After taking that tumble last week, I gave it five days before I went out for a run and spent most of the time listening to what my body was telling me and alert for reaction. It went fine, and I gave myself a couple more days until going out again, which I did this morning. The aim today wasn’t about distance and it wasn’t about speed: my aim today was to run for a continuous 45 minutes, which I achieved. I did a little more than that, but by then I was on our hill and gritting my teeth.
Assuming no more accidents or illness, I’m back on my leisurely track towards 10k fitness. Sometime in the next couple of days, I’m going to follow a reasonably flat route and aim for 7k, then focus on short runs through next week. This would put me on a path to 10k fitness sometime in early to mid August. If I get there, I’ll look for a couple of 10k runs to enter and reward myself with a T-shirt and a medal 🙂
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TV has livened up again with the appearance of season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. After bailing on season 3 of Star Trek Discovery and putting Picard on pause, I was sceptical about any new shows in the franchise, but I’m enjoying Strange New Worlds a lot. I don’t think it’s groundbreaking, but it has a good cast and tells its stories well, even if the stories are familiar.
The Witcher is back for season 3 and has started strongly. I’m also enjoying Star Wars Visions on Disney+ – anime shorts from the Star Wars universe (well, except for the Ardman mashup of the pod race from The Phantom Menace and Chicken Run.)
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For reasons not unrelated to the acoustic bass guitar that I’m currently grappling with, I’ve been listening to a lot of The Beatles. I haven’t listened to a lot of their stuff for a while and it’s fascinating to come back to them with fresh ears. The journey from a hot band playing rock’n’roll standards in Hamburg and Liverpool to the emergence of their own writing talent is one I’m going to have to think about more, but something happened in 1963. It might have been meeting George Martin, but there was something else going on: the emergent repertoire of Lennon/McCartney originals is qualitatively different to the Hamburg/Cavern material.
At the same time, McCartney begins to emerge as a creative and influential bass player, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. He has said that a big influence was James Jamerson of Motown, but there is more to it than that. The bass line of All My Loving is rooted in neither rock’n’roll nor Jamerson. By the time of Michelle (1965) he’s a long way from roots and triads or walking basslines.
There was more to the Beatles than just Macca, of course, but I can’t help but think his restless creativity was the catalyst for what the band became.
More on this to come.
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