Tuesday March 30th 2021

Tuesday March 30th 2021...

Got in late again, around 8:20am. I left the office at around 8, parked up between five past and ten past, and then used walking to get money from the cash machine as an excuse to finish listening to a podcast I’d started listening to!

It’s taking over...

It’s all about getting those shows listened to, because once again I’m thinking of how I’ve got nine days off again from next Tuesday, and how I don’t listen to podcasts outside of work time for the most part. 

I’m using my accrued holiday time you see, because if I don’t use it then I will lose it.

Someone at work told me that staff returning from being on furlough also have to use their holidays up, to which I said “they’ve just had lots of time off already!” That’s bloody cheeky if you ask me!

I wish I had all the time off with pay that they’ve had! 

Look at what I’ve done while working nigh on seventy hours a week at work. I’ve still got two episodes per week of my podcast coming out.

Now, I don’t think that I’d put put out more episodes, but I’m certain that it would be a much more relaxed affair. I’d actually have time to do other stuff such as write and record music. 

I remember many years ago when I lived on my own in a flat (or apartment) above a shop that there was a period of time where I was unemployed for about eight months. 

In all of that time, I probably never left for about four days of each week, instead working on music. 

When I returned to work, I booked some sessions in three blocks. I think there was a day in March 2003, a day in May, two days in July, and a day in September or October.

In that time I recorded over sixty new songs, from which the songs from my album A New World Order were chosen.

I was bloody quick back then, but not thinking straight. I made the error of recording a live guide of vocal and guitar (acoustic or electric) without a click track, and would rip through the song guides like no one’s business. 

That was the first order of business from 10am until 1pm, during which I rifled through as many guides as I could.  Then we would have an hour’s break, and I’d return at 2 to record any required overdubs, but keeping it fairly loose for the most part. 

Most of those songs stayed as the guides, even seeing me wearing a harmonica harness in the studio for the live guides! I’d actually got the songs practiced before the sessions, so I knew what to do, even to the level of having practiced most of  the overdubs.

Back at home I had been working on songs in the room with my stereo in, where I had a dictaphone that recorded onto standard tape cassettes. 

I started by recording the initial song onto the dictaphone, and then took that tape out, placed it into the stereo, put another tape cassette into the dictaphone, and then recorded onto that dictaphone tape the stereo playing the original in the background, alongside whatever overdub I had in mind.

I did that until all of the pieces were in place, and then practised every part before sessions began, by using those basic and crappy home recordings as practice aids!

Basic, but needs must!

I remember playing the home recordings to my friends (and ex-bandmates) Andy & Paul when they would visit, and they kept saying that I should go into the studio with the songs.

Anyway, I did and the album is out there for streaming.

So, going back to where this long tangent came from, just imagine what I could have done if I was furloughed!

Anyway...

I got the next episode of Pods Like Us edited and set up for release at 2pm GMT on Wednesday. 

Actually, what am I doing to myself?  When I started the podcast, the pods came out at midnight on Sunday night and Wednesday night, but now I’m doing it ten hours earlier. Why? That’s making it more difficult!

In the evening we watched the 1979 film Time After Time, which has three Star Trek connections that I can see straight away - the actors Malcolm McDowell & David Warner, as well as writer/director Nicholas Meyer. 

Malcolm McDowell was in the film Star Trek Generations, and Nicholas Meyer wrote and directed Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan & Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

David Warner played a human in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, a Klingon Chancellor in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and a Cardassian interrogator in the Star Trek The Next Generation episodes Chain Of Command parts one and two - “there are four lights!”

The last time I saw the film Time After Time was possibly in the late eighties or early nineties. A bloody great film in my opinion with obvious late seventies special effects, but a superb yarn...

Malcolm McDowell plays the author HG Wells, who is having a special dinner with some close friends. One of his friends, Dr John Leslie Stevenson, appears late, at which point HG shows his friends design plans for a machine that he says he can use to travel through time. 

He then takes them downstairs into his basement, where it is already built and ready, at which point he describes how it works.

The housekeeper informs HG that the police are at the door, as Jack The Ripper has struck again in the area. They then see Dr Stevenson’s doctor’s bag, with bloodied equipment that matches that used in the murders, but the doctor has disappeared, has as the time machine which eventually returns without the doctor.

HG travels to 1979, where the machine showed it had gone to, in order to return the murder back to 1893.

I loved the film, and so did Louise on what she thinks might be her first viewing. 

We watched a bit more, and then went to bed.

As a point of interest, Louise made some lovely wraps for Taco Tuesday! Yummy. 

Take care and stay safe.