Follow the science is the new post Brexit mantra.
It allows the Government appear to not need to make a decision.
This is of course wrong.
Only religious fundamentalists and Brexiteers believe in absolutes. Science everything is a theory.
There is not a "clear" science saying the UK should or shouldn't do this or that. Science will say many things, it is up to Government to listen to all spectrums and decide what to do. In listening to some science, the wrong path could be chosen.
But they won't tell us what science it is they are following. Could be astronomy for all we know. Nor will they tell us who sits of the SAGE committee. But yesterday, it emerged that Johnson's chief advisor and nerd, Dominic Cummings sits on the committee and is allowed to ask questions. Politicians representing Scotland and Wales can attend but not take part.
"The science" will be thrown under the bus when the blame is ready to be shared out. The science than the scientists who secretly, at the moment, advise the Government. Johnson, Gove, Raab et al will hide behind this, and throw the scientists to the lions. Look at it as "nerd immunity" if you will.
People have had enough of experts, but not when you can hide behind them to shield you from the angry mob which will be coming.
Over 41,000 people have died in the UK, second behind the US where you have a Moron in Chief who seems to want to kill as many Americans as possible, apparently so he can blame the State Governors he doesn't like or who he thinks have slighted him. That's a pretty low bar to get over to be honest.
Saturday, 25 April 2020
Friday, 24 April 2020
Counting the cost
Each day the Government makes an announcement on how many people died the previous 24 hours. As long as they died in hospital and had a positive test result for COVID-19.
But this is not the true total.
The National Audit Office has been keeping count, and although figures are a week behind, they have extrapolated the total for yesterday, officially under 20,000, to 41,000. That is a town bigger than Dover. All dead.
The Government hasn't been counting those who have died in care homes, their bodies just piled up.
Forty one thousand.
I can't remember if it was Stalin or someone said about him, that one death is a tragedy, thousands, millions of deaths is just a statistic.
Dyson, who the Government contracted to make those very famous ventilators announced today that whey are no longer needed and work has stopped.
The hundreds of thousands of pieces of PPE from Turkey numbered only in the thousands and were less than a day's supply for the NHS when the RAF plane carrying the pallets finally arrived three days late. This is because the announcement of the consignment and the request were made on the same day: it was never going to arrive on Sunday.
More shops and garden centres are now to open, more people out on the roads.
The Government might know what they're doing. Or might not.
Good luck.
But this is not the true total.
The National Audit Office has been keeping count, and although figures are a week behind, they have extrapolated the total for yesterday, officially under 20,000, to 41,000. That is a town bigger than Dover. All dead.
The Government hasn't been counting those who have died in care homes, their bodies just piled up.
Forty one thousand.
I can't remember if it was Stalin or someone said about him, that one death is a tragedy, thousands, millions of deaths is just a statistic.
Dyson, who the Government contracted to make those very famous ventilators announced today that whey are no longer needed and work has stopped.
The hundreds of thousands of pieces of PPE from Turkey numbered only in the thousands and were less than a day's supply for the NHS when the RAF plane carrying the pallets finally arrived three days late. This is because the announcement of the consignment and the request were made on the same day: it was never going to arrive on Sunday.
More shops and garden centres are now to open, more people out on the roads.
The Government might know what they're doing. Or might not.
Good luck.
Thursday 23rd April 2020
St George's Day
And a rest day.
Which is nice.
It means I can be extra relaxed in the morning. LAy an extra ten minutes in bed, but there were chores to do. After coffee, I put out the bins, put out the seedlings from the shed, water them too.
And before you know it is time to start work again.
There is the usual early meeting, while we finish our coffees, swapping news and gossip, and mainly comparing the weather in various parts of Jutland and Kent.
Outside it is a glorious day here, the wind had dropped, and was much warmer.
Which was also nice.
I have to go to the doctors for my quarterly assessment as to whether I needs the pills I'm on. So I set out to walk over the fields and then down the Dip to the village.
I see little of any additional interest that I saw at the weekend.
There is a queuing system outside the surgery, I go in and am seen by the doctor, though I am at one end of the room and he behind the desk. He looks at me and says I have lost weight by still need the meds. The dispensary tells me that they don't have the drugs and I will have to come back in the morning after nine.
Bugger.
So, I walk down the Dip, and go straight on, heading for Windy Ridge, even if my back had been complaining for a god twenty minutes already.
And it is busy, I mean not crowded, but groups of people, a family of five, a couple in stout walking shoes with those odd skiing sticks for walking, another couple in sweat pants, and a mother with young son.
But further on as I neared the wood, I was on my own.
I was there to check the bluebells in the wood, to see if a stray EPO would show.
There were none. In fact only one small group were anything like pure-bred "English" Bluebells, the rest were hybrids, or "Spanish". They don't droop like the native ones. And some of those are pinker, even pink. Anyway, I walk on.
After a while I leave the wood to walk along the lane beside it, hoping to see butterflies, as it has been a rich spot in the past, but as it was gone eleven, any that did fly by were very twitchy, and none settled.
