i'm leavin' now

Halfway through February.  It's that funny time of the year when I am a year older than my wife - this lasts for nine days.  Then we revert to me being only nine days older than her.  She loves this few days of the year when she can make some capital on the "age difference". 

Nevermind, it's not important.  I have now passed the midway in my fifties, they say it's all downhill from here.  Mind you, they've been saying that for the last twenty years, really.  Still, we're going to celebrate it somehow.  We've decided that we need to get away for a few days, so London's Calling.

We're off tomorrow to the Smoke for a few days of Culture with a big C.  Two for One offers abound and so we'll hopefully be able to take in the Hajj Experience at the British Museum and a trip to Vinopolis and maybe a film or a play, too.  We've gone onto laterooms to find a reasonable hotel (much like last week) so everything seems ticketyboo.  I think the Cartoon Museum is nearby too so we may go there as well.

Despite the fact that the quacks still can't decide what's wrong with my left foot, we'll still go up and wander about.  I went back to them last evening and my regular doctor told me that there's "not much wrong" - which is fine for him to say.  It still hurts.  Anyway, I went and bought (at vast expense, let me tell you) some orthotic supports for my feet.  Hopefully, these will sort it out.  Evidently it's not a fracture.  Oh well, maybe one day someone'll let me know what it's all about.  So far the only person who has made any sense of it all is a friend of ours who's a vet.  That says it all!

We've been off school for our half term break this week.  my sister came down for the weekend - my only blood relative still alive - and I've tried to relax a bit so far.  In between catching up on hair and dental appointments, I decided to change the strings on my Fylde.  Thirty Five years and counting. It sounds wonderful, and more-or-less in tune whenever I take it out of its case.  However, I put some Elixir strings on which I've taken a gamble on as they're damned expensive.  They're supposed to last for years because of their "nanoweb" covering.  Hmm, we'll see.  They do sound great at the moment, though.  I must admit to being a bit guilty about ignoring this noble beast for months at a time.  I don't deserve it but I bought it fair and square in the late seventies with money that I earned. According to various inflation converters, the £250 I paid in 1977 is worth about £1400 now.  A new Fylde Orsino (the basic model, ie mine) now costs £1795.  I'd hate to lose it or break it but the Insurance people may have kittens. . .

The current edition of Word magazine has a lovely article on Jackie Leven and a free cd that works as an excellent primer to his work - fourteen tracks that cover a lot of ground.  Recommended to one and all (except Mike).  You need to look inside the magazine for it as they've stuck it onto a page, which means it'll rip the page as you remove it.  Well thought-out, there.

One of my daughters bought me Nick Coleman's The Train in the Night: A Story of Music and Loss for my birthday, which is almost un-put-downable.  I'll have to think about this over the next few days but some of us take listening to music for granted.  When disaster strikes and we lose our hearing, how do we respond?  Very thought provoking and right up my alley when it comes to reading matter.  More on that later. Now, talking of trains, where did I put those tickets?