Long Time No Post

I haven’t posted this last week or so, partly because I have been busy with life in general  and partly because I haven’t felt the need to share thoughts or opinions or indeed music, with you all. This inattention to my craft means I will never get to be a “Blog of Note”.

 

I could easily post a song each day which would undoubtedly get the page views numbers up but that would mean it was just another music blog and I was trying to be a bit different. This lack of focus which I have previously mentioned is another reason why I will never be a “must read Blog” Not that I am bothered by that either.

 

It was my daughter’s 18^th birthday on Tuesday gone. She is now all grown up with a boyfriend in tow. Her one concession to her departed childhood was in the fact she wanted a Barney cake for her birthday from these people who had made her sixteenth birthday cake and my son’s 18^th cake which I wrote about at the time.(see here). We took the day off went to Francescas for lunch and she went out in the evening with her mates. My children are now adults, it’s a weird feeling.

 

It is a big family gathering at the weekend. My son, whose birthday is this Friday, was meant to be coming up as well but he has decided not to come up after all, much to my wife’s disappointment. Still sister and brother in law are coming  up to celebrate Harriet’s birthday anyway.

 

Now its only three weeks until my 50^th.

Sunday Night

My daughter is performing at her school show at Dance City   tonight. My wife has gone, I haven't. We left it a bit late to get tickets and we could only get one. Can't say I am too disappointed. She is only in three pieces which would have meant sitting through about 1 hour of stuff I'm not interested in. There will be many more performances to sit through if she gets onto one of the dance courses she is applying for. Lucky me.

So , here I am in front of the PC, listening to music, very loud. Media Player is on shuffle and it is currently playing Sugarbabes  Overload. (An acoustic live version- which is actually very good)

On The Road

We took our daughter to an audition at Liverpool's John Moores University yesterday. It was a 9 am start so we got up early and set off at 5.15 am. Traffic was heavy around Liverpool and my wife took a wrong turn once so we got there a bit late- just after 9am.

 

The campus is in South Liverpool and was very pleasant and suburban. The campus looked like an old teacher training college and later a bit of Goggling confirmed that it in fact it had been. In fact I was a bit surprised by how nice this part of Liverpool , Aigburth,  was. Not at all like my memories of Liverpool or how it is portrayed in the media.

 

The prospective students were mostly  girls, mostly  local to Liverpool and the North West (judging by the accents) and mostly  looking like extras from Hollyoaks with Jordan style hair and make up. There were a handful of parents there; who we guessed mostly had not gone to Uni themselves.

 

Whilst she was in her audition classes we went to Sudley House  which was a pleasant hour and we also went for a walk along the Mersey which was only a short distance away. I have only been to Liverpool once before and I had forgotten how big a river the Mersey is. It makes the Tyne look like a stream.

 

Anyway after a very perfunctory presentation, the daughter's audition classes and a shambolic tour of campus and  demonstration of current students work (not impressed) we were away home by 2pm, driving past the Halewood plant and John Lennon Airpor which has the  slogan Above Us Only Sky on it's welcome sign. This made us laugh. My daughter took a picture and put it on her Facebook page.

 

This is the only audition/interview we are going to with her  which is probably a good thing. Both as ex students and  parents we are pretty critical of what is on offer and although I am sure the staff and tutors etc are all competent, lovely people we were not impressed by the campus or the course as judged by the presentation – by a bloke who looked a bit like Stuart Maconie only less well maintained- or by the tour and performance.It was  a bit sixth formish and amateurish.

 

We could be wrong of course.It is many years since the wife and I were students and neither of our sets of parents accompanied us to interviews for the Unis we chose so we have no idea what they would have made of it.

 

 

Language School- The Tours

The third in my occasional series of Songs You Really Should Hear this song seemed to be played every night on John Peel's show when it was released but it probably wasn't. It was played enough for me to register its brilliance and use my school dinner money to purchase it from  the cool record shop Tracks in Hertford.

Anyway it is a cracking song that races along with  added advantage of barely intelligible lyrics that made it seem more alluring. I almost took a TEFL course on the back of this song with its seeming promise of  foreign girls in language schools being very keen on their teachers!!

Language School- The Tours

I never heard anything more from them after this masterpiece but if you Google them you will find some stuff. I could provide you with links but that would just make you Internet surfers even more lazy than you already are. Look it up yourself if you want. It's not hard.

2nd birthday

Two years on and I am still (well,sort of) going strong. It has had its up and down this blogging thing and sometimes I haven't felt like posting anything for weeks. I do come back to it though and my series idea for Songs You Really Should Hear is getting me thinking and planning

 Looking over the last two years I can see that I still haven't really found a groove and stuck to it . In other words this Blog is a bit all over the place. That I suppose is reflected in the Blog's strap line and in reality is a reflection of me.

Went To see Posh play last night. We won 5-3 against Sheffield Wednesday .Met my son. Those  two things made the not getting back to Newcastle until 2:30am worthwhile. So today I am off work, resting.

Page views are increasing so I know some people out there are reading this. Leave a comment  I welcome all feedback about this. Why not listen to some of the songs. You never know you might even enjoy them.