I walked on the lane leading back down to Collingwood, the ground now hard like iron, but due to lack of rain, not cold. Chalk downland drains so quickly, so it was like we had no rain.
Back down the hill, up to the road and along, pausing to check if I could see a Bluethroat, but no, as there is little manure to rummage in.
Back home it is lunchtime, and back to work, but I had missed little. So I put on a podcast and listen while I have lunch.
I try sitting in the garden, and was rewarded with a Holly Blue flying through, it briefly settled on the hedge, long enough for me to hurry over wearing my floppy slippers and grab a handful of shots.
Through the day I made a rich ragu, but in a change I used the hedge garlic from our garden instead of actual garlic, seeing as we'd run out. I simmered the tomatoes with the garlic for an hour, then let the pot sit for a few hours for the flavours to build.
I fry two small onions, some sausage meat, add that and the final five mushrooms in the bottom of the fridge, thinly sliced, to the pot. I add a litre of beef stock left over from the prime rib, mix and then set to boil, then simmer for 90 minutes until Jools was due to come back.
Finally I boil some pasta, make some garlic bread out of the stale remains of the cornbread loaf.
And, it was very good indeed. Not a huge garlic hit, but a slight afterburn. I liked it, so did Jools. And good news is there is more than enough to freeze for another day.
By then it was seven, and we were pooped, but we have a coffee whilst listening to the radio. It was nearly warm enough to sit outside once it got dark, but we were tired little angels, so we go to bed. Me curled up around Scully as usual.
And a rest day.
Which is nice.
It means I can be extra relaxed in the morning. LAy an extra ten minutes in bed, but there were chores to do. After coffee, I put out the bins, put out the seedlings from the shed, water them too.
And before you know it is time to start work again.
There is the usual early meeting, while we finish our coffees, swapping news and gossip, and mainly comparing the weather in various parts of Jutland and Kent.
Outside it is a glorious day here, the wind had dropped, and was much warmer.
Which was also nice.
I have to go to the doctors for my quarterly assessment as to whether I needs the pills I'm on. So I set out to walk over the fields and then down the Dip to the village.
I see little of any additional interest that I saw at the weekend.
There is a queuing system outside the surgery, I go in and am seen by the doctor, though I am at one end of the room and he behind the desk. He looks at me and says I have lost weight by still need the meds. The dispensary tells me that they don't have the drugs and I will have to come back in the morning after nine.Bugger.
So, I walk down the Dip, and go straight on, heading for Windy Ridge, even if my back had been complaining for a god twenty minutes already.
And it is busy, I mean not crowded, but groups of people, a family of five, a couple in stout walking shoes with those odd skiing sticks for walking, another couple in sweat pants, and a mother with young son. But further on as I neared the wood, I was on my own.
I was there to check the bluebells in the wood, to see if a stray EPO would show.
There were none. In fact only one small group were anything like pure-bred "English" Bluebells, the rest were hybrids, or "Spanish". They don't droop like the native ones. And some of those are pinker, even pink. Anyway, I walk on.
After a while I leave the wood to walk along the lane beside it, hoping to see butterflies, as it has been a rich spot in the past, but as it was gone eleven, any that did fly by were very twitchy, and none settled.
I walked on the lane leading back down to Collingwood, the ground now hard like iron, but due to lack of rain, not cold. Chalk downland drains so quickly, so it was like we had no rain.
Back down the hill, up to the road and along, pausing to check if I could see a Bluethroat, but no, as there is little manure to rummage in.Back home it is lunchtime, and back to work, but I had missed little. So I put on a podcast and listen while I have lunch.
I try sitting in the garden, and was rewarded with a Holly Blue flying through, it briefly settled on the hedge, long enough for me to hurry over wearing my floppy slippers and grab a handful of shots.Through the day I made a rich ragu, but in a change I used the hedge garlic from our garden instead of actual garlic, seeing as we'd run out. I simmered the tomatoes with the garlic for an hour, then let the pot sit for a few hours for the flavours to build.
I fry two small onions, some sausage meat, add that and the final five mushrooms in the bottom of the fridge, thinly sliced, to the pot. I add a litre of beef stock left over from the prime rib, mix and then set to boil, then simmer for 90 minutes until Jools was due to come back.
Finally I boil some pasta, make some garlic bread out of the stale remains of the cornbread loaf.
And, it was very good indeed. Not a huge garlic hit, but a slight afterburn. I liked it, so did Jools. And good news is there is more than enough to freeze for another day.
By then it was seven, and we were pooped, but we have a coffee whilst listening to the radio. It was nearly warm enough to sit outside once it got dark, but we were tired little angels, so we go to bed. Me curled up around Scully as usual.
The "plan"
The tactics are clear:
1) Pretend that idiots wishing harm on PM are representative of all govt. critics. (Ignore all examples of harm being wished on govt. critics.)
2) Orchestrate pliant MPs & client journalists in ‘quote tweet’ pile-ons against the most effective criticism.
3) Insist that the govt. has ‘followed the science’ without explaining what science.
