The Piano Is In The Pyrenees

I am half way through the book "A Piano In The Pyrenees" by Tony Hawks, and while it is extremely entertaining , the piano got there after a hundred pages without too much trauma, apart from a Luton Van meeting it's demise. The thing is it's a bit like writing a 500 page book on the titanic and a hundred pages in it's on the bottom of the Atlantic. I suppose the film did start a bit like that.

Anyway this is just one of Tony Hawks books (all worth a read and great fun) and some fun stories about an English man relocating to a house in the Pyrenees , the scrapes he gets into and the characters he meets.

The weekend is here and I am not sure what is going to happen. 

I am working through "The Killing" on BBC iPlayer and , if this is really the right word , enjoying it. In the past I have worked so many people who will not watch a program with subtitles, they really don't know what they are missing do they?

As I mentioned "Titanic" I've included "The Unsinkable Ship" from "White Star Liner" by Public Service Broadcasting.

Go - 50 Years Since Apollo 11 Lift Off

Sunny days can lift your spirits, and we have a sunny day this morning and hopefully it will be like that all day. Yesterday, without making any particular effort I did over 20K steps (6 Miles). I walked into work for the first time in a while and had to walk round town a bit so that's where it came from, but it was really no great effort on my part. That is really the best way to do things, so they are either part of the norm , ideally pleasurable and afterwards you can feel satisfied with what you have done.

One thing I keep noticing is spelling or grammatical mistakes in my posts and tweets but they seem to have been done by autocorrect but there is also the possibility that I have made the mistake, but I know what I wanted and intended to write and that is not what is in front of me.

Today is fifty years since Apollo 11 was launched and sent the first men to the moon.Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, but you got to feel for Mike Collins who just had to stay in Orbit while the other two went down , but you can read more here.

So really it's gotta be something from "The Race For Space" by Public Service Broadcasting and we'll go with the highly positive "Go", which is based on the Apollo 11 mission.

Another Rainy Day

So another day where I don't have to water the garden. One the things about the Facebook ban is the fact you cannot communicate with anyone unless you play a game with them (I can message people in Scrabble but as I only have two people I play with not very good and I can contact both of those outside the game). A friend messaged me asking if I was OK but I cannot reply in Messenger. Just a warning make sure you have your import friends phone numbers or emails, and, although it may open you up to spam, put some alternate contact on your Facebook profile.

Today is grey and hardly uplifting, but I am being positive, have a course in Durham tomorrow and I see by daughters for a Father's Day get together tomorrow at Bar Loco which is always good.

I've just finished watching Chernobyl, an absolutely stunning mini series, and was struck by the similarities between the Soviet Government of that time and our current Tory Government with Brexit. Both refusing to acknowledge reality so their version of events is the one that's pushed. Having said that I've worked with a few managers who have had that attitude and one once said to me, "You might be right but I am in charge". They crashed and burned.

So what should we play this morning? What about "Go" by Public Service Broadcasting as it is a huge injection of positivity guaranteed to lift you out of any apathetic or lethargic state.

Yes we will GO!

Middle of the Night Post

Not quite, a lot of today has been wrestling with Power Pivot and finally making some decent progress, but am still affected by the shortened daylight hours, but it does mean I get to see some decent sunrises but it has been cold when walking in a morning so it is very tempting to just take the bus.

It is dark outside now and this is an excuse to share Public Service Broadcasting's take on WH Auden's "Night Mail" (the full poem is here) and I was thinking it was a Betjamin poem. I've shared Auden before, Alex Harvey covered his "Roman Wall Blues" as "Soldier on The Wall" and I did a video here.

So that's quite a lot of information is very few words which is always good.

I'm on track to pass 300 posts this year and to post my 2,000th post next year, which is something that I just didn't expect to do so that is good. My walking is also hitting the targets so that is another plus.

Tomorrow is Friday, and I am surprised that I've posted very day this week and could possibly hit 300 posts before the end of November, although that is very unlikely, but it does mean I have been posting an average of almost one a day this year.

So enjoy everything I've shared with you and enjoy your Friday too.

Past Imperfect, Present More Imperfect

All my posts have been getting around 40 to 50 views until five days ago when they have dropped to five or six. I think this is something Facebook has done because that's where, normally most of my visits come from. It feel a little like all of a sudden you are rubbish and no one wants to interact with you . Often in these situations you think "What have I done?" when the reality is that something beyond your contriol has changed, and you can't do anything about it. Well you could spend a lot of time trying to discover what the problem or change is, but to be quite honest I honestly can't be bothered. I amd sure if I keep writing and sharing stuff worth sharing both readers and robots will return and my stats will increase.

