Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Now, I’m not saying that I have a pre-digital temperament, but well, I clearly do have a pre-digital temperament.

I took delivery of the Super deluxe (3CD+1 Blue Ray) edition of the 50th anniversary remix of Abbey Road a couple of days ago, and I’ve been grumbling that I wouldn’t be able to give it a listen until Friday at the earliest – or more likely Saturday.

Well, my ageing brane has just reminded me, somewhat belatedly, that I have Spotify on my iPhone, headphones and a good Wi-Fi connection. So now, finally, I am having my first listen to the remixed album.

My initial thoughts are that the sound is clearer, punchier and more three-dimensional. Giles Martin has given more thought to the sound separation; it is no longer half the sound on one ear and half the sound on the other. The new mix puts the main vocals more generally in the middle, along with the drums. The bass goes to the right with the backing vocals and the rhythm guitar off to the left. The overall effect is to make each part of the track easier to hear. There is less lost in the mix, to the point that I now hear things that I’ve not noticed in the previous fifty years (or more precisely, closer to forty-five years – I can’t pretend I owned a copy of the album before I was about fifteen).

I think that one of the revelations of both this and earlier remixes (Sergeant Pepper and the White Album), is that on many tracks I can finally pick out the vocal harmonies on more tracks than I ever realised had them in the past. The Beatles’ harmonies were a very big part of their game in the early to middle years of their career, and I had thought that they had largely dispensed with them after perhaps, Revolver, but no. The harmonies are there, but they weren’t as obvious (at least to my cloth ears) in the original mono and electronically separated mixes. In the recent reworkings, those harmonies are there and clearly to be heard.

It now feels as though you can shut your eyes and place each of the band members in front of you.

What I need to do now, of course, is sit down and listen to the album track by track, in its original, 2009 remaster and 2019 re-mix formats, just to hear how the evolving technology has allowed more to come out as time moves on. In fact I should do that with Pepper, the White Album and Abbey Road. It’s a huge task, but I think I’m up to it. Especially now that I have remembered that it’s 2019 and not 1999.

I should be working, but I am distracted.

I have been poking around on my office monitor and I see that both the keyboard and the mouse connect to it directly, rather than via the Microsoft Cloud tablet/keyboard/pencil combo that I carry around and work on. The tablet connects separately via a USBc connector, and it all communicates nicely so that I can use double screens and a full-size keyboard and mouse when I’m in the office.

I own a series of cables that would, in theory at least, connect my iPad Mini to the monitor, via a USB adaptor for the Thunderbolt cable that fits in the iPad, allowing me to then connect the USB to a USB-C to USB adaptor. That’s four different plugs, and they have to be snug enough to transfer the data between devices. Ironically for a person so embedded in the Apple ecosystem, I am hoping to make apples (hah!) talk to oranges. This would be a lot simpler with an Android device, but I don’t much care for Android; there’s nothing wrong with it per se, but I prefer Apple and iOS. My days of mucking about in the innards of computers were dealt their death blow sometime around the introduction of Windows 98 and despite my efforts back then to get more involved in IT at work, opportunities kind of dried up and what little knowledge I had quickly became obsolete. These days I just like the IT to get on with it for me, so poking around under the bonnet (or hood, for my North American audience – if any) is not for me.

That is not to say that I don’t try wiring devices together in the hope that there is some degree of compatibility. I mean it’s got to be easier than making the English see eye to eye with the French, right? I mean even if the different tech doesn’t communicate, at least one device won’t get snarky with the other? Right?

Plus, given that everything works over the Cloud, and that I can download Office 365 onto the iPad (I already have Outlook on it, so I can get my office emails when I want to), it should mean that I can work off the iPad instead – provided that I have Wi-Fi access. The Cloud version of Office 365 isn’t as flexible as the actual apps downloaded and installed on the machine, but it will do in a pinch (provided I’m not trying to do something *too* clever on an Excel workbook). I mean, what could go wrong?

Well, I’ll be trying it a bit later today, once I have the iPad more fully charged.

Like I said, what could possibly go wrong?

We’ve had a sad few days here at the Gin Palace.

When I awoke on Saturday morning, my biggest concern was that we had to take the cats, Peploe?*, more generally known as Peppers, and his sister, Moneypenny to the vets for their annual check up and booster jab. Always placid, last year he was so nervous that he left sweaty little paw marks on the vet’s table. I wanted to keep him calm this year. That was what I was fretting about.

