Showing posts with label Sleep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sleep. Show all posts

Sunday 25 April 2021

Sleep , Creativity and Little Feat

 I have a bit of a headache , it’s half an hour after midnight , so I’m just into Sunday morning but I feel that I need to write something. I sort of feel if I don;t write then I lose something and I can always lie in tomorrow, I don’t have to get up for work until Monday.


Writing articles for Vocal has changed the way I do my writing. I used to just write to my blog and wasn’t too bothered on how much I was writing. I mainly wanted to record stuff that I wanted to remember and may , one day , to go back to.Then I started on Vocal and realised I wanted to share my writing on my blog  (Sevendaysin.co.uk) as well as on Vocal , although the platforms require slightly different formatting.


Basically I need a basic text format which I can then paste into the platform I am posting on and then add the required enhancements in links and video additions , to give the reader a fuller experience, with sound and vision.


Publication on Vocal is fairly quick , and the categorise it so it is in the correct area for Vocal and external readers. My own blog is instantly published because I fully control it , but it is relatively self contained.


I have learned how to fully enhance the Vocal posts which I think will be very good going forward and I have already posted seven times and this will be my eighth. So much for me not posting as much this year as I have done previously. Mt first Vocal post was on the 17th of April and it;s now the 25th of April  so that is one a day.


I did try actually using my phone (a Google Pixel 2XL) to record my voice and convert to text to post but that did require a hell of a lot of editing , but is great for capturing ideas. So I am just using that fairly sparingly.


This week my music listening has involved a couple of the Rhino original album series featuring the first five albums from Little Feat and Th eIncredible String Band. These album set retail at about £12 for five albums in replica album sleeves (or did when they were released) and are wonderful to listen to in my CD player while I work.


The Little Feat box is a stunning listen and there is not skipping of songs, although the albums are quite short. I then noticed an Amazon Documentary on Lowell George which affirmed everything I thought about Little Feat, but expanded my knowledge including George’s sting with The Standells and Frank Zappa, and well as displaying and explaining his excellent slide guitar technique which he used a spark plug puller rather than a glass bottleneck for.


The music speaks for itself and sounds as fresh today as when it first came out. 


Good music never dates.


I followed this up with five Incredible String Band albums culminating in “Wee Tam” and ”The Big Huge” . Their sound is an otherworldly folk which would not have sounded out of place in “The Wicker Man”. Robin Williamson and Mike Heron are very special talents and if you surrender yourself to their music you will go on some amazing mental excursions. 


The great thing about having these album sets it that I can listen to them almost at will.


They are just a few of many that I have but they are definitely worth time and effort to track down , listen to and enjoy.


I can now include videos and album links for you to follow and discover more about these absolutely amazing bands.

Also I do find it amazing that word processing software can point out when you have made grammatical errors. We are always getting more help when we want to be creative.


It is now one o’clock so time to publish


Saturday 6 February 2021

In The Middle Of The Night

Having had a reasonably restful week I thought I would get up in the middle of the night and write this post just to prove that I can. I went to bed at 11 o'clock and woke up at 8 o'clock , so the fact is I got a very good night's sleep, nine hours. I may try again tonight.

So I've gone through the day , and the weather is still so dreich and I do not think I will wake up to write another post. I've not done much today but my weekends are for resting and recuperation.

I have not even listened to any music today , but done some reading and managed to keep warm and dry.

I didn't do much walking either so in terms of doing things this has been an unsuccessful day, I am even tempted to not share this as this post is as uninspiring and uneventful as the weather at the moment.

So for a weather related song we shall go with "Like The Weather" by 10,000 Maniacs. No I shall go to bed.

Monday 4 November 2019

Late Again


For the first time since I can remember I woke and got up at nine am today. I am almost always up around six like clockwork and I know I am on holiday but that came as a bit of a surprise to me. I thought the older you got the less sleep you needed but that doesn't seem be the situation with me.

It is good to get enough sleep, and you need your sleep, it is not a good idea to do without. Sleep repairs the body and promotes good stuff happening in there. If you don't get enough sleep then it does affect you, although I expect it is different for everybody , but it is nice to be in bed and be able to enjoy the feeling.  The TED talk from Matt Walker below is extremely informative on this.


So a perfect song for this post is "Late Again" the song that introduced me to Stealers Wheel ( Joe Egan , Gerry Rafferty and band , the saxophone is glorious, I wonder if it was the same guy who played on "Baker Street" ) who I saw performing this on The Old Grey Whistle Test as a teenager.

