What's the first thing you do on getting to work?
Before the kettle, even before the kettle, as long as I arrive before office hours, is music. Early starts and late finishes are made much less frustrating and tedious with some music playing. At a previous office the ear-buds in were a signal that someone was trying to get a report or spec finished against a deadline, and were not to be interrupted.
It's the same in the car. Long drives, two to three hours, take careful planning. Okay, there may a cursory glance at the tyres, check the oil, top up the window washer bottle, but the main thing is to sort the cd's out. Unless you're BLISS, in which case the main thing is emergency supplies. I think there's sufficient rations in her car to get through at least a couple of weeks in a snow drift.
I shouldn't laugh, really, because she'd be on the news “woman braves weeks stuck in snowdrift – found alive and asking for some salt”, whereas I'd either not make it or be found in the woods somewhere complaining about the tedium of a raw squirrel and berry diet. “Ill-prepared lunatic found in wood raving about curry-cravings”.
Milk. That'd be her undoing. A need for builders' tea means fretting about not having access to milk.
I've picked up a couple of new musical genres from the ?uestlove book:
Yacht-rock: the sort of inoffensive, soft rock music you'd expect to hear playing behind the chinking of glasses filled with expensive and sparkling liquids on board a rich man's plaything. Typical example, I suppose, would be Hotel California.
Dentist radio: those awful radio stations people seem genetically predisposed to tuning in to when they hit middle age. Heart FM and the like. Radio stations devoted to Yacht Rock.
Dentists' music: the output of dentist radio stations.
Contrary to what I say, which is...
“I don't want to be told what to listen to...”
...when explaining a dislike for music radio, actually, I do like to be told what to listen to, because that's a good way to find new stuff to listen to. What I don't like is being told what to listen to by producers bound by playlists formulated by what's selling, sterilising change and stagnating listening patterns, and by radio stations governed by pleasing listeners who want familiar, singalong stuff to please the advertisers and keep the corporate moneymen happy.
Just as, if Denis Potter came along today, he'd be ignored in favour of lavish costume dramas and reality telly shows, there's no John Peel legacy on the radio, you need to look around the internet to find music radio worth listening to.
Someone called Andrew Hale tweeted this:
@BumbleCricket Clarke setting another fine example with very clear obscenities thrown at Buttler. How many kids watching will emulate?
I don't understand people who claim to like sport, and to understand the intense competition and passion that is involved, then have some sort of pantomime dame skirt-hitching, bust rearranging meltdown about a bit of swearing.
Andrew, I'd happily have kids hitting runs and gobbling up catches the way Clarke does, and playing the game hard, giving their opponents a hard time. The Aussies have absolutely rinsed us over there this winter, and it's no coincidence that our captain is a perfect gent, while theirs has copped a match fine for telling Anderson to “face up and get you f*****g arm broke”, nor that they've adopted a much more in your face approach.
Remember the year we beat them at home, after a period of Aussie dominance? The series started with Steve Harmison thundering the ball into someone's helmet and leaving them dazed with the physio stemming the flow of blood and patching them up. A signal of aggression and intent. Nothing wrong with that on the field of play.
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