4) If pushed on 3, argue that explaining the science will ‘embarrass our allies’.
5) Wibble about ‘national cycles’ when asked why the govt. failed to learn from stark foreign examples.
6) Repeat 5 when asked to explain unflattering comparisons with Germany, Ireland etc
7) Introduce pithy but vacuous slogans into public discourse so that blindly loyal forelock-tuggers at least have something to shout into the ether. See ‘population density’ & ‘herd immunity’.
8) Try to move the debate away from scrutiny of deeply flawed lockdown messaging towards one about when lockdown should end.
9) Blame govt. failures on doctors & nurses; WHO; Public Health England; civil service; China; the Boogie.
10) If all else fails, refuse all interviews.
https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1249636026844397568
1) Pretend that idiots wishing harm on PM are representative of all govt. critics. (Ignore all examples of harm being wished on govt. critics.)
2) Orchestrate pliant MPs & client journalists in ‘quote tweet’ pile-ons against the most effective criticism.
3) Insist that the govt. has ‘followed the science’ without explaining what science.
4) If pushed on 3, argue that explaining the science will ‘embarrass our allies’.
5) Wibble about ‘national cycles’ when asked why the govt. failed to learn from stark foreign examples.
6) Repeat 5 when asked to explain unflattering comparisons with Germany, Ireland etc
7) Introduce pithy but vacuous slogans into public discourse so that blindly loyal forelock-tuggers at least have something to shout into the ether. See ‘population density’ & ‘herd immunity’.
8) Try to move the debate away from scrutiny of deeply flawed lockdown messaging towards one about when lockdown should end.
9) Blame govt. failures on doctors & nurses; WHO; Public Health England; civil service; China; the Boogie.
10) If all else fails, refuse all interviews.
https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1249636026844397568
Thursday, 23 April 2020
Wednesday 22nd April 2020
In another universe, I should be waking up after my ten year celebration in Denmark, an evening meal and drinking session.
But I am home.
And alive.
Middle of the week.
Swallows have arrived. They did last week, but yesterday I watched them from the patio, wheeling and whirling, whilst chirping like happy dolphins.
It is nearly summer.
Going to bed earlier and earlier means getting up earlier and earlier. If only there was some football to watch. I was awake at twenty past four, and soon dawn showed, with blackbirds singing loudly.
As soon as I'm awake, my bladder says, as you're awake.....
Back in bed, and I lay and just enjoy the silence of the morning.
Jools gets up at five, I lay a while so she can do her chores and tasks, so when I do get up at half past, the coffee is brewing.
Lovely.
Once that is drunk, Jools is off on her walk and I have to go on the cross trainer, once again listening to the radio. Not perfect, but it'll do.
I do twenty minutes, get dressed and am ready for the early morning meeting at half seven, by which time Jools had returned, loaded the car and left.
We are all well, still, and to date, no one in the company, in any country or facility has tested positive, which is pretty incredible.
After the meeting ends at eight, I go to put out the seedlings, water them, make breakfast and a fresh coffee.
This is the life.
And I have a stack of work to do. Stuff I had been putting off for weeks, so I do it all, and by lunch I am all caught up.
Best have lunch then. And a fresh brew.
Perfect. Again.
I would have gone for a walk, but I need to do a second workout, so take it easy in the early afternoon, have a glass of iced squash sitting in the garden whilst reading the latest Rail magazine, whilst all around the garden was a riot of colour and sounds. It is all rather marvellous.
It is odd spending such dark days in domestic bliss at home. I listen to the radio, we have food, entertainment and I have three quarters of a crate of Belgian tripel. We have the cats, each other, our health, are being paid and happy.
We are so lucky.
I do a session on the cross trainer, upping the level as before. But by the end I am so tired. Thankfully Thursday is a rest day.
Dinner is pizza and beer.
One was vegetarian, so I add bacon lardons and sliced chorizo, which made it very tasty indeed. We eat the pizza sitting on the lower patio, sipping beer or cider.
It is like being on our holibobs, but it is a working week.
We sit in the lengthening shadows, as swallows and swifts wheel above us. And the cats sit nearby in case we feel like feeding them.
But as soon as the sun goes behind the house next door, it gets chilly, so we head inside to warm up.
We play Uckers, Jools thrashes me, mainly because I went about twenty rounds without rolling a double.
What goes around and all that.
So ends another day working from home.
But I am home.
And alive.
Middle of the week.
Swallows have arrived. They did last week, but yesterday I watched them from the patio, wheeling and whirling, whilst chirping like happy dolphins.
It is nearly summer.Going to bed earlier and earlier means getting up earlier and earlier. If only there was some football to watch. I was awake at twenty past four, and soon dawn showed, with blackbirds singing loudly.
As soon as I'm awake, my bladder says, as you're awake.....
Back in bed, and I lay and just enjoy the silence of the morning.
Jools gets up at five, I lay a while so she can do her chores and tasks, so when I do get up at half past, the coffee is brewing.
Lovely.
Once that is drunk, Jools is off on her walk and I have to go on the cross trainer, once again listening to the radio. Not perfect, but it'll do.
