Map of the Day 2

Ah, the memories….

Map Of The Day

Ah well – the descent into total randomness continues…

For all your rickshaw needs in Truro. I pity the poor rickshaw bloke who has to take me. Good luck mate!

A Message To The Scum Of The Earth

Somethings happen that really shake you, and to put it mildly, I am a bit concerned.

First of all, to the individual who inputted two words – one to do with children and the other ”n*r*o*p” (and read the word backwards – put the stars in to stop it being the subject of a further search) and got to this blog; it is a good job I am a technophobe who doesn’t know how or where IP addresses are logged, because you sick bastard deserve to be grassed up. I fucking hope you get what comes to you.

Of course, I am concerned as to how this blog ends up on a list of sites that Google search comes up with to go with such a despicable entry. It almost makes me want to stop doing it and start again from scratch.

Jesus. Life can kick you in the teeth.

UPDATE – The offending post was “Adult Entertainment – Fridge Magnet Style” which had the two offending terms in it – I’d used an acronym for No Relation Of Patrick. This has been changed. I only hope the nonces out there got absolutely distraught when they saw what they clicked on, and that they suffer a life of purgatory, knowing they’ll get caught one day.

Sleepwalking

There’s a lot to love about the UK – yes, really there is. It is a beautiful country, and I will be sampling some of its pleasures soon with a trip down to Cornwall. As I have a wife relatively new to the country, I’ve got out of my suburban bolt-hole and seen parts of the country outside the cities and their football grounds. Driving through the Cotswolds to Worcester in May, strolling around Whitstable, a weekend break in Dorset a couple of years back and our fantastic week away in the Highlands of Scotland.

But this country has a lot to worry about. The increasing pervasiveness of the state and local authorities in our lives, telling us how to live, banning us when the state believes we are doing wrong. You know I am a climate change sceptic, seeing less as “save the planet” but “fleece the public” in the eyes of politicians while the great unwashed and the students see it as the new cause celebre now everyone is fed up with “ban the bomb”. We see a government straining every sinew to stay in power, and we see a populace equally straining every sinew to avoid anything to do with politics. We see the rise of the BNP, and the politician / liberal cognoscenti sniff and believe the only way to stop them is to ban them instead of trying to work out just why their support is increasing – it isn’t rocket science. We see economic woes that we know will hit us, but we just seem oblivious…

I don’t / can’t do a political diatribe here, but what does get me with this country, and the serious issues we face, is how we let trivialities dominate. When I see charities, funded by public money through government departments, that is, by the taxes you and I pay telling me how to live my life and suggesting all manner of banning, deprivation, denegration and degeneration of the individual, I get mad. I get angry. It seems other people are oblivious and care only that Arlene Phillips has been replaced on the panel of Strictly Come Dancing by Alesha Dixon. It isn’t a show I watch, nor one I particularly care about. However, this article in the epitome of this country the Daily Mail, sums it all up. At the time of writing 187 people have cared enough to write something on this. It is bollocks. So what? How has your life changed for the good or for the worse over this change? So what if she does things differently to her predecessor? It is trivial.

Fuck me. People are sleepwalking. Truly they are.

Ah…Rage Welling Inside…I’m Back…

I knew it. I had been too calm, serene, peaceful etc. etc. So what has made me angry, I hear none of you ask…

THIS.

I am travelling to the US with my beloved in November. If it isn’t bad enough that BA are going to start charging for the extra bag you take to the States (although they don’t make it crystal clear, because we booked before the 7th October we are “grandfathered” into the two bag clause) then they take the next step in the Ryanliar business model by charging you to pre-book seats. This isn’t aimed at the solo traveller, but at the couples (families with kids look like they are still free) or mates. It also appears to be targetted at those who read seatguru and look to book some of the better seats that have more room (I benefitted from one of those coming from and going to Singapore en route to Australia). I know the airlines are having a tough time, victimised as they are by specious climate taxes by governments who seem hell bent on making travel the preserve of the rich once more, and by the tiresome climate lobby… so you respond by what? Pissing what customers you have off even more than you already have to.

