Blurp...

This morning I feel a bit squiffy and I don’t know why. While I was on the train coming in, I felt nervous in that annoying adrenaline surge sort of way and it didn’t really fade until I got off the train at Victoria and walked to the office. I’m not sure that it isn’t there in the background now, too, so I guess it’s just as well that I intend to wander off to the park at lunchtime with my camera to see if any of the ducks have got their arses frozen into the pond…

I had to wait ages for as train this morning; despite assurances that ‘a good service is running on all London Underground lines’, the northern end of the Northern Line was special even by its own standards. I let the first train go deliberately since it was going only as far as East Finchley and the next indicated was for Morden. Now I know that the indicator board at Totteridge and Whetsone station is indicative only, it changes its mind every couple of minutes or so, but there is usually a useable train within two or three minutes. Anyway, the Morden train became another East Finchley train, before morphing back and forth between the two over the next ten minutes before plumping for Kennington via Charing Cross. I have my preferences, but frankly, provided it’s not an East Finchley train it doesn’t really matter, but good grief, for once, why can’t it just display a destination and stick with it?

Creepy Swedish Guy made his first appearance of the year this morning. Unlike me, he seems quite happy to get on an East Finchley train and risk standing for the remainder of his journey thereafter. I think he may be turning Russian: he had a long black coat and one of those Siberian fur hats, so beloved of the Soviet Politburo in the 70s.

Blurp...

This morning I feel a bit squiffy and I don’t know why. While I was on the train coming in, I felt nervous in that annoying adrenaline surge sort of way and it didn’t really fade until I got off the train at Victoria and walked to the office. I’m not sure that it isn’t there in the background now, too, so I guess it’s just as well that I intend to wander off to the park at lunchtime with my camera to see if any of the ducks have got their arses frozen into the pond…

I had to wait ages for as train this morning; despite assurances that ‘a good service is running on all London Underground lines’, the northern end of the Northern Line was special even by its own standards. I let the first train go deliberately since it was going only as far as East Finchley and the next indicated was for Morden. Now I know that the indicator board at Totteridge and Whetsone station is indicative only, it changes its mind every couple of minutes or so, but there is usually a useable train within two or three minutes. Anyway, the Morden train became another East Finchley train, before morphing back and forth between the two over the next ten minutes before plumping for Kennington via Charing Cross. I have my preferences, but frankly, provided it’s not an East Finchley train it doesn’t really matter, but good grief, for once, why can’t it just display a destination and stick with it?

Creepy Swedish Guy made his first appearance of the year this morning. Unlike me, he seems quite happy to get on an East Finchley train and risk standing for the remainder of his journey thereafter. I think he may be turning Russian: he had a long black coat and one of those Siberian fur hats, so beloved of the Soviet Politburo in the 70s.

I could work, but...

In the end I decided against wandering up to the park at lunchtime. What I take to be the after effect of last night’s chicken dhansak suggested to me that it might be er… inconvenient in the widest sense of that term. I shall try to remember to keep my camera with me and provided that tomorrow is still chill, I shall wander across then and see about ambushing frozen ducks.

In the meantime, simply to take up time that could be more profitably used writing letters to idiot tenants and MPs, I have decided to list the last ten songs pitched up by my iPod, just to show that not everything in my music collection is progressive rock:

That’s the Way God Planned It: Billy Preston, live at the Concert for Bangladesh 1971. Part Blues, part gospel, all good;

All Along the Watchtower: Jimi Hendrix’ classic and unsurpassed interpretation of the Bob Dylan song;

Sweet Sunday: Chris Rea, from Blue Guitars: Beginnings. One of the tracks from Rea’s mammoth eleven CD opus exploring the Blues and its derivatives. Beginnings isn’t strictly Blues as the tracks on that CD are written in the style of various songs in a blended African style that prefigured the Blues and Gospel on the slave plantations of the Deep South;

Stiletto Heels: Sailor, Buried Treasure. Quirky 70s pop from the band whose best known, but not best number is probably Glass of Champagne;

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, Various Positions; the original and probably still the best of the versions out there in my opinion, though unlike some of my friends, I do like the X-Factor winning version by Alexandra and the studio version by Jeff Buckley.

Tunnel of Love: Dire Straits – eighties giants now rather unfashionable, though they did crop up on the radio the other day. I still like them;

Blue Eyes: Elton John. Another piece of pop/rock from the eighties, I think. Certainly it was in the days before his knighthood and probably from when he still thought he was straight. A classic piece of Taupin/John;

I Can Remember: Billie Davis from Tell Him: The Decca Years. Classic piece of superior 60s pop by the supremely unlucky Ms Davis, who kept getting fractures instead of breaks.

Freedom: Alice Cooper. Nice piece of rock about which I know nothing other than it was a single in something like 1987 or 1988.

Stealing My Heart: Rolling Stones, one of – think – the four new tracks recorded for 2002’s Forty Licks by the current core band of Jagger, Richards, Watts, Wood, Leavell and Jones.

Better do some work now, I guess.

I could work, but...

In the end I decided against wandering up to the park at lunchtime. What I take to be the after effect of last night’s chicken dhansak suggested to me that it might be er… inconvenient in the widest sense of that term. I shall try to remember to keep my camera with me and provided that tomorrow is still chill, I shall wander across then and see about ambushing frozen ducks.

In the meantime, simply to take up time that could be more profitably used writing letters to idiot tenants and MPs, I have decided to list the last ten songs pitched up by my iPod, just to show that not everything in my music collection is progressive rock:

That’s the Way God Planned It: Billy Preston, live at the Concert for Bangladesh 1971. Part Blues, part gospel, all good;

All Along the Watchtower: Jimi Hendrix’ classic and unsurpassed interpretation of the Bob Dylan song;

Sweet Sunday: Chris Rea, from Blue Guitars: Beginnings. One of the tracks from Rea’s mammoth eleven CD opus exploring the Blues and its derivatives. Beginnings isn’t strictly Blues as the tracks on that CD are written in the style of various songs in a blended African style that prefigured the Blues and Gospel on the slave plantations of the Deep South;

Stiletto Heels: Sailor, Buried Treasure. Quirky 70s pop from the band whose best known, but not best number is probably Glass of Champagne;

Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, Various Positions; the original and probably still the best of the versions out there in my opinion, though unlike some of my friends, I do like the X-Factor winning version by Alexandra and the studio version by Jeff Buckley.

Tunnel of Love: Dire Straits – eighties giants now rather unfashionable, though they did crop up on the radio the other day. I still like them;

Blue Eyes: Elton John. Another piece of pop/rock from the eighties, I think. Certainly it was in the days before his knighthood and probably from when he still thought he was straight. A classic piece of Taupin/John;

I Can Remember: Billie Davis from Tell Him: The Decca Years. Classic piece of superior 60s pop by the supremely unlucky Ms Davis, who kept getting fractures instead of breaks.

Freedom: Alice Cooper. Nice piece of rock about which I know nothing other than it was a single in something like 1987 or 1988.

Stealing My Heart: Rolling Stones, one of – think – the four new tracks recorded for 2002’s Forty Licks by the current core band of Jagger, Richards, Watts, Wood, Leavell and Jones.

Better do some work now, I guess.