I do twenty minutes, get dressed and am ready for the early morning meeting at half seven, by which time Jools had returned, loaded the car and left.
We are all well, still, and to date, no one in the company, in any country or facility has tested positive, which is pretty incredible.
After the meeting ends at eight, I go to put out the seedlings, water them, make breakfast and a fresh coffee.This is the life.
And I have a stack of work to do. Stuff I had been putting off for weeks, so I do it all, and by lunch I am all caught up.
Best have lunch then. And a fresh brew.
Perfect. Again.
I would have gone for a walk, but I need to do a second workout, so take it easy in the early afternoon, have a glass of iced squash sitting in the garden whilst reading the latest Rail magazine, whilst all around the garden was a riot of colour and sounds. It is all rather marvellous.
It is odd spending such dark days in domestic bliss at home. I listen to the radio, we have food, entertainment and I have three quarters of a crate of Belgian tripel. We have the cats, each other, our health, are being paid and happy.We are so lucky.
I do a session on the cross trainer, upping the level as before. But by the end I am so tired. Thankfully Thursday is a rest day.
Dinner is pizza and beer.
One was vegetarian, so I add bacon lardons and sliced chorizo, which made it very tasty indeed. We eat the pizza sitting on the lower patio, sipping beer or cider.
It is like being on our holibobs, but it is a working week.
We sit in the lengthening shadows, as swallows and swifts wheel above us. And the cats sit nearby in case we feel like feeding them.
But as soon as the sun goes behind the house next door, it gets chilly, so we head inside to warm up.
We play Uckers, Jools thrashes me, mainly because I went about twenty rounds without rolling a double.
What goes around and all that.
So ends another day working from home.
4273
I think we forget how expensive records used to be. I find myself wishing I had bought more when I had the chance as a teen, and started earlier. But I had no money.
The only time I got money to spend on what I wanted was at Christmas and birthdays when like many other children, I would receive Boots vouchers.
These could be redeemed for records, or shampoo, to the value of the token the card contained. This was OK until the price of records climbed above a pound for a single. It was with a token I bought Abba's Take a Chance on Me, from Boots. It came in a plain white sleeve, or the one I got did. At first I didn't think there was a copy, as it blended in with the racking. But there was at least one copy, so I came away with a copy.
Anyway, LPs were out of my price range.
In 1979, things began to change. In June of that year, we had an exchange student from Germany, and all them from Germany and my German class, went for a day in Norwich to our museums and stuff. And in our free time I went along with my friends to a little records shop overlooking the market next to the Sir Garnet pub. My friends all came away with UK Subs singles, on bright blue vinyl and in picture sleeves showing a bank note stuffed into a woman's bra.
I thought it most rude. But then my German exchange partner bough the Scorpion's Love Drive album. I'll let you google that cover.
Anyway, all my fiends had started buying records, so I thought I had better. Up to that point, I had two ELO cassettes, bought by Mum from a catalogue. But this meant getting into vinyl.
1979 was also the point when Thatcher won the election at the beginning of May, and she announced VAT was going up, so Dad went out and got a "music centre" to replace the teak radiogram we had used up to that point. The music centre was wonderful, but clearly, it was Dad's toy, so I would be discouraged from using it, which would lead by Christmas in me getting one of my own, but not a £600 Hitachi brushed silver thing.
Anyway.
Being 15, my Boots vouchers must have gone up as I was able to buy LPs; knowing little about them, and assuming they would be all filled with tracks as good as the hit singles, I bought Parallel Lines, which as it turned out did have every track as good as the hit singles. And I bought Live Killers. I liked Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love and assumed as the LP was in the charts, it would contain that song. It didn't. And was horrible. And even those songs I did know sounded nothing like I remembered.
I got myself a paper round soon after my birthday, and so had weekly disposable income of £1.85. Before I could buy records, I had to save up for my trip to Germany for the exchange. By then I was buying at least one of the weekly music papers, and was concerned I might miss out on some news in my time away so got the shop to save me the the two printings of Record Mirror I would miss when away.
For Christmas not only did I receive the usual Boots vouchers from the family, I got £30 in my tips for my Christmas box on the paper round. I had never felt so rich. I went out and bought Eat to the Beat and The Wall. Again Blondie held up well, and being just 15 I think I did not appreciate the rest of The Wall other than Another Brick in the Wall and Comfortably Numb. I have to admit either got played that much.
And so began my love/hate relationship with LPs. I would buy them, lots of them, mostly to play once, or sometimes just for the lead single, which is why i find it hard to do those top ten album lists that crop up from time to time on FB.
Anyway, from the start of 1980, my friends and I would go into town on a Saturday morning to trawl though the latest releases to decide what to buy. One time I had heard Last Sunday by The Small faces, and thought I found it on the Old Gold selection in John Menzies. As this would be my only purchase for several weeks, I was rather pleased to have found it. And then I got it home, put it on and found it to be Sunny Afternoon by The Kinks. I had no idea who had sung the track I wanted, just it was about an afternoon, might have been Sunny of Sunday.
