Gigs that is, not your house. Your favourite band/musician is coming to town, and you have a free choice of seats* to buy. Which do you choose?

I quite like to be front row and centre where I can get a feeling of being in the presence of the act, but for venues with a higher stage that can mean emerging with a sore neck after staring up their noses for two hours. With a free choice I’ll go for the centre of the front row of the balcony I think. A clear view, being able to see the whole stage at once for more spectacular shows, and observing the crowd below rather than being part of it.

* You can make the case for sore feet and being jostled for the best view of the backs of tall people’s heads at standing gigs if you wish, but I won’t be persuaded.

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We spent the first half of the afternoon at the house of The Light’s late father, picking up some items before the house is put on the market. The bulk of it is ‘collectible’ decorative plates which were left to her in the will, the sort of toot advertised in the back of the colour supplements back in the day. Really, so many plates … most of them still boxed with their certificates. We reckon there are between 150 and 200, and it took us two car trips to relocate them from one house to the lean-to which they currently fill at hers.

What do people do with this sort of stuff when it gets passed on to them? It applies to our record and book collections as much as a more specialist items like this. Following a death possessions get passed on to people who have no idea what to do with them. What have you done if it has happened to you?

We can’t believe the plates have much value, or at least not as much as her dad paid for them, though we don’t really know how to find out. There are too many to pass on » Continue Reading.

Lenny Law, late of this parish, made an interesting point on Twitter the other day. He wrote that if asked when younger he would have said that he didn’t have a ‘type’. But looking at his youthful crushes, a pattern emerges – short hair, delicate features, and large eyes. Summed up in one word: ‘Elfin’.

If pushed, I would have said that my type was ‘any woman who would give me the time of day’ but looking at past partners, and indeed the current one with whom I hope to spend the rest of my days, they are generally round of face, with ample curves and usually, though not exclusively, fair. I suppose the shorthand would be ‘earth mother’.

It seems odd to me that I have never realised this until mid life, though I dare say close acquaintances would shake their heads and say they could have told me that *years* ago.

Anyway, how about you? What’s your type, and have you only just realised you have one because I’ve asked the question now?

Yesterday Amazon expanded the range of songs on Prime from 2 million to 100 million, which ought to be good news. What they also seem to have done, unless you stump up for Premium, is remove the user’s power to control what it plays. Try to select an album and it will instead give you a playlist of ‘similar music’ on shuffle.

I played a couple of Sarah McQuaid albums yesterday after seeing her mentioned on here, but when I selected another Sarah McQuaid album I got Adele instead, followed by someone called Hades.

There is a shuffle icon, but pressing it just informs you that ‘to listen to what you wanted try Amazon Music Unlimited, or, if you prefer, just fuck off instead’ (I paraphrase.)

Does anyone know how I can hear what I actually asked for?

PS – Oh joy. I’ve just found I can’t even skip to the next track when it throws up a track I actively dislike.

Due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances* I have two tickets for Madama Butterfly at the Royal Opera House this Saturday, 1st October, at 12:30 which I can’t use. I’m gutted to miss this because I’ve waited for years for a production of Madama Butterfly at Covent Garden, and this is the last performance of the run.

These are cheap but excellent tickets, in the upper slips (the highest level, on padded benches rather than individual seats), at the far end of the auditorium from the stage with great sight-lines, excellent sound and a close-up view of the most opulent ceiling in London.

If you’re an opera fan, or even just opera curious (this would be a good beginners’ opera), and, this is important, you’re sure you can get to Covent Garden for a 12:30 curtain up on Saturday then PM me including your email address. I’ll forward the E-tickets to the first one who asks.

* The rail strike, and the car developed a fault today so we can’t even drive to somewhere we could join onto a TFL option. I blame the Queen – if she hadn’t died the strike would have been last week.

I heard something I had never heard before at a gig last night. Just before Richard Thompson took to the stage at the Ipswich Corn Exchange an announcement was made over the PA that anyone who wanted to take photos during the gig should do so during the first three songs only, and that anyone taking videos as well was requested not to share them on social media.

I like to take photos at gigs (in as considerate as possible a way for those around me of course) and that seemed fair enough to me. It endorsed those who wished to take pictures while asking them to stop after a reasonable time. It was one man, one guitar with simple lighting – if you hadn’t captured any of the spectacle on offer after a few songs nothing was going to change after that.

I guess this was the venue’s stipulation rather than Richard’s. He was a recent guest on Chris Difford’s podcast and was asked about phones at gigs. In a reply taking in David Byrne (everyone told to film a particular song the put their phones away) and Chrisssie Hynde (so pissed off she threatened to stop playing if » Continue Reading.

The song has been around for a while, there are recordings in YouTube from 2017 and I heard him play it on his last pre-Covid tour, but it’s his new single nevertheless and it’s also this evening’s earworm for some reason.

Yesterday, or more precisely early this morning due to a flight delay, we got from a few days in Venice, our first time ‘away away’ since 2019. We’ve been on various short trips to a variety of places in England, Scotland and Wales in the last couple of years, but not the sort of destination where you can relax in a sunny Campo with a Spritz before dinner, take a gondola ride, or discover that your very poor command of Italian hasn’t improved miraculously by being neglected for such a long time.

It was bliss.

What we most missed during lockdowns and other more restrictive Covid regulations were gigs and holidays, not just the events themselves but having them as points in the calendar to look forward too. These things are subject to change of course, but in the Italy’s case at least the only Covid restriction we noticed was a request to wear a face covering on the bus between Marco Polo and Piazzale Roma. We didn’t take the vaporetti, preferring to walk everywhere, but passengers in those seemed to be masked too (as were staff but not customers in shops). There was no requirement to provide a » Continue Reading.