Strawberry Disappointment

We all make mistakes. Sometimes we act on those mistakes, believing what we are doing is right, even though it does slightly rankle that you are acting on what you believe to be the correct course of action. That happened to me recently.

The Strawberry changed their menu. Instead of the black laminated card (admittedly past their sell by date) we got a printed couple of sheets on a clip board protected by a textured plastic sheet. This didn't look good. My worst fears were confirmed when their excellent Curry Top Chips had disappeared from the menu. Yes it's pub food , yes it's quick , and great value for money and it was always a quick lunch option and it was gone. I thought I have no reason to go back to The Strawberry because they don't have Curry topped Chips.

I relented because I couldn't actually remebery what was on the menu bar unspecified toasties and a fish finger butty. So I went in today, checked the new menu and right in the middle of the front page was the  Topped Chips or Baked Potato options. How the hell did I miss that. Yes the menu has had a slight revamp but it still has everything worth having so that definitely made may day, as The Strawberry is an excellent pub and their bar meals are excellent and great value for money.

The lesson to be learned is if something is not exactly what you want or what you think, go back and double check it, you may find you are mistaken and get the result you require more quickly.

Incidentally tomorrow the blog will pass quarter of a million visits, I know a lot are robots, but it's still a success to go with my Christopher Lee and Nick Cave slideshow.s

So the obvious song is Split Enz "My Mistake" a band I saw several times in the seventies who produced some amazing music.

How To Win The Lottery and Make money on Scratch Cards

Basically don't buy them. It amused me that whet the National Lottery started there were lots of books on "How To Win The Lottery"  (surprisingly there are still lots of books on this, who buys them?)  and I've heard people talk about about how to win at scratch cards. Jordan Ellenberg wrote a book called "How Not To Be Wrong" and it contains a chapter on how to win on certain lotteries where there is a trickle down if the main jackpot is not won, but this requires a sizeable dedicated team and a lot of money to crack it. Remember that for each person to win £5 million on the National Lottery  more than 2.5 million people have to lose, yes you might win, but it is not very likely is it.

Today it is hot but raining and thing is in some ways that's not a great thing , because the water falls then because of the heat in evaporates filling the clouds with more water to rain down on us. The benefit is we don't have to water the garden but is a definite symptom of global warming.

Been listening to a lot of vinyl this morning while relaxing , Boston, Bowie , Brubeck and Split Enz , the laser etched disks still amaze me (on my instagram feed here), and the first side of the Boston album is close to perfect, I should really play the second side sometime, but it is twenty minutes of vinyl perfection.

So what should I share with you, I think we'll go with the best football song ever, "England's Irie" by Black Grape for the chorus lines:

"I live in a land of class hypocrisy, 

We're going to win the National Lottery, 

E I Adio, I don't think so"

Don't you think so?

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. The Never Ending Story - An Index of All My Vocal Writing
2. A Halloween Film Evening
3. A Waterfall of Clouds
4. The Witch's Promise
5. Waiting For The Green Light - The Genius of Bill Hicks

I See Red

If you read my last post you may think this is a continuation of it but it's not really. The title is stolen from a Split Enz song and yesterday I was reading a QI book on my phone which told me when we blush our stomachs turn redder too, and the acid in your stomach would actually burn you skin if it had direct contact, it seems we have more in common with Alien and Predator than we think.

I love reading, especially things that stimulate my imagination or tell me interesting things that I don't know (and the QI books are excellent for that). I suppose Science fiction and fantasy stimulate my imagination although then again I have read a lot of biographies and straight science books (though often these swamp my minimal intellect). The QI books are ideal for ereaders to drop in and out of although mty youngest daughter does most of her reading on the move on her phone.

We have hit another Friday and it's Black Friday. I used think this was named because of some terrible thing that has happened but apparently when companies go into the black from profits in the financial year. We are only half way through the financial year!! Personally my own Black Friday for the financial year of 2019 will be sometime in 2029 thanks to continues wage suppression, and I am very well paid compared with a lot of people I know (though not well paid for what I do, although the fact that I am so conveniently located, the people I work with are great and the work is interesting are major mitigating factors).

So without further ado we will continue on our merry way. Have a great Friday.

