“You are 19th in the queue.”
And it’s only 8am. Trying to speak to anyone at the Health Centre is quite a chore these days. Trying to book an appointment is even trickier.
tbf, the phone line queue soon receded; I made first contact. Half an hour later and I received a polite call back.
I am the Dot Cotton of Weird Wiv.
A brief scroll through Strava. I have extreme fitness jealously. I’m out of action for at least another seven weeks. I see pals cycling, swimming and running. Making it up the stairs is worthy of a position on the medal podium for me right now.
Late Junction was painful listening. JJJJJerome had a session. He’s an artist who is open about his stutter. There was a very patience and at times tense interview to get through. It was worth it to be rewarded by the collaboration session at the end.
Bert Jansch’s Bittern from 1979 was also played. That sounded spectacular. I had a quick online shifty. The album comes in at £100 on ebay. Whatever happened to £50 Bloke?
Moving in the other direction were my own CD prices. I’ve lost track of the number of duplicates that I’m trying to offload online. I did a pre-Black Friday price reduction of my own inventory.
Likewise for the FUCK OFF cactus. I have much love for the 2m monster. Sadly A and the kitchen ceiling don’t share this love.
The BEAST is still growing at an alarming rate. I give it until Christmas before it makes contact with the kitchen roof.
It’s been on ebay for around six months. It’s not that I want to get rid of it - I don’t have the space. There’s been a little interest, but nothing solid. I whacked £100 off the price tag.
Album of the Day: Soft Machine - Third
I would have run a bloody mile from this in years gone by. These days I’m the one making all the moves. You grow old, you listen to jazz, innit. Life 101. Even better if it’s on the cusp of psychedelic shit fusing it with freestyle jazz and drugs are involved - participants, not the listener.
I love how the songs build up throughout ten minutes or so. You aren’t going to hear these on Heart FM anytime soon. There’s also a soft approach to all the jazz shit. The horns won’t blow your arse off.
If you make it through all four sides then you have done very well. It takes you on a journey. Gawd knows where to. I became lost on side 3. That’s half the fun, right?
⭐ ⭐ ⭐
I caught up with Forest away at Anfield on MOTD2 late afternoon. It was good to hear Martin Fisher on BBC comms duties with Forest again. He was the Voice of Forest at the start of the PL years. I suspect he is a secret Trentside fan.
I tried briefly with Twitter again today but soon gave up. I can’t see the content I need beyond all the endless spam and commercial shit. Threads is still a little threadbare for me.
I am noticing that slowly, slowly, old school bloggers are starting to resurface in various forms. Adders has resurrected his Substack once again.
Back in the day and building these informal networks was the online currency that kept most of us going. You shared posts, linking out and in. It was the social currency that held it all together.
Just maybe…
There was a well written tribute to Adam Johnson of the Panthers in The Athletic. BBC Nottingham also handled the tragedy with great dignity in the weekend sport round up.
I made a little progress listening to Adam Buxton’s lengthy interview with Billy Bragg. It’s a long form listen, and one that is all the better for this.
Online music journalism can suffer with the need to condense everything down to a soundbite for social content. Not so with a podcast. If I want to listen an hour and a half interview then this is the perfect platform for two geezers to have a right old chinwag.