220020022020

This is post 2200 on 20/02/2020 . I didn't plan it, it just happened, though I could have planned it, but I didn't. That's a lot of twos and zeroes and no other digits. Numbers can be both fascinating and boring, it just depends on your frame of mind.

Today I dropped into Windows and was tempted by reasonable priced vinyl , a Best of Bowie , "Diamond Dogs" and "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac . I have all these on digital and to be quite honest now I tend to buy vinyl for the sleeve as well as the music. The whole lot would have cost £35. Oh I forgot , there was also Deep Purple "In Rock" , one of my earliest metal album and still, in my opinion , a classic with a great cover, but really my space for vinyl is sort of full.

I believe that you should play music, not just have it. I think I bought a lot to support the artist, especially on CD, but I cannot play my CD collection which is why a chunk of it is on Discogs.

I took delivery of a reconditioned Google Pixel 2XL today and I am still relearning it and setting up apps on it. I need to get a protective cover and load some music onto it but I've got the basic apps on it and am well impressed with my buy from Music Magpie, but still slightly miffed that my Google Pixel would be fine if the charging port worked. Still c'est la vie.

So on this numerically coming together I am thinking of the Cat Stevens album "Numbers" which I do have on vinyl, which is beautifully put together and the music is good as well. A definitely worthy part of my collection so I'll share the opening "Whistlestar".

Today's The Day

SevenDaysIn has just gone over the half million visit line. Also by tomorrow I will replace the Samsung Galaxy A3 with a Google Pixel 2XL , an older phone but significantly cheaper than a new one with the same twelve month guarantee and not much more expensive than repairing the defunct charging port on my Google Pixel. The really annoying thing is that I have a perfectly functional phone that I can't charge and therefor is NOT perfectly functional any more.

Over the last week my steps have significantly dropped off mainly because of the biting cold weather, which means the bus is a preferable option.

6Music was playing Tone Loc this morning, and I always loved "Funky Cold Medina" so we will share that on this extremely short post, although it still clocks in at around 150 words, a definite novella compared to some of my early posts (like the first "mission statement" one here, but I suppose diary entries can be like that,

So enjoy your Wednesday my friends.

Tomorrow's The Day ....

... that the blog hits half a million visits. It's taken a long time and after the visits dropped I wasn't sure how long it would be, but given that I'm now polling 150 visits a day and there are 80 more visits required it's safe to say that Wednesday the 19th of February is the day that SevenDaysIn hits the half a million mark. I'm quite surprised that that single sentence consists of over fifty words, though there is something that tells me that at school I used to write 100 word essays, that's like two or three sentences, there is no way that that could be true so I think my mind is playing tricks on me there.

My initial attempt at book writing floundered and died, and I do admire the people who can actually string together coherent text that grabs and keeps you attention. Clive Barker's "Weaveworld" and "Imajica" certainly do that , although not for the more genteel folk among us but for me riveting stuff.

So this is a latish Tuesday placeholder, which may bring itn one or two more views before I go to bed. I'm not really sure what piece of music to play although I introduced some friends to Barclay James Harvest recently via "Poor Man's Moody Blues" and for some reason the incredibly contrived "Titles" maybe appropriate , wonderful tune, wonderful music but the lyrics are made up of Breatles song titles so it can be deemed very clever or very crass, but I do actually like it.

See what you think and let me know with a comment.

.... a Magic Carpet

I finished "Follow The Music" who's final chapter was very contrivedly 33⅓ and was wondering what to read next. I sort of wanted fiction, but something I know I'd be happy with so I have gone back to the first Clive Barker book I read, "Weaveworld", it's in a large format BCA edition with "Cabal" (which found it's way into film as "Nightbreed" , an interesting twist where the real monsters are the humans and the "monsters" are ghettoised and persecuted and features David Cronenberg acting as the major villain).

"Weaveworld" was Barker's second novel after "The Damnation Game" although he had produced "The Books of Blood" short story collection. I am currently reading "Imajica" on Kindle  (my favourite book ever) but I now know why I was hooked by "Weaveworld" , sixty pages in wit just a glimpse of the magic carpet referred to in the title and part of this is telling me "when you have read this you know you have to read the other books" so it looks like I am unlikely to be reading any more new books for a while.

I was trying to think of a song to go with this and while I could have chosen "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf (great name from the Herman Hesse novel), "The Magic Suitcase" by Carbon/Silicon has been playing in my bed, while the subject matter is a little dodgy (the suitcase contains a bomb, I think) it's a superb song and the second best song on their brilliant debut album.

It's grey Tuesday and time for me to leave the house, but if you need some new book places to visit "Weaveworld" is a brilliant place to go.

Keep Yourself Alive

One of the things I say to people is YOU are the most important person in your life, to which people tell me I'm wrong and say it's their partner , their children or grand children. My reply is is you have to keep yourself it the best condition to be there for them, if you are not there, their lives would be missing you for love and support , so that's why you have to put yourself first.

