Ring Out The Old, Ring In The New

This Christmas and New Year break has seen me hit by 'flu' and a cold and I am still probably only functioning at 50% but still smiling and looking forward to the new decade. We lost the wonderful Neil Innes but we have his digital, musical and comedic legacy to keep smiles on our faces. Technology has enabled some amazing situations, if we lose someone their immortality is now virtually guaranteed (as long as they leave something behind). It is one of the many reasons I post on this blog.

In previous years I have sent texts to people on my phone lists but this year I just see that as spamming them, they know I am thinking about them and I know they are thinking about me.

So this is my "Happy New Year" post taking a line from George Harrison's "Ding Dong" which sort of sums up some of my feelings:

Go Forward

Be Happy

Smile

Look Out For Others

Accept Compliments

Stay Positive

Look For New Things

Enjoy Yourself

Be With Friends

Make Me Time

Make Time To Be Social

And Have a Happy New Year

So this is my Happy New Year to you all.

Wrestle Poodles And Win

After the smiling positivity of my last two posts yesterday I saw the news that Neil Innes had unexpectedly died. I'm not sure when  I first was exposed to him via the Bonzo Dog Band, possibly on "Do Not Adjust Your Set" , the the hit single with "I'm The Urban Spaceman" and listening to "The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse" in the Sixth Form College common room  to the annoyance of the "cool heads" but there was a guy there who took no shit from them and we continually played it, and when they listened they liked some of the stuff.

Although essentially born in trad jazz the Bonzo's were the English equivalent of The Mothers of Invention (Frank Zappa's lot) seemingly anarchic and chaotic but absolutely spot on musicians and composers covering all sorts of genres meaning you didn't necessarily know what to expect. They incurred the wrath of politician Quentin Hogg for crediting him with "Piggy Grunt" on "The Intro and The Outro", and the band continued to delight and surpries.

While Bonzo's songs were often credited to Innnes with front man Vivian Stanshall , they were not a two man unit, with other members contributing much of their repertoire.

But this is essential my remembrance of Neil Innes who along with the Bonzo's was the mind behind the Rutles , absolutely spot on Beatles pastiche band and many other musical and comedy collaborations including beith dubbed the seventh Monty Python member.

So although our Urban Spaceman has left the plane he will always bring a smile to my face , and he's now joined Vivian in the next phase of existence.

Stay Happy

This post is post 366 this year and while there are generally assumed to be 365 days in a year it's actually 365.25 days a year so to adjust it every four years we have a leap year , and the devil in me says , "Ah but you've not really averaged on a day, have you?" , so this post is just nails it.

As I was sharing my last post, vehicle I love "Happy" by The Carpenters , I probably love "Happy" by The Rolling Stones even more, with it's joyous hedonistic loping riff and brilliant night out lyrics so that was on my mind during the last post and will be the piece for this post. It's from "Exile On Main Street" probably my favourite Rolling Stones album.

The thing is Amazon's search algorithm seems to have gone all to pot. Search for "Rolling Stones Happy" and yu get "Exile on Main Street" then clothes and playlists and unrelated album, so the list below is my personal choices.

Sport wise this week has been awful for Preston North End and Newcastle which is a bit of a bring down, but I expect both teams to pick themselves up and kick on from here.

I also am not going to hit my step target for the month, although really the monthly target is a notional one as part of the three month Million Step Challenge so that means I haven't really missed a target there, although it feels like it, but again I need to kick on with that. Also the 'flu' I've had really stopped me from walking so I sort of have an excuse.

So without further ado it's back to work now, and remember what a smile can do for for you , smile lots today.

If I Make You Smile ....

... then I take that as a huge compliment. I do like talking to people , sometimes reassuring them that they can deal with their situation like my dad with his upcoming cataract operation. Smiling boosts our health and immune system so just smiling is a quick win. If you smile at someone and they smile back then that's two people who's lives have improved. . Here's a few more reasons to smile.

It may be difficult to smile in bad times but I always try and find positives in every situation no matter how unpositive they may be. A smile always helps.

