Dreich

A good description of this Saturday morning Dreich which if you follow the link you will get the definition. It's grey, wet and cold, the wind and rain beating aginst the window panes. And that's it.

While I do enjoy a shower, I just want to come out ready for the day , but hate having to dry myself, apply deodarant etc before you can actually get dressed. I've known people who say that deodorant is just a trick to con more money out of you , not the sort of people to get too close too.

One of the main problems I have with lockdown is the lack of physical contact with people, although I still have contact via phone , social media , and video apps , but to compensate for this I speak to people when out for walks (while maintaining social distancing)  and have spoken with a lot of people although I will probably never see or speak to them again.

In the time I've been writing this the sun has started to poke through so it may turn out to be a decent day , but we shall see how it goes.

Lots of ideas are going through my head , thinking about a podcast / radio show as it used to be that music couldn't be included in podcasts , but the BBC has a lot of shows / podcasts that do include music, but I first need to grab some software to do this , although I could just record in analogue form, but we shall see, and it may go like many of my other purported projects and never get started, although I do know I can do things when I put my mind to it otherwise I couldn't do a job.

We're in June and we should be well into summer weather but you have seen how I've described it, although we have had some great weather this week so I'm just trying to think of some music to share, and then I found this father/daughter quarantine take on "The Time Warp" from Richard O'Brien's "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" which in my opinion is one of the most fun things ever.. Watch this , you may love it. My daughters love The Rocky Horror Picture Show and loved the computer game on the old Amstrad.

Enjoy

The Titles of Budgie

I was originally going to title this "Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman" which is one of the many startling titles from the Welsh Heavy Metallers Budgie. Other titles are "It The Grip of A Tyre Fitters Hand" and "Breadfan" the latter covered by Metallica here among other places.

Their titles also vaguely remind me of the titles that Amon Duul II had on their albums which only just about made sense.

This morning I awoke from a dream it which lots happened but most has melted away now although one thing I remember was going back to the office except walking in was more like a packed church, withe everyone at their desks , then I realised I had forgotten my laptop so had to go back home , but it was pointless going back to the office because there was no place to sit anyway.

My mind is empty tonight (as usual) so I will leave you to enjoy the Welsh metal.

Long Distance

I have a Canon SX620 camera and it enables me to take long distance pictures. The control says I can take up to 100x zoom although the front of the camera says 25x optical zoom so that maty be why my longer distance pics get a bit less detailed, after 25x the zoom becomes digital.

I use the photos of long distance shots as a screensaver on my desktop and love when I see something and try to work out lots of things that I had never noticed before in relatively familiar surroundings. From the top of Cow Hill I can photograph from The West Road to Wallsend taking in the City Centre and St Jame's Park.

Having a sizeable zoom worried me about privacy , but I trued taking photos in my front room and front bedroom and the lack of light and glass reflection ensures good privacy. I do wonder about controllable drones that could easily be used to snoop, although I have seen some great outdoor drone shots.

Today Shaun Keaveny brought up the fact that you can use scissors to cut pizza, something I had never thought about , but I suppose you could , although the take aways I get are usually ready cut , and I haven't had a frozen pizza for a long time (Dr Oetker and Morrisons are my preferred ones when I feel in a pizza mood).

So given that this started about cameras we shall go with "The Camera Eye" by Rush

Parallel Reading

This year I was determined not to post so much, and although I am posting less than last year I am still posting. There are seldom two days between posts unless I am away for a weekend and don't take a laptop with me.

For the first time I am actually reading two books simultaneously , one on paper "The Great and Secret Show" (c 800 pages) and "Imajica" (c 1200 pages) on my Kindle Fire , both by Clive Barker , both excellent and getting through them at a reasonable pace which I don't normally do. These are rereads and though I know the overall story the detail has gone , so it's like I am reading a book I know I will like , which is always a good thing.

This morning on my walk I was listening to "Diamond Dogs" by David Bowie and I still think that "Rebel Rebel" is one of the greatest riffs ever because a) I can play it and b) it's probably the greatest Rolling Stones song that they never wrote or recorded.

I always go one about how brilliant Bowie is but yesterday I realised I have a particularly awful song by him from the covers album "Pin-Ups" . The rest of the album is great, the version of "Sorrow" is sublime and most of the others hit the spot , but "Shapes of Things" , the Yardbirds cover,  in which he sounds like he is impersonating one of his big influences Anthony Newley. The guitar solo is OK but it is really a sore thumb on a decent covers album

My reasons for disliking it it that the original is a great Yardbirds song , and Jeff Beck covered in with Rod Stewart as he had every right to do and that turned out fine .

Unfortunately for all other covers Nazareth threw the kitchen sink plus lots of phasing and heavy metal turning it into a perfect piece of prog metal , tagging on "Space Safari" giving us an excellent closer to their finest album "Rampant", so that's what we start June with.

