On The Outrun

"The Outrun" by Amy Liptrot, has started well for me. The Outun is a field on Amy's Orkney farm, and the prologue introduces why her life has been torn apart by mental health issues and religion.

The book brings into play the magic and mysticism of Orkney, Standing Stones and Skara Brae, as well as the wildlife. There are magic disappearing islands and lots of references to Celtic mythology.

This is a good start.

 "Jerusalem Commands" by Michael Moorcock is on hold while I read The Outrun

I am still reading "Imajica" by Clive Barker on my Kindle. This is a book I never want to end. When I finish it, I just restart it.

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog, which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

The Music is "Man of Aran" by Sea Power

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal, but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
5. The King Of Elfland's Daughter - A Wonderful Book By Lord Dunsany
6. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
7. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
8. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
9. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer and this is her Instagram

Rainy Day

Turkish Grand Bazaar - Grainger Market

Well today started with blue skies , but very cold, now we have a bit of rain. It's nice to have a restful weekend . I visited the Grainger Market  and got some amazing bookmarks from the Turkish Bazaar, which I instagrammed at Christmas as well.

I then wandered past Reflex and saw an impressive looking Ron Kavana boxed set for under three quid  called "Irish Ways - The Story of Ireland In Song, Music and Poetry". It's available quite reasonable on Amazon as well here

CDs from Reflex plus a Bookmark

Obviously this talk of music as well as bookmarks means I do need to put something relevant to the post on here, but should it be British Sea Power or Ron Kavana?

I love both these artists  and recommend both to everyone, and you can find lots of both of them on Youtube.

But having thought about the British Sea Power
 preview of the album I've bought would be a perfect addition to this post, and it could whet your appetite if you don't know them.


Anyway I will leave you with this as I get off to bed, sleep well all.

Positively Now Street

Not sure what to say this post is about. There's a lot of bad things happening , mostly to people fairly far removed from me. It's therefore easy to write about stuff complaining about the bad , and lets face it it's always easy to find something wrong or to complain about stuff , without having an idea how to fix it. Anyway I always lokk for good stuff , positives , things to make me smile. I love seeing pics of my daughter Juliet and her fiance Paul's cat and the fantastic meals they make  and my daughter Kirsty's music and gaming posts  and her and Mark's dogs' Moll's pictures and videos. There is a lot in life to enjoy.

My Music Boxes - Abba , Roxy , Little Feat etc

Anyway a couple of things I was looking at a small part of my record collection , particularly the Original Album series and other boxes and  realised than the starting with Madness - The Lot and finishing with Little Feat's Original Album series contains around 100 CDs which is approximately 100 hours or four continuous days of (though I say it myself) excellent music. And that's just a single row on a rack. I'm still ripping this lot to hard disc so I can listen through my home network.

This week I was introduced to the attrociously named Deezer , which has an equally attrocious sign up process expecting a Facebook account these days , but once you're on it is effectively a music library service. You never own the music but for a fiver a month you can listen to anything they have , although the excellent Tempest by Bob Dylan is missing from their base , but I have been listening to the new British Sea Power album courtesy of Deezer.

My home studio - now operational

The other thing is that I finally have my home studio working consisting of an iPad with Garageband and a couple of other music software things, plus an Alesis I/O Dock and Q49 Keyboard , all now working after months of trauma getting things to talk to each other.

The I/O Dock lets you plug things into it like guitars and microphones so expect to have something online this week , just a bit of ambient improvisation , but that has made me really happy as well. Just hope the noise that comes out thats good.

I finished EH Gombrich's A Little History Of The World , the book I'll be distributiong for World Book Night 2013 and think I write a piece and put together a video montage of this years books. But we shall see. Any the book is excellent and fantastic for any parents with children under twelve who are open to learning about history. Well written and jargon free. Recommended for anyone.

Finally next week have tickets to see Omid Djalili at The Stand in Newcastle so things are generally good.