If that isn’t bad enough, then this takes the biscuit

British Airways last night defended its new seat reservation charges.

‘British Airways is launching a new service to give customers more control over their seating options.

You see, the only thing that pisses me off more than being taken the piss out of, is being taken the piss out of in an even more patronising way than you usually do. How the fuck is this giving me “more control”? At the moment, I am in charge, even total control, of £80 of my (hard) earned cash. Because, reasonably, I would quite like to sit with my wife on the flight out and back, BA would like to give me more control of the seating arrangements, that have never been a problem before, by charging me £80 to guarantee I sit next to my wife. That’s the element of my control….

‘Customers will now be able to select their seats when booking and secure exit row seats.’

Only you won’t be able to get the emergency exit seats until 10 days before, and you have to pay £50 per seat for them. Not that they are any use to me, as I’m wider than the average bear. I prefer a window seat if at all possible, but I suppose they’ll go..

Mark Hassell, BA’s head of customer experience, said: “There are various seats within the aircraft that we frequently receive requests for from our customers.

Yes. And those you are charging extra for. How does this square with the couples who’d like to sit together and are now faced with an £80 gamble? Do we shell that out to guarantee a seat together, or risk it and pray we can still do so? How pissed off would you be to pay £80 and find, as I frequently do, the flight half-empty?

This quote, though, is the one that makes the blood boil..

‘The move is in line with the airline’s response to surviving the economic downturn, by listening to customers’ requests and looking for innovative revenue streams.

Every customer I know wants to pay more. Every customer I know wants to pay for something they previously got for nothing. Every customer welcomes such innovations.

BA, well done. I despise Virgin, but you’ve made it much more likely that I’ll be flying with them next time around. Have you the fucking foggiest idea what you are doing? People despise Ryanliar, but realise it is just an hour or two hindrance rather than 7 or 8 hours flying back and forwards to the States. We all know Ryanliar to be a bunch of thieving deceptive bastards, but they are the cheapest source of travel and we use the rules the best we can. No-one loves Ryanliar. Now, in the name of customer innovation, as you call it, you are charging for seats, you are charging for bags. What next? I know when you are trying to fleece me. You utter, utter fuckwits. You can fuck off.

Banalities and Generalities

Apologies for the lack of blogging for those of you who give a fig and are not here to find a map of Barbados. A mixture of work, lack of motivation, illness and lack of inspiration has meant that there has not been a lot to write about, even if I wanted to. WindyBricks won 3-1 at the weekend, and looked quite good against some northern nonsense who sound like cow’s tits grazing, and the first two goals by Can’t and The Dresden Axeman were very well worked. When the bloke who lost an r off the supermarket sign headed in his first goal since transferring from the borough of ghastly Follett MP, the game was all but up. This week, We Three Kings Of the Fat Welsh Dartman are our hosts. Rigged snooker matches all round.

The Red Sox are 7 games up in the wild card, 6 games down in the division. Unless a cataclysm happens, the Sox will play the Angels in the ALDS starting in a fortnight. There really isn’t much else for me to add.

The next book to be reviewed (and I get the chance to read now I commute) will be Ashes Victory (2005) which very much falls into the category of “I should probably get this one out of the way”. It hasn’t had the most auspicious of starts, and has not been particularly enlightening thus far. Is there really any more to be said about that series?

I have in mind a post about the country of my wife, and which I think I need to talk about in my own way. It is revolving around in my head a bit, and it is not at all clear to me what the message will be. For the first time in my life, I really do believe my future may lie elsewhere – not the immediate future, but the mid-term one. And yet, the things that revile me about my current country, and the one I always will be a citizen of, no matter what the paperwork says, are creeping in in the States. Would it merely be jumping out of the fire place and into the fire? All I do know is I am off to Cape May in November and it doesn’t feel like a holiday to me. It feels like going to a second home. I know when I walk the border collie I look up and see the aeroplanes flying in to Heathrow and think – I so want to be on one of those, having come back from the USA. Oh well, I’ll come to that sooner or later.

