Blog 5 – a day in the life (if you remember this one you’re as old as me or play the parents old vinyl)
There’s always been the saying regarding nostalgia (see letter of int.) “ain’t wot it used to be” or…… let me divert a bit –nothing like diversion to completely ruin your train of thought.
A few years back I was working in a building which we were told never to reveal it’s whereabouts or that it even existed (secret – clue 1 on pain of potential arrest-it’s counterpart of the building in the Bond movies that is always being blown to smithereens – clue two)– but if you opened one the older editions of London A to Z , there it was larger than life and looking just like the movies. More about Bond later??!
That’s got absolutely nothing to do with what I wanted to tell you, so here goes.
I have worked for years as a sub-contractor for a number of companies, travelling all over the country, but on this occasion I was in London. Being a midlands person there are a number of ways to get to central London, our favoured route being M40/A40. From this way in we headed towards Millbank area and was going passed a few older residences, when I spotted two(expensive – top of the range) cars, well to be more accurate the reg. numbers on two posh cars.
Car 1 reg. - 2 B (costly)
Car 2 reg.- NOT 2 B (Cheaper, probably the wife’s car) Can I say that???
Isn’t that the coolest thing (if you’re a nerd about reg. numbers on cars.)
Back to the plot, which was –no wait don’t tell me, was it about vinyl- yes course it was twit.!
Like most of my generation we listened to vinyl records in various guises
We tuned in to the big thick black vinyl records or parents played, with music pre-and-post WW2.
These were fragile considering how robust they looked. They could be played on a Gramophone – look it up – at a speed of 78 rpm (revolutions per minute) and sounded like they were being scratched to death with a four (100mm) nail, sometimes so bad you couldn’t hear the words or almost the music. It must have been an amazing revolution when the disc/record appeared staring a the traditional black disc and over the years transforming to all of the colours of the rainbow and more. These little gems played at 45rpm. Which gave rise to a number of major changes, mainly to the method of playing, hence the birth of the record player both portable and static. Fed up yet? I’m getting that way so I’ll throw-in some one word memory jerkers - Dansette --juke box and former juke box records hint big hole in the centre -- lp’s -- 16, 33+third, 45 and 78 -- dust covers -- album sleeves etc. etc. etc….
Enough nostalgia yet, and why talk about vinyl anyway? Well, for last father’s day (English style) the kids??!! (they’ll always be the kids to me – quaint sentimentality) gave me a music centre, what a fabulous piece of kit (another blog), the point being that it has a record deck and I could play the one lp of a 2 lp set –starlight express -- and my 14 lp boxed set of Queen – brilliant group etc. etc. but as you play through the collection you realise you have to open a lot of oysters before you find a pearl.
This gave me the bug, vinyl need vinyl. So every visit to town involves going into every charity shop (what between them, the vape shops, mobile phone emporiums and barbers fill the town centres nowadays) to rummage – nice word – through their collections of lps. It makes you wonder who bought these records in the first place? In the rummage boxes you find volumes of classical music discs, great if you’re into Herbert von Karri something, country and western, but hardly any real rock stuff. It amazes me that such unloved lps have lasted this long. So people, just to warn you, I may/might ? return to this topic, cos it has lots of potential.
The point of this meander about the discs is that you can be a classical music buff for 50p pd. – I know it sounds cr— but I didn’t say it was all laughs
O wise ones, you will recall in the midst of my train of thought I mentioned Bond, but you’ve upset me now and it’s late (4.27) so the main aim now is to follow the trigger words leading to… kn----red, I’ll start tomorrow
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