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My Diary/Blog For the Month of October 2010 |
Sunday 24th October 2010 |
12:22 BST This morning has been bright and sunny, but also very chilly. What was a clear blue sky is now filling with light patchy cloud. If today follows the pattern of yesterday it will eventually rain as the evening approaches. Yesterday's evening rain came very quickly after a bright afternoon, but I think it only lasted for half an hour, or maybe a bit longer. Once the daylight faded away I didn't really pay that much attention to what was going on outside. I seemed to spend most of yesterday preparing a couple of audio CD's of Chain's performance at The Catford Ram on Friday 15th October. I had mostly prepared the audio files earlier, but there was more to it than that. The entire performance takes up 2 CDs, and I decided to make 5 sets of disks. So I had to burn 10 disks, design Lightscribe artwork for the two different disks, and then burn the artwork onto the disks. It was the latter job that took so long. It takes about 20 minutes to burn the Lightscribe label onto each disk, and although I can do other stuff while the disk is "cooking" I still have to change disks once the previous one is done. The last disk was finally complete at about midnight. Obviously with that going on I didn't go out to see Chain play in Dunton Green. Although I would have liked to see them play there would have been a lot of obstacles to overcome to get me to Dunton Green. Besides being busy with all the CDs the main problem was in the travelling as I explained yesterday. To add to the grief of an awkward rail journey that would be off putting in daylight, it was dark and it was raining. It was just not worth enduring that misery for the sake of an hours entertainment before getting the last train home again. It is rather unfortunate that next weeks gig will be a similar pain in the backside. Chain are playing at The Folly pub that is reasonably close to South Croydon station. Getting there would be relatively straightforward. I would just get a bus to Forest Hill, and then a train direct to South Croydon station. The problem comes with getting home again. If I was to see more than half the gig I would have to change trains 3 or 4 times, and travel via central London to get home if I left later than a little before 10pm. Happily the gig after that is (I think I recall) at The Chattenden Arms in Bromley, and getting there and back is straightforward apart from the tedium of a medium long bus journey through the wilds of Bromley town centre after dark ! So far today I have done some laundry and done some shopping. I have also been indulging in a bit of a technofest. The technofest actually started last night when I started to pull out some useful apparatus like pairs of headphones. In doing so I also came across a spare battery for my Sony MZ-R30 portable minidisk recorder. The original battery has ceased to function, but the spare seems in excellent condition. All this came about because I am unhappy with the quality of sound I have been getting from my camcorderes when videoing Chain. The next time I see them I am going to see how well my Minidisk recorder, and a stereo microphone meant for mounting on a camcorder. can record their performance. I do have another minidisk recorder made by Kenwood. It is not quite as good as the Sony, but I am wondering if it would be possible to record the sound directly from Chains mini stage mixer using it. All this multi media stuff is building in preparation for when Chain perform at The Daylight Inn for the switching on of the pubs Xmas lights on Saturday 27th November. I am hoping that I will have some help, probably from Iain when this gig takes place because in all probabilty I will be attending with two camcorders, and two minidisk recorders as well as a stills camera or two. If I felt really enthusiastic I could also take along an analogue camcorder too ! With all that recording equipment I would have enough media to edit up something special - assuming I had a miraculous surge in my levels of talent ! It is still nice and sunny outside a good hour or more since the clouds started gathering, and apart from the chill in the air it would be ideal to go for a walk in the woods and fields. It would be nice, but I don't feel any deep need to do that today even though this could be the last such day like this before the spring. What I will do instead is to design some artwork for the jewel case for the double Chain audio CD, and I also want to have an afternoon nap. I got up too early this morning, and I did intend to go back to bed again, but so much time passed while I was searching for bits and pieces related to the minisdisk recorders that it got so late I stayed up. Now I feel an afternoon snooze would be really nice. Before that I have some lamb chops to cook and eat ! |
Saturday 23rd October 2010 |
