If you have always hankered after doing something, something different or starting over, there is no time like the present.
However, I read an alarming report on BBC news from Marvel Guitars in Timperley, Greater Manchester, who have seen a surge in demand for musical instruments in recent days.
“Ukuleles have flown out this week,” said owner Rick Manning. “It’s something that young kids can just pick up and start.”
Oh shit.
Ukuleles seem to have replaced recorders and violins as the instrument of choice for primary school music teaching. My neice’s daughter got one for her birthday a little while back and is an enthusiastic strummer. She already had a melodica.
Could be worse. A young mum-of-two that I know has recently been learning the accordion.
I bought a bass on a whim a while back which I’m going to spend more time on, Amazon overlords permitting. Son is home from university until October with electric guitar. Daughter has been playing the Faith acoustic. If we could just get my wife to learn keyboards, it’d be like the Isolation Partridge Family.
My lad got to grade 6 (with distinction) on the drums last year, and then packed in his lessons. The kit’s in the spare room and I have a bash when nobody’s in the house (i.e. not for the next 12 weeks). I have a professional tambourine (although played by an amateur). We could do you a Skype rhythm section.
With built in delay.
Before the lockdown, I used to have a bash when nobody was in the house. Even that pleasure is denied me now.
Where’s Moose when you need him? Hurrrr.
He’s gone from FB. @Moose-the-Mooche let us know you’re OK.
Careful now…”Yes, on Amazon Prime you can get a harpsichord and a falconry glove delivered by first thing tomorrow, but you will neither use this period to learn the harpsichord nor take up falconry. ”
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/five-incredibly-stupid-things-you-shouldnt-be-doing-right-now-20200326194897?fbclid=IwAR0wiAfdxmblnTVpRJBmuEU9iQwBndyrGZQCH8mXR-6Zx7kcD9NHzSTtfA0
I found an online guitar tuner, and have tuned my acoustic and my red Strat (Squier, not Fender).
Haven’t picked them up for about 4 years, but I still know those 4 chords.
Haven’t really got time to fill, as Working From Home means I start about half-hour earlier and finish about half-hour later. I can’t get used to this sitting at my dining table having conversations about Project Management systems and processes.
(I have broken the urge to have beer at lunchtime though)
My favourite guitar tuner is the phone app Guitar Tuna.
I like DaTuner Pro.
Working 16 hours a day, then drinking too much, falling into a coma, and repeat. That’s how I’m filling my time.
To be fair, today’s been a bit quieter, so I’m already an hour into the ‘Drinking too Much’ phase
I rather miss that schedule. I’m at home with a two year old 24/7 at the moment. So just chilling, really…
Strikes me that a positive aspect of the lockdown might be busy parents getting to spend more time with their kids.
Family cohesion an’ ‘at.
It’s a very astute observation. I was due to be on tour until June and my wife started a new day and was sent home on day one when Boris advised the country not to go to theatres etc. So what was due to be a prolonged period of grandparental care has turned into nuclear family time and no physical grandparental contact for the foreseeable future. We’re all having fun, but it’s exhausting being locked down when one of you has no attention span to speak of.
A nice letter from Italy about what to expect during the lockdown:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/a-letter-to-the-uk-from-italy-this-is-what-we-know-about-your-future?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR23ZJtjbkyxok26xU7LFU_2cw6U8TsERltkOnA_BD94E3lkauvyH5tdZOg
“You’ll eat” is the one that resonates most with me. “You’ll eat again”. No gym, no swim, nothing to do but eat. Chocolate and cheese. If I ever get to go to the beach again, I’m gonna be a holy show. Luckily, so will everybody else.
This situation is playing havoc with my New Year resolution (the only one I’ve ever kept for more than a couple of weeks) to only drink alcohol between Friday evening and Sunday evening unless I’m at a gig where the bar is in the same room as the performance.
Fell off twice this week.
No time to learn new skills or catch up on reading. I’ve had enough work to do pretty much standard hours. Well, maybe a bit less but once you remove all the distractions of the office it’s surprising how much you can get done, even over a network which is not designed to suddenly have thousands of people working remotely.
I’m sticking to meals rather than snacking, exercising, sleeping better than I have in years, and as I’ve always been happiest with my own company I love the solitude. The Light works in an NHS hospital and is finding the whole business a lot less relaxing than me. It’s easy to say this after a week of course. By week three I might be daubing symbols over my naked body with boot polish and trapping bluebottles to sacrifice to the ancient gods.
Been in to work 3 days this week (schools aren’t actually shut are they Boris?) . One day spent tracking down food and today allegedly working from home. We’re going to be providing child care over the Easter Holidays too. Important to have a routine I reck and to try not to eat and drink too much. Hmm.
