Sydney Opera House (Again) - #FruitfulSeptember #5

 Walking down Fenham Hall Drive I noticed the cranes at Wallsend seemed very close. This is one of many examples I have seen of the Sydney Opera House Effect , but its certainly the most impressive one that I have seen . I first tried taking photos with my phone but they didn't come out very well, then tried yesterday with my Canon camera but it was a bit grey and then today the light was a bit better and the pictures came out better with the 25x optical zoom. I can go up to 50x but that is digital enhancement and you really need and tripod to keep the camera still and given that many of the photos are done dodging traffic , it;s not really an option. You can see the photos on my Instagram channel here.

Due to one thing and another and the task above I have walked nearly seventeen miles this weekend without really trying. I suppose that's good for me and show that I can actually walk. It's amazing the number of times that because I am diabetic and have high blood pressure that people ask me if I'm able to work, and do gentle exercise. Sometimes I do get tired but you cannot let health things get the better of you , you have a life to live.

I feel slightly guilty that have binged on series four of Bosch and am now on the second episode of series five. It is excellent and highly watchable and I do know that when I hit the end of series six in a few weeks I have plenty of other things to watch. It becomes so easy to watch the start of the next episode , then you are thirty minutes through and then you think I may as well finish this one and then you are onto the next one.

I finish and enjoyed "Venus on the Half Shell" by Philip Jose Farmer writing as Kurt Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout and it was enjoyable but am now revisiting "Spear of Destiny" by Daniel Easterman and even though it's not really started I am eighty pages in and completely rehooked. How he has not had any of his books made into films I haven't a clue, although you can see the Easterman / Aycliffe styles criss crossing. 

So for #FruitfulSeptember we will continue with "Apples and Oranges" a single from Pink Floyd when they were still led by Syd Barrett.

Odd Socks - #Oktoberfest #30 - Baby Lemonade - Syd Barrett

LAst night I looked down at my feet and noticed one of my socks was blue and one was green. It's just the toe and heel and one is a bluey green and the other is a greeny blue so today I have worn the other mismatched pair. It is very easy to do when you are sorting a lot of socks from the wash to put into the sock drawer.  I know this is a bit boring but it's amazing how many spelling mistakes you can make in a really short sentence. I don't know if autocorrect causes some of the problems , di I really write "si" instead of "is" , my mind says know but I am often wrong.

It is a very wet Friday the sky is grey and heavy and the windows are covered in rain

So #Oktoberfest continues with "Baby Lemonade" a song from Syd Barrett's second and really final album after he left Pink Floyd. Barrett produced some amazing stuff on the first Floyd album but sadly the drugs and possibly other things took their toll. Syd was one of my heroes because of the songs he produced and some of his amazing lyrics. This is probably not him at his best but it is good for the #Oktoberfest sequence and so that's why we include it , and it's always good to hear some Syd Barrett.

Actually listening to "Baby Lemonade" I still love it mostly for the lyric, and have a feeling that the guitar intro is Dave Gilmour , but  still worth five minutes of my time.

Anthropic

When you are reading a book it helps if you know what the words you are reading actually mean and I am still sort of getting my head round The Anthropic Principle which basically means that if the universe were not capable of supporting life then we wouldn't be hear to wonder about it . This is the weak version, follow the link or search google for more information.

It is coming up a lot in "The God Delusion" where I am up to so far and does sort of make sense to me but I also feel it's far above my intellectual level (which is not very high anyway, 2 "A" Levels , 5 "O" Levels and something in Business Studies) but I wont let it stop me from reading this book.

The blog visits are probably going to hit 300K in the next month and at this rate half a million could happen in the next six months. That is something that I didn't expect as the Feedburner thing is continuing unbroken this time, although it may stop after two months, but we shall see.

September has seen 34K visits which is an all time record following the previous record of 27K last month and 25K in June which smashed the previous record of 10K in October 2013.


So we'll go for "Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun" by Pink Floyd from "A Saucerful of Secrets" which seems vaguely appropriate for me with a suitable video. Apparently Stanley Kubrick wanted to film an adaptation of Dune with a soundtrack performed by Pink Floyd... it would have been 14 hours long. This song was the only one to feature all five members of Pink Floyd Phas I

I'll set my mind to understand more.

Music IS a Drug

Today I listened to Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets" and followed that up with XTC's "Mummer" and when "Beating of Hearts" came on I thought wow this is so good, I want more. I had been going thru "A Saucerful of Secrets" thinking how sinister and disturbing "Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun" and getting lost in the three part soundscape of the title track, and the songs that close each side "Corporal Clegg" half comedy/half tragedy and Syd Barrett's farewell appearance with the band "Jugband Blues" which seems an almost cut and paste effort but sad realising the burnt out genius that this was showing us, and still is. Evering song is like a pill that makes you want another.

I think "Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun" and the title track on "A Saucerful of Secrets"are absolutely excellent but they are improved on in the live versions on the album "Ummagumma". I remember going into a shop that sold records at Lane Ends in Preston and the hipster salesperson told me they didn't sell singles!! I never darkened their door again.