09:36 BST At 5 O'clock this morning it was chucking it down. Since then the rain has stopped, the cloud is breaking up, and the sun is doing it's best to peep out from behind a cloud. There is quite an extensive area of blue sky I can see, but unfortunately it is in the wrong part of the sky to let the sun shine through unimpeded. Later on we should be getting a lot of sunshine, but it will remain quite cold with temperatures only just reaching into double figures. There was one little bit of significant sunshine yesterday. I seem to recall being dazzled by the low sun for part of the walk from work to the station, but I can't recall any more sunshine than that. At least it stayed dry all day because it was rather cool, but maybe not as cool as the day before. I think I did feel a fair bit better yesterday, but I was still a bit fatigued, and it felt bad enough to turn down the offer of meeting up for a few beers. I had it in my head that I was going to go straight home, have a couple of cans of hot soup, and probably go to bed by 7.30pm. I didn't quite work out like that. On the way home from work I called into the cafe on platforms B & C at Waterloo East station to buy New Scientist magazine. I also bought a couple of hideously expensive sandwichs. Once I was home I ate the sandwichs with some hot pepper sauce (for extra taste), and initially that was all I intended to have, but as 6pm approached, and time for the news on TV, the living room was still feeling a bit cool, and I was beginning to feel cold as I sat there reading. The answer was to have some hot soup. First I had one can of tomato with a hint of basil soup. That felt (and tasted) good so I had another can of just plain tomato soup. I sprinkled on some grated mature cheddar on both bowls of soup, and with hindsight I don't know why I did that. The grated cheese, being alleged mature cheese, should have been very cheesy, but I found it to be practically tasteless. I did have some freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and I am sure that would have been a far better addition to the soup. After the soup I felt nice and full and warm, and in theory I would have started preparing to go to bed after the news had finished at 7pm, but I had a little surprise coming. The following programme, The One Show, had as special guest the subject of yesterday's blog - Felicity Kendall ! So I had to stay watching that, and in doing so it saved me from the horrors of watching Strictly Come Dancing (possibly on TV tonight). Felicity was looking good, and still has the cute mannerisms that made her so delightful many years ago, but I found I couldn't really get excited about her in the same way these days. Today I have got up, gone back to bed for a couple of hours, and got up again. I am not yet sure how I am going to spend the day. Having had another surprise call from Patricia during the week the chances of meeting up with her today have changed from infinitely impossible, to finitely improbable. There is a gig on tonight. Chain are performing at a pub in Dunton Green. The pub is tantilisingly close to Dunton Green railway station, but that is not so easy to get to, and the last train for a very roundabout way of getting home is hopelessly early at just gone 10pm. There is a small chance that I will attempt to get there to see half their gig, but next weekend sees far easier places to get to. One thing I will be doing today is making audio copies of the video I took when Chain played in The Catford Ram. This follows on from a short email exchange I had with the band (or more precisely, Jo who does most of their internet stuff). Initially I had suggested that Chris, with his deep gruff voice, should not start the vocals for Hotel California. The vocals start after some tinkly sounding Spanish guitar, and Jo's voice would suit it much better. It transpired that even before the email had been read they had watched the video I had posted and reached the same conclusion. Chain - Hotel California We agreed that the sound I hear at the front is not quite the same as the sound the band hears on stage. I suggested "Don't forget that you can always ask for copies of the original recordings if you want to study them. I have both sets at The Ram recorded in their entirety from the camcorder on the tripod. The video is pretty lousy, but the sound is just about passable." To which Jo replied "It's easier to see how things could work better from your point of view at times - which is what your video gives us. (A copy of the Ram set would be very useful for that reason.) ". So by the end of today I hope to have Chain's very first "double live" album ready for them to listen to and study. The video from the camcorder was pretty horrible, and the sound was not exactly wonderful, but if it doesn't sound that bad I may make up a few spare copies of the CDs that they can give away to some of the biggest fans one night. |
Friday 22nd October 2010 |
