Ten Miles

On Friday I'd decided that hitting my 340K steps this May for the rolling Million Step Challenge was unlikely to happen , then yesterday due my local office not taking a Discogs order to go to the USA I walked into town to the Haymarket Post Office / M&M News who did allow me to post the item.

What this meant is , with other perambulations, I walked over ten and half miles yesterday , 23K steps , which now pots me about 2K steps behind schedule, so maybe I might actually make my target , though I'm just over half way through the month, and the reasons I thought I wouldn't make it still stand.

This is also continuing the #maywriteabit thing although I suppose all my May posts fall into that category.

Though this morning I have already covered 5K stepa and that is close to half my normal daily target.

I switched on 6Music and Chris Hawkins is playing "Isolation" by Joy Division (appropriate for these times) as it's the 40th anniversary of Ian Curtis' death. So as I need to get to work we will share that song and if you listen to 6Music today there will be a lot of related things on there for you to listen to.

I think the clip is from the film Control although has spanish subtitles , but wort a watch. Track down the film too.

All Queued Up

This will be a very short post , almost just a note, there will be very few words, almost none (I have an ambition to do a one word post one day, but not today).

One of my biggest bugbears is queuing , I always avoid it when I can. However the lockdown and social distancing means that I do have to do it to get into certain places , normally supermarkets and chemists. I still don't like it , but now I have to do it and I totally accept it although some people still think it should be everybody but them that has to queue.

The reason I am doing this post is that the phrase "All Queued Up" came to mind and I thought it was an early Ultravox song but it was actually a Deaf School song but you can hear the similarities between early Ultravox and Deaf School. and that is what I am sharing with you.

I think the first song I heard from them was "What A Way To End It All" and they are a band surprisingly absent from my music collection , so you know I will have to do something about that, although these days you can usually find stuff on Youtube or wherever.

Have a listen , you may be pleasantly surprised.

Share The Good Things

While life may not be perfect at the moment , we are getting a lot of chances to do things that we didn't think we could do before. It does help when the weather is good and I have not actually used a bus for about three weeks, that's not because I dislike buses , it's just because I don't need to use them.

Today I am going to visit Westerhope for supplies shopping , rather than going into town, It means actually crossing the A1 but there is a foot bridge so I don't have to dodge motorway traffic.

I am listening to a lot of vinyl and digital at the moment, plus 6Music and a hell of a lot of TV , there is so much to watch and so much choice and it does amaze me that people record , watch and rewatch soaps . Having said that is me watching "Vikings" and "Lucifer" and different that someone watching "Eastenders" and "Coronation STreet" in the grand scheme of things.

I always try and dig out some piece of music that is either new and you should hear, or appropriate to the post, or some great song that you have never heard. This one fulfills the latter two criteria , being "Television" by Dave Edmunds.

Choose Your Masques

I think facemasks in close contact with people you don't know are probably a good idea, but there are people who think (or probably don't think) they are a fashion accessory. I saw a guy in the street the other day wearing one, pull it down and then sneeze into the air, obviously didn't want any germs polluting HIS mask. As far as I am aware the point of facemasks is to stop YOU spreading anything to others, rather than protecting you. Only the surgical type ones protect you from close contact with infected non mask wearers.

I've given up on th erolling million steps every three months and halfing it to two million steps per year which is around 5.5K steps a day until I get to easily wander again. The main problem is a relatively small area that I am walking in resulting is a boredom / familiarity scenario which is why I don't do gyms and only do swimming very infrequently.

In other areas "Not The End Of The World" by Christopher Brookmyre is rather excellent, although it covers a heck of a lot and the initial "Marie Celeste" event of the prologue has not featured too much , but I expect will be resolved in the final quarter of the book. I home it doesn't turn out like many episodes of "Elementary" where everything is wrapped up in the final two minutes.

So I simply chose the title becasue of the name of the Hawkwind album, but if I wera one it will just be a bandit / neckerchief or scarf , though was also thing of a balaclava / motorcycle helmet inned balaclava thing.

