Listening To More Albums

While out walking today I listened to a couple of great albums. Actually prior to that I had listened to some vinyl, namely Nadine Shah's "Stealing Cars" a Tenpole Tudor album and Emerson Lake and palmer's take on Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" all worth listening to and you can see them here if you follow my Instagram Channel.

Nadine Shah's "Holiday Destination" features some amazing percussion driven songs recall Tom Waits and Van Der Graaf Generator, tackling todays issues. The title track written as a response to holiday makers complaining that their holiday had been ruined when refugees were washed up on their beach. If our country wasn't supplying weapons to various regimes maybe things like this wouldn't happe. However the album is highly listenable also tackling growing into "aldulthood" and reading the labels on food. Well worth getting a copy.

That was followed by "Listen To The Band" and early Mike Nesmith compilation featuring great country song after great country song and if you haven't heard them before you certainly won't forget them once you have.

Anyway it's time for bed and I will leave you with the title tracks of both those albums.

Not Quite Making It

The #August50 is out the window and the monthly steps is easily doable but it I hadn't spent two hours walking after returning from a very pleasurable weekend in Dalgety Bay I would have had some major extra walking to do this week, then it starts again on Friday. It is good if you can buid up reserves to fall back on, but often the way you can do that varies like hell and it is far better to have reserves than actually playing catch up, because if you are continuously playing catch up eventually it becomes just impossible (like the #August50).

All the people (Scott, Maureen and Fiona)  I spent the weekend are extremely fit and I seriously expeceted a similar weekend to last weekend walking wise. It wasn't, but I enjoyed some great company , saw some great views (the Forth Bridges) went on a non drinking (for me) pub crawl in South Queensferry and played choose a music video on YouTube on a big telly which was great fun and a great way of sharing music.

Anyway I really need to do some walking today so I will leave you with a couple of pictures and a piece of appropriate music "The Crossing" by Big Country.

The Sun on The New Forth Road Bridge

The Forth Rail Bridge

Listening To Albums

I've decided to give random play a rest and actually listen to full albums on my walks. I'm aiming to do 340K steps a month and Pacer still eems to be working. The last couple of days I've only done 8K but I'm still on tarket to hit 340K which will guarantee a million steps every three months on a rolling basis. My friend Carol is hoping to hit TEN MILLION steps this year, that 900K a month and 30K (maybe 15Km) a day. I know people's step lengths differ but that is still some very hard going over a long period of time and dwarfs my Million Step Challenge , which other people seem to think is a lot.

Anyway the albums I have listened to so far are

• Fairport Convention - Nine : Not regarded as a classic but it is one of my favourites, Trevor Lucas' vocals, Jerry Donahue's guitar and Dave Swarbrick's voice and fiddle are wonderful. Songs like "Polly On The Shore" with it's dragging bass, the beautiful "To Althea From Prison" and apocalyptic "Bring 'Em Down" have never lost their power for me.
• Thea Gilmore  - Don't Stop Singing: This is a beautiful labour of love, Thea taking the words of te departed Sandy Denny and weaving a wonderful album. The song "London" made me have to buy it and "Glistening Bay" gives me goosebumps every time. There's a great evaution on the BBC here.
• David Bowie - The Lodger : The one with Bowie's "League of Gentleman" nose on the cover, and like every Bowie album you put is on and then just love every song. "Fantastic Voyage" , "Boys Keep Swinging", "Yassassin"   I could list every song.
• Blue Oyster Cult - Imaginos: This is the album that BOC were destined to make , full almost Lovecraftian libretto and when the remade "Astronomy" kicks in you really are out there with them.

I found a live from Union Chapel take on "London" by Thea Gilmore for you to enjoy, the sound is not perfect, but you can always buy the album if you follow the blue link.

So who knows what I'll be listening to this morning. Time to set off for work, and I think I will walk in. It is a sunny beautiful day and the weekend is almost here. Enjoy yourselves everyone.

Mistakes

This morning I was at the Freeman Hospital sorting out drugs for my cirrhosis of the liver condition, and in the course of the encourt I gave an armful of blood and a urine sample. ALl seemed fine and normal and I went on my way back to work.

I then got a phone call, which was cut off asking if my blood sugars were OK , as I had just given samples I thought it was odd that they were ringing me so quickly which would imply there was a problem. I tring calling the number back and found out it was a practice I had never had anything to do with. They said it was probably the Diabetic Clinic who had changed their number but it had been set up wrong so they can all the phone calls. It turned out it was the Diabetic Clinic enquiring if my blood sugars were OK as I had drastically reduced my insulin intake (much to the apparent chagrin of the stand in consultant). I told them all was good and that seemed to be enough for them.

My mistake was making teh assumption that the phonecall was a direct result of the hospital visit. The thing is , we always assume the most logical (in our own minds) reason for an event, ad obviously a medical phone call would be about my hospital visit this morning.

I was wrong.