So, surprisingly people, you have a calm and considered Dmitri – I am not feeling too angry about anything except the gaping hole in the sleeve of my shirt. I built a chest of drawers from Ikea on Sunday to go with the garden furniture. Work is going very well with most people happy with me for once in a while. I am enjoying the married life, despite a lot of the time probably giving off the impression that I don’t, and feel a lot less stressed. Commuting has been fine, with little to annoy me. I have a break coming up. I don’t care what the dietitian says to me. Hatchet Harriet scares me more next week.

I hope to get enthused soon. I am sure something – like Carol Kirkwood putting the Aussie dust storms down to a hot summer in Australia (guess she can’t figure out why they play test cricket in December and January down under then) – or another ludicrously bent decision going the Crimson Snide’s way will put fingers to keyboard, but at the moment, I have a Billy bookcase to build, TVs to take to the recycling units and a state visit from the Mum in Law to prepare for.

Book Review – In Search of Robert Millar by Richard Moore

The field of sports book writing is plagued with some absolute drivel. I avoid most football books like the plague, find many cricket books to be ruthless money-spinners (hey, Freddie, hey KP, hey Vaughan, I’m talking to you…) and while the American sports book I read are pretty decent, they do lapse frequently into cliche and hyperbole. In short, I have read plenty of old twaddle in my time.

So why read sports books? Because every now and then you come across a work like Mystery Spinner (Gideon Haigh) or The Death of Marco Pantani (Matt Rendell). In Search of Robert Millar can easily place itself right up there with the best books I have read on sports. Richard Moore takes his respect and blatant “fan-dom” over the diminutive Scottish cyclist of the 80s and turns a biography into so much more than a list of race victories and career achievements. The book is aided, not hindered, by the fact that Millar is so elusive now, has an obsession with privacy and has all but disappeared to all those not considered close enough to him. That’s Millar’s right, and his antipathy to the public scrutinising him is clear. But by not approving or authoring the book, Moore gets a free hand to do as he sees fit. With Millar’s input (save the e-mails at the end) missing the book has to take other’s perspectives, from his roots in Glasgow to the continent and beyond. Moore ties them together superbly.

The most compelling sections in the book are those that delve into the machinations of team cycling in the 1980s and especially the 1985 Vuelta, which was stolen from Millar by a combination it appears of bad luck, poor management, a knackered team and downright skullduggery. The book is also very revealing in detailing how hard it was for a Brit to break into the cutthroat world of continental cycling. His early skirmishes with Bernard Hinault were amusing. I liked the detailing of his career, but these facts were necessaily interspersed with details of what, at the time, appeared an eccentricity that cast Millar as “different” and his detachment from many around him.

The trail gets thinner towards the end, and some of the stuff on drugs left me a little cold – but that is just the slightest of criticisms and inevitably these books can drift a little – and the last 10 years of Millar’s life are, basically, missing. Moore’s e-mails with Millar a couple of years ago put the exclamation mark on the book. Moore spends his time trying to tease more and more out of the reclusive ex-cyclist; Millar gives matter-of-fact responses to virtually all he asked EXCEPT where he lived and what he does. He doesn’t address the sex-change rumours. He doesn’t say why he never attends public ceremonies / events. He is Robert Millar.

I came to the Tour de France in the late 80s. I saw the Roche tour up unti I went on holiday. I saw Delgado’s win when he got caught for a drug banned by the world authorities except the UCI. I saw the 1989 tour with LeMond and Fignon. I wasn’t really caught up with Robert Millar, although I do remember his Pyreneean stage win, and the story of his climb up the Col de la Bonnette, only to be caught, then come back, on the climb to Isola 2000. I do remember the time he was sent off course when set for a battle for the stage in the Pyrenees. He was the peripheral figure. I loved LeMond, and he was the man I wanted to win.

