Bookmarks

Still reading Dawn of the Dumb by Charlie Brooker, and charged my bookmark from the one I got made for me for reviewing a book on Norse mythology to a freebie I picked up on my last visit to Barter Books (link below).

It is really useful because it is like an old wooden ruler with lots of measurement conversions written on it. Check it out here.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

I've included "Finding My Way" by Rush which when I first heard it on John Peel I thought was Led Zeppelin, but we use bookmarks to help find our way through books.

I recently found out 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 others. C'est La Vie.

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. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Could A Copper Comprehend?

 Wasn't sure if I was going to post on the first day of 2021 but the song "Fog on the Tyne" by Lindisfarne has been playing through my head and as I remembered the words I was thing what tripe they actually were from a logical position.

But that's not what it's about , they may have made sense to Alan Hull as he quaffed his next bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale but what he came up with was a genius tone poem , the words sound perfect together , and are great to sing, just don't think about what they are actually saying. I have often used the same argument about Abba and Rush , just listen to the music , fall into the song and enjoy it for what it is.

The song is very simple to play and great to sing along to, a fantastic live staple. Lindisfarne also did some complex and difficult to play songs (say the ghostly "Lady Eleanor") .

Today I wanted to have a walk out, the weather is still grey and boring but I managed to hit my step target trying to track down non existent Buck's Fizz (the drink not the Eurovision Song Contest winners).

So I will share the lyrics for you to peruse and of course you can listen to it above.

Enjoy

Fog on the Tyne

"Sittin' in a sleazy snack-bar suckin'

Sickly sausage rolls

Slippin' down slowly

Slippin' down sideways

Think I'll sign off the dole

'Cause the fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine

Could a copper catch a crooked coffin maker

Could a copper comprehend

That a crooked coffin maker is just an undertaker who

Undertakes to be a friend

'Cause the fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine

Tell the truth tomorrow

Today will take it's time to

Tell you what tonight will bring,

Presently we'll have a pint or two together

Everybody do their thing

We can swing together

We can have a wee wee

We can have a wet on the wall

If someone slips a whisper

That his simple sister slapped them down

And they slavered on their smalls

'Cause the fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine

'Cause the fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine

The fog on the Tyne is all mine"

Long Distance

I have a Canon SX620 camera and it enables me to take long distance pictures. The control says I can take up to 100x zoom although the front of the camera says 25x optical zoom so that maty be why my longer distance pics get a bit less detailed, after 25x the zoom becomes digital.

I use the photos of long distance shots as a screensaver on my desktop and love when I see something and try to work out lots of things that I had never noticed before in relatively familiar surroundings. From the top of Cow Hill I can photograph from The West Road to Wallsend taking in the City Centre and St Jame's Park.

Having a sizeable zoom worried me about privacy , but I trued taking photos in my front room and front bedroom and the lack of light and glass reflection ensures good privacy. I do wonder about controllable drones that could easily be used to snoop, although I have seen some great outdoor drone shots.

Today Shaun Keaveny brought up the fact that you can use scissors to cut pizza, something I had never thought about , but I suppose you could , although the take aways I get are usually ready cut , and I haven't had a frozen pizza for a long time (Dr Oetker and Morrisons are my preferred ones when I feel in a pizza mood).

So given that this started about cameras we shall go with "The Camera Eye" by Rush

2 Early Morning

An early start the morning and there was a lady with a big dog outside the house before 5 am, you do wonder about what others are doing up so early. I know lots of people have dogs and have to be out early to walk there dogs and play with them throwing sticks and balls.

It's funny how when you have to get up early for work you are always tired, but if you are up early on a non work day it's easy to get up before you normally do because you know you can always relax later during the day.

I have been listening to a lot of music over the weekend and was very impressed with the quality of a copy of Al Stewart's "Past Present and Future" but was at first disappointed with "All The World's A Stage" but the solution was to turn the record player up louder and then it sounded good. I remember having the same problem when I got "On Your Feet or On Your Knees" by The blue Oyster Cult. It was heavy metal and it sounded small and tinny, not what I wanted or was expecting. Then I had a lightbulb moment , "TURN IT UP LOUD" , and then it sounded great. My parents were not too impressed, so I switched to headphones and only had it on loud when they were out.

So we will go with "Hot Rails To Hell" from that album, best played loud, great guitar soloing and possibly the best recorded version of this song that the band did.

The Final Chapter

This morning I slept through , almost ten hours. It does help when you have switched off your alarm, but again it was a surprise and probably good for me.

When I decided to write this I had one chapter to go in "The Secret Commonwealth" but as the final chapter was only ten pages I could not resist finishing it off. This books has a lot of parallels with what is happening in the world today and there is a touching tribute to the Grenfell disaster (caused by our government getting rid of safety standards to improve profitability) but that's by the way. At 700 pages this is a hefty read and is only part of the "His Dark Materials" / "Book of Dust" double trilogy, and like all great books I did not want this one to end, so I now have to wait til my next birthday for the final installment which I am now actually waiting for.

The last two days have been so grey that I don't think I have even seen the sun. Today is mist rather than rain but yesterday was very rainy.

