Tickle

#

I'm not going to work tomorrow, or Monday and not going to do anything this weekend. The doc says I have something unpronounceable on my left side and has provided me with a five day antibiotics course. The situation is that I have the most aggressive tickly cough which waits til I'm about to sleep then kicks in causing and coughing fit, not the most restful situation.

I was in bed at eight and it's now ten thirty and sitting up writing this is giving me some respite,, although the chunks of Galaxy plus Buttercup Syrup and other sundry druggy things are keeping it at bay though not sure for how long.

I really had no intention of writing this but I am just hoping it can lull my whole body into a sense of sleepiness. I really can't take any more chocolate and I am not sure what other options I have.

If I do drop off I don't have to get up tomorrow, the doc recommended a couple of days off and spoke with a couple of bosses today before tidying things up and setting my OOO.

I will leave you with the excellent "Take The Skinheads Bowling" by Camper Van Beethoven which is just a wonderful song and can bring a ray of brightness into the most mundane of situations.

Tusk

In October 1979 an AOR band released an album that was reviewed by the NME. The band was Fleetwood Mac, sitting duck targets for the punk driven NME ethic at the time. Even worse this was a double album, the absolute eptome of self indulgence for the bloated dinosaur rockers of the time. This was shooting fish in a barrel.

Meanwhile somewhere in the  USA record execs listened to the follow to the multi million selling "Rumours" and saw their bonuses going up in smoke.

The NME review was shocking in that it acknowledge the absolute brilliance of this double album, driven by the eccentric genius of Lindsey Buckingham with huge contributions from Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie and Mick Fleetwood. It was album of the week, this was as unexpected as Brian Clough taking over Leeds United.

I bought the album and totally loved it, and still play it today , end to end. The advent of CD and digital means that you can listen without haveing to flip the vinyl, but music is excellent and it doesn't matter what the medium is.

In 2003 Camper Van Beethoven decided to cover the whole double album (see here) and I was listening to this excellent cover when I was drifting off to sleep the other night. As "Not That Funny" was playing I thought that sounds like Camper Van Beethoven on "Take The Skinheads Bowling" before realising who I was actually listening to.

So I will leave you with 

I Think I'll ......

How many times do you decide to do a trivial task and it turns into a hell of a lot more than you expected. Today was bin day so I thought I'd just empty the bin in the bedroom last night, this then turned into every bin in the house before dragging out the bin to the the street for the binmen's convenience.

Then there was a couple of days washing up to deal with and one small fabric wash turned into three biggish loads which have to be hung to dy after they've finished, but to make room had to take a load of towels off the drying racks to make room.

Then dug dug out my only two unripped Cracker albums, "Kerosene Hat" and "Redux - Greatest Hits" and I use iTunes to rip CDs. Remember in the early days of Java, when every time you wanted to use a Java enabled app you had to download and install the latest 2 Mb installation and this was pre broadband, it was bloody painful. Well that's what iTunes (and probably all other Apple updates) is like today, 250 Mb to give you the same as you had before with probably more advertising.

The I start ripping "Kerosene Hat" and find it has a hundred tracks on it, most of which are blank spacers, decided it would be quickest to rip and then delete.

So taking a lot longer to do things I expected to do yesterday and today.

ALso my lurgi (I'm off to the docs tomorrow) is causing me to fall behind on my walking targets, so September maybe the first month where I fail tohit the 340K target. It's not bothering me too much as I think it's maybe taking energy that should be going towards recuperation, but we shall see.

So I'll leave you with another Cracker song "Low".

Enjoy your Wednesday

Get Yer Bloody Lawn Mowed

My lawn does need mowing but it is looking lush and healthy at the moment and I think I will be overdoing it if I try it today, so I will let it continue to be lush. The title is inspired by the title of the latest Half Man Half Biscuit album " No-one Cares About Your Creative Hub So Get Your Fvckin' Hedge Cut", the title is starred out on Amazon and I've replaced the "U" with a "V" so hopefully people won't be too offended. The thing is starring things out doesn't hide anything really, people what F**k and Bu**er mean given the context, and it's unlikely the second word will be Butler, Bugker or Butter.