On that note it's time for bed and the song has got to be "Wrong" by The Archers of Loaf from the excellently titled "Speed of Cattle" album. Sleep well all.

God Guided My Hand

I'm still reading the Jordan Ellenberg book and I've just finished the chapter that explains how to win at the lottery, which basically means finding a certain time of lottery and having your syndicate write out and enter 300K tickets when the conditions are right, and this can guarantee a profit of maybe £50K , so not for the average punter.

The current chapter talks about the likelihood of the existence of God (He does exist and I follow him on Facebook here and instagram here incidentally) and the mathematician Pascal (and Ellenberg) reckoned that even if there was only a 5% chance that God existed , and the rewards for believing in Him are Infinite Ecstacy , then 5% of Infinity is still Infinity, so it's a great investment either way. OK there's a 95% chance there is no God but the investment is still worthwhile because if there is a God you are well rewarded. However this binary argument is flawed because There may be no (Christian) God, there may be a (Christian) God , but there may be other Gods who will condemn you to eternal damnation so the belief suddenly becomes a very big gamble, now it's happiness or nothing or misery.

It's also like sometimes I will see something like a horse bet, or an album I've never heard of and go for it based on no logic that I can think of and the horse will win (the other week the name "Sea Monkey" was jumping out at me, it wasn't the favourite and was going to bet on the favourite but then changed my mind and made a profit) , or the album will be brilliant and there are people who will say God guided them to this wonderful situation when actually it's nothing more than coincidence and good luck. Usually those things are followed by an increase in belief and confidence until the next one doesn't work out.

Anyway the song that comes to mind is The Saints' "Church of Indifference" , probably my favourite Australian band. Have a good Wednesday everybody.

Sweat, Sweat and Sweat

No blood, no tears but a lot of sweat. Due to one thing and another the lawn has not been mowed. It needed doing on Sunday when I got back but I was too lazy, and then yesterday there was rain. The nights are drawing in , but tonight was very muggy, but I forced myself to do it and ended up very hot and very sweaty and therefore no one would want to be withing a million miles of me tonight. It is strange how you never want to do this things, but you do get a sense of small accomplishment when they are done.

As I've said I doubt I will hit #August50 but this edges me a little closer. I would have to average about four posts a day , which is easily do-able , and I have about four things lined up to write about, and as I only tend to write about 250 words , that would be a thousand words a day , and proper writers do that ten times over.

So tomorrow I have a hospital check up so fasting from eight o'clock tonight I think, then I am not sure if I should take drugs or not, so I will bag them up and sally along to the Freeman, though it means I need to leave the house about seven as I am not sure what time I am supposed to be there. It's a flexible arrangement.

A song for this , well it could have been something by Lawnmower Deth,  but I willl go for the more sedat but no less eerie "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe" by Genesis. You know why.

"When The Sun Beats Down

And I Lie On The Bench

I Can Always Hear Them Talk.

Me?

I'm Just A Lawnmower.

You Can Tell Me By The Way I Walk"

Back

Just back from a great weekend in Epsom and Brighton seeing Lesley, Matt and Nick , and actually getting to see Brighton Pavilion which is an impressive structure and saw a couple of excellent buskers Linos Wengara Magaya & Gary Cove (playing a vague jazz on Mbira and saxophone). You can see a bit of them here on my Instagram Channel.

I walked 15 Km up and down Brighton Beach ( and I'm sure Matt, Lesley , Nick and Fiona walked further) but that's a record using my latest tracking software Pacer (which is still working on my Xperia, which now has a shattered screen due to me dropping it, I did this many times with my Samsong Note 4 , not a scratch, but my Sony , instant screen shatter) . To put the distance into context Matt will run that far if he's eaten something he maybe shouldn't have to burn off the calories :)

Anyway I wasn't really going to write about the weekend, although I have done it now, and have another one in Dalgety Bay next weekend which I am looking forward to , with Scott and Maureen , plus a bit of time in Edinburgh. I do prefer the train to driving.

In Brighton I was wondering if I'd see Nick Cave , but no , there was also a big "Free The Nipple" parade, and great to see people to dress as they want, it wakes me irate when people are ok with others carrying round assault rifles and other weapons, but explode when they see a woman breastfeeding or actually displaying a nipple. It's ok for men to be topless but not women. It's often worsen with the odd asian / middle eastern couple where the man is just wearing shorts and woman is completely covered bar a slit for the eyes. The thing is sometimes nudity empowers people, sometimes modesty empowers people, but it should be their choice and they should not be oppressed and denigrated for that choice. Though I am offended by people who wear face masks in everyday situations, this includes IRA Terrorsist balaclavas, asian pollution facemasks in Newcastle, and niqabs , they all offend me equally.

Anyway less of that and we'll have Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand" before I get off to work. I think the #August50 is dead and buried, to hit it I would need to post thrirty times before the end of Bank Holiday Monday (but you never know).