08:45 BST More cloud means that there was no frost this morning, but there was still a lot of condensation on all the parked cars. It has actually taken very little cloud to achieve this (though it may have been a lot thicker during the hours of darkness). There are enough breaks in the cloud right now for occasional bursts of sunshine. Yesterday was mainly dull and occasionally gloomy. Even with, as far as I can recall, a complete lack of sunshine the day did warm up a bit after the viciously cold frosty start. By the afternoon it was almost warm enough to go outside for a fag without a coat, and not shiver too much. For most of the working day yesterday, I felt almost like I had shrugged off the disease that was like 'flu. It didn't last though. I stayed at work for an extra couple of hours last night, and then went to the pub with a couple of workmates for a few beers. As my normal going home time appraoched I began to feel tired, aching, and other stuff. When I left work to go to the pub I felt as bad as some of the worst times during this disease. Three pints of Kronenberg did take away some of the discomfort, but I felt really all-in by the time I got home at 8.55pm (five minutes before my usual bedtime). I didn't want to bother with preparing any dinner when I got home so I bought some spicy hot wings and a portion of chips on the way from the station to home. As I ate them I watched some TV. Happily my spirits were raised when I found that a new "Have I Got News For You" was showing. As usual it ranged from the amusing to almost side splittingly funny, but there was also a dark side to it. One of the guests was Janet Street Porter. It seems that the illness, the tiredness, and maybe the booze, all conspired to lower my defenses. It is to my utmost shame that I began to see Janet Street Porter as attractive, and maybe even desirable. There is only one TV celebrity who it is perfectly legal, moral, and normal, to have fantasies about, and it is not Janet Street Porter. It is in fact Felicity Kendall. This is true at any time, but particularly so when she was playing Barbara Good in The Good Life. Now I hear that Felicity
Kendall is appearing on the BBC's "Strictly Come Dancing" as one of the
dancers, and is looking as good as ever. Maybe I might have to grit my
teeth and watch some of the show, or maybe I should download it and
then fast forward between all the bits that don't have her in it :-)
This morning I am not too sure how I feel. I don't think I feel as good as yesterday morning, but infinitely better than last Tuesday morning, and maybe a little better than Wednesday morning. I definitely know that I am looking forward to the weekend, and particularly tomorrow morning. If it were possible I would attempt to sleep all through tomorrow morning. That is highly unlikely, but I will have the luxury of getting up for a bit to feed Smudge, potter around a bit, and then go back to bed for as long as I need. Then if neccesary I can repeat the prescription on Sunday morning. By Monday morning I hope that this 'flu like malady* will be completely gone and forgotten. *As I wroteI wrote a couple of days ago - I can't be suffering from 'flu because I was vaccinated against it a fortnight ago. So I can only describe this horribleness as 'flu like. |
Sunday 17th October 2010 |
12:36 BST The nights are now getting very cold, but today is rather nice. It is very mild outside, and there is plenty of sunshine, but there are also a fair amount of clouds in the sky. Some of the clouds have dark centres, but I don't think they pose any threat of rain. The last I heard was that the weather should continue dry for some days to come. The wind will soon becoming from the north, and unless it is just my imagination, I think that winds from the north do not carry much moisture in them. They will be cold though, and sooner or later we will be waking up to thick frosts. Yesterday's weather was unremarkable. It was cool and there were only a few times when the sun came out. I think there may have been a tiny bit of rain. I didn't see it fall, but I did observe a few spots of moisture on the old dustbin outside my back door, although I never noticed anything on the pavements. Friday night at The Catford Ram was an excellent night. I arrived a tiny bit late, and Chain were just finishing their soundcheck. That gave me a little time to chat to the band, and to set up my equipment. I took along both my digital camcorders, and a tripod. My cheap Samsung camcorder is not too good under low light conditions, and the picture quality is never quite as good as my semi-pro Sony camcorder, but it seems to have better audio quality. So I set that up on the tripod and essentially just left it recording by itself. What I had hoped to do was to combine the pictures from both camcorders to make a more interesting video, but with the poor quality of the pictures from the Samsung camcorder it didn't really work when I tried experimenting with it yesterday. However it did capture superior sound, and did capture, albeit a bit fuzzy, a great moment while Chain were playing. The excited fan As usual the band played really well apart from a couple of minor gaffs, and Jo's usual guitar going faulty on her. She changed to a spare guitar that I had never seen before, and oddly enough I thought it sounded a little better than her usual one. I had hoped that a few more people might have turned up to watch the gig. Jodie said she might drop in, but was really intending to go to another gig at the venue known as The Dirty South (which used to be The Rose