Anyway more of my thoughts on the album, it's much like most of their albums, ie excellent and the instrumentation, playing and productions seems much improved, possibly to the detriment of the lyrics, which are incredibly important in the effect of Half Man Half Biscuit songs sponting the references , connections, ambiguities and hilarities and Shakespearean class word play in there, although Nigel Blackwell may not thank me for that comparison, though him and John Cooper Clarke should be Poet Laureate at some point, two of our greatest populist wordsmiths.

I've chosen "Every Time A Bell Rings" which contains a refrain of the album title, checks in with David Bowie in the first line, takes swipes at Artisan stuff and wannabe cyclist and "It's A Wonderful Life". It's this sort of song that makes them an absolute joy to listen to.

Yes there is darkness in there but it's a sort of loveable darkness, and they are still one of my favourite bands and always will be.

A New Low

Yesterday I did about 1100 steps, that's 2K under the national average and the lowest I've done since starting my rolling three month Million Step Challenge. For the first time since I can remember I never left the house, and virtually never left  my bed apart from to have a hot bath the ease my aches. For the last three days I've been suffering from cold and 'flu' like symptoms. It's not real 'flu' because I can actually move.

It's three AM and as yesterday was spent sleeping and resting I thought I could just write a blog post to say what has been happening to me.

I was looking through my digital music collection and noticed I hadn't ripped any of my Cracker albums so I will extract them from the box tomorrow and ad them to my digital collection, so I have shared the brilliant "Teen Angst" with you for this post.

I am finding Simon Singh's "The Code Book" extremely interesting about the history of code making, code breaking and the ingenious ways of passing secret messages from the time we actually started to write.

It is amazing how much time we spend online these days, when I switched the computer on it was 2.22 it is now 3.02, and I will soon be going back to bed, though I really do hope that getting up and writing this doesn't knock me back, but it's Saturday morning so I can have a day of relaxation, though hopefully won't hit another all time low on the step front.

Some Lines

Suffering from a cold, runny nose , headache and the like, what certain softies call 'flu' or man 'flu' . It's a cold, a head cold, it's unpleasant and I want it to go away.

Sitting downstairs this popped into my head for some reason. It has before, but I thought I would formalise it as one of my Non-Poems, just thinking of what we have that we will probably never use, but we still collect:

We have films

We will never watch

We have books

We will never read

We have records

We will never listen to

We have devices

We will never use

........

Or Will We?

What we have

Gives us choice

We Justify it

As Planning

For The Future

..........

I Will

Watch That Film

Read That Book

Listen To That Record

Use That Device

I Will

I Will

I am going through tissues and headachey so will leave you with "Legend of A Mind" by The Moody Blues from "In Search of The Lost Chord" which references Timothy Leary the LSD guru.

Morning Darker

Looking out my window the sky is full of grey clouds scudding across the skyline. Yesterday I was feeling very down, I'm not sure why, but I'd run out of some of my tablets unexpectedly and they were are related to blood pressure so maybe that was something to do with it. Also valious friends are suffering from physical and mental pain and barring supportive texting there is absolutely nothing I can do for them.

Added to this I had various meetings and things that needed to be sorted at work and an, at times, painful hacking chesty cough.

When I got home I got by drugs stash replenished and loaded up with chocolate to ease my throat and started watching "Spectre", which is rather enjoyable but the title song is half decent but ruined by the strangled cat vocals of Sam Smith. Still that was just a couple of minutes at the beginning.

I also finished "The Fourteenth Letter", the debut novel by Claire Evans, I didn't think it was my cup of tea, it wasn;t it was the whole teapot, highly recommended despite recommendations on the back cover from Heat and Good Housekeeping which would have put me off. I suggest to you get yourself a copy.

That's been replaced by "The Code Book" by the excellent Simon Singh, the choice may have been influenced by me watch the brilliant "Imitation Game" the incredible story that showed how the British Government drove the genius Alan Turing to suicide and it's the sort of thing that would happen under today's US and UK governments.

Looking out of the window and there is now blue sky appearing and the clouds blow away.

Spo what to play, maybe Jonathan Richman's "I'm A Little Dinosaur" which is a cuteness injection for a fairly downer post, but I know today wiill be an improvement on yesterday for me, I hope it is for all my friends.

Have a great Wednesday.