The New Time

One of the problems with getting older is that the days seem to get shorter and you seem to have less time to do things, well that's how I feel. A number of people with children want to get the children back to school mainly because they are missing their friends, and of course looking after young children 24/7 is not an easy task.

The thing is that six weeks of lockdown for a six year old is a fiftieth of their life , where for me it's one five hundredth so it seems a lot longer for them that it does for me although the actual time is the same.

I am now trying to find a way of perceiving time in the same way that a child does and see a week's holiday or even a weekend as a long time. A weekend is around 62 hours from work finish to work start for most Monday to Friday workers and we should be able to see that as time to enjoy and do things.

I'm often reminded of "The Eighty Minute Hour" by Brian Aldiss where the controllers speed up clocks when we are not at work and slow them down when we are at work, and if that were happening  would we know?

People often waste weeks wishing for Friday , I used to be like that but now think "What Can I Do Today?" . If you are always looking forward to Friday you effectively throw away five days of your week , and the weekend is only two days so that makes your time seem to fly by.

My aim is not only to slow time down , but to do more in that time. I often am bothered by going for
walks because , by it's nature, that takes time, although usually I listen to music while walking as they are complimentary activities and listening to music can almost make the activity go faster. The paradox is that you want to finish your walk , but you want to enjoy your time doing it and if time speeds up you feel you are losing out.

Matt Haig wrote one of his excellent books "How To Stop Time" which also took this as part of his premise, and his self help page from "Reasons To Stay Alive" is excellent , so I am now FEELING TIME as well as taking my final part in the #maywriteabit , because tomorrow is the first of June.

So what song should we go with , there are many songs called "Time" , Pink Floyd and David Bowie come to mind, and even "Five Years Time" by Noah and the Whale and "Minutes" by The Human League came to mind.

I decided to go with "The Waiting" by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers as it is sort of appropriate for the position we are in now and does contain a lot of pertinent lines to the lockdown situation.

Primal Screen

We're coming to the end of the second full month of working during lockdown and while I have adapted there are a lot of people who still find things difficult . Next week I have a hospital appointment when I will probably use a bus to go. I haven't used a bus for weeks. Although I could actually walk to the hospital I wouldn't have time to walk back to start work.

We have had had sunny days and last night my phone showed a temperature of 17º Centigrade which I thought was hot , though I seem to be the only man in our neighbourhood cluster without a suntan, though I noticed an oddity on my left arm this morning two adjacent two centimetre round spots on my right arm one dark (as in tanned)  and one light (as in white) ,  not something that bothers me , just slightly odd.

I watched "Suicide Squad" last night and while it was good in bits with an excellent cast , the film as a whole was a bit of a mess.

So this Friday morning we go with another song that 6Music have been playing by a band who are new to me BC Camplight , and the song is "Shortly After Take Off" , I'd forgotten thename of the band and the title of the song but thanks to the shows' tracklistings on 6Music (in this case Nemone sitting in for Lauren Laverne) .

The thing is that's how my memory works , I often can't remember things but I can remember what to do to find them . How does that work? If my memory is bad then surely it should be bad for everything.

Another song that Nemone played was the absolutely brilliant "Endless Art" by A House (both versions) and really have to share that as well.

Why "Primal Screen" , well an obvious play on "Primal Scream" and the latest section in Clive Barker's "The Great and Secret Show" is called "Primal Scenes" and I am use my laptop computer screen for work as well as play.

Have a great Friday everyone.

On Demand

Yesterday I didn't even listen to the live radio, because now you can listen to shows on demand. I was using the BBC Sounds app on my Kindle Fire. I noticed there was something featuring Stephen King , who , like Terry Pratchett, I don't really like his books , but I like him as a person and like the TV and film dramatisations of his stories.

First up was the 6Music "Paperback Writers" show and the listing didn't include The Rolling Stones song "Dance Little Sister" which came between Jan & Dean's "New Girl In School" and KC & The Sunshine Band's "That's The Way (I Like It)" . King's attitude to disco is the same as mine, and we both love it.

I was looking forward to following this with his "Desert Island Discs" but it ran into Irvine Welsh's show and as I am an admirer of Irvine Welsh I let it run , and his music choices were stuff that I would have played , listened to and maybe even picked.

Both authors' shows were illuminating and gave a good insight into them and their tastes. The only slight black mark for me was Stephen King closing with "My Sharona" by The Knack , but each to his hown and when the other choices were so good you have to allow some leeway. Irvine Welsh's choices were all more than acceptable to me.

I then went back to "Desert Island Discs"  which was more talking and less music but a decent listen nonetheless.

The thing is you can cherrypick what you want to listen to these days and that means that live radio is up against a formidable library of sound, so my listening to live radio is about to get a little less. I think I will share "It Came Out Of The Sky" by Creedence Clearwater Revival" because it is on Stephen King's list and it has the "It" connection too.