Good Morning

The other day was one of those hideous morning when I got woken up my my alarm clock. I know that is the point of the alarm clock , but I have never figured out how to snooze it , so when the alarm goes off I know I have to get up. Although I have also observed that the alarm actually stops after a while then restarts after five minutes. I like waking up and knowing i hamaybe forty minutes before the alarm allowing me a gradual waking , but the other morning it wasn't to be.

The good thing about being woken by my alarm is that I must have had a good night's sleep, undisturbed by anything and though I had to drag myself up , I knew that I had benefitted from the rest. I would hate to be awake throughout the night and when the alarm went off having to drag a tired ad reluctant body towards the shower despite the physical protests and desire to just stay in bed.

Todays' music has been mostly Jefferson Airplane's first five albums, Edward II's "Dancing Tunes" and some Continental Quilts . Follow the links to the artist's Bandcamp areas. All worthy listens , and was particularly impressed with "Surrealistic Pillow" which contains "White Rabbit" , "You're My Best Friend" . "Somebody To Love" and I will share the wonderful acoustic "Embryonic Journey" , which I loved when I first heard it many moons ago.

Steppenwolfing

I am a third of the way through the book (you know I am a very slow reader) and am on the third part / chapter . whatever the "Treatise on the Steppenwolf" and have seen the first references to the main subject Harry Haller as a were-wolf, though this is philosophy as a novel, with the man wolf situation almost like the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of Robert Louis Stevenson.

The book drifts between mundane normality and dark areas where the reality becomes more than  a bit blurred and maybe it's this that is keeping my interest. I am not sure that I will pick up another Hermann Hesse book but even though I bought this it nearly never got read. 

I suppose it's like "The Catcher In The Rye" by JD Salinger , "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac and "Tarantula" by Bob Dylan, books that grace your shelf but maybe you have never read. I still haven't done "On The Road" ,, yet but I am sure I will do.

So musically we will keep the wolf theme going with "Will The Wolf Survive" by Los Lobos which I thought sounds almost like a Stevie Winwood song, it is rather excellent.

Steppenwolf

On the back cover this is described as "the hip bible of 60's counter culture". I remember seeing people with bookcases at home thinking "they've never read any of those books" and to some extent that is true of me. I bought several  sets of classic books , in their own boxes and yesterday decided to extract some , and in two of them the books were actually stuck together, only slightly but nonetheless , theses were books I have bought and never read.

I finally decided to read at least one of these, and the one I chose is "Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse , the English translation from the original German because like most entitled English people I am effectively monolinguistic. The book is potentially very dark although the author does describe it as hopeful in the preface.

When I started it , I thought it was going to all be the preface after the foreword, because there is not chapter listing , but then I found a break at page 50 and hit another at page 30.

Although the book's preface seems very boring , a lodger staying in a guy's aunt's guesthose the style of writing has me captivated, just wondering how this is going to pan out. As yet it is not the most dynamic or uplifting tome, but I am enjoying , though possibly not the best choice after finishing the excellent but worrying "Fake Law" by The Secret Barrister,

No doubt I will keep you updated as I progress through "Steppenwolf" and my musical accompaniment was going to be something by the band Steppenwolf (I wonder where they got the name from) but then remembered a Hawkwind song from the "Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music" album called "Steppenwolf" though it refers more to a werewolf rather than the nan in the book , our Mr Haller.

The Wind

Although temperatures are rising when I am out walking there is a wind that almost takes your face off it is so cold. This makes walking out not very pleasant, although I still try and get out and to hit an avaerage of 11K steps a day.

This week I tried Noom but found it too regimented but was willing to give it a try as it seems to working for certain friends, but after continually filling it information about what I'm eating (the blurb does not indicate this) and the final straw was to get you walking and then work up to a decent amount. It gave me three starting points , 2K , 5K and 10K . I chose 10K because I walk an average of 11K steps a day, but Noom said I had to start at 2K then increase my steps by 300 a day. There was no way I was doing that as it would ruin my normal routine.