Of Lee on ethe borders of Lewisham and Lee Green). Iain had said the previous night that he had hoped to come, but never turned up. Kevin did turn up, but a bit later on, and then had to go early because of backache. There were plenty of other people in the pub to watch the gig, and the band received lots of hearty applause at the end of each song. I can imagine that when Chain next play in The Catford Ram, on 3rd December, there will be even more people going to see them as word spreads of how good an evening it is. Such was the applause at the end of the planned set that Chain had to play a second encore. At the end I was both slightly drunk, and honoured to be invited to join the after gig "party". It wasn't quite on the scale of what Guns And Roses may do, and in reality it was just a final round of drinks all sitting at the same table, but just as enjoyable. I awoke yesterday morning with a mild hangover. It wasn't really of the painful sort, but it slowed me down a lot. I still managed to do a reasonable job of doing some housework to make a few areas reasonably presentable for when Aleemah visited. After she left I got down to the serious business of trying to do something with all the video I shot on Friday night. So far I have only touched on the nearly three hours of video I took. So today, while it may be criminally insane not to go out and enjoy one more day of sunshine and mild air, I am going to stay in and see what else I can do with that video. There are one or two songs that my hazy memory suggests may contain some reasonable camera work at the same time as the band were performing really well. I am going to experiment with trying to "jazz up" one of those songs with some video effects using just the video from the hand held camera (but using the sound from the Samsung camcorder on the tripod). Unlike yesterday's experiment I am going to try to remember some of the video editing rules that I forgot in my haste to bodge something together. |
Monday 11th October 2010 |
07:50 BST This morning is starting off better than yesterday morning, but in my wildest optimism I can't believe that today could be as good as yesterday. Yesterday turned out to be an exceptional day. During the afternoon the sky was the most wonderful clear blue, and the sunshine made it feel quite warm. It was an autumn day that was better than many days in the middle of summer. Today is supposed to be very good, but there is a cool wind blowing in from the east, and that will make this afternoon a lot cooler than yesterday even if the sun manages to stay shining. I felt very comfortable at home yesterday morning, and yet I couldn't bear to waste what was probably the last decent weekend until late next spring. It would have been easy to stay in but I made a rapid decision to go out for a walk. I had a yearning to walk among some pine trees, and I wanted to try taking some pictures of the fungi that spring up in these autumn days. My walk from Hayes (Kent) station towards Locksbottom didn't take me through any pine woods as I hoped it might, but I did find plenty of fungi to photograph. I haven't made up a web page about the walk yet, but you can see some of the pictures I took on my Myspace pages. I walked for about 3 miles across the woods and fields, and came out somewhere completely different from where I thought I was heading for. In fact where I ended up turned out to be quite handy. I was on a main road with a handy bus service running on it that would take me directly back to Catford. The three miles I walked seemed to have been done with such ease that I thought I would walk some more. I only added about an extra half mile to the walk because the road I was walking up was a hill, admittedly a very, very gentle hill, but it still took it's toll on me. More significantly I found a pub right opposite a handy bus stop, and this was like a divine signal from heaven that I should stop there. So I cooled off with a pint of Young's Special in the beer garden before waiting maybe 7 or 8 minutes for my bus to arrive. I don't know exactly how far I walked yesterday because I had a few technology failures. First of all my (spare) mobile phone threw a wobbly and would not update the tracking program I use to record my walks. (Like many computer based things it needed a reboot to set it back onto the path of righteousness). The second technology failure occured when my camera announced that the batteries in it were flat. That stopped me taking a few pictures, but happily I passed a shop where I bought new batteries before plunging in to the wilds. The third technology failure occured an hour or two after I got home, and I can illustrate the nature of the failure. It is probably not obvious
what the picture is showing. So I'll explain. The thing that looks like
a screw thread is indeed a screw thread. The top half is the remains of
a tooth with a crown fixed to the top of it. It fell out while I was
eating my dinner last night. There was no pain then, and only once or
twice since then have I experienced something like the merest, feather
touch of a sensation that could hint that some pain might be expected.
