stuff on there from my point of view.

So anyway it's Monday morning and I don't have much to say after a weekend of Football disappointment in which Preston North End lost to a goal in the 98th minute (though Reading are a real bogey team for us) , Newcastle lost to Chelsea (that was not unexpected, the fact it was only 1-0 was), Liverpool's juggernaut was finally unexpectedly stopped by a misfiring Manchester United but the were not beaten (and I love Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Jurgen Klopp) and Ayr (Fiona's team)  were unexpectedly beaten by Dunfermline (who are my friend Scott's team so that was good for him).

Anyway, as I said, I have nothing to say this morning, so without further ado we will continue #Oktoberfest with "Whiskey in The Jar" by The Dubliners. That's the third time this song has appeared on this sequence but it's a great song and all the versions I have shared are excellent and worth your listening time, and The Dubliners live take here is certainly livelier than the Thin Lizzy / The King takes

Dawn is breaking now so I may get a photo or two on my walk to work this morning.

By the way the blog visits has now passed 320K and although this most was meant to be short , it's more than 300 words (I think my average is about 250 words), so so much for nothing to say , whether it's worth reading is a different matter entirely.

Walking Off The Walking Dead - #Oktoberfest #16 - Jockey Full Of Bourbon - Tom Waits

I've finally given up on The Walking Dead as it seems to have drifted too far from it's main concept. Yes it's post apocalyptic and things can go off it so many directions but I am still vaguely wondering what happened to Rick when he was spirited off in that unknown helicopter. I'm not that observant so I may have missed something and the latest series started and it was like I couldn't remember where I was in it and the zombies are just an embellishment rather than the result of what caused this situation. No doubt people will be able to enjoy it and I didn't stop watching because it was bad, but because it had run out for me.

One of the problems is there is some much excellent television and only a limited amount of time. There is nothing wrong with ending a series, I'm thinking "Game of Thrones" , "Black Sails" and "Breaking Bad" but I have now picked up "Vikings" and "Preacher" and with "His Dark Materials" on the way I think my television time is spoken for well into 2020.

For some reason I thought I could hit a record number of annual posts this months by instigating #Oktoberfest but I still have to post 43 more seventeen days to go , so three posts a day is not going to happen but I will likely complete it in November.

So the #Oktoberfest song today is "Jockey Full of Bourbon" by Tom Waits from "Raindogs", and it was Hannah Berry (Comic Laureate) on here Paperback Writers show on 6Music yesterday who played it and reminded that if I need songs about drink Tom Waits provides a rich vein to mine. I had been having problems trying to think of songs related to drink but I am sure I can hit another 15-20 by the end of the month.

It's a greyish Monday but go out and hit the world.

Newcastle to Whitby by Train - #Oktoberfest #6 - Gin Soaked boy - Tom Waits

I decided too to try Newcastle to Whitby by train as I hadn't done it before, didn't realise there was a direct train (26 stops) and a return fare for two was only thirty pounds. On the Friday going down the train stopped at Hartlepool because of a broken down freight train but Northern rail laid on a taxi to Whitby resulting in us getting there half an hour earlier than expected.

It's a scenic and long (timewise) route, but anyone can do it plus you get to the end and don't have to find a car park. You have to be selective in what you buy because you have to carry everything back, but the peace of mind that the relaxation gives you is so worth it. My next two holidays are by train and it really makes it more of a holiday for me. I know some will require a car but it is so pleasant when you can do it by bus or train.

I was surprised to come home to see that the blog had passed 300K visits, despite no posts since Friday.

So continuing #Oktoberfest we're hitting the Gin with Tom Waits' "Gin Soaked Boy" from "Swordfishtrombones" . My friends Peter and Jane run The Northumberland Gin Company so worth trying if you are a Gin connoisseur.