We picked up both cats (two from the same litter) just a fortnight shy of four years ago, so they are just under five years old. Moneypenny is small and was doing her best to make herself smaller and hide in the back of her travel case. It took her a week to become tired enough to finally zonk out and sleep properly when we got her home, and she’s always been a little nervy. Peppers, by contrast was larger, but in the rescue home, he was shaking with fear. I stuck my hand into his travel case to pet him and he came over and immediately calmed down. He just needed a bit of fuss.

I think it’s fair to say that we bonded there and then, so while we had intended to buy just one cat – preferably a middle aged lady or gentleman, who liked a bit of fuss and sitting on people’s laps, we ended up with two young adults, of about a year old. They were both lovely cats, with quite different personalities, and we’ve been very lucky. But Peppers was my special little buddy, in the same way that Moneypenny gravitates more to Elle.

At about 9.25am on Saturday, while we were still wondering how best to deal with the trip to the vet’s, Peppers was hit by a bus. There are only two consolations: it must have been immediate. The poor little soul literally would not known anything about it, and from our point of view, we *know* what happened and were able to retrieve him. There was no disappearance followed by weeks of frantic poster pinning and leafleting.

Peppers was the only cat I have ever known who loved belly rubs. He would hawk for them and berate you if you came up short. He would drop his shoulder and roll onto his back ready for a tickle. He loved having his chin tickled. His right upper fang always stuck out over his bottom lip in a rakish fashion and he could look like a slightly roguish kitten when he had a mind to. When he’d had enough fuss (for now), he’s bat your hand out of the way with his back legs, or of you were tickling his chin, he would gently push your hand away with his paw. There were never any claws involved.



He loved to sleep on our wheely case that we keep on top of the wardrobe, where he thought no one could see him. When he went out of the cat flap, he *never* quite managed to get his back leg in properly first time. And he nearly always tried to bury his food the first time around, before relenting and having a few mouthfuls.

We have buried him in the garden, in a nice shady place behind the camelia and places some small slabs over him so that scavengers can’t dig him out.

It’s broken my heart to put down just one helping of food the past couple of nights and we’ve not let Moneypenny out while she gets used to the new normal of being an only cat. You can never quite tell with them as they are such guarded creatures, but I swear on Saturday evening she kept going outside to see if she could find her brother.

Peppers was our lovely, affectionate, daft cat.

But he was also my special little Buddy and I miss him.

*Always with the question mark. You will understand if you’ve read Alexander McCall Smith

It’s really odd. I haven’t blogged for quite a while – quite deliberately; I didn’t want to fill my pages up with gripes about Brexit, wider politics or anything like that because it was all to annoying/depressing and such. That would have meant fewer entries, but there’s other stuff going on that in times past, I would have written about and posted up.

But I rather got out of the habit, and I suppose that writing is like any other muscle: if you don’t use it, it atrophies. I’ve been thinking about trying to get back into the habit of writing here, not because I expect anyone to read and comment like they might have done in the heyday of blogging between say, 2003 and 2013, but because it’s generally a good place to unload and preserve a few memories. Having fallen out of the habit, I find it quite hard to think of things to write about, now.

I can’t deny that the fall in feedback hasn’t had something to do with it. It’s undeniably more fun to feel that you’re not just shouting into the void, but nonetheless… and of course, the continued rise of FaceBook (at least among my friends/age group) allows for almost immediate gratification for almost no effort. And let’s be fair – it is *much* easier to post pictures and links on FaceBook than it is on many blogging platforms. Still, let’s see, shall we?

Let’s see if I can kickstart my blog back into some sort of life; get a few lines down from time to time and see where it goes.

And if anyone reads it.

You may have noticed that I've not posted here for ages. To be fair, I've not posted anywhere for ages (other than FarceBork and Twitter).

I am in the process of copying my entire LJ archive across to Dreamwidth. I might be a less frequent visitor than of yore, but I can't *quite* give up on the idea, or face losing my archive of faff back to 2003.

On the assumption that the migration works, I shall eventually delete this journal and post there, instead. The only reason is that I'm not sure about the new Putin-friendly Terms and Conditions.

Anyway, the switch hasn't happened yet, but my Dreamwidth account is open for business. I'm still Caddyman over there and you're all welcome.

As we approach August Bank Holiday, I thought it might be nice to update for the first time in a couple of months.

I had planned – and half written a piece about THAT VOTE back in June, but as I refined and developed it, I realised that everything I was saying, or trying to say had already been said by other people and probably better expressed. And then I just sort of stopped writing anywhere except for the odd thing over on FarceBørk.

Anyway.

