Difficult - #Oktoberfest #35 - Orange Juice - Rip It Up

This morning I had to replenish my diabetes and blood pressure tablets from my stash, but every cardboard pack seemed absolutely super sealed, requiring the total destruction of the pack to get into it. It's almost as bad as digestive or Weetabix biscuits , you should be able to unwrap them but often have to resort to a knife to break into them. Often you will have a box is in shrink wrapped cellophane that is difficult to remove , then the box itself is designed for you not to get into it followed by the stuff you actually want which is in another from of close wrapped plastic packaging.

I got what I needed and incidentally Gemma Cairney is playing the excellent "Pills" by St Vincent on 6Music so there's a bit of synchronicity for you.

But we are still on #Oktoberfest  (I must make a chart of which drinks have been featured)  so for a change the band name gets it in and we will go for "Rip It Up" by Orange Juice to continue the sequence which is now well over the edge of October hitting #35 which I seriously didn't expect. There's still two days left to go and I can think of two more drink related songs.

I think because of the synchronicity and the subject I am going to include the St Vincent song as well as the Orange Juice one, so you get a double treat.

Plan - #Oktoberfest #34 - Little Ole Wine Drinker Me - Dean Martin

Life is much easier if you have a plan and everything falls into place. It is seldom that that happens especially for me, although today I decided what I wanted to eat at lunchtime and waled into the Strawberry and, for a change there were lots of free tables, then I had some leftovers that were perfect for tea , meaning I came home took drugs and then my tea was ready and I ate that. There was no preparation and I didn't have to go out and buy anything, everything just fell into place perfectly.

Because all this worked it means that I can watch TV tonight and am totally relaxed, not that cooking is a problem, but it is nice that everything just slots into place.

So my intention was to do a post a day for #Oktoberfest but this is #34  in October so I've gone off the end a bit, but the latest is Dean Martin's "Little Ole Wine Drinker Me" , and while Dean Martin is hardly your average rocker fare , he came up with some absolutely class performances and this is one of them. A good song is a good song and you have to admire that.

Milk - #Oktoberfest #33 - Milk and Alcohol - Dr Feelgood

Over the weekend I was speaking to someone about living in the wilds with no neighbours for miles and said that's great in some ways but a major problem if you need something for either convenience or something more serious. Last week I saw an ambulance drive away from my neighbours fairly rapidly. They are great friends but I only have email contact. When there was no sign of their car or lights in the house after two days I was worried so emailed , but got a reply fairly quickly saying it wasn't them and they'd seen as well.

The first thing about living in suburbia, if you are lucky like me you get some great neighbours who you look out for and they look out for you.

The other thing was last night I had some cereal and used the last of the milk. I knew I was running low and had been out a few times and not replenished it but it was nine o' clock at night. Now I have three local shops open from six am to 11 pm (I would not have a problem if they had shorter hours) but it meant I had the option of getting milk when I got up or nipping out immediately. I chose the latter.

They are a couple of reasons why I prefer to live in this type of suburbia, I also don't need a car either which is another plus.

For #Oktoberfest we have "Milk and Alcohol" by Dr Feelgood in their post Wilko Johnson phase but still good. Wilko Johnson is is my guitar hero and an absolutely heroic cancer survivor still playing live today. He lost his wife to cancer, then was hit by pancreatic cancer and given three months to live but decided to not have chemotherapy and perform until he died. Six months later he was still with us and apologised it an interview saying that people probably felt cheated that he was still here (jokingly). Then a surgeon offered some groundbreaking surgery (see here) and Wilko is still with use and you can still see him performing and he's still making records. Oh he was also in "Game of Thrones" (Ser Ilyn Payne) as an executioner and the cast were devasted on his initial diagnosis and elated on his cure.