#Oktoberfest #4 - Whiskey In The Jar - The King

I was not sure which version of this I was going to share, for me the definitive version in the Thin Lizzy one but for others it's The Dubliners and those may both reappear this month in the #Oktoberfest sequence but I found this live take of "Whisky In The Jar" by The King who covers songs by departed rock stars, and he usually delivers in spades with panache and an obvious sense of humour,

I started this this morning and know I need to finish this now, though I am feeling grotesquely lazy and unable to think of anything to add to this superb rendition. The next few days I can see me not posting anything , so now I am writing about my life as a failure as I can't even think of anything to blog about, although on the positive side although I can't think of anything to write I am still managing to fill up the page a bit.

It's also amazing how in depth these quite tiny posts seem to be when viewed on a mobile device while in your average browser it does look quite short.

I was wondering about whether it was "whisky" or "whiskey" and came upon this explanation:

"The Scots spell it whisky and the Irish spell it whiskey, with an extra 'e'. This difference in the spelling comes from the translations of the word from the Scottish and Irish Gaelic forms. Whiskey with the extra 'e' is also used when referring to American whiskies."

So the program got it wrong as the song is Irish in origin.

OK so I have done my 250 words, so this post is not too short after all and you have learned how to spell the subject of the drink in this post depending on where you are.

More Words

I could have had a one word post title but was getting a bit bored with single word ones and the chane is that I will duplicate something, although that is always a probability.

Today is grey, wet and we have had a lot of rain, it's not even a nice Autumn day, just a drab grey day although it's always up to us to make something of the days that come our way. While sometimes we might feel hard done by I always try to look for the positives in any situation ( well as long as the situation is not really disastrous)  and you can usually find something to be positive about, well I do.

I am listening to Radcliffe and Maconie and they're playing "Future Days" by Can which is a laid back almost hypnotic stretch and I was thinking of including it here, but maybe not. I do remember watching Top of the Pops as a teenager and being shocked when Can were on there playing "I Want More", now that I would share but it's not available on Youtube (the Top of the Pops performance).

I was just thinking I done over 2K posts on this particular blog, and average, these days maybe 250 words a post (I did one of 2K words just to see if I could write that was back in 2011 here and very contrived  but my first one, a sort of mission statement for this blog was about 50 words here) so that is about half a million words that have flowed from my fingers, enough for a very short novel if it made any sense.

I was vaguely thinking of theming my October posts on drink because of the Octoberfest celebration, although I don't actually drink. So here's the thing I will do a post a day and there will be a song included that is drink related although it will be mostly alcohol related it will be anything that you can drink , so that will be thirty one drink related posts . By the way this post is about four hundred words (you can count them).

So what music should we go with, well "I'm Writing A Novel" by Father John Misty seems appropriate, although I am still hoping that inspiration will turn up and I will actually metaphorically put pen to paper and get my arse in gear to produce a pice of lasting art, although in a way tht's what this blog is.

Bore

I keep wanting to write a really short post , one or two words to see what happens, if it causes any reaction, but as you can see it's not going to happen in this one. I once saw a blog where every post was just a link, I don't know if it was paid links but there was no description so it seemed a little pointless although if it was a pay per click link that could be lucrative if robots actually count as clicks.

This blog has links to Amazon as you will see from the strib at the bottom , plus Google ads that pay me about a pound a week,  and links to Topcashback who give me £7.50 if you join and sign up. These days that's about it. Amazon however keep introducing more rules not to pay, but this is after it becomes so integral to your site that it's more hassle to remove them than just leave them in.

I've sort of decided that I want to hit another annual record for posts but we shall see if that happens, I need to post about 25 times a month til New Years Eve.

This must rate as one of the most pointless, uninformative, boring posts I've ever done because it tells you nothing interesting or outside of my life bubble.

I am a quarter of the way though "The God Delusion" and Dawkins is currently pointing out the glaring error that are the various bibles which the historical inaccuracies and the the scriptures that were deemed "not good enough" (ie  too ridiculous).

6Music music played something from Penguin Cafe now led by Arthur Jeffes since the sad death of his father and have dropped the Orchestra part of the name. I went to their site and found this fifteen minute Tiny Desk Concert which is very good. I love the brilliant use of repetitive motifs in their music which continues their sound in an almost hypnotic fashion. I counted four "Peaky Blinders" caps in the video

So it it turns out that I did find something worthwhile to include in this post.

Have a great Saturday.