Millar’s career seems astonishing in hindsight – 2nd in the Vuelta twice. 2nd in the Giro d’Italia; 4th in the Tour de France. The country were rightly delighted – me included – that Wiggins got 4th this year in the Tour de France. Millar did this 25 years ago and was King of the Mountains to boot. An amazing achievement, overshadowed it seems by the exploits of Boardman and Cavendish, and of course the all conquering track team since. Millar was a big player in the 1980s, but no-one really seems to realise. Moore does, and does him justice.

A cracking read, interspersed with great insights from Roche (how Millar and his super-team Fagor got the hump with him over his knee injury in 1988 – and his approach to the hostility of the Italian crowds in 1987), his various managers, Pedro Delgado’s comments on the 1985 Vuelta, his brief encounters with Graham Obree, and his evident distaste for Peter Keen which seemed mutual (and briefly an off comment about  Boardman) and the antipathy to Millar the man felt by Phil Liggett (while commentating as if he was his biggest supporter) make this a brilliant read.

Five stars, no hesitation, and I have throughly enjoyed reading this on the way to work in the past week. The book finishes the way that  seems appropriate. Robert Millar concludes the e-mail back and forth in the epilogue with “No More Questions”.

Moore answered many throughout the book and done his hero great justice. Top stuff.

Book Review – “A Walk In The Woods” by Bill Bryson

There has always been something in me that has stopped me reading a Bill Bryson book. I mean, hasn’t nearly every regular reader read one? I’ve been told Down Under is brilliant but I thought – no, I won’t. Then I went through a phase of hunting around charity shops for bargain books. The main factor needed to be (a) interest in the subject matter and (b) although secondhand, preferably not in tatters. I have picked up most of Bryson’s books via this route but only just got around to reading one. I chose this first as I would love to see some of the scenery he mentions, I love Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and the bits of Maine I saw and we’ve seen the Delaware Water Gap. I am not a hiker, and will never profess to be one, but I like reading travelogues, even if many are garbage.

This one wasn’t. I love the raconteur style of Bryson, and his bit about facing up to bears had me laughing out loud on the DLR – no mean feat for a morning curmudgeon like myself. The book fades a bit towards the end as the author and his pal’s commitment to the cause wanes, but the book was a cracking commuting read and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. It has made me want to visit the Great Smoky Mounties, Centralia, and even more, to drive up Mount Washington (in someone else’s car). It makes me yearn even more for Vermont, which is just the nicest spot I have seen in the States, and to visit New England again.

I will be awarding it 4/5 on Facebook when I get around to it!!!

Always Leave ‘Em Laughing…

Always got to love those prophets… This one, according to the people what know this stuff, made this list of prophecies in 1958. I suppose he’s keeping his reputation intact on the Iraqi war thingamy (or predicting the plot of Capricorn One), but I defy anyone to get to number 30 and have the will to live.

Mr Meier’s Laugh In

Let no-one ever call me a misery-guts again. Never.

The Commuter Chronicles

How does this work?

I walked to the station this morning – this chunkster needs the exercise – and as it was a Monday morning, I thought I’d have a lie in compared to the 7 o’clock rise and shine. This time I would walk to the nearer station, Grove Park, for the 9:24.

I huffed and puffed my lumbering frame up the hill, got to the top of Chinbrook Road and headed into the station. There, on the board, it said. 09:24 Cannon Street – Expected 09:33.

A large “oh fuck off” was spoken, probably audibly, as this happy commuter pondered whether to phone the office to explain how this lump couldn’t be arsed to get out of bed this morning and hence was going to be late. And I do put the ponder into ponderous, by the way…

So I walked onto the platform, and decided to take a seat and ponder some more. I took out Walk In The Woods, my first Bryson read, and he is in the Delaware Water Gap (been there!) at this point of the book. I have the Ipod on, and oblivious to the world.

Suddenly, a train, pulls up in front of me. Well bless me, if it wasn’t the 09:24 on time. The miracle of Grove Park indeed.

Does this happen all the time?

Three Curiosities…

Three pictures from recent weeks..

Snigger, Snigger...

One for Adelaide Exile...