It is a Sunday morning here an the last week in November.

I was vaguely toying with the idea of posting a good Christmas song each day in December but I sort of did this here in 2013 and after going on about Rush in post number 2113 there was this post in that sequence which was virtually on the same subject with the same points, so I do repeat myself but who remembers what they said on a day six years back.

Music wise I'm going with The Cascades "Rhythm of the Rain" due to this inclement weather, but it's a great song and I found a more than decent live take. Obviously the band have aged but they are in fine form and still sound great.

In the sixties bands imagined they had a shelf life on two or three years and often that was true, but for others they found they could go on and on until they are physically removed from this mortal plane. The Rolling Stones , The Who and The Beach Boys are three that come to mind.

Anyway it's time to do Sunday things now.

2112

Actually this is post 2113, the last one here was 2112. I only realised as I was getting towards the end of it and it was all about my eye infection. 2112 was an album by Rush and was pretentious as hell but I always equated Rush with Abba, music generally awesome but lyrics were sometimes very iffy. Abba had the excuse of English being a second language but Rush didn't.

It didn't stop Rush producing some great music and when they reigned back their pretentious side everything was excellent, but even the pretentious stuff , the music still more than stands up. The first song I heard by them was "Finding My Way" from "Fly By Night" on the John Peel show and thought it was Led Zeppelin, they were that good. I must have heard their early albums because I didn't actually by them and generally they were patchy in my opinion, but  the live "All The World's A Stage" changed that which is a live tour-de-force and that was the first Rush album that I bought.

I actually sang "Spirit of Radio" with Spoon and always have difficulty singing rubbish lyrics, "Spirit of Radio" has excellent lyrics, but I don't think I have a recording anywhere of that to see how good or bad I was.

So I really have to included "2112" that took up side one of the album it named. Great music and dodgy lyrics for this Friday.

Extremes

Yesterday while I was out and about I noticed how many places you can charge your device now, although I wouldn't be too happy about leaving an iPhone X at a charging station in Eldon Square, although they probably don't have Apple's latest non standard connector so that situation is probably a non starter. The iPhone X is probably the first extreme on this post costing above a thousand pounds. Most buses and trains also have a pluf for charging as well, although I find amausing how many places still have Wifi without internet access or demand you agree to terms and conditions every time you sign in . They already know who you are so whay do you have to keep agreeing? It's like Apple's Terms and Conditioons.

Today I  connected up my OVO Smart Meter to mi Wifi so I can now see how much I'm using at any time. It does save me submitting readings but I am a bit wary of how the data will be used by them, also it's a daily remeinder of how much things are costing.

Anyway yesterday I was listening to "Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine" by the Cosmic Rough Riders which is still a brilliant listen which opens with four absolute standout songs. One of them however is a pure evil control scenario which has an awesome tune but worrying lyrics about control, which follows on from The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and Peter Hammil's "I Will Find You" and you may be able to surmise the scenario from the title "The Gun Isn't Loaded". The protagonist controls the victim because they do not have the full picture, and how many times to we see that in everyday life. The  lyrics make feel uncorfortable but I have to listen because the music is so wonderful.

It's not a bad lyrics scenario like Rush or Abba sometimes hit , Abba having the excuse of being Swedish , and Rush are Canadian , but bothe produce some amazing music sometimes let down by lyrical ineptitude but that's something for another post.

One of the other standouts on "Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine" is "Glastonbury Revisited" probably my favourite song about Glastonbury, and it is lyrically to polar opposite of "The Gun Isn't Loaded", full of hope , love and inclusivity. I've had the CD for close on twenty years and still still sounds as good today as when I first heard it.

I'll include the two songs from the album which are extremes in the lyrical sense, and I will soon be taking myself off to see Jerry Sadowitz for the first time ever, which I suppose is another extreme.

Enjoy your Thursday night.

Tenuous Connections (Only Dogs and Water Horses)

All The World's A Stage

So Kelpies are water horses and Sheepdogs and I'm posting a seasonal song a day, and this is my most tenuous one so far , "By-Tor and The SNOW Dog" by Rush , the version is the one from the brilliant "All The Worlds A Stage" album. It has some wonderful guitar soundscapes by Alex Lifeson. It's today's tune. It's amazing what sort of connections our minds can make.

In the seventies I was listening to John Peel and a song came on called "Finding My Way". At first I thought it was a new Led Zeppelin offering, but no, it was by a Canadian power Trio called Rush, the singer Geddy Lee sounding like a cross between Zep's Robert Plant and Yes's Jon Anderson , a power falsetto.

I checked out the album "Fly By Night" but felt it was a bit wooden , barring "Finding My Way" , however when the live album "All The World's A Stage" was released that all changed and this was a real loud and impressive band.

I've always likened Rush to Abba , both have produced some of the greatest music ever, but often their lyrics let them down. While Abba have the excuse that they were Swedish writing in English, Rush are Canadian , and , unfortunately found inspiration in Ayn Rand. I think they've outgrown that now and are still touring and producing some wonderful music.

Anyway I hope your Christmas is still causing you lots of happiness and hope you have a brilliant weekend.