Cooking mostly. I live alone, as do my 2 sons and my 85 year old mum. Chilli, bolognese sauce, curry, soup etc. There’s usually half a dozen portions of each, so I spread them around and freeze the rest. I’ve always done this, but I’m doing it more now.
Play guitar. Play chess. Read books. I’ve always done these…..you get the idea.
Spring cleaning. Cleaning cupboards, washing windows. I’ve never really done this before.
Eating normally….always have done. Drinking too much….always have done. I worry about this a wee bit.
I cry every time I look at the numbers.
Mike the p’s other half lives 12000 miles away. Mine lives 33 miles away, but could just as well be 12000.
Songs…..new ones I am learning –
Blaze Foley- If I Could Only Fly
Frankie Miller – When I’m Away From You
Virtual man hug in solidarity @bigsteviecook.
Thanks Mike…..back at ya!
Keep checking the supermarket delivery slots. I had a look at 6am today and got a slot for next Friday! Also, my other half’s son in law started with Tesco today as a delivery driver, and he will soon be on the road, so more slots should appear.
Word up…I checked back with Waitrose, where I’ve had a gradually shrinking trolley for a week – and got a slot this coming Monday lunchtime! Can only get 6 items in each category, but nevertheless. Brightened my Saturday morning, I can tell you.
I was talking earlier with my sister about spring cleaning and how nobody seems to do it any more. Including her (she’s coming up for her 71st, lives alone and just can’t be arsed anymore). She’s been focused this week on her garden because the weather has been so good.
My nephew Bart is currently deep-cleaning his house in Bracknell, having been laid off this week from his delivery driving job for builders merchants Travis Perkins. Meanwhile his partner, who is a senior administrator for BUPA, dealing with patient safety, is at home in her office upstairs, working.
I’m taking on line classes and watching Star Trek Picard and Discovery because it’s free for a month.
Sharon and I both have noise canceling headphones, so us sitting across the table watching two different TV shows at the same time, perfectly happy, is not uncommon.
I’m performing proof of life calls twice a week with my parents. I’m not sure that my Dad (77) and my Mum (74) will get out of 12 weeks enforced lock down alive.
Like a normal w/e without guilt: lie in, some cataloguing the music files, a job that will never be finished, some downloading, some burning, some blog scribbling, a walk, collecting the wife and step-dters medication, some telly. Bed.
Yup, I worry. The phoney war is inescapably becoming real: so far it has been a surreal world of phone and online surgeries, more stressful than face 2 face, strange with, reliant on experientially built up and fingers crossed hope and expectation, nary a human being before me. Soon it will be the fan splattering reality of the hospitals too full to deal with the sick, so the someones got too scenario. PPE and testing please. Soon…….
Posted elsewhere, I have less time than normal. Working a normal working week from home, plus I have to go in office tomorrow for something that can’t be done from home. And I unusually have my daughter staying with me all the time (schools closed), so I am cooking much more (especially with restaurants closed), clearing up after her, laundry etc.
I may as well take this opportunity to cut down on the Ale and lose some weight. We’re pretty much living out of our local village greengrocer and mini-market for now – don’t wanna go to a large supermarket again for the duration if I can help it.
Am trying to replace interaction with people as virtually/phone as possible. Hopefully I can still get out for a walk as long as BBQ idiots and people who think exercise breaks = a nice day out with the family – don’t spoil it and spark a full lockdown. I’m listening to loads of Podcasts – Pappy’s Flatshare Slamdown is now – Pappy’s Flatshare Lockdown 3 times a week and, after a shaky start, they’re on to something.
Reading is essential – no breaking news, turn it off and just read something offline/paper. Got a few WIYE recommendations lined up. I’ve been asked to pre-record some radio shows which will be an absolute joy.
And yeah of course the neglected guitar has been dusted off – I have learned how to play Tom Verlaine’s ‘Breakin in My Heart’ which the Blue Aeroplanes do as an encore. If you only learn two chords:
Well, apart from a very brief stint as an electrician, I am spending the day as a schoolteacher, trying my best to convince two kids they should be doing some work and that they aren’t on holiday, whilst trying my best to keep myself as healthy as possible for when I inevitably get the virus, on account of ticking at least two of the ‘at risk’ boxes. Around that I’m playing games and watching films with the kids, missing my usual quiet days and staying up way too late just to get some quiet time, tonight’s spent watching season 3 of The Ozarks. And me and the boy are spending way too much time playing pool on the iPads. Tonight’s session ended abruptly when a series of defeats saw me gambling all my money away! Probably for the best.
If I’m honest, how I always fill my time.
60s.
BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Putting up and taking down posters around the village (a role that has taken on quite a significance).
Wading through newspapers online, 1920s-50s, for info on the local football team, at the rate of one season (about 70 pages) per week..