A Very Bizarre Item in Pets At Home

On the subject of the last picture. If the American Petsmart has an Obama chew toy, can you let me know. This seems a touch disrespectful, don’t you think?

The NFL…

Although the Steelers beat the Titans the other night, the season really gets into full swing tonight as the reduced UK coverage of the sport (no Monday night game, no red button) starts in earnest.

I am no expert, but I see the following:

• I am a Dolphins fan, the wife is a Giants fan. No marriage problems could ensue unless we see them meet in the Superbowl. We aren’t playing each other this season…
• The Dolphins won their division last season so get an absolute howler of a schedule this season. We’ll be lucky to go 8-8, and will probably be as good as last season.
• The Pats have Brady back so look to be the real dangers. And we get to see them in London at the end of October. I fancy them over the Steelers, Titans and Ravens for the AFC title. I think they will meet the latter in the AFC Championship game.
• Can’t say I know a lot about the NFC, but the Bears have got better with a decent quarterback, I think Atlanta are a dangerous customer, the Cardinals will benefit from an easy division, and of course there are the Eagles. I have a hunch my wife’s nemesis may do it this time.
• Philadelphia to beat New England in the Superbowl.

There go my Sunday nights…

Finally – This Fridge Magnet Begs One Question

Magnets are cheap tourist tat. They have been created by cultural vacuums who have no sense of taste, decency, art or morality. But every so often, this genre surprises. The question fridge magnets such as the one below beg is “Why the F*ck Did They Bother?”

December 2007 and the one fingered bassist, Sir Peter and Dmitri booked a wild weekend in the pre-Christmas run up. We went to a closed down town in Sardinia called Alghero. It was a superb weekend despite the closed town, and many alcoholic beverages and excellent food was consumed. And I bought this…

This one is actually touching. There are several materials involved, with netting, a flag, a wooden base, painted with care and attention. Why? It is really quite lovely, and so out of place on my fridge. Sailing as it is on my equally carefully crafted Ikea Garden Furniture, brought to you in association with Standing Just About productions, this vessel is not allowed on the front of the fridge because it is so fragile and I would not want it crashing into the kitchen wall when I reach for the mineral water through bleary eyes each night.

So it sails around the side, and if it were to bob around to the front, the first magnet it would see is that Cape Town monstrosity below.

Even the magnet part is tastefully small. Adorable little piece this one….

Keeping Them Coming… An Uninspirational Loft

My beloved, who I love more each day that the dawn rises, and that is the truth, has a wonderful family. Her sister is a constant source of wondrous fridge magnetry, as witnessed by the evil Minnesota Mossie, and the premier league quality San Francisco Bad Penny (not Brad Penny, the Red Sox reject who is showing how easy NL pitching is) guff – top drawer. However, and I don’t wish this to sound ungrateful in any way, because I don’t mean it, but even the best “mail it in”. Unless, given the characters involved, this is some sort of post-ironic get back at your’s truly, and that this fridge magnet is so boring it is good. Hang about, maybe that is it.

What did I know about Edmonton, Alberta before this fridge magnet. The 1978 Commonwealth Games when I thought it was a suburb of Montreal, the only other city (other than the capital Ottawa) I knew. Or where Wayne Gretzky played ice hockey when I found it on a map. They held a world athletics championship too. However, when it comes to fridge magnets, well they, quite frankly, don’t give a shit.

No Made In China here – pure Canadian in design, concept and manufacture. A rubbish joke on the front adds to the magnet being modelled here on the arm of the Ikea Garden furniture assembled by Dmitri which has the theme tune “I’m Still Standing”. I am very proud of that chair – as I am any magnet I have. But this is dull. Three canadian geese grazing with some sort of gardening humour at play. Can I demand the head of the Edmonton Tourist Board head for this piece of nonsense. My lovely wife frequently refers to Canada as the Loft. As in the loft on top of a good party. Me? If this is as lively as they get, they should be called the Coma.

