vinyl man

This is my mate Keith, he runs a record shop in Kingston Upon Thames here!

If you are ever in the neighbourhood, pop in and tell him I sent ya! I'm not on commission but I do love a record shop and think people like Keith are keeping them alive!

There is something so seductive about the smell of old vinyl... and don't get me started on the crackle! Just rediscovered this via a recording and it gave me goosebumps. One of the great reasons I love that I am a child of the 70s is that I can appreciate vinyl and all its crackling joy. Kids today etc etc ;)

My first shop job was in a record shop in Liverpool on Matthew Street called Backtracks... I was 16/17 and soon also had a cloakroom job in a nightclub called The Buzz... ah good times! I loved working listening to music all day.. hence my radio bug methinks!

Later when I moved to Basingstoke I got a Saturday job at the brand new HMV and met my first love...

So here's to record shops, long may they live on street corners, full of indie kids, soul divas, metal heads and all the rest!

a whiff of the past?

my mum has long been a fan of the bacon sarnie... and i know she isn't alone in this... bacon sizzling on the grill is probs one of the most popular whiffs when people are asked their favourites...

but hear this! i, being the vegetarian of many years that i am, am perplexed by something that happened last week while on holiday in Cornwall...

walking down by the seafront early one morning i got a whiff of this cooking bacon and was surprised to feel myself enjoying the smell! my finding the smell of bacon cooking pleasant in any way is at odds with my moral belief that it is inhumane to eat animals... and yet something biological maybe was saying 'mmm, dinner!'

in these situations it's best to blame your parents! lol

my mum tried to be a veggie in the 80s but the bacon buttie proved too tempting a mistress and she had sneaky meat treats when out of the house she shared with her then veggie husband (my dad) on more than one occasion... which must've somehow made an impression on me haha, the bacon sandwich forever cast as forbidden fruit!

i must say i had/ have no desire to actually eat a bacon sarnie, the idea of chewing on flesh after more years than i care to count is actually abhorrent to me.. i love to remind people that Einstein said humans would have to evolve to be vegetarians*, it all comes down to simple economics! i'm the cheapest date! lol so no chance of my being corrupt into an omnivore again any time soon.. but i have always wondered how i would cope if i got pregnant and had a meat craving! the social pressure to give my baby/ body what it 'needed' would be massive, what a horror!

so i'm guessing that pre-13 i enjoyed a bacon sarnie with my mum on more than one occasion and enjoyed her enjoyment of said snack so much that the smell of it makes me smile...



*and they love to remind me that Hitler was a vegetarian... which by all accounts may just be a bit of propaganda anyway! how rude! i never ask people why they eat meat and i am always asked why i don't.. i know it's the norm to eat meat in western society but surely now we're 1 in 10, people can get over it? i suppose it's like when you don't drink, people want to know why because it reflects badly on them somehow... ah the world is a strange and beautiful place...

hungover on a sunny day

today is very sunny and the weather reports assure me it's going to be lovely and warm too. but i am hungover and unable to a) get dressed b) open the curtains - my tiny eyes couldn't cope!

i am glad to report that i have a couple of unidentified drunken bruises. why is it that you always come home from a night of vodka with bruises?

i've been drinking vodka a long time now and let me tell you* it never ceases to amaze me when i wake up with a sore head. i take this as proof that vodka is no good for the memory!






*this is my new fave phrase courtesy of Dave...

dream a little dream

I've had a few odd dreams recently... maybe you can tell me what they mean (if anything)

in the first one i was driving in my car in the rain. then it cut to my looking for my parked car ahead of the rain coming. couldn't remember where i had parked it and was very worried about it!

in the next dream i was driving my car along a treacherous winding road through a woody area, that seemed high up, in possibly a foreign country. i was concerned about driving along this road and the journey ahead...

the last dream of a driving theme saw me driving but unable to make my rear view mirror sit in the right position. that is to say it would sit too high or too low but not where i wanted it to. the boyf says this represents my not being able to see clearly where i've been!

so what is it? a lot of driving... a lot of uncertainty and anxiety... maybe that's it, just anxiety dreams... what do you think?!