Temporally Speaking

I find it amazing how time flies by if you are doing something that needs to be done , or you are enjoying it, but drags like hell when you are waiting for something , doing absolutely nothing , or doing something that bores you. 

I love doing things that interest me and detest boredom but when time is dragging or flying I always call to mind "The eighty Minute Hour" by Brian Aldiss, where the controllers slow down timepieces when you are at work and speed them up when you are not. If that were the situation , how would we know.

This morning I started out extra early , got things done then , had to do more thanks to a milk leak in my rucksack meaning that had to go in the wash , and suddenlty you don't feel any further forward that you thought you would be but you actually are.

It's a bit like my current paperback "The Other Log of Phileas Fogg" , it's only 166 pages but the font is so tiny it is going much slower than I expected. Having said that, though I know the overall concept and have seen a couple of films I have never read Jules Verne's "Around The World In Eighty Days" , although my girls as children used to love the cartoon character Willy Fogg, but this book is giving me a good grounding in the original book while setting my mind off on lots of "What is happening here" questions. I am enjoying it and , unusually , this is taking longer than expected , and "Imajica" on the Kindle Fire is going very slowly , but , in all honesty , that is a book I never want to end despite having read it several times.

The weather this week has been totally dreich and showing no signs of changing , but weather is weather. The thing I don't like about it is the featureless skies.

There are lots of songs that refer to time , but I'm going with Todd Rundgren's "Time Heals" from the album "Healing", the video was a staple of MTV in the early eighties.

So Nineteenth Century

 My current TV series is "The Frankenstein Chronicles" , a hybrid of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" novel and "Ripper Street". I was a bit apprehensive about this but it has turned out to be a great watch , very high production values and barring what I have told you I don't want to give anything away. Even the abhorrent Laurence Fox turns in an excellent performance , and Ed Stoppard in this series is ideally avoided.

It's definitely nineteenth century with Sean Bean being Sean Bean with the transition of the Bow Street Runners to the Peelers. It is a Netflix series and well worth the temporal investment. I've just realised that Sean Bean's name visually rhymes but does not do so audibly.

My current paperback book is "The Other Log of Phileas Fogg" by Philip Jose Farmer, an alternate take on Jules Verne's "Around The World in Eighty Days" continually asking questions on why certain things happen in the original book that are unexplained and coming out for the real reasons for the events. There are elements of Sherlock Holmes in there and I think a lot of these books are available for free if you have a Kindle or equivalent. So my paperback reading is also nineteenth century. 

On my Kindle I am still reading Clive Barker's "Imajica" so that is more vaguely twentieth century although it reaches back into history and across five universal dimensions.

So that's me being nineteenth century in the twenty first century so to soundtrack this we will share Todd Rundgren's take on Gilbert & Sullivan's "Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song" from that appeared on his album "Todd"

Love unrequited, robs me of me rest,

Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers,

Love, nightmare like, lies heavy of me chest,

And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers.

When you're lying awake with a dismal headache and

Repose is taboo'd by anxiety,

I conceive you may use any language you choose to

Indulge in, without impropriety;

For your brain is on fire, the bed-clothes conspire of

Usual slumber to plunder you:

First your counter-pane goes, and uncovers your toes,

And your sheet slips demurely from under you;

Then the blanketing tickles, you feel like mixed

Pickles, so terribly sharp is the pricking,

And you're hot and you're cross, and you tumble and

Toss 'til there's nothing 'twixt you and the

Ticking.

Then the bed-clothes all creep to the ground…

Enjoy

Observations on a Piece of Clear Plastic

 A Contact Lens

Sticks to the Eye

Comes To Terms With The Eye

To Focus

And Make Your Sight Good

It is not Mechanical

It Is Not Alive

But It Works

Human Invention

Never Fails to Amaze

So Many Things

But

This Piece of Clear Plastic

Makes My Life

So Convenient

It doesn't Steam Up

And works 99% Of The Time

Yeah m this is a sort of Dylan like Tarantula stream of consciousness thoughts about wearing contact lenses. Is it a poem. You decide that because it has little structure , doesn't rhyme or conform to anything apart for using words you will find in a dictionary, much like me, but I felt I had to write it down. 

I reckon really it's a non-poem , it looks like a poem, but it isn't. I have actually used that term before. If you follow the Non-Poem link I've actually written about ten of these pieces and that surprised me, it's almost like I consider myself a writer.

Maybe "Blind Vision" by Blancmange will be a suitable accompaniment.

The Fabulous Presentations and Music of Chris Rea

 I am writing this because Facebook wont let me properly share a recent YouTube album cover video that I post on three Chris Rea releases :

• "The Return of The Fabulous Hofner Bluenotes" 
• "Santo Spirito Blues"
• "Blue Guitars"

I have also discovered another set "La Passione" which could be a Christmas present as it's another well presented set with good reviews and given my reevaluation of the first of these sets will be a worthy addition to my collection.

The first one I didn't think I liked. The presentation pack is wonderful but thought the music was a little too sixties stylised. It consists of a book with lots of photographs and some of Chris's paintings (he is a great artist) , two ten inch vinyl albums and three vinyl replica CDs.

Yesterday , thanks to the excellent RPM supplied record player (close on two years old now) I played the first vinyl album , and while very Shadows influenced you can tell it's Chris Rea, and it sounded a lot better than I expected. I am listening to my digital copy as I type this and it is extremely listenable, and you can sort of spot the songs that the tunes have been lifter from, but that is no bad thing, it just adds another level of enjoyment to the listening, and The Shadows are always a great starting point (two of my favourites are "Apache" and "Wonderful Land" and Hank Marvin was responsible for the killer intro to Cliff Richard's best ever record , his debut single "Move It").