So while Noom is fine for a lot of people , it is not for me , like gyms (which I find boring. I am going to go out for a walk after this and hopefully the weather will be a little milder but knowing my luck maybe it wont be.

So music wise we will go with "The Wind" from "Teaser and the Firecat" by Cat Stevens.

Charity Albums

There have been a lot of albums that raised money for charity and the Warchild "Help!" album was a major flagship, produced in next to no time and almost every song on it being an absolute gem , but like Band Aid , some artists saw it as a way of promoting themselves or not putting on much effort because people would buy it and it's for charity.

The bad has included Ronan Keating murdering "In The Ghetto" and a completely soulless "Knockin On Heaven's Door" by Avril Lavigne but gems include "House of The Rising Sun" by Muse , "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" by The Kaiser Chiefs "Ghost Town" by The Prodigy, "Vietnam" by New Order and a lot more.

These albums serve a purpose and are worth exploring because you end up with some unusual and exciting covers, and some interesting original music and remixes.

Most of these albums don't seem to be available for download so you will have to grab yourself a copy , but I will leave you with  "The Magnificent" by The One World Orchestra (which was really The KLF) from the "Help" album which is definitely worth buying.

Making Time

How often do you think "Where's The Time Gone?". As we get older time seems to go faster but that's because we see it as relative to out age. When I was 6 I got six weeks summer holidays from school. That was a week for every year of my life, it seemed like forever to me and when I hit grammar school it was eight weeks. The equivalent holiday time now based on my age would be over a year.

I don't regard time spent watching a program I want to watch as wasted, but often we just sit and channel hop finding nothing and suddenly a few hours have disappeared. It's similar with phones , computers and web based devices, time just disappears.

I regard listening to music , reading , watching TV series I enjoy as time spent well, and it's always good to look at what you want to do and then you do not feel your time is wasted, because whatever you do , it takes time. There is no getting away from that.

This morning I walked seven miles and that took me three hours , but it is my way of exercising and I listened to a few albums even though it was raining. Today is part of me using up my annual leave but I am not wasting it and will be seeing my granddaughter Alexis this afternoon.

I have done sixteen thousand steps so far, but to hit the twenty six mile marathon total I would have to do that three more times and I don't think I could commit to that on a normal day.

So always find something to do , even if it's jus to rest and relax and take things easy. That should prepare you for when you need to do something that involves planning and effort.

Y5G?

We are continually being sold 5G by every mobile phone network, but seriously who actually needs it? Yes it's faster but it's like telling your average punter that they need an HGV or Formula 1 Racing Car to get about. I'm not dissing 5G , and I can see that it can have many applications, but I remember streaming movies on 3G and 4G is generally more than adequate for all my needs. If my broadband is off I can use my 4G signal with no problem.

I can see possibly that when you are 5G you can stream very high definition movies but if you are watching on a phone or computer will you get any benefit from that?  Obviously your data usage will shoot through the roof but maube that's what the mobile phone companies are looking at.

The ads will tell you  you can download a movie or album in seconds, but given the amount who streaming platforms who is going to be downloading anything. I use Netflix, Amazon Prime , BBC iPlayer , All4 and lots of others to watch things on my 40" television , and I recently purchased "Dancing Tunes" by Edward II and "Chapter Zero" by Jordan Reyne from Bandcamp and downloaded them via my broadband , but 4G would have been fine. 

By the way a lot of Bandcamp artists make music available free such as the song "Dancing Girls" by Dead Eyes Opened (great goth band) or on pay what you want so a great source of music worth supporting if you can.

So given that I started on 5G and finished on Bandcamp here's "The Banana Boat Song" from "Dancing Tunes" by Edward II , it is a totally joyful album and if you can get a signal you can stream it over 3G, 4G or 5G.