There is not even any apparent tenderness of the socket, although I am
too much of a coward to really probe it. All I seem to be left with is
that weird sensation of a new hole that will be familiar to anyone who
has had a tooth extracted. Within a couple of days it all seems
perfectly normal again.
I suspect the tooth was actually loosened during the extreme, and extremely painful process of extracting the tooth that was next to it. Lots of things apeared to go snap, crackle and pop as my dentist wrestled that tooth out. I am now left wondering if I should my last three days of holiday up seeing my dentist, or whether to just ignore it. With no pain to guide/compel me it is a hard decision to make. |
Saturday 9th October 2010 |
17:45 BST I am most disappointed by the predictive powers of the weather forecasters - again ! After a dull and misty start there was supposed to be a bright sunny afternoon today. If the sun did come out today I must have blinked and missed it. Not only was there no sunshine, but the wind kept it a lot cooler than forecast. It was only just tolerable going out in just a t-shirt today when it was supposed to be a warm day. For a while it was a sunny day yesterday, and maybe I should have put that extra effort in to go out. It occurs to me that now would be a good time to take a wander in woods or forest and take some pictures of some of the marvelous fungi that (I think) pop up in these autumn days. Instead of going out I spent quite a lot of time reading. It's something I greatly enjoy, but it hardly tunes my body to physical perfection. Instead it does quite the opposite, but I think the mantra still applies - no gain without pain. It's just yesterday I gained knowledge rather than fitness. In the evening I spent far too long on the internet. I ended up getting to bed far too late, but once again I learned a few new things. I came across a web site by a very pretty looking Indian woman who, by profession, does mystical healing stuff of the mind and body. Her website provided some very intereresting reading, and some very interesting video too. I don't subscribe to the mystical aspects of this sort of thing, but strip that away and what's left is a series of ideas and opinions that do, in some respects, mirror my own. My true beliefs and opinions are probably more in line with stuff I imagine John Lennon might say or think. Of particular relevance here is a saying that might, or might not, have originally been said by John lennon, but was quite prominent in the film "Yellow Submarine". That saying was "it's all in the mind". That probably means different things to different people, but here it is highly relevant because I am making this up as I go along without doing any research. So it is literally all out of my mind no matter how warped that may be. There is one very important fact that I am sure of, and that is that had he lived, John Lennon would have been 70 years old today. I'm happy to see that even Google acknowleged that. Unfortunately
my shamelessly stolen from Google image above does not link to the
little video that played when you clicked on it. Nevertheless, it is
the thought that counts. It is at this point I have to confess I have
just used Google to look up the saying "it's all in the mind", and it
turns out it was George Harrison who said it. Well, no matter, he was a
pretty good guy too. It was past midnight before I finally got to bed, and later still before I got to sleep. I woke up again at 6am, and with lots to do I got up soon after. I saw Aleemah today, and that meant rushing to get some housework and shopping done before 10am. I can't honestly say the house was very tidy when she arrived, but I think I got it barely passable in places. We watched the film Species today. It wasn't a bad film, but it had it's pros and cons. Against it was the Americaness of it (is that actually a word ?). For it was the amount of time the very pretty lead actress wandered around topless. The rest was reasonable scifi fare. I think that Species should actually be a warning to any extra terrestrials who come visiting here. Whatever you do E.T. don't land in North America. If you do you will be chased around by loads of excitable government types who will want to find increasingly more violent, and explosive ways to slaughter you. I'd recommend you landing in England. Here you will be able to sit down and have a nice civilised chat over a cup of tea, and if you are lucky you will be offered a council house and child benefit for your blood crazed, brain slurping, all devouring, carnivorous human/alien hybrid offspring. In theory I should be setting out on a long lonely journey in the dark to see Chain play at The British Oak pub in a place that is described as Blackheath, but is actually somewhere in the no mans land between Blackheath, Greenwich, and Charlton. To get there demands a 30 - 40 minute bus ride and a 15 - 20 minute walk. After my late night and early morning I don't feel I have the energy to go out tonight, but I shall take comfort in the knowledge that they are playing in The Catford Ram next Friday night - and that is going to be a really great event. |