On the walking fron I will finish October on about 420K steps that's about 25% up on my target number of steps. Whether I can keep that up in November is a different story, but as long as I hit my target steps that's all that really matters to me.

This morning I listened to  Public Service Broadcasting's  "Inform, Educate, Entertain" and there was one song I hadn't noticed before, the rather excellent "The Now Generation". The thing I love about them is that you actually learn from listening to their music, so as well as being just great to listen to it's educational as well.  Most of their songs are also like films for the ears, although they often have acocompanying videos that are available via the Public Service Broadcasting Channel on Youtube.

All their releases are themed so fall into the "concept album" genre, but are still all essential listing from "The War Room" up to the present day "White Star Liner" EP based on The Titanic.

Anyway I will be listening to a bit more of them this week.

Codes and Ciphers

Why am I writing at 1AM on a school night. I've woken up to prevent another coughing fit, as well as feeling queasy still. Yesterday was spent in bed sleeping so I was expecting to be fit and back to work today, then about 5PM I woke and started coughing again.

I've finished my course of antibiotics, but none of the standard remedies seem to be working for me. The worst thing is I'm sort of able to do things (I can write this) but then when I start coughing, feeling sick then I get out of it and am not fit to do anything and would certainly not be appreciated in work.

When I am trying to occupy my mind I am reading Simon Singh's "The Code Book", possibly his most unassuming title. THhs is third of his books that I have read, the first being "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets" which is an entertaining observations on why The Simpsons is jammed for of mathematical asides, the second being "Fermat's Last Theorem" which is a remarkable detective story about a conceptually simple but complex theorem and much of the side effects of of that area of mathematics then there is this....

"The Code Book" means to read it and understand it you have to think, it explains the development of codes and ciphers from the beginning of time to the present day, though I am only half way through the book. One of the things the book does explain is the difference between a cipher and a code:

"The difference between a cipher and a code is: a cipher changes a message on a letter-by-letter basis, while a code converts whole plaintext words or phrases into other words or numbers. That’s it, question answered."

Full explanation here. The book has taken me through the story of Mary Queen of Scots and the continual development of more and more complex code/ciphers each time with accompanying examples of how these work up to the Enigma machines and how Alan Turing drove the team that broke it, developing what became the computer I am typing this on on you are reading this on today, and probably shortening World War Two by two years.

Ofne very frightening part of this is that if the authorities that be had known of his homosexuality, Turing would have been jailed and Britain would have lost the war, remember that when someone is not the same as you. Society still drove him to suicide after the war.

Essentially this is another excellent Simon Singh book, and the work of Turing is leaving my tiny intellect floundering and I am only half way through.

I was trying to think of an accompanying piece of music for this and thought maybe something from Public Service Broadcasting's "The War Room" and a tribute to another major contribution to Britain's War Effort, "Spitfire".

Right now time to try and get some sleep.

#TenAlbumsInTenDays #5 - The Race For Space - Public Service Broadcasting

This was the first coherently themed Public Service Broadcasting album, they had put out "The War Room" EP, and this was their second album. "Inform, Educate, Entertain" is a mission statement for the band and you will probably learn something by listening to enything by this band.

There pasting of dialogue from films, and documentaries is similar to what happened in Spirit's "Future Games" and early Big Audio Dynamite albums although without the dialogue the e songs are just driving instrumentals (and rather excellent at that).

"The Race For Space" revisits both the Russian and American sides of the race that started in the 1950s, with dialogue from John F Kennedy and The Apollo program.

The band are probably one of the finest live experirences you can see today, and I amazed at J. Willgoose Esq.'s ability to tee up the sound samples wile playing guitar. Even the crowd banter is done via keyboard.

I have seen this band three times though they now tend to sell out gigs immediately so I am not sure if I will see them in a live situation again, but you never know. I've included a live take of "Go" at one of the gigs I saw the at , the 6Music Festival at The Sage in 2015, and I am somewhere in that crowd mass. An absolutely brilliant gig and part of a brilliant festival.

#TenAlbumsInTenDays #3 - Future Games (A Magical Kahauna Dream) - Spirit

Before the internet and email and mobil phones the was CB , Citizen's Band Radio. I'm not exactly sure what the attraction of this was for the average person but I know a few people who had CB Radio set ups.I could see a use for it for long distance lorry drivers and this was documented in the CW McCall song "Convoy".