But there is so much more to investigate. The firm who manufactured this is Murphy Magnets. Suspiciously Irish. Someone actually copyrighted the design of this – (C) MC Per Design – and they have a website advertised on the back too! www.maplecanoe.com. When you enter the web address, you get nothing. Now I feel sad. Have they gone broke? what stories may lie beneath such a magnet. Is the designer now penniless?

Can you be surprised? With any magnet, there may be so much more to uncover…

Mandela’s Pride…And I Returned With A Monstrosity

On to another amazing instalment of “Just why did you buy that tat?” and this one is one of my own personal purchases so I can blame no-one else.

In 2004, on a cold December afternoon, I left Blighty for the Cape, with Good Hope in my heart. Having seen an ostrich, woken up a neighbourhood just by ringing a doorbell, put a Fez on, had big beer, and watched England lose as my lower leg turned to a rasher of bacon, our good fortune that the end of the test came with the removal of the tablecloth from the top of the southern city’s most famous monument meant we could get our arses up there and see for ourselves. You could see where Mandela was held from the top. His freedom would have been in jeopardy if he’d seen the souvenir shop at Table Mountain. First some nice pics.

Looking up - with the hint of the tablecloth..

Looking Down From The Top...

Isn’t it just amazing.

I then thought it would be a great idea to purchase this. Sir Peter was appalled…

For those of you too stunned for words, it is a bottle, neatly modelled on the arm of the Ikea Garden Furniture I assembled (note, it is still standing) containing genuine, so they say, rocks from the slopes of Table Mountain. There are no obvious signs of “Made in China” to disabuse us of this notion, but the very idea that people are scooping up mounds of gravel to insert into appalling bottles is so utterly preposterous for me not to believe that the grey detritus in there isn’t from the slopes of a slag heap just outside Shenzen.

However, this truly monstrous souvenir has now adorned two fridges in the house, and is a lock as the front door resident (top left corner). Cape Town has so much to offer, and all I bought was this – not a t-shirt, not a clock, not a key ring. A bottle. With gravel in.

Oh dear!

Sunday Morning 1980s Music…

A nice chill out tune to start with…

But this was always my favourite of their’s

I’ve probably posted that before.. and now to another 80s icon..

A bit of 80s soul…

My next door neighbour booked this 80s artist for his bar the other week…

Here is another pre-uni tune.. a little appopriate, eh? This was around when I started in Liverpool…

And now for two songs that will always be the Carnatic Bar…

Sorry. Music was better then. More depth!

Enough To Give You The Hump

On today’s double bill of fridge magnet purchases from across the globe, we have a victim of the most grisly, gruesome of events. In fact, I believe as a carer for animals, this is barbaric, nee cruel. Who would produce a fridge magnet of an animal which had just had its head hacked off, and with its nation branded on its neck like a torture victim from one of those interminable Hostel / Saw thingamies which you would have more chence of me being caught in flagrante delicto with Miss World than watching.

The answer to your question of a nation sick enough to do this?

Morocco.

And they can’t even spell their own country’s name. I’ll bet it was a French conspiracy..

A Decapitated Ship Of The Desert

The purchaser of such filth has to be one of those sickos who enjoys watching Friday The Halloween films. Who could take pleasure in an animal’s pain? They didn’t even have the good grace to take his harness off before whipping off his noggin. The eyes are still open. Cold, lifeless eyes. Well, there’s only one eye, because the sickos then sliced its head down the middle. Someone, somewhere has the other half of this camel’s nut.

Grade A tat from the Arab world. I’ve just assessed their banking sector for work. I might be tempted to downgrade them now. Evil stuff.

Are people telling me something?

Back By Popular Demand

Well, it seems my limited readership don’t care too much for my music posts, nor my looks at life in general. They want fridge magnets. I know I have fallen behind in my duties, so without further ado, and an upset sister-in-law could also equal an upset wife, here is the next part of Fridge Magnets From Around The World.

Before the picture let me just explain that I don’t find this one very funny. As I sit typing this I have a very itchy, and quite sore example of what these bloody things can do. I must be the beluga caviar of the flying biter world. This summer they have devoured me with a relish not seen since sitting at Harpoon Henry’s at sundown with my shorts on (June 2007).