As this progresses it becomes more and more contemporary Chris Rea rather than Chris Rea being The Shadows.

"Santo Spirito Blues" is a book with two film DVDs , accompanying CD soundtracks and a stand alone CD bearing the title of the collection. I haven't yet watched the films but the "Bull Fighting" is extremely Spanish influenced guitar and orchestral music and very good.

The biggest surprise is the half hour "Santo Spirito" CD  which sounds like "Wish You Were Here" era Pink Floyd with overlaid accordions, shockingly and unexpectedly excellent and will be on my player a lot more often. A very impressive package.

"Blue Guitars" is an absolute tour-de-force, 11 CDs each with a different blues style all composed by Chris Rea and performed by him and the band , plus a DVD and page upon page of excellent Chris Rea art pieces. When this was released it was about £30 , which is less than £3 a CD, the art book alone is probably worth that. You will pay £60 for a copy on Amazon and there may be copies on Discogs as well.

11 CDs provide about eight hours continual listening and then you have a DVD to watch and an artbook to enjoy. The amazing thing is that this was produced in under two years and I still enjouy dipping into this today.

Hopefully people will check this out, and Chris Rea is an artist who still produces impressive album packages in this digital age. Although you can download the MP3 copies , you really want the physical copies to appreciate how good they are.

A Nightmare

 I woke from , what for me is, a recurring nightmare, although it is very mild compared with what most people would class as a nightmare. I think I am slightly claustrophobic , so it's a manifestation based on that.

Earlier this week I dreamt I was in a house and many of the rooms had no windows, big buildings with no windows I find, creepy, rooms with no windows creepier because you are inside.

The latest was for some reason I was holidaying in the far north of Scotland (which I would like to do) , and while being shown around the place I had to squeeze past the host in the doorway to the "main room" and then felt even being there it was too small to get out. It's this situation where you are at the risk of getting stuck and unable to free yourself and often have variations on that theme, though I always manage to get past the difficult part.

In real like it reminds me of the ascent of Scott's Monument in Edinburgh which manged to combine my claustrophobia with vertigo, but I managed to do that and got some great photographs, and to be honest, my body size is not increasing, so once this lockdown is dealt with (if that happens) I may do it again. Similarly the "gateway to Cow Hill from Grandstand Road is a very tight squeeze for me , although I could climb over or through the fence.

I don't like small caves or underground tunnels and when I see these cavers squeezing through holes , often also underwater it sends my blood cold, I think that happens in the film "The Descent" , which for me is a real horror film.

Other nightmare scenarios are being up high and having to traverse gaps in stairs or ladders to go up, knowing you have to do the same coming back.

The thing is, with all these nightmares, I either get through it or wake up, and with tonight's , because I am on a staycation, I can write about this at 3:30 am knowing I don't have to get up at 5:45 as usual. Every day is like a Saturday , although today I have to go to Newcastle University to help with research into my Cirrhosis of the Liver so it won't be just lying around doing nothing, listening to music , read or playing.

So something dark to accompany this post, or maybe not. I'm been listening to a lot of Chris Rea recently and maybe "Nothing To Fear" is a more suitable piece to sign off with. I just posted a Youtube video of some of his amazing album packaging here, although some people may think that Chris Rea's music is a nightmare but given his prodigiously good output I can forgive "Driving Home For Christmas". 

It is now 4:10 am

Here Comes The Rain Again

Today has been cold and miserable out , persistent precipitation that just makes it uncomfortable to be out. Today I took a day off work , got a haircut from my local Turkish Barber Skin Fade which apparently refers to a hair styling technique and Ahmet gave me some very nice Turkish Delight which I have already partaken of.

Today has seen me finish off American Horror Story:Freaks which , although there is a lot of graphic violence as generally more a tragedy than a horror story , despite having the scariest clown I know , and the finale was actually quite uplifting (I think) . I am watching "Prodigal Son" with Michael Sheen sort of stealing it amid a brilliant cast and have now started on "The Frankenstein Chronicles" which is wandering the realms of "Ripper Street".

"Coldheart Canyon" is now finished and I don't remember the rather quiet but still decent ending of another excellent Clive Barker novel. The next one is "The Other Log of Phileas Fogg" by Philip Jose Farmer , a book which I have totally forgotten reading but the title gives you clues.

The rain is still falling and there are rumours of snow, although I haven't seen any yet.

I just realised that because I have had a relatively restful day , I can actually do a blog post and am under no pressure to get up early tomorrow and it is nice to feel completely unpressured.

So I am just left to choose a song to go with this and the simplest option is to go with the Eurythmics one that I stole the title from.

The Thirteenth Month

I have often wondered why we have twelve months when we say four weekes is a month. If that were so we'd be starting our thirteenth month tomorrow and would probably called Undecember (latin for eleven is Undecim) . Here is an explanation , apparently the romans started with ten months but then tried to match it to the (just over) 12 lunar cycles in a year so a 13 month year would be out of sync with th elunare cycles.

The thing remind me of imperial weights and money systems  (12 pennies to a shilling , 5 shillings to a crown , then there's half crowns , twenty shillings in a pound and twenty one shillings in a guinea. Then sixteen ounces to a pound, fourteen pounds to a stone etc , then you have twelve inches to a foot , three feet to a yard , six feet to a fathom etc.

Then you have tennis scoring which is weird as hell and the Duckworth-Lewis method in cricket for curtailed matches and all the weird scoring possibilities with light stopping play and more.

Metric is a far more sensible measurement system , although people still have problems with our swith to decimalisation fifty years back.

So this is my first post of the month and think I'm going to go with "The Killing Moon" by Echo & The Bunnymen because of the lunar cycles that prompted this post in th efirst place.