There's a Michael Moorcock book "Breakfast In The Ruins" that finishes each chapter with an impossible "What Would You Do?" dilemma, if you follow the link you can see some of the horrible dilemmas listed, and I had misremembered one as "You and your child are taken by a group of thugs and they give you five minutes to decided who dies, you or your child" . The horrible thing with this scenario is that you know that you cannot trust these people and you are probably more able to defend yourself if you chose yourself.

So what brought this on , again it's finishing "Follow The Music" , the two artists I was waiting to be covered were Harry Chapin and Queen and the latter's first single was "Keep Yourself Alive" which impressed me no end, with the excellent guitar phasing and "No Synthesisers". I was unaware that the band were all degree educated and Freddie Mercury was classically trained. Jac Holzman love the first album but was not impressed with them when he first saw them live, so he wrote them a letter, which they took on board. He remarked how hard working they were and really the rest is history.

The thing is look after yourself because you are very important to the people in your life. I am diabetic and many people have told me they would never inject themselves, they would rather die. I said "What about your family?" and injections are just a tiny prick that you get used to. I still inject five times a day although the amount of insulin is reducing as it the weight (slowly) and I have to sort about twenty tablets a day , and while it is, at worst , a chore, I do this because I want to have a good life, and me having a good life means that everyone who I mean something to will be happy that I am.

So have a great Sunday , Storm Dennis seems to have calmed and there's not been too much damage here, which is good......

Choice

I grew up with two TV channels. When John F Kennedy was assassinated they replaced "Bonanza" with an old woman playing piano  much to my annoyance. It was either that or nothing. I probably went and played out.

It's the same with books and music, I know people who have little or no personal music or books in their lives and at some point I didn't have much.

This has come home to me using the Samsung A3 until I replace my Google Pixel. I had so much music on the Pixel that I didn't really know what to play some days. It's the same with TV channels , I have over 200 to choose from as well as on demand TV and over 400 video discs, as well as so many books I could start my own library.

Reading "Follow The Music" I decided to load the CD from it plus the five discs from "Forever Changing " in to the small SD card on the phone to listen to in sequence.  It's strange having too much choice is almost as bad as having no choice at all or a limited choice, but it's always better to have the option of too much of what you want.

But listening to these albums , I 'm not thinking of what should I listen to, I'm enjoying the six albums that I have to listen to , and means that I can appreciate them as they should be, Having said that there is some awful stuff mixed with some subliminal stuff but I am still on the early folk so we have Tim Buckley and Tom Rush mixing with people I've never heard before, but  is all great to listen to.

When I've finished these I'll replace them with another few albums. Sometimes it is good to limit your choices, but then again you want to be able to choose what you limit yourself to.

Tomorrow I have a work photography session, I offered to be in the crowd and they've asked me to run it, so that should be interesting.

So what song should we go with , it has to be one from the current album, we'll take Judy Collins' "Tomorrow Is A Long Time" which I first heard excellently covered by Rod Stewart on "Every Picture Tells A Story" and it is a wonderful song penned by Bob Dylan and covered by many.

Kontakt

I said I write about anything , and I have no writing targets, but this morning as I put in my contact lenses I was still amazed how they actually work. Today was almost seamless lenses in , one perfect vision,  in slight irritation , so took it out and put it back in. I started on contact lenses thirty years back with hard lenses, I have never felt more uncomfortable and at the same time euphoric that I could walk round and see without glasses.

Someone once said to me that I wore contact lenses out of vanity. I told them it wasn't. I have 20/20 vision with them in, they don't get wet when it rains, and don't steam up when you go from cold to warm environments.

When I moved to soft lenses (I had considered laser surgery but they told me once it was done I would have to wear glasses for reading and it would cost me two grand, slightly pointless as I didn't want to wear glasses permanently and pay for the privilege), I heard stories about people who lose them in their eyes, get them stuck to their eyes and can't get them out etc. I lost one and it reappeared about three days later and I didn't feel any irritation.

It just amazes me that I put them in and then I can see. It amazes me that they adjust to my eye and that I can then see. Who thought that instead of glasses you could stick something on your eye (a horrible thought until you actually do it and get used to it) . Apparently the idea was first mooted by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1580, but there's a fair bit about on Wikipedia here.

Also why does bad weather seem worse at night. Last night was rainy and windy but this morning seems to have quietened down. Monday night I was walking home and got hit by rain and stinging hailstones and when I looked at what was playing when I got on it was "Stormy Weather" by Echo and The Bunnymen. Last night it started snowing when I was walking back though I am now listening to the free CD that came with "Follow The Music" with 26 early Elektra folk and blues tracks some taken from vinyl. Some are embarrassingly trite but some are very good like Judy Collins cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" and Phil Ochs "I Ain't Marching Anymore" which what will go with this morning , an excellent anti war anthem.