Most people know Stealers Wheel because "Stuck In The Middle With You" was used for THAT scene in Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs", one of Tarantino's inspired musical selection that wonderfully litter all his films.

So I know it's Monday afternoon, and the fact I am not at work means I can write this and communicate with the whole world. That's one of the pluses of writing your own blog , there is no one to tell you not to do that, although maybe sometimes you do need that.

So watch the TED talk and enjoy the excellent Stealers Wheel song on this Monday.

Wednesday 16 October 2019

Darkness - #Oktoberfest #18 - Streams Of Whiskey - The Pogues


I know we're into Autumn because it's very dark when I wake, which does make more likely that I want to actually stay warm in bed. Why is it when you go to bed you often can't sleep (I always drop off within fifteen minutes, though that's sleeping too close to the edge of the bed) and I don't have a problem sleeping, but darkness does make it so much easier to sleep, shut your eyes and drift off to realms of Morpheus.

So #Oktoberfest continues and amazingly it's taken eighteen posts to introduce the first Pogues song , the excellent "Streams of Whiskey" from the "Red Roses For You" album, and is like almost Pogues songs, as soon as you hear it it moves either your body or soul or both. I found a libe take from Japan in 1988, and it's always great to see a band play their songs live, and while it may not always be a perfect mirror image  of the studio version (hopefully not) it always should add to the song. I think audiences can bring out the humanity of the band and it becomes a symbiotic process , yu need it all to get the best experience.

So the darkness is dispersing this Wednesday morning and it is time to leave for work (again).

Friday 11 October 2019

Dreams and Sleep - #Oktoberfest #11 - Everything Stops For Tea - Long John Baldry


Yesterday I was on an "away day" in Leeds and on the journeys to and from I watched a few excellent TED talks one of which (included below) by Matt Walker informed me that it's not a good idea to pull all nighters. Ideally you should have a consistent routine with around eight hours sleep as this actually helps the body recover by promoting the growth of !assassin cells" that eliminate lots of bad stuff in our bodies, while not sleeping does exactly the opposite. It last twenty minutes but is very interesting and worth taking your time over.

Because I am actually run down I went to bed about nine o'clock and slept though til 5:45 when the alarm went off and think I feel better for that, but it is always good to get a good nights sleep. There's a few snippets of the dream left including my boss asking what she was doing doing wrong , the answer being just sleep, there was a new locked SUV who's seats were covered with snow, and footprints leading to a brick wall where I was sure there was a door , and finally twenty pound notes had been taken out of circulation and ten pound notes had been replaced by eleven pound notes. I know it doesn't make sense but that's the nature of dreams.

The last item just reminded me of the imperial currency system. 12 pennies made a shilling , two shillings were a florin , five were a crown , for crowns made a pound but 21 shillings made a guinea and the guinea was often used for pricing although the guinea was like 5% more expensive than a pound so a 20 guinea item was a £21 item. Simple wasn't it.

So #Oktoberfest is continuing non alcoholic which Long John Baldry's odd take on Jack Buchanan's "Everything Stops For Tea". The album was produced by Rod Stewart and Elton John. Rod had been a member of Steampacket with Long John Baldry along with Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll.

It's Friday morning so time for work.



Tuesday 11 June 2019

Sleep Now


A lot of this is coming from Matt Haig's book "Notes on a Nervous Planet" and it is so good that I am about to order "How To Stop Time" which I think was inspired from a page in "Reasons To Stay Alive" which is another of his excellent books. I have read others, my introduction to him was "Humans" which I gave away on  World Book Night before it degenerated into commercialisation. The thing is I'm not sure if I have read and bought "How To Stop Time" because it is a paperback book and my real books are not stored digitally although Amazon will tell me if I've bought it before, then I just have to find it.

Anyway one section I have come to is a short section on sleep and the fact that generally we don't get enough. We need seven to nine hours per night and lack of sleep does cause problems. The odd night or two is fine especially if you are interacting withe real people of real things. The problem is that people use what should be sleep time to bings watch TV, be on their electronic device, with phones replacing alarm clocks and therefore living on people's bedsides. This si not a good idea.

