There's Nothing On TV

That is a line I hear almost daily. I do find it amazing how narrow mindedness actually seems to stop people from knowing about things (though I suppose sales of The Sun and Daily Mail and Election Results in the UK and UK mean that I should be surprised). I've been denigrated because I don't watch Top Gear, Eastenders of Coronation Street and because I watch BBC2 and 4 (and a bit of 3) , Channel 4, More 4 and Sky Arts. But I suppose it's each to their own, and if you don't want to stray from your own chosen TV path then that's fine but don't complain about it.

The weather today has been warmer and the snow has gone, but tonight ther was a frost as the temperatures started to drop again. The good thing was that I got to walk into work , even though it was dark and cold (the walk not work) so I am keeping up my required steps. As we move towards the shortest day I'm not even getting to see a sunrise or sunset, but again that's just nature, in winter the days are shorter and we get Christmas Day just when the days start to lengthen.

One benefit of my Emopeak headphones is that as well as sounding excellent and being wireless, in cold weather they keep your ears very warm as well as maintaing a decent bass sound.

One of the albums I've been listening to is Genesis "Extra Tracks 1970-5" (part of a boxed set that will set you back a few hundred quid these days) which just confirms that Genesis virtually lost their way when Steve Hackett left. Gabriel's departure was a major blow but commercially benefitted the band, though having said that they really started coining after Hackett's departure, but artistically they missed more than hit after that. Typicall example are the songs from the "Spot The Pigeon" EP , "Pigeons" is awful, "Match of the Day" musically good lyrically awful , and "Inside and Out" is a piece of totally brilliance so I will leave you with that one.

Snow, Laziness, Apathy,Lethargy and Ethiopiques

.. and it's cold. Back from Litton, and back to work . This is the part of the year where I thought my walking would take a hit, you can wrap up but sometimes the biting cold and wetness can get to you and you just want to get on a bus or get in and keep warm.

I don't know if it;s an age thing or my natural laziness, but I seem to find it increasingly difficult to do things that need preparation. This can be getting the laptop and mouse out the bag to do a blog post when I'm on holiday. Another is playing a DVD, you have to get up , find the DVD , take it out of the case, switch on the DVD player , tune the TV to the DVD channel, and play the DVD. It's far too easy to take the alternateive route and click a few buttons on the remote and play something on the TIVO, or on demand. Although strangely I still like  playing things on vinyl, and that is very incovenient and labour intensive.

Cooking is similar, I am alwasy tempted to chuck a frozen pizza in the oven, though last night it was mashed normal / sweet potato and bean burger which meant cooking but it was worth it. I still don't do ready meals, although part of that is that ready meals often take as long to cook as it would to prepare from scratch.

I like to be able to walk into a situation and start doing what I want to do, I don't like the preparation , so maybe I'm not lazy , just selective.

I am still hitting my rolling monthly million steps despite the weather, though part of the motivation for that is the fact it helps with keeping my blood sugar under control.

While on holiday I picked up a Best of Ethiopiques album , and I remember listening to some of this music and actually being frightened by it, it was so other worldly atmospheric, but disturbing. I corresponded with Nadine Shah about it, so will include "Yegelle Tezetta" byMulatu Astatke which is a great piece but I find there is a strage menace behind it. Have a great Tuesday everybody.

Snow and Wait

It's te last full day in Litton for this year, and we have had snow. At the sametime my Pixel XL is doing a half a gigabyte system update. In 1990 I was working on a DEC mainframe which was running accounts for a biggish company which had 4 Mb of memory, that's enough room for four minutes of basic MP3 music.

Prior to  that my Cambridge Lynx computer had 3K of memory, I'd bought it because it ran CP/M which was an early competitor for MS/DOS but when IBM came calling the CP/M guy was outflying his plane so Bill Gates got the IBM gig and the rest, well you know the rest, I'm writing this on an ASUS laptop running Microsoft Windows 10.

Did you know that Microsoft have a patent on the technology for SD card slots which apparently is why so many phones don't have SD card slots.

Anyway my walking has been hit by the weather, yesterday it was rain and hail and today it may be the snow, so I will have some catching up to do when I get back.

I've had a brilliant breakfast at High Nelly's in Tideswell, and finally found out that a Derbyshire Oatcake was basically an oat pancake, and they are rather excellent too. There's a picture of my breakfast here.

I'm listening to 6Music and today's Album of the Year choice is Tom Robinson's and it's Nadine Shah's "Holday Destination" which I pre ordered about three months in advance. I have written about it before and it's not cheerful but addresses a lot of current serious issues especially on the title track which I will include here.