Satellite

At the current rate of views I will have had 300K visits by mid October. The Feedburner boost is still continuing so I'm getting more than a thousand visits a day. This is a huge surprise but do wish it would translate into actual followers or something, but what the hell SevenDaysIn is popular with someone or something.

I wasn't going to write this, like I wasn't going to write the last post, but I am feeling weirdly tired but also wide awake. I think my mind is tired and so is my body , but my body does not want sleep, it wants to keep doing things, hence the fingers to keyboard causing this bog post to take shape. I am expecting maybe a hundred words or so then I will crash into bed and fall asleep maybe.

This morning when the alarm went off I was in some kind of deep sleep state and I really did not want to leave my bed, but, as always, I did and crawled to the bathroom still wanting to turn around and sleep.

Stepwise I hit 17.5K steps today that's about  five and a half miles.

I heard the sing "Satellite" by The Hooters today and it is still brilliant taking it out of the televangelists so sort of appropriate given I am reading "The God Delusion".

So before Saturday comes I will share this nugget of prose with you.

Reading Appendices

I know I was on the last leg of "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" have finally met the subject of the final book "Leviathan" then way before the end the book ends! It's been a wild kaleidoscopic ride (and I know that probably isn't a correct metaphor, even if it is a metaphor) but here I was at the end.

So I have still nearly ten per cent of the text to go through that consist of the appendices which I suppose is unusual for a work of mainly fiction with the odd drops of reality and even truth in there, so I still probably have a week's reading to go.

Is this a book I will keep? I'm not sure. I've loved reading it but I'm fairly certain this is a one read book for me and not something, for me, that I can dip in and out of, but I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to go off on a mad literary ride. I'm not sure what book I will read next, maybe something with a more stable narrative.

Also this week I have been, for me, binge watching TV taking in Catch-22 , Parks and Recreation, Carnival Row and Scamalot.

September is a 30 month so I need to slightly up my daily steps but that's going OK after last month fairly smashing it. I'm just wondering if I could maybe hit half a million steps in a month, which would require me to hit 17K steps a day so maybe that's not really an option as I am generally to lazy.

The sky outside is grey, the heating is on , there are seagulls crying which indicates rain but we are at the first Tuesday in September.

In that past month the blog has now had 30K visits thanks to Feedburner picking it up again and I'm glad that I have a new top post which is here. thankfully replace this, which was stuck there for years.

So what song for today. I really haven't a clue but as the KLF are the reason I am reading "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" we can go with "Justified And Ancient" their mash up with Tammy Wynette.

Enjoy your Tuesday.

Quarter Of A Million

I've hit quarter of a million visits on the blog since it started, and while I don't write a lot on each post, fairly bite size chunks, it is an improvement on when I started. I have lots of friends who started blogs that have then lapsed, a few of my favourites that you see on the right hand side of this have not been updated for a hell of a long time. Often people write extremely long essay type pieces which  take time to put together (which often we don't really have) and then sometimes people see a huge chunk of text and it just turns them off, even though the subject or writer actually interest the reader.

I have been criticised for writing documentation at work, because there is not enough writing on each page (never for the actual content). The thing is white space actually draws people in because they see that they can read and take in what's on that page. I'm not sure about others but I find all my documentation useful because it's easy to find and take in what you need to know but that is just self recommendation.

"The Illuminatus! Trilogy" is severely blocks of non stop text, so very intimidating, but it has managed to draw me in and keep me hooked but that is a definite exception to the rule

Also while these blog posts might be seemingly slight on a computer browser, when viewed on a mobile device they become reasonably digestible articles, not too long but but not throw away.

So Graham Parker's "New York Shuffle" is playing on 6Music , and it's a brilliant reminder of the wonderful Graham Parker who is still making great music. Thanks for that Chris Hawkins.

New Targets? Well I can probably hit 320 posts this year, which will be another record and well within my grasp and unexpected as I was aiming for 200 posts this year. It is possible I may hit 300K visits this year but that's dependent on stuff beyond my control , also I'd like to see the Christopher Lee video hit 50K visits as it hit 30K this year.