That last occupation would leave anyone in no doubt as to how boring the Second World War actually was. Mercifully, because (like now) there was barely any sport, I’ll race through the 1939-40 to 1944-45 stint in about half a day.
Battling the garden in particular the oceans of ivy that has grown unchecked for many years. It’s all a bit Groundhog though – walk the dog, daily hopeless check in to local Coop in case by any miracle any bog roll, pasta or rice has appeared (found a small tin of beans yesterday – priceless). Daily check in with a couple of elderly neighbours. As with others we are drinking too much but we have decided that from today we will desist (a bit). Keep looking at next Feedback File musical project but not actually doing anything. Missing football hugely. Joined way too many WhatsApp groups so my phone never stops pinging – getting a bit bored with digital communicating, it was fun for a while but missing the real thing.
I’ve not worked for 18 months so I’m used to long free days and I do what I always do, housework stuff – cleaning, washing, tidying, lots of time in my music room playing, practicing and working on the new masterpiece which I am sure you are all awaiting with bated breath. Now Mrs. T and the boy are home I have added long lazy morning coffee in the garden (with her) and the odd jam session or row about lying around all day in pyjamas (him). I’m doing that daily cartoon lesson @paul-wad posted. Cooking, drinking slightly too much – the Monday – Thursday AFD has slipped but I might reinstitute it next week. Oh and I’ve written an unpublishable novel and spent some time trying to get to the bottom of the deep seated crap going round in my head which is interesting. So I’m OK. The nice weather this week has been great so we’ve also been tidying up the garden. The daily walk is a joy. And now I’ve got involved in trying to get low cost face shields made an supplied to front line NHS staff. I’m busier than I’ve been for ages.
A hive of activity at Hairnet acres. An infinite number of jobs await outside the house. This afternoon, I will attempt to enter the ‘zen zone’ as I continue building a small drystone wall. It’s less thinking more doing, but it’s difficult to find that mental sweet spot, where each rock seems to miraculously find a home, with precious little thought or effort.
Inside, there is a novel underway, and a pile of books on Spanish verbs and grammar that needs my attention.
Good luck with the wall.
Living here in Yorkshire we are surrounded by dry stone walls and although not a native I decided that if a Yorkshireman can build a dry stone wall, anyone can. And so it proved in separating my back garden and the fields beyond.
During its construction I learned the simple lesson that whatever piece of stone you pick up, put it down on the wall immediately without ‘looking’ for a specific place or fit. Otherwise you will be building it forever.
Thanks @attackdog. This one I’m building is a small retaining wall around a patio, and is proving fiddly. I have plenty of stone on the land around me, but it’s a mix of flattish stuff and rubble like rock. My tendency is to seek out the flatter rocks in the pursuit of order, but that tends to slow things down as endless shimming and the search for flat rocks takes over. The rougher, rounder stones, with their multiple contact points seem to go together better, once you find ‘the zone’.
No-one else using it as an opportunity to catch up on those games they’ve not played? Well am enjoying flying F-14’s and Migs in Ace Combat 7, then RPG Outer Worlds, cheap as chips Cex mercy dash Killzone Shadowfall. After that from the kids pile Red Dead Redemption, and there’s infinite crafting and exploring on No Man’s Sky.
Daughter is learning German, son has school work online Mon-Fri when I am at work at home. So our routine is trying to keep 9-4 Mon-Fri as work.
TV: serials during the week, films Fri and Sat. Working our way through Giri/Haji (very good, underrated when it came out) followed by Handmaids Tale series 3, Westworld 1 and 2.
What with phoning in with family and friends, allotment tasks and the garden there’s no shortage of stuff to do. It’s people on their own I think who are really feeling it I guess as having people you like to talk to makes no end of difference.f
And our news ration: today programme, press briefing. That’s it.
Well we’ve just watched “Contagion” – the 2011 Steven Soderbergh film.
Basically most of us are going to die, society will implode and then the elite will get the vaccine. And they all lived happily every after……
Actually a pretty good film and scarily accurate parallels with the current virus.
I am reliably assured by a mate of mine, a PhD research scientist that CV 19 is not mutable and can’t convert into something even worse. Some good news then.
Unlike Ed Sheeran, say.
Looking forward, then, to the world’s experts speaking to him and learning from his workings.
As part of “stay at home” I’ve recorded a bunch of new tunes in the last couple of weeks. Quarantunes Volume 1 is now available, for FREE, on Bandcamp. Take care of yourselves.
https://tomrafferty1.bandcamp.com/album/quarantunes-volume-1
Barely noticed the lockdown, as still working and have been manic, as a rep, trying to persuade homeworking management that their key worker staff need rather better protection. I was looking forward to spending more time at home than usual. Then my broadband died yesterday morning. First BT engineer is available in three weeks. Bugger. So it’s reading books and learning lyrics for me.