Clocks - #Oktoberfest #32 - Milk - Garbage

I was thinking of using "Milkshake" by Kelis for this #Oktoberfest sequence post but then remembered "Milk" by Garbage which I feel is a bit classier if less poppy. Both Milk and Milkshake are drinks though not alcoholic, but I suppose you could always ad your own choice of alcohol , imagine a Baileys Milkshake , now that would be very nice.

Anyway why Clocks.? I woke about 5 O' Clock and went to check if my Google Pixel had charged (though I think it's started losing charge faster) but anyway the time said 4:05 . I thought bloody hell it's losing time. Then I remembered that it was sometime around now that the clocks go back.

Because almost all TV is watched on demand , news papers are seldom taken , and even TV news is seldom watched I had received not a single prompt to put the clocks back. However now that all our electronic connected devices are programmed to reset when they need to we can almost ignore clock resetting (although all my watches and analogue timepieces do need resetting.

If you think about this "The Eighty Minute Hour" by Brian Aldiss could become reality and we wouldn't even know because we tend to trust our electronic devices, the number of times I've left my watch at home so use  my phone to check the time is very high.

The concept of  "The Eighty Minute Hour" is that the controllers slow clocks down during working hours and speed them up out of work, and it so often feels like that is our reality.

Charged - #Oktoberfest #31 - Cigarettes and Alcohol - Oasis

A weird thing , last night I switched my phone (a Google Pixel) off and put it on charge. It is always good to switch the off at some point, I do not understand people who sleep with their phone's next to their bed (unless you are on call for something) but it was about 20% charged when I went to bed last night. Switched it on this morning and it was on 2% , yes that's 2%. So although it was off, therefore not doing anything , even if it hadn't been plugged in to charge, it should have still been around 20%, so that is just a little disconcerting. It is on charge now, and though it says it's charging slowly, it's sitting at 60% charged.

I got the PIxel on the recommendation of my youngest daughter Kirsty who pointed out that you don't get all the phone brand crap that you don't want and by going on to SIM only with EE (who still are probably the best network to be with as they are reliable , fast, and have good customer service despite the awful Kevin Bacon adverts , they need to get Brennan Brown and Steve Furst back who did the amazing classy ads for Orange also check here but one of my faves was the Elton John one advertising the dawn of 3G here)

So continuing #Oktoberfest and another reserve is "Cigarettes and Alcohol" by Oasis. Oasis always annoyed me as mouthy Mancs and Beatles rip off merchants, but they actually came up with a handful of decent tunes and this one is OK.

So have a good Saturday everyone.

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.

Vegano - #Oktoberfest #29 - A Glass of Champagne - Sailor

Today I really didn't feel like anything to eat, but I do make a point of getting out of the office at lunchtime. It's not good to bring a packed lunch , sit at your desk and work through lunch , though a lot of people feel absolutely obliged to do it. I work better if I get a total break. I was thinking about all the places I normally eat then Vegano came into my head, I have eaten there before and they do a gorgeous vegan "sausage and egg" muffin, so that was decided. The had the muffin on so that was it, and it's just as good as ever, highly recommended.

The first time I was in the conversation about the muffin went thus:

Me: "That's gorgeous but what is the egg substitute?"
Vegano: "Tofu"
Me: "I hate Tofu"
Vegano: "Oh Sorry..."
Me: "No don't be, I love it , how have you done it? Tofu normally tastes like furniture stuffin"

They then explained what they did to make the "egg type pattie"

Me: "So how you make the sausage bit"
Vegano: "We get xxxxx hot dogs , skin them and make the patties"
Me: "So it's not vegan then"
Vegano: "It is they are vegan hot dogs"

So I ended up have a gorgeous lightish lunch which you can see here, also they play mostly decent music, and great to speak with, and really nice people, and they are right in front of the Discovery Museum which is round the corner from where I work.

Now I have got a few more drink related songs for #Oktoberfest and we will go with "A Glass of Champagne" by Sailor who had the mad "nickleodeon" two man keyboard built by their main man George Kajanus although the Star Spangled Chestwigs do a cracking version which you can see and hear here.