Numbskull Avoidance / March 30 2007
We’re moving house.
I’ve always been fascinated by people who, like me, don’t always demonstrate absolute mental stability, but at the moment, I’m having great difficulty understanding the actions of an unattractive man who lives a few doors down from Audrey and me.
For about two weeks now, his car alarm has been loudly squawking and squealing […]
Wake Me Up Before I Go Go / March 28 2007
I know that growing old is inevitable, but for me, lately, the process has taken a somewhat unexpected turn.
For perhaps the last eight months or so, I find I am waking up two or three times in the night desperately needing to pee. Even if I try not to ingest much liquid in the hours before […]
Air Indoors / March 26 2007
I’ve just bought a new air ionizer for the studio and it’s brilliant.
Ionizers reduce the amount of positively-charged molecules – ions – in the air that lots of electrical equipment such as one might find in a recording studio can produce. These positively-charged ions are converted into negatively-charged ions such as one might encounter in […]
Under Pressure / March 25 2007
Stupid pressure cookers. I’ve had a Tefal Pressure Cooker sitting in a box in a kitchen cupboard for about five years now and yesterday, feeling adventurous, I decided to try and cook some vegetables with it.
I think the principle behind the appliance is primarily to enable one to cook food very quickly using a volatile […]
. . . And All That Jazz / March 24 2007
Aren’t guitars great? I’ve just bought a new one: a gold seventies Fender Jazz Bass. It’s gorgeous.
I don’t play bass much but I needed one for various recording duties and this beauty winked at me in the dusty shop and whispered: ‘We should be together.’
I have several guitars: an 80s black and white Fender Telecaster […]
Gangmaster Flash / March 21 2007
The new people who have moved into Bernard’s old flat across the road from Audrey and me are from Belarus; six young workers in a one-bedroom apartment with hardly any furniture (there is no room for any!) and no curtains, in a village in Derbyshire.
I was talking to one of them, a bluff and amenable […]
Nurse - The Screens! / March 18 2007
It’s easy to criticise the Eurovision Song Contest and the songs that the entrants sing; but spare a thought for all the poor songwriters on Tin Pan Alley, banging away in dusty closets, damp backrooms and frosty booths.
I think we would all agree that, as a whole, the work they produce for the contest isn’t always of […]
Night Rally / March 16 2007
I am having trouble sleeping at night. It’s the horses, you see. They gather outside my bedroom window in the early hours, around half-past two, three o’clock.
I haven’t managed to do a full head-count yet, but I would say that on average there are always about twenty or thirty that regularly assemble there, waiting.
It is a […]
Making My Mind Up / March 15 2007
Great news! You can drop the Arctic Monkeys from your iPods and replace them with Bucks Fizz. The 1981 Eurovision winners are reforming.
Oh boy! I can’t wait, me. I’ll be there at Easter, dancing to Piece of the Action in the village hall, ripping my skirt off as an exciting finale to my routine. Showbiz: […]
Neighbours / March 13 2007
This morning, Audrey and I are spying, through our net curtains, on the new tenants who are moving into Bernard’s old flat. (Bernard was the idiosyncratic old man who we used to occasionally meet in the street and who died recently - unexpectedly and completely alone.)
Unfortunately, they have a boom-box playing loudly in the uncarpeted […]