I think I posted elsewhere that this is proving much trickier for Mrs. T than me, although she is now finding ways of joining fitness classes online which has helped. She is a Girl Guide Commissioner , so all that has stopped, and is involved in editing two local magazines, which have also essentially gone on hold. We did a walk and shopping trip combined yesterday and it really upset her – the empty streets, closed shops, the social distancing. I find it more fascinating than disturbing.
I keep saying that we are actually really lucky – we are retired on decent pensions so have no financial concerns, and no elderly parents or young children to look after, we have a roof over our head and a garden to enjoy and escape into as the weather gets better (and that has helped this week – imagine if had been pissing down as well as all this!).
I have volunteered to do a daily radio show in the afternoons on the local station, so that has helped me enormously and is really being appreciated in the community as so many people are on their own. There are loads of jobs to get on with, of course, but now no excuses for not doing them!
My wife has, for a while, expressed her displeasure that the Sonos can’t be more comprehensively controlled by voice commands using Alexa. I found a site that explains how to program small commands (they call them triggers) to play different radio stations as well as favourite songs.
https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/alexa-and-bbc-6831167
You’ll need to create an account with IFFFT and each command requires a new “applet” but it seems to work well.
To paraphrase the first Chameleons album…What on earth are you talking about?!
I was bored Freddy and I thought someone else might find it useful to be able to play a radio station through their Sonos by saying, “Alexa, trigger Radio 4 in the kitchen.”
I finished my round early today as the Great Computer only gave me a small number of parcels to deliver. My route was through rural Sussex where many of the road names, house names and numbers are difficult to see and the roads themselves are often more like lanes. I was, however, blessed by Chris Difford coming out of his cottage to check if I was lost. Shame I wasn’t delivering to him as I could have told him his parcel was labelled with love.
Having seen a newspaper feature on it, I can tell you that Chris Difford’s gaff is a bit more than a cottage!
It is, indeed, Some Fantastic Place.
Eyethanyu.
It’s smarter looking than the rest of the properties in the “lane”. Not flash but nicely painted with an iMac visible from the front window. Having found a Metro article about it, there’s clearly a lot more to it than the facade I saw.
At the next drop at the top of the lane, I commented (through the window, we’re practicing social distancing) to the elderly recipient that a guy who looked like Chris Difford from Squeeze had popped out and he cheerfully confirmed that it was him so he’s presumably not a recluse.
Difford’s autobiography is full of honesty (he’s an alcoholic in AA recovery) and lists all the places he’s ever lived, including the current abode.
I was at his first ever solo gig, somewhere in Docklands. He was nervous so I took him to a nearby cafe for a cup of tea.
Lovely bloke. He took all the bottled beer from his backstage rider and shoved them into my coat pockets when I left.
Lovely story Dave! And I wasn’t having a pop.,,.I’m a bit of a technophobe and was finding it hard to understand
No offence taken Freddy. It was a bit random.
Welcome to my world Dave! The country lanes round this way are a delivery nightmare. I’m lucky that I have training on my rounds when I learn a new one (I’m learning a 7th round next week) and have a computer printout of the walk to help when I’m out. But it’s still a struggle when first doing a new one.
Good luck and it gets easier!
Thanks. Just being more familiar with the company delivery app is helping. Top tip for homeowners: if you’re going to give your house a cute name, make sure it’s on a sign visible from the road. I’m amazed some people ever get their post or parcels.
Exactly. Some houses don’t even have a sign to let you know what it’s called, you’re just supposed to know.
Reminds me of the olden days when I was on call at nights and weekend, trying to find house numbers in the frigging dark. Nightmare, with only an A to Z to help…..
Yes. Evening and weekend callouts here too. One week out of every four on top of my normal weekday 8-5:30.
Even worse trying to find house numbers on rainy winter nights with limited parking options.
Home working daily til around 6pm. It’s exhausting – There’s something very intense about just sitting at your computer all day and video conferencing as oppose to wandering round to someone’s desk for a quick catch up. I’ve never worked 9 to 5 Monday to Friday before – there have always been plenty of evenings and weekends as well, so downing tools by 6pm every day and having completely clear weekends (both of which which I am being disciplined about maintaining) is a novelty.
One of our daughters is home from London and has persuaded us to finally take out a Netflix subscription. Have watched a couple for films but am mainly looking forward to Bruce on broadway and the Dylan Rolling Thunder documentary.
Other than that, am being more disciplined about daily exercises to combat the back and neck pain from too much sitting down all day, reading a bit more, drinking a bit more, and largely avoiding the news and social media.
There’s a Netflix special on Loudon Wainwright III called ‘Surviving Twin’ too if you’re a fan. I thought it was great!
Ooh thanks, I’ll add to the list