Mistakes

This morning I was walking along the street and a guy said be "Morning Luv, How Are You?" .... then I realise he was addressing a woman behind me. That does happen to me a lot where I think people are speaking to me or waving at me but it's someone behind me that is the object of their attention.

I spend a lot of my time making mistakes and correcting them. I'll often misread words and think "What the Heck?" before realising that I was mistaken in what I read.

At work I thought I had made a huge mistakes in a data extract I had run, but after speaking to someone in the know had the situation properly explained and it turned out that I had actually got it right but thought that I had made a mistake.

Life is peppered with these sort of things, sometimes they are mistakes sometimes you just think they are mistakes.

So naturally I will share "My Mistake" buy Split Enz who I cought live in the early seventies long before they morphed into Crowded House.

Seventeen Hundred

I thought I would post this just to hit seventeen hundred posts since I started posting, breaking the #August50 target, and sharing another #SongsYouveNeverHeard to make it worth reading and listening to.

There is a hell of a lot of great Antipodean music and my favourite band from down under are The Saints, but I also love Split Enz, Crowded House and Midnight Oil. I completely missed out on AC/DC in my teens / early twenties but they are a perfect example of how to last while staying exactly the same. Similar to the UK's Status Quo who really lost it when they tried to change their twelve bar sound, although my favourite two Qho songs are "Mystery Song" and "Accident Prone" which do deviate slightly from their normal formula.

The #SongsYouveNeverHeard that I am going to share with you is the excellent "S'cool Days" by Stanley Frank which was backed by the equally excellent "On A Line", one of those perfect singles like The Beatles "Paperback Writer" backed with "Rain". All I know about Stanley Frank is that he is Australian (I think ... and yes I know how silly that sounds) and that is about it.

Another for you to enjoy.

I Feel Love

There is a flying ant on the outside of my window pane, and the sky is a uniform grey. It is a Friday morning and 6Music is celebrating women in music with "Hear Her Day" with female-dominated playlists and female  DJs. However due to one thing and another I had to leave this unfinished, but I can now write about what I wanted to write about.

I keep thinking that my vinyl collection is close to complete and then there's always just one more thing, these one more things have included Cat Stevens' "Numbers" for the overal package and book as well as being a decent album, "True Colours" by Split Enz which I didn't know was actually laser etched, I have the single "History Never Repeats" that looks amazing when it's playing and I am looking forward to seeing the album, you don't get that with a CD or MP3 do you?

The third was going to be the Patrick Cowley Megamix of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" all 15 minutes of it on 45rpm vinyl but even I shy away from paying twenty notes for a single. The thing is you can download Donna Summer's Greatest Hits (26 songs) for four pounds so that's what I did, and then ordered a double promo remix vinyl set for fifteen pounds so hopefully, that will satisfy me.

When "I Feel Love" came out in the mid-seventies for the rock and rock and roll cognoscenti, Disco was a dirty word, but me and friends were into German psychedelia and Giorgi Moroder's metallic rhythms on this single made a lot of people listen, who would have normally dissed Disco.

It turns out that the sound was stumbled on accidentally with the note on the synthesiser being played twice with the slightest delay resulting in an amazing sound. This was perfectly complemented by Donna Summer's voice and is perfect for remixing as it's both skeletal but more than powerful enough to stand on it's own. It's similar to the guitar delay favoured buy Pink Floyd and U2, and also the accident in the drum machine pattern that resulted in New Order's "Blue Monday".

So I managed to find the Patrick Cowley Mix on Youtube so I will leave that with you to enjoy.

Enjoy your Friday.

One of Those Weekends

I usually write, when I feel inspired or happy. I really don't like complaining or saying that I'm down. This weekend was an opportunity to do lots of things and, actually I've done nothing. I'm feeling apathetic and lethargic and divorced from any social interaction.

Yesterday I just about managed my 11K steps but today I doubt I'll hit 5K. I haven't been feeling that good, but as I write this I feel some sort of Adrenalin buzz. Yesterday and today I thought maybe I should write a blog post, but just couldn't motivate myself to do it. Now as I'm writing this , I know that after I've posted it , I will go out and do half an hour's walking , listen to some music, and feel much better for it.