Who knew?
But this wasn't the only thing my paper round money had to fund. As there was Tuesday Club.
Tuesday Club was a youth club held at the Oulton village community centre, and split into two halves. Before my teens, there was the Scout huts there, and there were table tennis tables, a kind of disco, but games and things. By the time I reached 14, the huts had been replaced with a functional but ugly hall, and those 13 and over could attend the club from, well, now I'm not too sure, was it seven to nine? I have no idea.
But two hours of music, flashing disco lights, gel lighting which was still a thing in Suffolk. And music.
Well, it cost 50p, I think to get in, which was a 6th of my paper round money. But it was the night out of the week, and we look forward to it, though it was fairly dreadful, or so we thought. Poor Mr Rogers who ran it, suffered greatly with our antics, and it got worse in 1980 when there was a pitched battle in a recreation of the Mods v Rockers on the dancefloor between the mods and everyone else. But it only happened once.
For the most part, we all sat around the edge of the hall, me and my friends waiting for the time when the DJ would play two, maybe three heavy records. Usually Whole Lotta Rosie, Paranoid and something else. We would go up, shake our heads while the mods stood around us and made fun. When their records came on, they had a fine old time, leaping and skanking about. They might have had the better deal. But they got maybe three or fours songs too. The rest was disco. Shimmering late 70s, early 80s classic disco. We hated it at the time, but it was wonderful, by the end of the decade I sued to go to a club that played the same songs and I used to thow myself about to.
Otherwise I was buying more and more records as my pay increased. Which was nice.
And at the end of 1980 I had persuaded my Dad to buy me a music centre. Not like his, but a cheap Pye thing, but had a turntable, tape deck and radio. But the turntable was too variable, and I tried really hard to get him to spend another £30 to buy me a Phillips, which sounded much better. And he did.
Truth is we read about music more than heard it. If it hadn't have been for John Peel we would have heard almost nothing of the great music being made. If a journalist we liked said a recored was good, we would try to order it. God knows what the person behind the counter made of: Bonk Bonk Bonk, Crispy Ambulance, Hagar the Womb, Shambeko say Wah!, We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use it, Echo and the Bunnymen, and so on and on and on.
I got most of what I wanted, although the heavy Reggae took some time to get from Brixton to Lowestoft up the A12.
By the time 1983 rolled round, I was on a YOP scheme, on £25 a week, of which I gave Mum a tenner, leaving me with £15 to spend on records. Lowestoft Electrical was the chart return shop, and they had twelve inch singles for £1.99, I could get a few of those a week!
We had a wide choice for our weekly virus fix, in Lowestoft starting from Station Square there was:
John Wells (mainly camera and Hi-fi, but had a large record department out back)
WH Smiths
John Menzies
Lowestoft Electrical (typical white goods retailers with a huge record department upstairs)
Morlings House of Music (early 80s, very poor, became chart return shop, spent half my wages here for five years)
Record and Tape Exchange
Trying to think if I missed any. But Lowestoft Electrical and Morlings had HUGE record departments. Lowestoft Electrical had a counter which were the racks for twelve inch records, three feet deep and twenty feet wide. Thinking about it, I wonder how the floor did not collapse due to the weight. It was all in the racks in random order, other than new stuff was put in the front of the racks.
Good luck, hunting.
And you could always try to order things, as long as you didn't mind waiting, of course.
For Christmas 1980, not only did I get a music centre, but I got the triple Rush retrospective, Archives, featuring their first three albums. Now, bearing in my mind I didn't have a long concentration span as far as LPs were concerned, a triple album wasn't really going to be played that much. I think I got it to"one-up" on my friends. As we always wanted to hear more music, but also have more than all our friends.
Saying that, we had one friend who said he had all the stuff we dreamed of, including Live at the Budokhan by Micheal Schenker Group, which was only available on import, he he said he had it, but he never let us borrow it or let us into his house. He might have been making it up. He was also a Kiss fan.
Kiss.
I mean, maybe if you lived in the mid-west they made sense, but not in England, not after Punk, I mean Kiss would only seem silly. Laughable, even.
But then we all have our odd obsessions, mine is Pat Benatar. Yeah. I wrote about that before. But it did lead to buying records on coloured vinyl, picture sleepves, picture discs, imports. All sorts. Mostly using mail order, and being paid for with postal orders.
I am 54 years old and I have no idea how this worked: but you would scour the lists at the back of the NME for the latest rare records, pick what you wanted. You would write a letter, I think, stating what you wanted, the return address, then go into town to the Post Office to get a postal order for the value of the recor(s), postage and packing for the amount, and they would attach stamps to the value on the order, which you would pop in the envelope with your letter, send to the shop, and if you were lucky, in a week or so the record would arrive.
This was normal. And how I got many of my Pat Benatar rarities. And other stuff too. I was still bying her stuff into the 1990s. Still have them too.
The only time I got money to spend on what I wanted was at Christmas and birthdays when like many other children, I would receive Boots vouchers.
