Lockdown Diary - Saturday 2nd May 2020
Up at the crack of dawn...steady! Not chuffed to be up so early, but quite chuffed to find I've lost weight again, not much admittedly, but a further step in the right direction, despite an increase in the chocolate and alcohol content of my diet. Obviously I need to drink more and eat more chocolate!
Shopping (x2). Took ages, queued for something like 35 minutes, worst Saturday so far. Why was it busier? No idea. Got there same time as usual, if not earlier. The woman behind me in the queue, who had a strong Northern Irish accent (which matters why? It doesn't, just added colour), said it was the first time she'd come shopping on a Saturday, and it was going to be her last!
Return home. Carers still here, even though I was about 30 minutes later than normal. They are both well, though they tell me that Bear's catheter has been bypassing and so I'll need to flush it later/during the lunchtime call.
Unpack shopping and go through the whole rigmarole of what's needed before putting it away. Put first wash load on. Set dishwasher up and hand wash the stuff that doesn't go in said machines. Make porridge with fruit (looks more like fruit with a dash of porridge!) and coffee. Home made Nespresso coffee has moved on a tad in my journey towards perfection, apart from recent changes like warming the cup with boiling water before adding the coffee, I now also zap the milk for 40 secs in the Microwave before adding it - that way everything's hot and stays hot longer. Finally, at around 11am, I sit down to eat my breakfast and drink my coffee. At last.
Riffing further on yesterday evening's discussion about my mum being one of the origins of my love of music, I can trace back my fledgling taste in music to something else which relates, indirectly, to my mum. Mum was part of a large family from South East London, and she was one of youngest ones, so consequently I had quite a lot of cousins who were teenagers during the early/mid-1960s. Somehow or other, and the details are very sketchy (I wasn't that old), we were handed down a bunch of albums and singles that, for some reason or other, were no longer wanted. Amongst these were Beatles albums (definitely 'Please Please Me' - the cover is etched in my brain) and quite a few 45s. I think originally they may have been either my elder sister's or mum's to begin with, though at some point, I took ownership, and this was the start of a lifelong obsession. Three singles stick in my memory, that I loved the most and these were: 'Red River Rock' - Johnny & the Hurricanes; 'Telstar' - The Tornadoes; and favourite of the three, and what probably fuelled my initial interest in heavy metal (not that it was), 'You Really Got Me' - The Kinks.
Carers arrive quite early for the lunch call, so I don my gloves and protective apron the other bits and pieces and carry out the catheter flush, ably assisted by one of the carers who gets rid of the rubbish as its generated.
Another wash done and hung out to dry, hopefully today's sun will do the trick. Time to make lunch with two out of three sons (numbers 2 and 3, for posterity).
Lunch consumed. Papers or vacuuming? Tough choice. Chose neither! Decided to finish book III chapter 4 of the 'Wake, which nicely puts me at the start of Book IV, and only 30 pages from the beginning. My original goal was to finish it by the end of the year (my first cover to cover reading took roughly a year, so it wasn't an unreasonable estimate), but maybe I'll finish it late May or sooner? Once I've got back to the start, I'll read up on book I.1 and carry on round again, though this time it will probably take me longer, as I'll be reading at least two books about the 'Wake as well as Danis Rose & John O'Hanlon's absolutely monumental work of scholarship, the web-based James Joyce Digital Archive (which can be found here), which brings together so many resources (drafts, Joyce's notebooks and so much more) that it is indispensable.
Now I must vacuum the living room. Which turned into a bigger task, cleaning both the sofas and dusting. If you're going to do something, you might as well do it properly!
The even panned out as any other lockdown Saturday: music, dinner, watch a film - 'Midnight Run' with Robert De Niro, which was surprisingly enjoyable hokum - then clear up and get ready for bed. I have this crazy notion I'll run tomorrow morning, so need to get a bit of sleep, though at least Sunday is lie-in day.
The perfect storm. Well, except there's nothing about the weather, nor storms and, climate change notwithstanding, we don't get storms of that magnitude here. Storm or no storm, a couple of coincidences make today's song the right choice. I've just finished chapter 26 of 'A New Day Yesterday', which was about the band Camel. Earlier in this post I was tracing back my earliest musical memories (OK, not quite, but that's for another day, years hence) and on that theme Camel are special to me, however many of their later albums I don't like, because they were the first band I saw live in Reading Town Hall on the 18th December 1975, during their 'Snow Goose' tour. Come to think of it, there is a meteorological connection to this tune: 'Air Born' from the album 'Moonmadness'
Shopping (x2). Took ages, queued for something like 35 minutes, worst Saturday so far. Why was it busier? No idea. Got there same time as usual, if not earlier. The woman behind me in the queue, who had a strong Northern Irish accent (which matters why? It doesn't, just added colour), said it was the first time she'd come shopping on a Saturday, and it was going to be her last!
Return home. Carers still here, even though I was about 30 minutes later than normal. They are both well, though they tell me that Bear's catheter has been bypassing and so I'll need to flush it later/during the lunchtime call.