It's ironic that the extremely good warm weather today is one of the reasons I haven't walked , the week before last it was bad rain one day that kept my waking down to 3K steps. In the Million Step Challenge I am more than 25K ahead of schedule and the intention is to hit a million steps by the last day of July. I think that will happen. It's quite funny to see some people's reactions when you say you are doing a millions steps. My friend Karen (proprietress of the wonderful Kazbat's Den) does 20K steps a day (she has a dog) making my 11K steps pale into insignificance, and you can see she is far fitter than me. I bought a studded belt from her two years back and despite repeated wear, though it's quite thin leather, it's still like brand new. If you want a leather belt or anything Goth , pierced or Majickal go there, it is absolutely wonderful.

Anyway, I am already feeling better. I've done catch up TV this weekend (American Gods, Ils, The Aliens, The Blacklist, Doctor Who)

Oh and this morning moved my record player this morning downstairs into the front room. I know my mate Marek from RPM has told me to get a proper one, and RPM have some beautiful vintage ones (take a look here), but my GPO is fine for me. I'm not an audiophile so that with my soundbar will be fine.

That was another thing, I needed a one plug AUX adaptor so went to the box in the garage where my cables, plugs etc are piled , as I was sure I had one, but no, it just looked like mass of liquorice strands so I though I may have to go to Maplin. This also was a bit of a downer for me, and I am not sure why, because I had solutions.

Then I ordered a cable from Amazon, went down again, thought I would look in the box and the first cable I pulled out was the one I needed. So I sent a cancellation request to Amazon, and played my first record downstairs , the laser-etched "History Never Repeats" by Split Enz (a bargain £3 from RPM) so that ended up fine, and I have a bit more room upstairs andmore music downstairs.

It is amazing how therapeutic that just writing this can be, There are a hell of a lot of my friends who have a lot more to deal with than me, and I do think about them and am there for them  when I can be, and when I think of the horrific events of the last few months I do realise how well off I actually am. I have spoken with people including my dad over this weekend, and he is dealing with stuff (by building extensions and putting roofs on at 82 like you do).

Sometimes just doing things actually kicks off the good stuff in you.

Anyway it's a new week and there will be lots of good things to come this week, I am sure, enjoy this gorgeous weather my friends.

256

I've just got to page 256 in Pete Townshend's autobiography "Who I Am" and again with my recent semi obsession with numbers he's just on about the story and completion on Quadrophenia , the lead single from that being 5:15 . 256 stick out because it's just the number two to the power eight , that is multiplied by itself eight times. If you do the same with one it's still one. One never changes, multiply it by itself or divide it by itself and it's still one. If you go up to 3 then the powers create much bigger numbers 2^8 = 256 but 3^8 is 6,561 , I doubt I will ever read a book with that many pages.

Yesterday the new Nick Cave album Skeleton Tree was released, and it's great that people are still producing things I want to hear, I love the new single and am sure I will love the album when it turns up.

The Vertigo Swirl In Action

I ordered a copy of Rod Stewart's Gasoline Alley album and Black Sabbath's Paranoid single as I wanted some vinyl with the original hypnotic Vertigo Swirl label. I do like the look of vinyl playing and the Vertigo Swirl does look good. I got a copy of Split Enz "History Never Repeats"  on laser etched vinyl which you can see here.

Anyway it's Saturday and I am going to get back to watching Casino Royale , which is enjoyable. You all have a great Saturday everybody.

I just found this unaccompanied performance by Rod, absolutely brilliant.

Don't Dream It's Over

Nothing deep , but woke this morning to blue skies and sunshine , and it's the weekend, how good is that. It just shows everyone had decided that summer was over and the sunshine has just returned to lift our spirits once more. For some reason the Crowded House song "Don't Dream It's Over" came to mind ,  and they are a wonderful antipodean band who I've loved ever since I first saw the Finn brothers in the wonderful Split Enz.

So today will be spent, enjoying myself taking in the sun , finding good things to enjoy and maybe taking a few photographs if the sky gets blue enough , which I am sure it will . I hope everyone has an absolutely brilliant weekend.

Oh I also need to practice a few more songs using more complex chords , which if they turn out good , I will post on Youtube. Have a wonderful day.