These could be redeemed for records, or shampoo, to the value of the token the card contained. This was OK until the price of records climbed above a pound for a single. It was with a token I bought Abba's Take a Chance on Me, from Boots. It came in a plain white sleeve, or the one I got did. At first I didn't think there was a copy, as it blended in with the racking. But there was at least one copy, so I came away with a copy.
Anyway, LPs were out of my price range.
In 1979, things began to change. In June of that year, we had an exchange student from Germany, and all them from Germany and my German class, went for a day in Norwich to our museums and stuff. And in our free time I went along with my friends to a little records shop overlooking the market next to the Sir Garnet pub. My friends all came away with UK Subs singles, on bright blue vinyl and in picture sleeves showing a bank note stuffed into a woman's bra.
I thought it most rude. But then my German exchange partner bough the Scorpion's Love Drive album. I'll let you google that cover.
Anyway, all my fiends had started buying records, so I thought I had better. Up to that point, I had two ELO cassettes, bought by Mum from a catalogue. But this meant getting into vinyl.
1979 was also the point when Thatcher won the election at the beginning of May, and she announced VAT was going up, so Dad went out and got a "music centre" to replace the teak radiogram we had used up to that point. The music centre was wonderful, but clearly, it was Dad's toy, so I would be discouraged from using it, which would lead by Christmas in me getting one of my own, but not a £600 Hitachi brushed silver thing.
Anyway.
Being 15, my Boots vouchers must have gone up as I was able to buy LPs; knowing little about them, and assuming they would be all filled with tracks as good as the hit singles, I bought Parallel Lines, which as it turned out did have every track as good as the hit singles. And I bought Live Killers. I liked Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love and assumed as the LP was in the charts, it would contain that song. It didn't. And was horrible. And even those songs I did know sounded nothing like I remembered.
I got myself a paper round soon after my birthday, and so had weekly disposable income of £1.85. Before I could buy records, I had to save up for my trip to Germany for the exchange. By then I was buying at least one of the weekly music papers, and was concerned I might miss out on some news in my time away so got the shop to save me the the two printings of Record Mirror I would miss when away.
For Christmas not only did I receive the usual Boots vouchers from the family, I got £30 in my tips for my Christmas box on the paper round. I had never felt so rich. I went out and bought Eat to the Beat and The Wall. Again Blondie held up well, and being just 15 I think I did not appreciate the rest of The Wall other than Another Brick in the Wall and Comfortably Numb. I have to admit either got played that much.
And so began my love/hate relationship with LPs. I would buy them, lots of them, mostly to play once, or sometimes just for the lead single, which is why i find it hard to do those top ten album lists that crop up from time to time on FB.
Anyway, from the start of 1980, my friends and I would go into town on a Saturday morning to trawl though the latest releases to decide what to buy. One time I had heard Last Sunday by The Small faces, and thought I found it on the Old Gold selection in John Menzies. As this would be my only purchase for several weeks, I was rather pleased to have found it. And then I got it home, put it on and found it to be Sunny Afternoon by The Kinks. I had no idea who had sung the track I wanted, just it was about an afternoon, might have been Sunny of Sunday.
Who knew?
But this wasn't the only thing my paper round money had to fund. As there was Tuesday Club.
Tuesday Club was a youth club held at the Oulton village community centre, and split into two halves. Before my teens, there was the Scout huts there, and there were table tennis tables, a kind of disco, but games and things. By the time I reached 14, the huts had been replaced with a functional but ugly hall, and those 13 and over could attend the club from, well, now I'm not too sure, was it seven to nine? I have no idea.
But two hours of music, flashing disco lights, gel lighting which was still a thing in Suffolk. And music.
Well, it cost 50p, I think to get in, which was a 6th of my paper round money. But it was the night out of the week, and we look forward to it, though it was fairly dreadful, or so we thought. Poor Mr Rogers who ran it, suffered greatly with our antics, and it got worse in 1980 when there was a pitched battle in a recreation of the Mods v Rockers on the dancefloor between the mods and everyone else. But it only happened once.
For the most part, we all sat around the edge of the hall, me and my friends waiting for the time when the DJ would play two, maybe three heavy records. Usually Whole Lotta Rosie, Paranoid and something else. We would go up, shake our heads while the mods stood around us and made fun. When their records came on, they had a fine old time, leaping and skanking about. They might have had the better deal. But they got maybe three or fours songs too. The rest was disco. Shimmering late 70s, early 80s classic disco. We hated it at the time, but it was wonderful, by the end of the decade I sued to go to a club that played the same songs and I used to thow myself about to.
Otherwise I was buying more and more records as my pay increased. Which was nice.
And at the end of 1980 I had persuaded my Dad to buy me a music centre. Not like his, but a cheap Pye thing, but had a turntable, tape deck and radio. But the turntable was too variable, and I tried really hard to get him to spend another £30 to buy me a Phillips, which sounded much better. And he did.