When the Referendum was on, we were, ironically, in Germany; Konstanz, to be precise, for a long weekend. Happily we’d bought our Euros before the pound tanked on the announcement of the result.

My God, it was hot, and my knee was still playing up from the torn ligament I’d suffered at the beginning of May. I think the heat took some of the enjoyment out of the trip for me, but we did get to the garden island of Mainau again and this time it was late enough in the year for the rose gardens to be in full bloom. This part of Germany remains one of my favourite places in the world and we shall go there again, but not for a while, I think. There are other places to explore.

In July, the sister-in-law got married to jfs. That was a good day, but again, so hot. Anyone who thinks we’ve not had a summer should bear in mid the fact that the end of June, nearly every day of July and most of August (with a few blessed days of relief) have been melters.

In further exciting, though unwelcome news, I have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. I guess it’s ben on the cards for some time, but still, you never quite believe it will happen to you personally. I’ve never had any symptoms – or rather I didn’t know I had symptoms. Apparently getting up most nights for a pee is a symptom, whereas I thought it was a side effect of my habit of having a large cup of tea at bed time. If I missed the cuppa, I didn’t get up for a pee at about 3 am. That said, only once in the two months since I’ve been on diabetes medication, have I had to get up in the night, and I still have that cup of tea.

Changing the diet hasn’t been quite the chore that I thought it might be, though I think I need to give it more thought. There is still room to cut back on the carbs and up the protein. I have been eating more fruit and veggies on the basis that if you can’t escape the sugars, you may as well go for the minerals and roughage. Trouble is, I might have over done it slightly. The sudden influx of apples, bananas and green veggies has really turned my digestion on its head. I have had to compensate by eating eggs. Let’s just say that if my broadband gave the same download speeds, well…

I’ll leave that hanging, actually. I’m wavering on the edge of too much information.

Beyond that, though, the main change is that I have sworn off the cider. When I go to the pub it’s back to the real ale or – as in times like this, when it’s bloody baking – lager. I feel fine and other than having to take more bloody pills and it being harder to avoid the quack, life rolls on as usual.

The garden is coming along nicely. We had a small barbecue a couple of weeks back, when we welcomed mathcathy and her fiancé, Patrick along with the newly double-barrelled Scott-Roe family. It all went rather well, I think and everyone seemed to have a good time. We should do more of that sort of thing in the summer, after all, what is the point of a garden otherwise?

Working from home again today, as I had to go to the doctor for my knee again.

Or so I thought – she asked a couple of questions about the knee and confirmed with me that I have a hospital appointment for an x-ray on the 21st, and then took my blood pressure. Still, she confirmed that that is now back within normal operating parameters (Captain), so that’s okay.

I’ve noticed over the past couple of days that the knee is better than it was, though it still aches abominably on the way home from work and into the evening. Just as long as it’s sorted by the time we go to Germany, later in the month.

I am not enjoying the humidity today. The stroll up to the surgery, which can be no more than a third of a mile at the absolute limit, left me drenched with sweat. I know that’s partly down to weight and the fact that I’ve not done much walking of any sort for the past month, but even so, it’s warm and uncomfortable. I can hear the occasional distant rumble of thunder as I type and we had to leave the garden where we had lunch (Furtle is at home today, too) as the odd, very large blob of rain started coming down.

On the other hand, Furtle bought me a small USB powered fan, which is now on my desk blowing cooling air directly onto my face. I am secure enough to accept that it is moulded in pink plastic.

I am getting fed up with having a sore knee now. The joys of being offered a seat on the train or the bus don’t make up for the fact that it’s sore and, after a while walking, squeaky. I’m not even allowed to hit anyone with the walking stick.

Sunday (you may know it as yesterday), we went across to Leytonstone to see jfs, Alix and Young Willum. My gammy leg and I sat with the baby most of the afternoon and managed to keep him asleep for nearly all of it (with breaks for bo0ttles of milk, obvs). John caught up on work and Furtle helped her sister do stuff. In addition to looking after the youngest member of the household, I managed to fall out with the cat, with whom I am no longer on speaking terms. He might be missing a leg, bit his remaining claws are suitably sharp. He better look out before getting within range of me again.

In the evening we ate pizza and watched Marple on DVD. We are catching up on the ITV version initially starring Geraldine McEwan and latterly Julia McKenzie. I am enjoying them very much, even the episodes where they have adapted a non-Marple Agatha Christie story, though I still think Joan Hickson is the definitive Marple.

This weekend we took Friday off work and went to Canterbury. Over the past few years we’ve tried to get there at least once in each twelve-month, just to escape London for a while.