They Think This Is A Good Product?

You really have to ask yourself if the state of Minnesota has an image problem if they think this is a good commemorative product. Let me take you through its special features. Well, it is actually a single feature. If the name of state transposed on a pool of blood isn’t awful enough – and ooozing the blood out of a bite is about the only fun one can get from these bastards, I suppose – and the evil look on the bloody insect’s face isn’t vindictive enough for us poor sufferers, and the speech box for the rare breed of talking mossies they must have up in the northern sector of the colonies doesn’t bring a lump to your throat, the Minnesota tourist board decided to add an extra feature.

You see the eyes? Do you?

Well, if you shake the fridge magnet, they move. What a staggeringly useful thing for a fridge magnet that spends its life in one position. I applaud the searcher of such a product, to come up with this macabre tat is verily impressive. It resides on the front door of the fridge, and provides some mirth, even if I am smashing up the bottom glass plate within it…

However, one question needs to be asked? Who would send this to me as a 40th birthday present? A twisted soul, enthusing in my misery. At least it isn’t s fridge magnet of a bottle of absinthe!

More to follow. My readers have spoken.

Anyone Who Knows Me..

Would know that my favourite band / group / duo are the Pet Shop Boys. I have every album, and for a long time every single they did too…

So this Friday night, here are five Pet Shop Boys songs that remind me of things…

First.. Left To My Own Devices. Often played – 12″ single, in my room on the top floor of 11 Sandown Lane in 1988/9. The 12″ single is absolutely superb.

The next is one of my favourite songs, and will remind me of my holiday to Rhodes in 1988. I bought both versions of the 12″ single. Brilliant.

The third is the most recent, and it is actually a bloody good pop song… I think the album was pretty decent too, to be fair. I am glad after over 20 years they still have it in them.

The more I listen to this song, I am probably convinced it was their best. Not my favourite, but just a classic. It reminds me of the summer of 87. My first office job, my run-up to university, awaiting the release of Actually. Rick Astley kept this off the number 1 position. Dusty Springfield’s voice is superb. 22 years on.. still not dated. Not in my view.

And finally the most sentimental one. Many people are ashamed if their mum likes the same music as their kids. I wasn’t ashamed at all. I loved it. My mum really liked the Pet Shop Boys and always went and got the CDs for me if I was at work and unable to get them on their first day out. My mum once woke me up in the morning and said “I heard a new Pet Shop Boys song this morning…” I had no idea they were releasing one, and mum said it came from a West End show, and that she thought it the best one she had heard from them for years. She went out and bought it “for me”. Both versions. So, as people know how special mum is / was to me, this one is for her. And yes, I actually think it is one of their best too… but I can’t play it often because it always makes me think of her.. and you know what that means…

The Friday Night Playlist

Musical self-indulgence time..

First – I think Dancin’ Danny D’s dad worked in my department…

I have this 12″ single somewhere…. why on earth, I have no idea…

Ah, yes… Rankin Hall 1988. If you heard this tune, it was me and Jon Harris…

Myself and the Gabriel rather liked this tune too.. Fallows in Aintree…

Never trust a big butt and a smile indeed…and on to one of my favourite New Edition songs..

And some Johnny Gill, who I saw live supporting Janet Jackson… I owe this phase of my music life to a Liverpool lawyer…

It was a little off the student track, I can tell you…. so let me wander off it even more! After 7 were another group that I have the CDs in my collection

This was my favourite song of After 7’s

The album cover does not match here, but this came on my Ipod today. Forgot how good it was…

Gabriel certainly got me into quite a few bands – and Troop were certainly one of them. I got this CD for my 21st birthday! Not sure I like this remix much..

And so… after all that soul / rnb / swing, my music taste veered off to dance music… And here is one of the tracks that took me there… from Sasha’s GU 13 album. The greatest mix CD I have bought. CD 2 is in my top CDs ever.

More to follow…