Truth is we read about music more than heard it. If it hadn't have been for John Peel we would have heard almost nothing of the great music being made. If a journalist we liked said a recored was good, we would try to order it. God knows what the person behind the counter made of: Bonk Bonk Bonk, Crispy Ambulance, Hagar the Womb, Shambeko say Wah!, We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use it, Echo and the Bunnymen, and so on and on and on.
I got most of what I wanted, although the heavy Reggae took some time to get from Brixton to Lowestoft up the A12.
By the time 1983 rolled round, I was on a YOP scheme, on £25 a week, of which I gave Mum a tenner, leaving me with £15 to spend on records. Lowestoft Electrical was the chart return shop, and they had twelve inch singles for £1.99, I could get a few of those a week!
We had a wide choice for our weekly virus fix, in Lowestoft starting from Station Square there was:
John Wells (mainly camera and Hi-fi, but had a large record department out back)
WH Smiths
John Menzies
Lowestoft Electrical (typical white goods retailers with a huge record department upstairs)
Morlings House of Music (early 80s, very poor, became chart return shop, spent half my wages here for five years)
Record and Tape Exchange
Trying to think if I missed any. But Lowestoft Electrical and Morlings had HUGE record departments. Lowestoft Electrical had a counter which were the racks for twelve inch records, three feet deep and twenty feet wide. Thinking about it, I wonder how the floor did not collapse due to the weight. It was all in the racks in random order, other than new stuff was put in the front of the racks.
Good luck, hunting.
And you could always try to order things, as long as you didn't mind waiting, of course.
For Christmas 1980, not only did I get a music centre, but I got the triple Rush retrospective, Archives, featuring their first three albums. Now, bearing in my mind I didn't have a long concentration span as far as LPs were concerned, a triple album wasn't really going to be played that much. I think I got it to"one-up" on my friends. As we always wanted to hear more music, but also have more than all our friends.
Saying that, we had one friend who said he had all the stuff we dreamed of, including Live at the Budokhan by Micheal Schenker Group, which was only available on import, he he said he had it, but he never let us borrow it or let us into his house. He might have been making it up. He was also a Kiss fan.
Kiss.
I mean, maybe if you lived in the mid-west they made sense, but not in England, not after Punk, I mean Kiss would only seem silly. Laughable, even.
But then we all have our odd obsessions, mine is Pat Benatar. Yeah. I wrote about that before. But it did lead to buying records on coloured vinyl, picture sleepves, picture discs, imports. All sorts. Mostly using mail order, and being paid for with postal orders.
I am 54 years old and I have no idea how this worked: but you would scour the lists at the back of the NME for the latest rare records, pick what you wanted. You would write a letter, I think, stating what you wanted, the return address, then go into town to the Post Office to get a postal order for the value of the recor(s), postage and packing for the amount, and they would attach stamps to the value on the order, which you would pop in the envelope with your letter, send to the shop, and if you were lucky, in a week or so the record would arrive.
This was normal. And how I got many of my Pat Benatar rarities. And other stuff too. I was still bying her stuff into the 1990s. Still have them too.
Wednesday, 22 April 2020
Tuesday 21st April 2020
I left the RAF some 15 years ago, I mention that from time to time over the summer. Anyway, part of the leaving ritual was going to the Medical Centre to show that you were Medical and Dental A1 when discharged.
I was nearly 40, fat, part deaf and knew I was anything but A1, and so in line for a medical (war) pension.
When it came to the hearing test, I knew I was part deaf, and tried my hardest to fail.
I passed.
The SMO passed me as A1 as did the Dental Officer, although my "temporary" crown he assured me would last until I died didn't last until my birthday in August. That year.
When I went to clear at Station HQ, aka PSF, I got a signature from the SSAFA, and she asked me what trade I had been. Armourer I replied. Ah, bad knees and back she said, and handed me a load of war pension forms.
Even at 40, you feel young, at least a quarter of a century of work ahead, you are barely out of your teens.
But the truth is my back is shot. I have two compressed discs, pressure from all sorts of ailments caused pain or sciatica.
And that is my life now: balancing my back and knee pain and my desire to go out and snap orchids, butterflies and wild flowers. I will try not to give into it. But, sometimes it is worse than others, and this year, even after the phys on the cross trainer, it has been painful. But I walk at my own pace, take breathers, and get the job done, just not that fast.
Oh well.
I mention this as sometimes when I go on walks or rambles, I say my back is complaining or screaming. This is the background. But I will always push myself for the next great shot.
Just saying.
Anyway. Tuesday.
Another sunny but windy day dawned. I lay in bed, Jools got up when the alarm went off.
Here we go again.
I get up and my coffee is waiting. Which is perfect.
Jools goes out for a walk, and I take the time to call my friend Tony in NZ to see how he is coping. He is doing fine, and it is good to spend 20 minutes catching up, but the clock ticks, and I have to do some phys and be ready for the early meeting at half seven.
We say goodbye and I go up to the spare room and do another session, to the soundtrack of the radio until I can program the Sony player, which should be straightforward. But I just need to squeeze that task into my packed schedule.
I do 20 minutes, cool down, then get the office set up and am waiting to log on on time, where we swap news and gossip.