This album opens with a track called "CB Talk" with Randy California descring the Spirit album. I had been majorly impressed by  "Spirit of '76" but this album took things to another level for me. The songs are excellent but are spliced with soundbites from Star Trek (this was just pre Star Wars), Science Fiction "B" Movies and The Muppet Show. There are a lot of interjections from "Jack Bond" the drummer Ed Cassidy's creation (he was also Randy California's father in law!)

It was like a movie for the ears, carried along by the excellent songs. California was favouribly compared with Jimi Hendrix but he was definitely his own man, but they still tackle Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" and deliver a creditable take although no one has ever touched the Hendrix version.

The songs are California sun influenced as well as being touched by certain other substances. THis album is my favourite all time album and when I first got it I was working shifts so would often drift off listening to this during the day.

Like all good albums you listen to it as a whole and ideally it should just be continously played, non stop.

I'm not sure if this was the first album where not musical dialogue was used an intefral part of the album,a concept later embraced by, among others, Big Audio Dynamite and Public Service Broadcasting.

A Threesome

After the disappointment of "Budokan" I went back to a couple of the source albums , "Desire" and "Blood on the Tracks". "Desire" was denigrated for the not completely professional violin playing of Scarlet Rivera who had been part of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review.

To me her playing enhances the recordings but like Dylan's voice maybe it grated a little too much on some people. The album opens with the eight and a half minute "Hurricane" the story of Rubin Carter and how he was stitched up by the police for being black. Nothing really changes does it? The song was released uncut as a single , one side stereo the other mono so Bob made sure that if you bought it you listened, and if it was on a jukebox you listened. The forman is similar to "All Along The Watchtower" but more relentless.

This is followed by six minutes of "Isis" with a H Rider Haggard-esque tale of body snatching from ice bound pyramids before we return to more familiar territory with songs like "Mozambique" and "One More Cup of Coffee". Bob as one more narrative ace to play in "Joey", and eleven minute tale of the life and death of a Mafia boss.

All in all an excellent album.

"Blood on The Tracks" was his response to the break up of his marriage and has some wonderful love songs such as "Tangled up in Blue", "If You See Her Say Hello" and "Shelter From The Storm". "Idiot Wind" is a vitriolic tale about a successful chancer and it contains possible my favourite Dyln song, "Lily Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts" a wonderful narrative of gambling and betrayal in the old West.

Between these I sandwiched Public Service Broadcasting's "Live At Brixton" and it's amazing that they have enough material for a live double album for thir first few releases including "The War Room" , "Everest" and "The Race For Space" as well as their first album. I love the way that J. Willgoose, Esq even has his crowd banter programmed into hi keyboard set up. They are one of the best live band syou will see anywhere today.

So if you have never heard these albums I suggest you check them out but please don't use Spotify as it rips off most artists.

Sleep well My friends

It's An Education

This is just a short piece about Public Service Broadcasting. Basically they take archive material and provide a sonic backdrop, and I still don't know how J. Willgoose, Esq. manages all the buttons and instruments to play live and trigger the sound bites.  I have to take their biography and mission statement from their website as they can put it far more eruditely that I ever could

Public Service Broadcasting is the corduroy-clad brainchild of London-based J. Willgoose, Esq. who, along with drumming companion Wrigglesworth and multi instrumentalist JFAbraham, is on a quest to inform, educate and entertain audiences around the globe.

PSB’s uniquely spell-binding live AV transmissions see them weave samples from old public information films, archive footage and propaganda material around live drums, guitar, banjo and electronics as they teach the lessons of the past through the music of the future – beaming our past back at us through vintage tv sets and state of the art modern video projection devices.

On Public Service Broadcasting's new album Every Valley, J. Willgoose, Esq. takes us on a journey down the mineshafts of the South Wales valleys, with the stories found there a black mirror to the plight of workers everywhere. Although Every Valley is the story of one industry in a region and time far from ours, the tales of a disenfranchised working class in this age of turmoil could not be more relevant.

Although the concept is localized and historical, J. Willgoose, Esq hopes the story is "applicable to industries all over the western world and possibly beyond, in the way that the Industrial Revolution generated these communities that were so dependent on one particular industry, and what happens to that community when you remove that industry from it, and where that leaves us now"

Today I listened tp "Every Valley" for the first time , even though I have had it for six months and you have read what it contains.

My first taste of Public Service Broadcasting was "ROYGBIV" an acronym for the colurs on the TV spectrum then that was followed by the atmosphere of "The War Room" a precursor to their debut album.

