Jul 22, 2009 | Uncategorized
20 years ago today I was resting at home with a small glass of something or other while Kirstin was in the Western General Hospital watching over the newly arrived Lindsay. Tonight we have all just returned from Giuliano’s restaurant after a good meal to celebrate her birthday which itself capped a good day with my sister and her family who are over from Texas to see the Scottish rain.
If I had a working scanner I’d copy over some baby pictures to embarass her in front of a world wide audience but she can be thankful that I don’t (because I have some really embarassing ones)!
Quite how my wee baby got to be 20 is not something on which I care to dwell for too long mind. Perhaps I should revisit my actions of twenty years ago and have a wee glass of something or other…
Jul 21, 2009 | Music
The first time I heard Farther on up the Road was almost certainly when Eric Clapton and The Band played it on The Last Waltz and I thought it was pretty good. Later I heard a really stinging version by Don Preston on a cracking wee album called Sacre Blues (which I heard on an old Alexis Korner show sometime in the very early 1980s) and thought that it was really good. It wasn’t until a lot later that I heard a version by Bobby Bland recorded in 1957 and was completely bowled over.
In comparison to the straight ahead 12-bar with extended guitar solo which we have come to associate with electric blues – and especially that of the British “blues boom” and it’s progeny – the Bobby Bland release is a very different beast and the main thing you notice, aside from the piano and saxes having equal ranking with the guitar, is the loping rhythmic complexity which the British bluesers – with the honourable exception of Van Morrison – very rarely “got”.
I was put in mind of this when I finished Elijah Wald’s “How the Beatles Destroyed Rock’n’Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music” which I mentioned a couple of posts ago. One of the key threads running through that book is the convergence – and then sharp divergence – of black and white styles in popular music. No-one could mistake Bobby Bland’s version as anything other than black, and once you’ve heard Bland’s, you cannot possibly mistake Clapton’s version as being anything other than white.
Jul 18, 2009 | Uncategorized
Well, maybe not anything. Last year I made a batch of home brew which I had planned to be ready in time for Christmas but it went wrong. It was my own fault – I used dried malt instead of malt extract and miscalculated the amount which I needed by a substantial margin leading to a significant lack of fermentable sugars in the wort. It was drinkable but I would never serve it to anyone else. Anyway I forgot all about it until about half an hour ago and have just dug a bottle out from under the stairs. It remains something which I would not serve to anyone else, but it quenched a thirst after some painting of the walls in one of the bedrooms.
Jul 14, 2009 | Uncategorized
I was at the airport earlyish this morning to go down to London. I was sitting in the departure lounge having already completed the Kakuro puzzle on the back of the paper and wondering how to fill the time when I realised that I was bored. Not bored in the normal sense of the dullness of sitting around airports but bored in the sense of in need of some real change and stimulation.
Thankfully a summer holiday is only a couple of weeks away now.
Later, wandering around Heathrow terminal one waiting for the gate to be called for the flight home, I was struck once again by the general rubbishness of the shops there. I have no aversion to picking things up in airports and in the past books have been bought and, indeed, cheap cds at Schiphol. What I mean is that the bulk of the shops are high end and the fact that overpriced stuff is being sold with a bit of tax knocked off doesn’t stop it being overpriced. Lots of the outlets seem to be empty of customers as well. So why not put some interesting shops there at sensible prices?
Jul 10, 2009 | Legs!
Yup, you read that right: tits’n’ass. I refer, of course, to the things that they don’t tell you about when you start running for a hobby.
Tits I have probably mentioned before – the unpleasantry which is jogger’s nipple. This is precisely what it sounds like – it is the chafing of the nipple against a running vest which has become infused with perspiration. Generally this occurs after the 5K mark but before the 10K. There are two remedies (for men, anyway, women have the third option of a well fitted sports bra) – these are (1) find a running vest which doesn’t chafe and (2) apply a dab of vaseline or aqueous solution to each nipple before donning the vest to act as a barrier. The first if these is preferable in the long run and in my own case I appear to have achieved this.
Ass refers to another that they don’t tell you about – jogger’s trots. This is the unpleasant sensation of urgently requiring to use the bathroom when out on a run – and it usually occurs when one is some distance away from a loo. If it strikes then you have few options, the most preferable being to slow down to a walk and, er, hold it in until relief can be found.
Better, of course, is prevention. The main cause of jogger’s trots would appear to be the presence of undigested food in your tummy. When you run the blood is diverted towards your heart and lungs and away from other tasks – such as your digestive system. Undigested food and fluids coupled with the shaking up of your body when running leads to the inevitable. The remedies concentrate on the causes. The first is to make sure you have eaten easily digested food if you know you are going for a run – so swap your breakfast of muesli and fruit for peanut butter and jam on white bread or bananas and give it time to digest. Try drinking only water rather than tea or coffee before you go out but not for the hour or so before you go. And go to the loo before you go out!
We could talk about thighs too – when you run a distance and you perspire then your thighs will rub together and, if you run long enough, friction burns will result. The best way to avoid this is to spread either vaseline or aqueous cream on the vulnerable part prior to running. Medicated talc doesn’t do the job by the way .
This has been a public service posting from your friendly neighbourhood jogger.
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