New toy

So in a bit of rather aggressive stress management, I decided to stop stewing over all the nonsense that had got me worked up over the last few days, and stomped off into town to spend some Christmas money that had been in ever-present danger of being swallowed up into everyday expenditure.

Yes, it was time to treat myself, and I bought this digital audio recorder, which should prove useful for all sorts of things. Having a new toy to play with should also serve as a spur to pick up the momentum with my music again, which has frustratingly been a casualty of my energies being directed (and, as often as not, wasted) elsewhere in recent days.

Misreading the signs

It's getting silly.

Earlier today, passing a bank or building society, I read an advert which, to me at least, read

Give your child the gift of starving

WHAT??? Was my immediate response, before I reread and saw that it was actually

Give your child the gift of saving

I'm not even trying to make this stuff up, this was as much of a genuine misreading as the many others that I've posted. What it says about me, well...

Swimming

February appears not to have been particularly conducive to blogging for me, doesn't it?

There's plenty I could talk and rant about, but I've ranted enough - in the workplace, hardly a surprise - and want to try and put it behind me for the sake of the weekend. I don't know how easy that's going to be though, after (as I just put in my reply to Carol on the previous comment thread) a frustrating end to a bewildering and difficult week.

I can tell I'm under stress:

I lost some keys. Only for a few minutes, but I never lose keys. Ever.

I was on my way out of a shop when the man at the counter called me back, I'd left my debit card in the card reader on the counter. I've never ever done that before. Ever. This was after renewing my weekly travel ticket, a day late, which meant that I'd been unwittingly travelling on an out of date pass. I never do that.

Ever.

I walked into a door today. Ouch. It was half-open, I could see that, yet as I passed through the doorway I still managed to hit the door itself.

I've felt too exhausted most evenings, once home, to do much at all. Nothing constructive anyway. Feeling the tiredness in my legs, and the knots in my back and shoulders.

I really hope the weekend is ok, and I hope yours is too.

76

I heard someone say seventy-six a number of times in quick succession today. It was during a phone conversation they were having: I'm not sure what the seventy-six in question referred to.

It suddenly reminded me of the first band that I was in, though. The personnel consisted of me, my brother, and my grandad. Armed with a motley selection of antique instruments - a slightly battered trombone, a banjo with more than one of its strings missing, a wooden flute - we would sit at the top of my grandparents' stairs at a certain point on Saturday afternoons and perform our own, erm, idiosyncratic version of Seventy-Six Trombones.

We were great. Or at least I thought so at the time - I used to be giddy with enjoyment and excitement at the prospect of our "performances", like it was the highlight of my week. My grandad would conduct and play along, no doubt enjoying the sheer silliness of it, and perhaps stifling giggles at what a tuneless racket we were making.

Nonetheless, I still remember the melody, but that's probably from my grandad's singing.

I can only assume we chose the top of the stairs so that we were suitably elevated to enable the audience (otherwise known as my grandma) to view us without impediment. I never thought about this at the time though: for me it just went without saying that us musicians would sit at the top of the stairs.

Misreading the signs

A newspaper sub-headline this time:

Cats put extradition procedures in spotlight

Which brings about some wonderful mental images, though the correctly-read words were, of course, rather more prosaic (ie, "Case puts....").