The thing is every time you listen to a Public Service Broadcasting record you learn something, and there are very few bands you can say that about. You won't be singing along to their songs but you can dance and your mind will definely be stimulated.

Their second album "The Race For Space" was more subject focussed as was "Every Valley" . Even singles such as "Everest" will teach you new facts while give you aural stimulation.

They are also probably THE live band to see at the present time, and I have seen them thrice.

So I leave you with "They Gave Me A Lamp" from "Every Valley" , a wonderful atmospheric piece with some telling sentiments. Enjoy.
.

245

With this post (number 245 this year) 2017 has become my most prolific year for posting on this blog. Maybe my other blogs have suffered but this is my main one. I still have 25 days of 2017 left and, as I say , I have just passed 2013's total. While it would be nice to hit 300, that would mean posting more than two a day til the end of the year, and that is not going to happen. I've posted two posts every three days and I think that is a decent output. I average maybe 250 words a post so that means I have done over sixty thousand words, which may sound like a lot , but it's like when I tried to do the Million Step Challenge, and people go "Wow, that's a lot" when really it's just maintaining 11K steps a day which for me is about five miles a day, so not exactly impossible but that is close to two thousand miles on foot, and I am no athlete, I have friends who will do tens of miles a day showing my efforts to be fairly puny, but they are constant.

I have been keeping up my walking steps and hit 12K today, and one of the albums I have listened to is Public Service Broadcasting's "The Race For Space". Listening to any of their albums you managed to learn something about the past and this album is about the space race in the sixties, using sound samples from the various events, including Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin and the Apollo program. Live they are one of the greatest current experiences you can have.

So I am going to take one of the most positive songs from a brilliant album , the wonderful "Go", live at the 6Music Festival at The Sage in 2015, and I was in the crowd watching them. Enjoy, and I shall soon slip off to bed. By the way this post runs over three hundred words so if you have read all my posts this year you have read over 60K of my words.

The War Room

Yesterday I was thinking that this might be a day when my walking targets go out of the window, it  was cold and raining slightly, but it turned out the rain was light and I could use an umbrella so the target was met and surpassed, which was good.

Had a visit to doctors and blood pressure was slightly high, which may be due to drugs trial that I am on, but will nip over and get blood pressure checked again next week. Everything else was fine though there was an issue with white blood cells but a second sample was fine.

The latest album I listened to was the excellent "War Room" by Public Service Broadcasting . There songs are soundtracks to soundbites from films and recording archives and are usually educational.

This is what they say about themselves:

J. Willgoose, Esq. and Wrigglesworth sample old public information films and archive material and set them to new music. Live, the films are screened simultaneously as laptops are fiddled with, drums are pounded, theremins are wafted at, guitars are bashed and banjos furiously plucked. Teaching the lessons of the past through the music of the future.

The central piece to the five song album is "Spitfire" based on the film "The First of The Few", based ironically on a driving motorik beat (motorik being a German musical style which I first became aware of listening to Neu!)

The album opens with "If War Should Come" atmospheric and scary government announcements which leads us into "London Can Take It" which feature an American style commentary likening the bombing of London to a boxind match , before we are hit by "Spitfire".

The album quitens down with "Dig For Victory" and "Waltz for George" (about Dunkirk) anlthough I do thing "Lit Up" sort of belongs on "War Room" as it is a wonderful description of a fleet, but you can find that on "Inform Educate Entertain" their full length debut album.

Last night I put "The War Room" on three times to get to sleep to, and never got past "If Watr Should Come" so it certainly helps me get to sleep quickly (because it's relaxing not boring).

Anyway it's time to go and we shall see how today's weather is.

Sleeping In

My body has stopped letting me sleep in at weekends. I used to be able to sleep til mid day quite easily. Now it's like I have an internal alarm that kicks me out of bed as early as 6 am, sometimes leaving me til 7 am. But both are a lot earlier that it used to be. My eyes are tired and my body and brain are, but something is pushing me to get up, and by the time I have washed and shaved I think I may as well have a shower and by that time I am awake and up.

So while it's 7:45 when I am writing this, I have done everything I mentioned and gone out and got the papers, done my first thousand steps of my Million Step Challenge , and need to iron a shirt or two because later I am going to Andrew and Glen's Wedding.

I need to update Song of The Salesman , and see if I can fly that drone again , write some songs (and more importantly record them) and walk at least another ten thousand steps and probably a lot more things.