Someone once described Ramones songs as like Smarties, you cant have just one you have to have lots.

So onto "Mummer" and "Beating of Hearts" which when you listen on headphones you get the low frequency hit after Andy Partridge sings "Louder Than Bombers In Flight" every time, you know it's coming, and eventually it finishes and you want the next one "Wonderland" and interlude before the single "Love on a Farmboy's Wages" and it continues on and you enjoy every moment.

I definitely could not be without music, even when I have nothing to play or not player or musical instrument handy, it's still there in my head, sometimes songs and pieces I know, sometimes things I want to rediscover.

I just felt I had to put this down here, before I go and sort out my tea, it was just an idea or a concept and it's an excuse to share this incredible XTC song. Have a great Saturday Night everybody.

Saucery

Another album I revisited last week was Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets" . My mate Harry Clark always used to refer to it as "Y D" because of the lettering on the cover, which really does pique your interest and draw you in , even though it was just a single sleeve. The astological, astronomical and majikal diagrams, planets and bottles the tapestry wizard and the band photo all made me wonder what was happening inside, and  it really is a cornucopia of sixties psychedelia and Englishness (brass bands and Kazoos, Waters' war obsession "Corporal Clegg")

PinK Floyd = Y D

The album opens with "Let There Be More Light" with it's manic easternised, three note bass intro with slides into the pedestrian ponderous main riff  for theis first slab of space rock on the album. "Remember A Day" follows, a gorgeous Rick Wright song featuring a wonderful rising piano line, and this gives way to the ominous suicidal "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", dark but brilliant. "Corporal Clegg" rounds off side one, which is a more shall we say normal song despite the kazoo led coda march.

Side two starts with the twelve minute title track which has three sections, the first the most ominous part of the album, just sound an noise before morphing into a drum section from hell but finishing with a gorgeous organ based section (also knowwn as "Celestial Voices", possibly influenced by Vaughn Williams.)

"See Saw" follows and like "Corporal Clegg" is a fairly standard formayt song before the closer "Jugband Blues" Syd Barret's final outing with the band, which is a gorgeous jumble sale of sound and a fitting finale complete with brass band.

I've included the "Celestial Voices" from the "Live at Pompeii" film. Enjoy your Saturday evening.

Two To Know - #ALifeInNumbers #2

Right off I've taken a bit of a liberty with this one but the number TWO is important in the song. I am lyning in bed drinking Buck's Fizz courtesy of the lovey people at La Rosa as I write this. This is unusual because I don't normally drink alcohol but it's still my birthday weekend and and I'm in La Rosa.

Anyway the song I've chosen is Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne" which contains the line:

"Two To Know"

Two To Know

Syd Barrett's lyric was picked up by the Oxford Book of Fine verse as a particularly fine example of alliteration or some grammatical construct. Amazingly I'd already written about this three years back and it came up in a Google Search here , which shows the benefits of blogging , that I am now referencing my own research on things. I will also use the same video of course as this is number two in a series of fifty nine songs which I will select by hook or by crook.








Anyway that is that, also I have come up with a way of predicting horse racing results using freely available tools and here are four horse for today so you can see if it's working or not.

Yesterday I predicted five out of seven and the other two placed. So if you fancy a flutter here they are:

Todays Tips

Have a brillaint Sunday everyone, I intend to.

Last Night I Had A Dream .... A Very Weird Dream

..and I've woken up exhausted. This was a real dream in which nothing made any real sense while also being vaguely familiar. I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with it, but there's nothing major in it, just a lot of weird juxtapositions. Here goes:

I'm at a skating rink or bowling alley meeting up to go to a Syd Barrett (original leader of Pink Floyd) concert (he's long dead and only die hard fans would attend) . When we get to the venue , a small theatre I meet up with hris from work (who is getting married in a couple of weeks and I'm with my daughters and a few other friends. Syd Barrett comes on stage , which is at the same level as the stalls, but he's obviously out of it so I get up, hold him up, and I sing the first song for him , before he's taken away and a tribute concert then takes place.

After the gig we wonder about going for a meal , there are two Mexican / Indian Wetherspoons pubs restaurants, one called the "Droopy Bell" with a logo of a Bell Pepper. We decide on the other restaurant and at this moment are in an area reminiscent of Newcastle's Haymarket. , coming out of roughly where Boots is now (may we'd been to Sergeant Peppers, but the "Bell Pepper" was where the Metro Station is. We decide on the other restaurant

On the way I'm then with a friend who's a pub owner who needs to order some replacement aluminium beer kegs, so while he's doing that I decide to let people know by phoning them. My phone is out of charge, so I look in my satchel and find an iPhone and wonder what that is doing there....

Then I woke up and thought what he hell was that.

Hope it's kept you entertained, and I have another post to do tonight but I need to get off to work. Have a great day everyone and hope I haven't twisted your melons!

By the way all the drugs I take are purely medicinal , honest. And by next blog  post will be number 700!