The CEO of Netflix said that their biggest enemy was sleep and it was a huge area to increase consumption of their product. I have not yet taken out a subscription to Netflix, because by TIVO Box is filling up from my Virgin subscription, I also have access to Amazon Prime, and NowTV which I can stop and start when I want it. I worked out that it will take six hours to illegally download a TV series or film yet for £8 you get a month of Netflix or NowTV, a far better use of my time to pay that rather than steal, though we have been conditioned to think we shouldn't have to pay for digital content.

When we sleep we cannot be consumers so the whole commercial world hates us because we are not buying, but to buy we need money, but we are always having credit pushed at use rather than being paid enough to actually buy without going into debt.

Another point that Matt Haig makes is to turn off notifications on your phone to give yourself control, and that is something I have always done as I can't deal with things popping up all the time.

So it's gotta be "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" by the sadly missed Warren Zevon as the music to accompany today's post.

Tuesday 14 August 2018

Clouds and Total Football


Looking out of the window and there is an amazing cloud formation overhead. Here's my nstagram post.

Well it looks like the site visits have taken another dive, c'estla vie. The last two nights I have gone to bed early and this morning I was wide awake at 2:30.

I had woken from a dream but the dream was very influenced by the book I'm reading Matt Haig's "How To Stop Time" which is certainly a page turner but the main protagonist is possibly the most depressing since Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant. Both characters have a heavy burden but it does become wearing in the way it's presented., although other charaters do provide the hope and lighter sections.

The rain has taken a break so I may be able to walk into work to day and listen to some good music.

Today is the first round of the Carabao Cup and Preston North End are playing Morecambe, and on 6Music Chris Hawkins has just played "Total Football" by Parquet Courts so it has to be that doesn't it.

Have a good day everyone.

Tuesday 30 January 2018

Sleep


After spending half an hour waiting for Excel to save my workbook, I was not happy when it crashed, said it had recovered my  workbook (and the hours work I'd done on it) and restored it to it;s state as it was when I started. Still I just closed down my laptop and will do it all again tomorrow morning except then I am sure it will work. They say a bad workman always blames his tools, well 95% of the time Excel is really useful, but every so often it can really let you down. Really when you thing these programs just move round binary digits and such a clever way you can do some incredibly useful calculations and analysis.

I suppose that it still puts a strain on my tiny mind. Tonight I managed to lose a contact lens. The worry is that's it's still somehwere in my eye. That happened to me once before, so we shall see if it resurfaces at some point.

Anyway I said my next three posts would feature artists's who'd covered the Rolling Stones' "Happy" and the first of those are The Pointer Sisters with their excellent cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Fire".

Right it's time for bed, there will be more tomorrow.


Saturday 18 March 2017

Sleep Is Good .. Being Awake Is Better


Although sleep is good, it enables your body and mind to recuperate and repair itself, but I do prefer being awake and able to do things. I know I should be in bed but thought I would just write a short post on this.

In John Cooper Clarke's "Beasley Street" , his very dark masterpiece , he describes sleep as "a sneak preview of death" which is a chilling assessment of what is really a natural function. Some animals sleep all winter, and I am sure some humans would like to do that as well.

Rest is good but activity is better. We do have so many sedentary pastimes such as watching TV or someone else do something. Reading at least exercises the mind as does writing. I am now sitting typing at a keyboard and a lot of my working day is taken up in a similar way. I do get up and walk around so I am not going to atrophy at my desk, but feel that is often frowned on by some people.

Tonight I've just read of Chuck Berry's passing , he was 90 and had a good life although he did some bad things and definitely in the 50s and 60s was royally screwed over by the white establishment. I saw him once at Southport Floral Hall, queued for tickets and found out everyone else in the queue was queuing for Gilbert O' Sullivan tickets. A sad loss from a true American poet, the words to his songs stand on their own.

Anyway that gives me an excuse to include a Chuck Berry song "No Money Down" for your delectation from the film "Hail Hail, Rock'n'Roll" , and now I will go to my bed and sleep. I have fourteen thousand steps to do tomorrow.

Sleep well my wonderful friends.

Friday 16 September 2016

EnjoyTheBedFeeling



I thought I'd write a poem.