Unpack shopping and go through the whole rigmarole of what's needed before putting it away. Put first wash load on. Set dishwasher up and hand wash the stuff that doesn't go in said machines. Make porridge with fruit (looks more like fruit with a dash of porridge!) and coffee. Home made Nespresso coffee has moved on a tad in my journey towards perfection, apart from recent changes like warming the cup with boiling water before adding the coffee, I now also zap the milk for 40 secs in the Microwave before adding it - that way everything's hot and stays hot longer. Finally, at around 11am, I sit down to eat my breakfast and drink my coffee. At last.
Riffing further on yesterday evening's discussion about my mum being one of the origins of my love of music, I can trace back my fledgling taste in music to something else which relates, indirectly, to my mum. Mum was part of a large family from South East London, and she was one of youngest ones, so consequently I had quite a lot of cousins who were teenagers during the early/mid-1960s. Somehow or other, and the details are very sketchy (I wasn't that old), we were handed down a bunch of albums and singles that, for some reason or other, were no longer wanted. Amongst these were Beatles albums (definitely 'Please Please Me' - the cover is etched in my brain) and quite a few 45s. I think originally they may have been either my elder sister's or mum's to begin with, though at some point, I took ownership, and this was the start of a lifelong obsession. Three singles stick in my memory, that I loved the most and these were: 'Red River Rock' - Johnny & the Hurricanes; 'Telstar' - The Tornadoes; and favourite of the three, and what probably fuelled my initial interest in heavy metal (not that it was), 'You Really Got Me' - The Kinks.
Carers arrive quite early for the lunch call, so I don my gloves and protective apron the other bits and pieces and carry out the catheter flush, ably assisted by one of the carers who gets rid of the rubbish as its generated.
Another wash done and hung out to dry, hopefully today's sun will do the trick. Time to make lunch with two out of three sons (numbers 2 and 3, for posterity).
Lunch consumed. Papers or vacuuming? Tough choice. Chose neither! Decided to finish book III chapter 4 of the 'Wake, which nicely puts me at the start of Book IV, and only 30 pages from the beginning. My original goal was to finish it by the end of the year (my first cover to cover reading took roughly a year, so it wasn't an unreasonable estimate), but maybe I'll finish it late May or sooner? Once I've got back to the start, I'll read up on book I.1 and carry on round again, though this time it will probably take me longer, as I'll be reading at least two books about the 'Wake as well as Danis Rose & John O'Hanlon's absolutely monumental work of scholarship, the web-based James Joyce Digital Archive (which can be found here), which brings together so many resources (drafts, Joyce's notebooks and so much more) that it is indispensable.
Now I must vacuum the living room. Which turned into a bigger task, cleaning both the sofas and dusting. If you're going to do something, you might as well do it properly!
The even panned out as any other lockdown Saturday: music, dinner, watch a film - 'Midnight Run' with Robert De Niro, which was surprisingly enjoyable hokum - then clear up and get ready for bed. I have this crazy notion I'll run tomorrow morning, so need to get a bit of sleep, though at least Sunday is lie-in day.
The perfect storm. Well, except there's nothing about the weather, nor storms and, climate change notwithstanding, we don't get storms of that magnitude here. Storm or no storm, a couple of coincidences make today's song the right choice. I've just finished chapter 26 of 'A New Day Yesterday', which was about the band Camel. Earlier in this post I was tracing back my earliest musical memories (OK, not quite, but that's for another day, years hence) and on that theme Camel are special to me, however many of their later albums I don't like, because they were the first band I saw live in Reading Town Hall on the 18th December 1975, during their 'Snow Goose' tour. Come to think of it, there is a meteorological connection to this tune: 'Air Born' from the album 'Moonmadness'
[[The only thing that I always find inexplicable about the song is that they don't return to the opening guitar intro (kicks in at around 44 secs)?]]
[[My punk/post-punk revisionist thinking has, for a long time (since 1976/7, I guess), made me me dismiss 'Snow Goose' as one of those dreadful rock band and symphony orchestra mash ups where additional credibility or merit is believed to be gained from a tenuous association with classical music. Revisiting the album in the past couple of days, I've changed my mind, it's better than that and more coherent. The orchestra is used mainly to add texture. As for classical versus 'popular' music (in the broadest sense possible and for ease of writing I'll include Jazz in that grouping), they are different art forms, both equally valid and equally valuable. Not that that means all music is equally good, but that it is a much more subjective concern. This is probably worth a much bigger discussion but, as always, this isn't it.]]
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[[My punk/post-punk revisionist thinking has, for a long time (since 1976/7, I guess), made me me dismiss 'Snow Goose' as one of those dreadful rock band and symphony orchestra mash ups where additional credibility or merit is believed to be gained from a tenuous association with classical music. Revisiting the album in the past couple of days, I've changed my mind, it's better than that and more coherent. The orchestra is used mainly to add texture. As for classical versus 'popular' music (in the broadest sense possible and for ease of writing I'll include Jazz in that grouping), they are different art forms, both equally valid and equally valuable. Not that that means all music is equally good, but that it is a much more subjective concern. This is probably worth a much bigger discussion but, as always, this isn't it.]]
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