Lockdown Diary - Monday 7th September 2020

If you thought Saturday and Sunday's posts were dull, then today's will probably top them, or should that be bottom them?

Normally today I would have started the day with a group meditation practice over Microsoft Teams, then followed that with yoga over Zoom and so on. Today I've done neither of those things. Instead I am attending a training course in a particular software technology that I'll not bore you with.

The one thing that I should be doing this evening, which will be a break from all this work, is Book Club: I've spent about 9 hours on Zoom today, so why not spend several more hours on Zoom - yay! Book Club  will be hard-pressed not to come up with something more amusing than the 'joke' (that really is too strong a word) from today's course about ticking the 'Yes' box stating you agree to the license terms when installing software, but you haven't really read them. The presenter even told it twice. Not even a titter. Tumbleweed rolls across horizon. 

Book Club was enjoyable, though I was feeling especially knackered by the time it started. I don't know if I'm suffering from Zoom fatigue or if being with virtual people is not as energising as being with real people? Much as I may have Zoom fatigue, I think it's the latter. It will be good when it is safe and legal to get together again in person, though given the rate at which the number of Covid is cases  rising again, that may not be for a while. Nevertheless, everyone seemed to have enjoyed 'Kindred' and there was a lot to talk about. Next book is 'The Hunting Party', a murder mystery, and at the end of the meeting we chose 'The Many' by Wyl Menmuir for the month after. Got a feeling we'll not be meeting in person again even by the time we discuss 'The Many', unless we are few in number.

I've been planning to use this track here for several weeks now, but somehow it kept getting pushed aside.  I really wanted to include it as it appears segued into mix on the Amorphous Androgynous' third album in the 'A Monstrous Bubble...' sequence of compilations, where its psych leanings are amplified, but there isn't a decent legal copy on YT. It's a song of two halves: the opening vocal section is just so laid back, while at the same time being full of longing and desire, I just don't want it to end, and then it melts into a masterclass of gradually soaring psych guitar and keyboard lines, redolent of 'Echoes' era 'Floyd, which fades at around four minutes and thirty seconds into a largely superfluous final section (wisely not included in the 'A Monstrous...' mix) If I may steal a quote from a book title of Hunter S. Thompson's, it's 'Better Than Sex', though in all honesty, at the very least, it needs the addition of the word 'Almost' at the start of the book title. (For the record, Hunter S. Thompson's book is similarly oversold, though by a much greater margin)

Get to the bloody point man, what song are you talking about? Oh yes, forgot that small detail.  This is Supergrass with 'Run' from 'Life On Other Planets'.  Please don't leave a mess on the carpet.


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