Nine Feet Underground

Another night of disturbed sleep, though this time it was due to the smoke alarm deciding to have a fit at around 3 a.m.  Somehow managed to remove the bloody thing from the ceiling and mains connection with some assistance from son #2. I didn't get much real sleep after that, maybe a little, and decided to get up pretty much as normal for a Sunday and get on with stuff. I am very restless at the moment and finding it hard to settle.  It's alright when I'm doing housework shit, but somehow I am losing focus. No clear direction. I've stripped my bed and got the washing underway, given the sun, hopefully it will dry, though it doesn't matter if it doesn't and just would be easier if it did. I have blown air through the smoke alarms and vacuumed them, hopefully clearing whatever is causing them to go off. They are meant to last until 2023, so there shouldn't be anything with them.  If I have to replace them, then I'll have to get an electrician in as they...

My top 10 albums of 2019 has been a struggle.  Not because there was a shortage of candidates. Far from it.  More because of the sheer impossibility of comparing one piece of music with another, something I've become increasingly bothered by over recent years.  On any given day the albums I might get the most enjoyment from will vary according to my mood and general state of mind.  Not only that, there have been a lot of albums which almost made it into my top 10, and in a few days, if you asked me, I'd probably choose one of them, instead of one in the list (with a few exceptions). Let's also be honest, close up, any year's music is hard to assess. The albums that I'll still be playing a year from now, let alone five years time - and when I say playing, I mean playing in full (I will, of course, still listen, randomly, to tracks from these albums) - may be very different to the ones that provide the most immediate enjoyment now. I've been struggling wi...