I have ripped a couple of music DVDs including The Who at the Isle of White, Public Service Broadcasting at Brixton Academy and Van Der Graaf Generator at Metropolis Studios, because I am now so lazy I can't be bothered to get up and put the DVD in the player, though that same Sony Player plays the ripped DVDs from my home network as I become "Homo Sedens".

I also found a load of rare David Bowie songs on Youtube and need to update the MP3 tags and ad to my already vast Bowie collection, and although I've used it before I will use the Spiders from Mars version of "Holy Holy" which is not on official CD release but in my opinion one of Bowies's finest songs (but how many songs could you say that about). His original was good but a little pedestrian and both version are available in the Five Years Box Set here, a ittle expensive but ten discs for £90 is not that bad really.

Anyway I will let you listen to both versions so you get two candidates for #ATuneaDayinMay,  enjoy your Saturday my friends.

Legendary Times

Not quite yet

Well the last few months have been amazing and the next few weeks are likely to be just as good. Have been catching up with friends, started an excellent new job with some great people in an excellent location, been involved with an amazing start up GeekTalent , done a small amount of volunteer work for Oxfam, taken part in Record Store Day and World Book Night, seen two total music legends, George Clinton and Lee Perry in accessible settings and Preston North End are within a win of returning to the Championship. Joe Garner winning League One Player of the year , and despite having a lengthy layoff still managing to finish as probably the league's top scorer. Here's that goal from last season's playoff defeat , but it is amazing:


So that's what's been happening, this week is more work , and more music with Public Service Broadcasting , Jordan Reyne next month Black Grape as well, with a possibility of fitting in the Fall. I'm just so lucky to be living in Newcastle with all this amazing stuff going on. Oh and there's going to be Summertyne , The Mouth Of Tyne Festival , Corbridge Festival, the Newcastle Unity Festival and The Green Festival, it is looking like an exciting summer.

It kicks off with a half eight hospital visit tomorrow morning which should be just routine stuff. Also lots of garden stuff to do , a new website to design and put live , and to record some songs I've half written (initial ideas recorded to phone now sitting on my PC)  when I finally get my set up running though may just go for recording to system microphone.

So basically it's now time for bed. Enjoy the rest of your weekend , I certainly will. I've include John Cale's Bamboo Floor because it makes me happy , with suitably dark lyrics.

Everything is Happening and Summer is a Coming In

RSD 2015

Sorry I've not blooged for a while , no real reason apart from laziness , but it has been remarked upon , and I need need to post something given how much is happening this week. So here it is.

This week I started my new job which is basically a 9 to 5 scenario with decent flexibility and good people to work with and it's been very enjoyable so far, managing to track down a rogue tenner in half a million quid to balance a book. The thing is , this new job has given me back about ten hours a week that I wont be on a train and maybe £3K a year I don't have to spend on travel.

This has come at an opportune time because tomorrow , as well as being my great friend Craig and Sheena's birthday it's also National Record Store Day , so I will be in and around Newcastle visiting RPM , Reflex , Beatdown  but may not get to the excellent Pop Recs in Sunderland although I'm sure they won't miss me there. Some great memories of previous days include getting a Facebook message from my great friend Mike asking if I could pick up a copy of the Clash's London Calling about ten to five. It was the most sought after item of that day, so had sold out when the shops opened , although one did turn up in Reflex a couple of weeks later which I snaffled immediately and dropped off.

WBN 2015

This week , also , it's World Book Night on Shakespeare's Birthday (23rd of April). Just 18 books this time but a bit of a trek by public transport to pick them up tomorrow , mine is Roddy Doyle's "Dead Man Talking"  a short , easy to read book , which I shall be distributing around Newcastle on the 23rd.

There are numerous gigs coming up as well including William Control , Public Service Broadcasting , Rhombus and Jordan Reyne, and PSB's excellent go is certainly appropriate for my life at the moment.

As well as that summer is on it's way so the garden will need it's first mow soon and the grass is now growing fairly healthily.

So I'm going to bed now , enjoy your weekend I certainly intend to

Ice Road Trucking

It's the last day of January and we have had on and off snow for most of the last week. Today I have a 140 mile journey from Newcastle to Barrow to celebrate my dad's birthday and give him his present. The snow this week has not been heavy but the weather has been cold enough to make footpaths treacherous underfoot , so I'm more likely to slip than anything else. It's hardly an Ice Road Trucker scenario. So looking forward to that as dawn crawls over the eastern horizon.