"A smile is formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile. Among humans, smiling is an expression denoting pleasure, sociability, happiness, joy or amusement."

"Smiling Boosts Your Immune System 

 Smiling can also boost your overall health. The act of smiling actually helps the human immune system to function more effectively. It is thought that when you smile, immune function improves because you are more relaxed (thanks to the release of certain neurotransmitters)."

That's a couple of thoughts on why you should smile, and do it now. Your mood will improve, your day will improve and if you share it with others their day improve as well and making lots of people feel better is a total win/ win.

Although I've used this recently, it's one of my mums favourite songs and probably helped me appreciate the Carpenters.

By the way this is post 365 , so I have done one post a day for 2019

Art Decade

I've just realised that this is the last Sunday and the last week of this decade, it just suddenly came upon me, this time next week it will be 2020. I think I am finally getting recovered from the #flu' and speaking to my dad he told me, touch wood, that he had never had it. I do quite feel tongue in cheek when people have it continually. This is not the worst I have had it as I have been able to move, but now I will be expected to be there for people and to do things that are expected of an average human being.

In the last decade I've learned things , forgotten things ,done different jobs, bought things that have turned out fairly useless,, set targets, still not written any songs or a book and we are now on the cusp of another decade.

No doubt there will be some numerical significance gleaned from from the onset of 2020 but you often find such significance is just in the nature of the numbers themselves. Numbers only reach significance when they actually represent something significant. Humans always look for significance and patterns , and lets face it if we could work out how these things work we could improve our lives significantly but random is impossible to predict, that's it's nature.

So anyway I am going with Bowie's song from the instrumental side of "Low" (i particularly like the colour changing underground video accompaniment for this) on the grey drab Sunday morning, it's ironic that I finish this decade by failing to hit my step target for the month, but I am likely to hit a post a  day for the year for  the blog which I didn't expect to hit, so sometimes you succeed and sometimes you don't quite hit it..

The thing is once you have done certain things you do not need to repeat them.

This Here 'flu' and Cold

.. has certainly allowed me to write about my situation and the sheer annoyance of being stopped from living normally and being unable to do even the very basics. This is the first month I won't hit 340K steps for several years although the three month rolling million steps will be fairly safe, as I am currently 57K short for the month and have three days left, and normally I over hit by at least 40K so that will be all good.

The worst feeling is feeling you should be doing something but being unable to do anything because your mind or body is just stopping you from actually doing anything. Your mind's ability to think shuts down and you get this real restlessness to just do something, which in itself is good.

I am annoyed that I can no longer apply labels to the blog, but if I can't I can't. I can still search it.

So I am overheating again, so need to strip off (don't worry no pictures) so what should I go with. There are lot's of medical related songs that I can share, but I'll go with the original Delia Derbyshire / Ron Grainer "Doctor Who Theme".

Rest

Today I have to rest, no ifs, no buts , rest. I am improving but the end of each day I have regressed, and also needed to majorly cool down. It is always to tempting to just do a little thing, and this morning I heard a bin lorry in the distance so thought it would be prudent to take out my bin and my neighbour's to be picked up if and when the bin lorry comes.

Yesterday I taught myself the basic notes to "Troika" by Prokofiev , the perfect Christmas musical piece and just wondering whether to record it or not, it is relatively simple and I am not going to do the whole piece but I've always loved it sine Pete Sinfield and Greg Lake lifted it for the memorable instrumental section in "I Believe In Father Christmas" which is another perfect Christmas song,

As I blog I keep seeing spelling mistakes and grammatical errors and am not sure if it's my own incompetence of the built in spelling and grammar checker. I also cannot add labels either as it locks up the blogging software, which is more than annoying. I did try Wordpress but found it unusable, I know I'm in the minority, but it just never worked for me.

So we will go with "Troika" by Prokofiev which is lovely, seasonal and relaxing.It is from the "Lieutenant Kije" suite with Sting also raided for "Russians"