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.

Suddenly It's Christmas

Oh I do love Loudon Wainwright III, and this really sums up the commercialisation of Christmas and it's funny too. I mean you have those Coca Cola lorries, what really has that got to do do with Christmas.. but remember that Coca Cola stuck their brand on Christmas so well that Santa dresses in Coca Cola colours.

Christmas is a time for reinforcing good things , looking out for people , connecting with those you haven't seen , and spreading happiness, although personally I would like that to be permanent m, not just at Christmas.

At work they're doing a Secret Santa, but I have opted out of it , not because I'm a curmudgeon or anything , but I don't need anything and so I'm gonna spend a tenner on a bag of goodies and drop it it to the Food Bank in the Grainger Market (and I'd rather not be doing that but while we have this government it's one way of helping those affected by their spiteful bullying)

This morning I went to the post office to pick up a letter that contained a code for me to download Office 2016. It cost me a tenner off Amazon here and I had to contact support to get a link for the 64 bit version , but all seems to be good now.

So if you want the Loudon Wainwright song it's here, have a brilliant Saturday my friends.

Winter Is Here ... The Magic's Back

Today is the first day of winter and I will theme December on #SuddenlyItsChristmas (taken from the title of a Loudon Wainwright III song. Yesterday we had snow as Autumn drew to a close, and today that snow is frozen making it difficult to walk , so I am wearing boots with soles like tractor tyres in the hope that I won't slip and end up on my bum.

Today there is a disco at Kommunity that started twenty minutes ago at 6:30 am so I will visit that before work. I did , and I'm completing this at 9 pm because I didn't want to be late , and enjoyed a vegan breakfast burrito and a coffee before work. The dancefloor was full and I hope there will be more of these events.

Anyway my first set of seasonal songs were on "The Ghosts of Oxford Street" by Malcolm Mclaren , which features a beautiful version of "Silent Night" by Sinead O'Connor as well as many other appropriate songs, but the one I will choose is "Magic's Back" by Alison Limerick, to usher us into this Winter Season.

If you can find the video of the show , it is worth watching, educational and interesting. McLaren's talent is for getting other people to do things (sometimes joining in) with never less than interesting results.