Uri Geller and The Postbox

One of the problems on birthdays is trying to get a decent card, so I look for unusual post boxes (my dad's work and sort of hobby)  and saw this one here , on the Thames Sonning bridge which has mystified Uri Geller and the local villagers. It looks to be in good repair which would imply that it is painted and maintained, though it's hardly convenient , although it's more convenient than the oriental underwater postboxes  I've seen pictures of  (just Google postboxes)


So it's now time to shower, and pick up the car, and get ready for the drive, but just for an added complication tickets for the 6 Music Festival went on sale yesterday, but each day the tickets are on sale separately. I wanted to go everyday but Sunday is the best one (more bands I want to see) , so I will try for today as Royal Blood and The Fall are playing , and will attempt to get tickets tomorrow as Public Service Broadcasting , Wire , Gaz Coombes and The Charlatans are playing . These are just some of the bands in what are damned near perfect line ups. This gives me an excuse to include the video for Gagarin , so have a brilliant weekend everyone, it's the last day of January which is an excuse to have lots of fun and look forward to a great week next week.

12 From 13 in 14

These are just a dozen songs that caught my ear during the year. They are all part of my collection and would heartily recommend to give them a listen.  It's on a Grooveshark Playlist so hope you can play them.

My favourite of the year though was Public Service Broadcasting's Spitfire.



Enjoy the rest of New Year's Day everyone.

A Rather Good Day .. so far ..

Well a lot of good things have happened today. I ran into a good friend who I hadn't seen for ages and got an invite to a 50th birthday party next year (to go with a wedding invitation from another friend) so probable lots of great things going to happen tonight I'm sure.

I then got a call from Screachtv who told me I'd won a £25 voucher to spend at The Strawberry ! That was unexpected and a nice surprise.

I watched a program and a film "Rescue Dawn" (well it's a Werner Herzog film with Christian Bale, what's not to like) on BBC iPlayer on my Samsung Note phone, and was majorly impressed with the quality and experience.

I've had some minor surgery, well half of it, resulting in 10 stitches , which need removing next week, so that was slightly worrying , but the doctor was brilliant and didn't spill too much blood. The NHS is brilliant.

And I managed to find the Formula 1 Brazilian Grand Prix version of Signal 30 by Public Service Broadcasting. Just how good is that
!

Numbers

   

Back from holiday finished by an excellent night seeing Public Service Broadcasting (and buying a T_Towel) , but absolutely shattered. The house was freezing but is now warmed up, and this morning saw the first frosty rooves of the year. The sun is out and melting the frost away and then a friend posted the TED talk above. It's only ten minutes , and I knew of Fibonacci numbers, though if you had asked me yesterday morning I couldn't have told you , but this talk reminded me, and despite it being short it is wonderfully uplifting and inspirational.

This afternoon I am hoping the weather will stay sunny allowing me to hoover the garden and dispose of the autumn leaves. Having said that there is still a lot of green leaves on the trees. Looking out the back window I see trees and blue skies, it could be a summers day apart from the fact that it's so cold.

James Spader

Anyway I am getting myself motivated and feeling less shattered by the second, and have lots of things I can do, Last night I finally started watching The Blacklist with James Spader, and rather excellent it is too, although still have a lot of stuff on the DVR to watch.

I'm still annoyed at Facebook's image processing software which just put's my google image up for all posts, which means I have to change it with every post otherwise people see it as just more of the same, which it isnt.

So I all hope you all have a great day and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Another Beautiful Day in National Sausage Week

Sausage Week

A good friend told me it was National Sausage Week in the UK and there's at least one website with all the details at LovePork a website name straight out of the Carry On canon! Although this theme carried through into the final episodes of series 3 of Game of Thrones, though not exactly rib tickling fun for the victim.

Ironically I've spent a lot of time in Helmsley in Yorkshire and there's been no high profile promotion of National Sausage Week. I think there is only one butcher there but there's a few "artisan" food shops but no prominent sausages! Earlier in the week I did sample some very hot ones from Pern's of Helmsley .

Yesterday I had fish and chips from the excellent Scotts though I should have gone for their small portion as I couldnt't finish the normal, and the also have a jumbo one, no way for me.

Any the weather is again beautiful, there was a frost , but it's blue skies and sunshine here. It's been a week of almost total relaxation, not going far and just enjoying myself. Tomorrow is a drive back to Newcastle for the Public Sevice Broadcasting gig, it's amazing how bands can still come up with new takes on how to make original music so even though it's National Sausage Week I'll post the last PSB video as a header to this post. Have a brilliant day everyone.