I pretty rubbish at this

But it's how I felt

EnjoyTheBedFeeling


EnjoyTheBedFeeling

The Mattress Fits You
The Sheets Do Too
The Feel Just The Right Warmth
The Pillows are Perfect
The Window is Open
The Breeze is Lovely

EnjoyTheBedFeeling

I don't want to get up
I wish it was like this
When I got into bed
I know work is a neccessary evil
But I have an Hour yet
To 
 EnjoyTheBedFeeling

Warm
Cozy
Warm
Perfect
Perfect

EnjoyTheBedFeeling

The thing is it's Saturday tomorrow so this is a distinct possibility for all of us.  And I need some music to go with it, and I think Kites by Simon Dupree and The Big Sound (who later morphed into the excellent Gentle Giant)  but be a perfectly ethereal way to wrap this up. The video is something I took at the Washington Kite Festival in 2010 which I went to with Fiona, my friend Nicky and her children Sharné, Alisha and Donovan

Sleep well and have a brilliant weekend my friends.




Thursday 30 July 2015

This Ain't Good


Wide awake on a school night , with absolutely nothing on my mind. I've tried to sleep, got up , found something to do , read, gone back to a warm bed, thought about playing guitar , but it's three o clock in the morning , which the neighbours wouldn't appreciate.

Ages since this has happened. I know I need sleep cos it's work tomorrow , but I don't want to be reliant of coffee tomorrow to keep me going. Yes it's a day closer to the weekend but I still appreciate I need to be fresh.

I ran into and exchanged emails with an old friend yesterday so that perked me up , though I am just going through one of those down phases I suppose. Everyone gets them and often use it for a reason to rail at someone or something. I am always looking to channel even negative energy into something positive , so that's why I am writing this.

I obviously need some social contact but , hey it's 3 in the morning and everyone with any sense is in bed , tucked up and asleep.. One positive from this is that it's another post closer to my millennium aim which I hope to hit before the end of the year. I'll roughly have to maintain three posts every five days to hit that target (87 posts in five months so roughly 150 days , you do the mathematical calculations)


Crazy Man Crazy
Anyway , the obvious song for this is the Dictator's "Sleeping With The TV On" except I'm not sleeping and the TV isn't on. As I pointed out recently on Instagram and Facebook , once you see the cover of "Go Girl Crazy" you don't even need to listen to the music to know you will love this band , and if you do listen to their music .... well you are in for a total treat.

Ok ... can I grab a couple of hours shut eye

Thursday 13 March 2014

How Does This Happen?


You wake at 5am, and are wide awake, not sleepy at all, bed is suddenly so comfortable you don't want to leave, but you have to get up. You're not really getting any benefit because you know you have to get up , so eventually you succumb and get out of bed, get washed , shower , perform ablutions and it's still half an hour before you leave for work.

Then it kicks in, you are so sleepy and want to go back to bed, yawning , and so tempted to get back into bed. Radio 6 keep playing Queen snippets,  but I'm sure that couldn't be anything to do with it , could it.

Thought of the Cure song to go with this though I suppose I could have had Queen , but I like The Cure better.

Hope you all have a good day.

Saturday 31 August 2013

Behind The Wall Of Sleep


When I was young I had problems sleeping , which persisted up to getting a job as a computer operator working continental shifts which meant I learnt to sleep anytime anywhere when the opportunity came. Certainly didn't do me any harm . I can sleep on buses , trains anywhere where it's safe to do so. In my life I've never missed a train stop and only missed a bus stop twice so I do have it down to a fine art.

The problem is my body is so well adjusted to the concept is I get  situations like now. Yesterday I had a lot of important stuff on at work , I had a hospital appointment in the morning and needed to provide one small report ideally by ten o' clock , plus some data extracts.

Something woke up , I don't know what , so then my mind started racing and thought if I spend an hour now I can get that report done, then I can have a nap during the day when I am bound to need one. Well report and data extracts got done , went back to bed , got up , went to hospital got back and worked through to just after five  (why does everything become really important at 4:30 on a Friday?) , then eventually got out to meet some friends at The Strawberry at six o'clock.

A good night was had by all severely tempted by Lynn and Julie's bowls ofchilli and chips / curry and chips (you must try if you ever go in there), but I resisted , and came home. By half past nine was shattered so went to bed.

Half past three I woke up. I've had six hours of sleep so it's time to get up my body say. My eyes say different , but thought I may as well write this down. I hope what will happen today is that I will have a lie in or nap or something and by tonight I will be back to normal , in fact I know that's what will happen. Anyway I thought an excellent song for this post was The Smithereens "Behind The Wall Of Sleep" , Black Sabbath do a song of the same name probably based on the HP Lovecraft story.. Maybe I can find that soon .