Once that was done at eight, I make breakfast, brew a fresh cup of coffee and settle down to work.
It was a slow day, and I won't lie.
After a couple of hours, I go out for a walk, nothing too ambitious, but taking the track between the one taken at the end of last week and Windy Ridge, as I think I had only walked that once.
Anyway, not much new to snap, just good to be out of the house, walking over the fields to Fleet House where the pigs were hiding deep in the wood. So, I walk on, down the slope, past the farm and up the hill towards Windy Ridge, past the first lane west, taking the second.
That runs straight for about a mile, with high hedges and trees on both sides. Not much of interest, just a Lords and Ladies bobbing in the breeze. So I take a shot and walk back.
Back onto Collingwood, past the midden again and no sign of any Bluethroats.
Oh well.
Back home for lunch of stir fry, with a double helping of noodles. Who knew they could be so filling?
Anyway, back to work.
I watch a documentary on the life of Ronnie Lane. A very talented guy, who got fed up with the music business and Rod Stewart, turned into a gypsy and tried to become a farmer, until his inherited MS made that impossible.
A man so ahead of his time, so nice and not bitter.
I was going to do another session on the cross trainer, but my legs ached, and then Gary called. So we talked and time slipped away, and before I knew it, it was half four, Jools would be home in an hour and I had dinner to make.
So I packed away the office, made sausage rolls with caprese and garlic bread to follow, and that was all rather wonderful.
After 48 hours off the booze, I had three glasses of red vino, and the world seemed better.
And that was another day in lockdown. We listen to the wireless. Drink coffee. And to bed. At nine.
I was nearly 40, fat, part deaf and knew I was anything but A1, and so in line for a medical (war) pension.
When it came to the hearing test, I knew I was part deaf, and tried my hardest to fail.
I passed.
The SMO passed me as A1 as did the Dental Officer, although my "temporary" crown he assured me would last until I died didn't last until my birthday in August. That year.
When I went to clear at Station HQ, aka PSF, I got a signature from the SSAFA, and she asked me what trade I had been. Armourer I replied. Ah, bad knees and back she said, and handed me a load of war pension forms.
Even at 40, you feel young, at least a quarter of a century of work ahead, you are barely out of your teens.But the truth is my back is shot. I have two compressed discs, pressure from all sorts of ailments caused pain or sciatica.
And that is my life now: balancing my back and knee pain and my desire to go out and snap orchids, butterflies and wild flowers. I will try not to give into it. But, sometimes it is worse than others, and this year, even after the phys on the cross trainer, it has been painful. But I walk at my own pace, take breathers, and get the job done, just not that fast.
Oh well.I mention this as sometimes when I go on walks or rambles, I say my back is complaining or screaming. This is the background. But I will always push myself for the next great shot.
Just saying.Anyway. Tuesday.
Another sunny but windy day dawned. I lay in bed, Jools got up when the alarm went off.
Here we go again.I get up and my coffee is waiting. Which is perfect.
Jools goes out for a walk, and I take the time to call my friend Tony in NZ to see how he is coping. He is doing fine, and it is good to spend 20 minutes catching up, but the clock ticks, and I have to do some phys and be ready for the early meeting at half seven.
We say goodbye and I go up to the spare room and do another session, to the soundtrack of the radio until I can program the Sony player, which should be straightforward. But I just need to squeeze that task into my packed schedule.
I do 20 minutes, cool down, then get the office set up and am waiting to log on on time, where we swap news and gossip.Once that was done at eight, I make breakfast, brew a fresh cup of coffee and settle down to work.
It was a slow day, and I won't lie.
After a couple of hours, I go out for a walk, nothing too ambitious, but taking the track between the one taken at the end of last week and Windy Ridge, as I think I had only walked that once.
Anyway, not much new to snap, just good to be out of the house, walking over the fields to Fleet House where the pigs were hiding deep in the wood. So, I walk on, down the slope, past the farm and up the hill towards Windy Ridge, past the first lane west, taking the second.
That runs straight for about a mile, with high hedges and trees on both sides. Not much of interest, just a Lords and Ladies bobbing in the breeze. So I take a shot and walk back.
Back onto Collingwood, past the midden again and no sign of any Bluethroats.Oh well.
Back home for lunch of stir fry, with a double helping of noodles. Who knew they could be so filling?
Anyway, back to work.
I watch a documentary on the life of Ronnie Lane. A very talented guy, who got fed up with the music business and Rod Stewart, turned into a gypsy and tried to become a farmer, until his inherited MS made that impossible.
A man so ahead of his time, so nice and not bitter.I was going to do another session on the cross trainer, but my legs ached, and then Gary called. So we talked and time slipped away, and before I knew it, it was half four, Jools would be home in an hour and I had dinner to make.
So I packed away the office, made sausage rolls with caprese and garlic bread to follow, and that was all rather wonderful.
After 48 hours off the booze, I had three glasses of red vino, and the world seemed better.
And that was another day in lockdown. We listen to the wireless. Drink coffee. And to bed. At nine.
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