This time around, we decided that we’d try a bit of a walk along the Stour and take the binoculars to see the wetlands and the local bird sanctuaries. Nothing too strenuous you understand, just a change of scenery and a chance for a bit of fresh air, with a couple of pints of decent ale at the end of it. Of course, having struggled the three miles out to Chartham, we took the train back to Canterbury. That took substantially less time.

Chartham is an odd little village – or at least the bit we saw was. As you come into the place from the Stour path, you notice a derelict terrace on the left, a row of white painted cottages built to look vaguely Georgian, but probably dating to the early 1920s. All shuttered and boarded with ivy growing over many of the windows. Then you decant onto the street, which has a church in one direction and a derelict-looking factory on the left. Except that it isn’t derelict, but still in use and proudly proclaiming to have been built as a paper mill in 1949. I doubt it’s had a penny spent on it since. Walking past that you round a corner where there are a few disconsolate, oddly built houses (hard to describe what was wrong with them, but they looked odd, nonetheless) and then there is the Artichoke a 4½ star recommended watering hole with a door I could barely get my ample tum through shuffling sideways. Still, a couple of pints of Whitstable India Pale Ale later, I was in a forgiving mood.

The short walk to the station allowed us to look at a little more of the village in which, with a couple of notable exceptions, most of the buildings are many centuries younger than the architecture would proclaim. It is as if aliens had been directed to build an English village, but only had third hand descriptions to work from.

We didn’t manage much more, other than a few wanders around Canterbury, poking around a few shops. For once we were there only for slightly over a full day –Friday afternoon until Sunday morning and my knee limited the fun as I’d buggered it before we even got there. Getting off the bus at Ilford station on the way out, I landed heavily on my left leg and there was a loud (to me at any rate) crack followed by a sharp pain. Happily I’d seen fit to pack one of my Nordic walking poles, which saw double duty as a walking stick (and still is). I’m not sure, but I think I snapped a tendon. It aches, My Dears, oh, it aches, but if I can get moving it improves as it warms up. Stairs remain a chore, though and guess where we stayed? In the City Gates Hotel, where we first stayed a number of years ago. The hotel with a small entrance at street level, which takes you up stairs to a series of rooms and over the roof tops to an extended and unexpected array of rooms. It’s quite fun, but damned awkward with a poorly drumstick.

A fortnight or so ago, I went out on the booze with my good friend, colonel_maxim.

The pub was packed, but he had discovered that the upstairs sitting room was both unlocked and its small bar staffed. We decided very quickly that paying through the nose for organic bottled cider was infinitely more preferable to traipsing up and down the stairs trying not to spill from pint glasses and hoping that no-one realised that there was additional seating to be had. It worked and we became expensively and extensively blootered over the course of the evening.

It was only during the early hours that I realised just how bladdered I’d contrived to get. I woke up sometime around 4am with a thumping headache and a full bladder. I scooted, as one does, to the bathroom and shortly thereafter I was suddenly and remarkably ill. I think my stomach attempted a complete escape – certainly it ejected its coronal layer. I wobbled back to bed and got up again, feeling ghastly, when my alarm went off at seven.

It was, as I recall, the work of but a moment to decide that actually, if it’s all the same to anyone else, I was going to go back to bed. ellefurtle was fully supportive of my ability to barely stand and think, so I emailed the office with the news that I was feeling awful, having consumed something the night before that had disagreed with me.

Which was, of course, true: I simply omitted any mention of alcohol; I felt it wise. I then went back to bed and failed to wake up again until gone midday, when I felt better, but not recovered.

Of course, taking a Thursday off sick looks suspicious in isolation, so I was forced to keep my head below the parapets on Friday, too. An unexpected 3½ day weekend had something of a transformative affect, I must say, but I should have preferred not to preface it with the worst hangover I’d had for over ten years.

Last night we met up again and this time Furtle popped along. We managed to avoid the excessive refreshment of the earlier escapade, but nonetheless managed to get a little frazzled around the edges. We wandered home in due course, getting back to the Gin Palace around midnight. A cup of tea and some toast, then bed. All was well.
Except that at 5am I awoke radiating heat like a furnace and with indigestion and a full bladder. There followed a minor, scaled down repeat of the previous escapade and I wobbled back to bed, re set the alarm for 8.30 and crammed in an extra 90 minutes of sleep. I made work, albeit half an hour late, but I’m still not fully recovered. Were it not for the fact that I have the rest of the week off legitimately, I might have sent THE EMAIL.

I don’t think cider and I are on quite the chummy terms we once were.