Have a great Friday everybody, the weekend is upon us.

245

With this post (number 245 this year) 2017 has become my most prolific year for posting on this blog. Maybe my other blogs have suffered but this is my main one. I still have 25 days of 2017 left and, as I say , I have just passed 2013's total. While it would be nice to hit 300, that would mean posting more than two a day til the end of the year, and that is not going to happen. I've posted two posts every three days and I think that is a decent output. I average maybe 250 words a post so that means I have done over sixty thousand words, which may sound like a lot , but it's like when I tried to do the Million Step Challenge, and people go "Wow, that's a lot" when really it's just maintaining 11K steps a day which for me is about five miles a day, so not exactly impossible but that is close to two thousand miles on foot, and I am no athlete, I have friends who will do tens of miles a day showing my efforts to be fairly puny, but they are constant.

I have been keeping up my walking steps and hit 12K today, and one of the albums I have listened to is Public Service Broadcasting's "The Race For Space". Listening to any of their albums you managed to learn something about the past and this album is about the space race in the sixties, using sound samples from the various events, including Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin and the Apollo program. Live they are one of the greatest current experiences you can have.

So I am going to take one of the most positive songs from a brilliant album , the wonderful "Go", live at the 6Music Festival at The Sage in 2015, and I was in the crowd watching them. Enjoy, and I shall soon slip off to bed. By the way this post runs over three hundred words so if you have read all my posts this year you have read over 60K of my words.

Sleepless In Litton

Not exactly, but my sleep patterns this week have been a little weird, going to bed around ten, then wakig up every two to three hours untill about fuve am then drifting into vivid dream sequences, which in themselves are fairly mundane mixing up familiar places and people , like work environments, before waking about eight o'clock and sort of wanting to go back to sleep, but knowing I am awake so getting up shaving and showering and getting dressed.

Today I've been in Bakewell, and managed to do 11K steps with a walk from Litton to Tideswell and back, and was surprised in how quickly darkness fell.

I got back to Music In The Green in Bakewell (I first wrote about it here - February 2016) and bough a rare Five Hand Reel vinyl album "A Bunch of Fives" which I have never seen before, so I added that to my collection. It was a 1979 album after the departure of Dick Gaughan, I can't find any digital music from the album so I will leave you with "Bratach Bana" from their first incarnation.

It Wasn't Tuesday

For some reason I spent yesterday thinking it was Tuesday, I suppose that can happen when you are away on holiday, and the benefit is that as today is Tuesday , in a way I've mentailly gained a day. I have been trying to keep up my steps and didn;t think I would make it yesterday.

I realised that effectively just walking to hit the number of steps is a bit boring like all the things that I don't like doing, but I usually have to have a place to go to or something to see or a place at the end to , but do realise that I need to keep walking to stay reasonably healthy.

Yesterdaywas spent at Chatsworth and generally relaxing, and today will be a trip to Bakewell.  There's some instagram pictures here.

It's strange how there is often a psychological block that stops you from doing things, I thought that Tideswell was too far to walk just because it's a featureless country walk but itturns out it's not so featureless or far as I thout there's some more pictures here and here.

I was thinking of including songs based on what day it is, until I can't think of anymore, so the #SuddenlyItsChristmas sequence has not lasted that long has it.

So today I'll include "Tuesday Aftertoon" by The Moody Blues from "Days of Future Passed" , which is the first in this maybe not to lengthy sequence

Still Loving Bowie's Music

I'm in Litton and the weather is very mild, not wintery at all. I easily walked from Litton to Tideswell and back , twice , ensuring I am on top of my step target fr December.

In the Red Lion I met a 96 year old who looked extremely well regaling us with tales of being called an old codger by people who were actually older than him. I remember the first time I became aware of age thinking that sixteen was old, then it slowly crept up with the evenual realisation that there was sweet nothing you could do about your body aging but you can make sure your mind doesn't get old by doing the things you enjoy and keeping as active as you can.

I turned sixty two months back and still feel and act like I did forty years ago, I just ache a bit more and take a bit longer to recover from things but that is just life . I knew someone once who was sixteen going on sixty fiv, I intend to stay the opposite.

Tomorrow I think it's the Chatsworth Christmas Fair, but essentially this week is about doing nothing mainly.

I am not posting a seasonal song today but have been listening to "Christian F" a soundtrack consisting of third period Bowie songs , which includes a live take of "Station To Station" which as I listened to it became my favourite Bowie song. I know others will replace it, but that's Bowie for you so I will leave you with "Station To Station" as you prepare for another day of work and I prepare for a day of relaxation.