Stream Girls

I'm not sure why , maybe because I'm a sexist , male chauvinist misogynist , but I find some of the phrasing and vocabulary of Lauren Laverne and Mary Ann Hobbs a bit grating and pretentious with "down with the kids" descriptions of certain musical pieces , however I'm OK with Craig Charles and Shaun Keaveny coming out with similar things.

It doesn't stop me listening to their music though , and they are far better that the dross available on commercial radio and  other BBC stations and today Mary Ann Hobbs had a guy on discussing the state of streaming. Now as you know I will not have anything to do with Spotify because it's an unworkable model and today I found out something more about the model that makes it even worse.

When you (or the person who's giving it your free) pays Spotify or whoever their monthly fee this is what happens. They take their cut and then the money goes into a big pot. It is the paid out to artists based on the the number of streamed songs they have. So what that means ids that you may have a a predilection for Egyptian and Iranian folk and listen exclusively to that music. Which is good for you but not the artist. Why? Because the money you may is split based on all streamings so if Ed Sheeran gets a million times the streams your artists get , then he will get that chunk of your subscription and the artists you listen to get next to nothing. So basically Spotify is even worse than I thought.

So a big , big thank you to Mary Ann Hobbs (and possibly Lauren Laverne) for illuminating me on this. They are extremely good and I can put up with the bits that niggle me. Here's my last post on the situation and to go with this I will share "Stealin'" by Uriah Heep , in my opinion a great record  with a vague connection to the situation.

Cloudbreaking

I think I've run out of date homophones so that's that for this month on that subject. If I tried hard enough I am sure I could have found one for TEN ,  depending on regional pronunciation Tin, Tan , Tun and Ton may have dones. Ton , Tin and Tonne are definite homophones for each other but  Ten is stretching .

Outside it's grey and a fine misty rain is coming down, though I do want to go for a walk. I'm keeping on with the #maywriteabit abd looking out thinking I can see clear sky but there is a huge gray cloud overhead but it is dissipating..

Eventually it turned out to be a nice day but I din't do much walking , so I am back down on my monthly step target , which doesn't bother me too much, although it's possibly a motivational worry.

I watched my first thing on Netflix , the first episode of season four of "Lucifer" so I really am Ok forever with TV to watch , having just completed "Code 404" in two days (6 x 25 minute episodes , so hardly a trial) . "Lucifer" opened with Tom Ellis playing "Creep" by Radiohead on piano , so more of the same but nice ending to the episode with Graham McTavish as a sinister priest.

May Ja , May Nein

The 8th of May!

Well I have a homophone for May 9 , although I am not sure how long I can keep this going , although it has given me a line to keep the #maywriteabit going although I did like the 8th of May Motorhead / Lemmy (Ian Fraser Kilmister) memes going round yesterday.

The blogger went into the new format , which like Facebook , seems anything but an improvement. When you are writing , ideally you want something that is going to look in the same ballpark as the published item and the new blogger interface is not that.

So this Saturday is another gorgeous day , but I have been working and listening to more of Max Richter's "Sleep" , and also gone through the childhood upbringing of one of the protagonists in Christopher Brookmyre's "Not The End of The World".

I was sure I'd written about this recently but my Google Pixel 2XL only actually starts after unlocking when I switch it on. This may be true of other phones , but this is the first time that I have started switching it off at night.

I feel that this Bank Holiday is a total damp squib and although I didn't work yesterday I don't really feel that I have had a day off and work starts at 8am on Monday again.

While I have been walking , I like to take photographs of trees , grass and wildlife but with this good weather you get lots of people on Nunsmoor and the Town Moor relaxing in the sun and I always avoid taking pictures of people. Yesterday I managed to use trees to avoid some people, and I wanted the tree in the picture anyway , so if you see one of my pictures with a tree in it , there may be someone behind that tree.

Yesterday I heard a lounge jazz version of "Ace of Spades" played by Huey Morgan on 6Music and I was not impressed. I know the obvious song to go for would be Motorhead's "Ace of Spades" but I am going for another one that 6Music have been playing The Streets & Tame Impala's collaboration "Call My Phone Thinking I'm Doing Nothing Better" ,I do love Mike Skinner's word, this does sound like classic Streets. It is rather good.