Saturday 30 January 2021

January 30, 2021

Bloke round the corner from me regularly leaves stacks of old records outside his house, free for anybody to have a rummage through and take what they want.

It's usually a load of old crap but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I have been very pleased to retrieve many excellent if badly scratched 1980s compliation albums from the pile.

Plus such gems as:

Through The Past Darkly (Big Hits Vol.2) by The Rolling Stones with the sleeve corners mysteriously cut off to form an octagon; 

Abacab by Genesis complete with Virgin Value sticker;

The 7" single of Take On Me by Aha (a welcome addition to my record collection now, but I hated it when it came out.)

It's too upsetting to think about the ones I left behind to "pick up on the way back" - from the park, from Sainsburys - and then forgot about.

#NP:

Da Da Da has a scratch in exactly the right place to create an eternal track, the jump so smooth you don't even notice it's stuck. Like the perfectly edited trampoline gif of your dreams. Sometimes I just leave it playing.

Love Is A Stranger and Starmaker's scratches turn them into Disintegration Loops.

I love records. Thanks Mr Record Man for all the freebies.

Felt cheerful all day, until I thought about going to work on Monday or knuckling down to any uni work. Then I felt shaky and tearful.

Music, Twitter, drawing and denial it is then.

Have done very little drawing since 2005 (long story) but today I thought I'd have a go. Started to copy a photo I found in Slovakia by Karel Plicka, a library book I never want to give back.

Ran out of steam after about half an hour, but hey, small steps.

 Maybe going public with it will make me finish it off?

Maybe.

Today's top reading:

The sacred and the symbolic in Polynesian tattoos

"We had no paper, we had no pens, but we had our bodies, traditional ink and tools to mark our skin. The body was used as a canvas, and that was one way for our ancestors to pass down knowledge. My malu therefore does not belong to me, but to my community."

I miss New Zealand.

What it's like to cycle for three weeks in Hokkaido

"We sampled cheeses, ate delicious thin crust cheese pizza, and signed up for a cheese making session where we made mascarpone."

I miss holidays.

There was some Neurodiversity Twitter stuff I needed to see:



It's been quite the ride trying to get my head around the fact I'm suddenly "disabled" and what was always normal for me is not actually that normal according to normal people.

Today's photo: When It Rains And Shines, It's Just A State Of Mind




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