Morse Code

Well, whaddaya know… it actually WAS Morse Code

So…

Busy moving things to the attic and emptying boxes, so no more to post today, unless I sit down to write some about the movie we saw last night.

Dot Dot Dot Dash Dash Dash

No, it’s not morse code (well, it could be – I wouldn’t know). I was thinking more along the lines of punctuation. I get a real bee in my bonnet about such things and have even had friends begin letters to me in the past with “Don’t you dare correct my grammar in this!”

Lynn Truss and I aren’t quite soul-mates (she’s a little too radical even for me) but I did enjoy ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves‘ when it came out a few years ago. The BBC have an article today based around the premise of writing thank you letters and how the wrong punctuation can have profound effects. I thought it was pretty funny and wanted to share it here.

Goodie Goodie Yum Yum

The funniest tv programme over the holidays was easily ‘Return of the Goodies’. I was fairly young when it was on originally but there is currently a campaign to have the shows repeated. I hope they succeed. This fan site looks interesting – I’ll go back for a look when I’m not so tired (it’s a bit bright in there!)

I hate it when that happens!

Last night was the final night of my Xmas/New Year holidays and I went off to bed with all good intentions of getting an early night. One problem, of course, is that it was 3 hours earlier than my ‘normal’ holiday bedtime, so I just lay awake for hours. And of course then it dragged on and on and on till I was worried that if I didn’t drop off soon, I’d oversleep and miss my alarm. This, in turn, kept me awake even longer, worrying.

The end result was about 2 or 3 hours’ sleep and then the alarm went off, so I’m completely wiped out tonight.

This is my excuse for a blog entry about nothing at all. Sorry.

Christmas is over

Well, it’s been nice, but today’s the day we take down the Christmas tree. We had a new tree this year for our new house but once it was built up, we realised it was probably a little bit big for our new lounge. We decided to go with it anyway, which just means that we’ll feel like we have so much more room in the lounge when it comes down.

We managed to get out to the shops briefly before New Year and found ourselves in a bookshop (yep, a real honest-to-goodness bricks-and-mortar shop) where we spent far too much money on books that we don’t really have room to store! We’re still unpacking boxes following our move earlier in 2005 (and nearly a whole year of renovations) and the books are all surfacing now. We do have a shortage of shelf space and will probably have to dispose of some of our older books, so I guess I’ll kick-start my bookcrossing habit again.

Track 6

OK – so now that I have my inaugural post out of the way, an explanation of the blog name is in order. I must just post a disclaimer that my musical tastes are many and varied and I’ve been through quite a few ‘phases’ in my life. Some were just that, some have lasted longer than others and some have recently been reignited (see below). And one more thing for the record… I like pop music. I’m not ashamed of it, I embrace it, and I will probably celebrate it on my blog. So there! Now, on to the explanation….
I’ve noticed over the years that on many albums I own, the sixth track seems to be the standout track. I first noticed this back in the late 80s and early 90s when I was going through a ‘rock’ phase in my musical life. My friend Linda and I used to follow a band called ‘Peter Goes To Partick‘ who played mostly soft metal/rock music. We managed to get a bootleg recording of a typical gig and our favourite pastime became seeking out the original artists of tracks that they covered on the tape. One of these was Poison’s ‘Talk Dirty to Me’ and it was track 6 on the album ‘Look What The Cat Dragged In’.

There were others at the time that made me first think of the Track 6 phenomenon but my memory’s really bad and I don’t remember them all right now. I plan to periodically post these as I remember them, but a more recent occurence of this got me thinking about it again and, since I had been contmplating blogging, I figured it was as good a title as any.

The recent track that prompted this was on Take That’s Never Forget: The Ultimate collection’ which has been released in the lead up to their reunion tour. Track 6 on the album is ‘Everything Changes’ which, as well as being one of my favourite TT tunes, was also sung by Mr Robert Williams, Esq, he being my favourite ‘thatter’ at the time and my favourite artist at any time since then.

We saw chickens!

It’s Christmas and instead of The Great Escape, we watched Chicken Run. A great substitute with lots of nods to the classic live-action film. I’m a big fan of animation, and Aardman are one of my favourites, but it was sad to think that all of the props and characters from the film are all gone, following the fire at the Aardman warehouse in Bristol earlier this year.

I’ve been looking at software that I might have a play with in the New Year, once our studio is empty of packing boxes, called iStopMotion . I plan to combine my clay/modelling hobby with something a little more technical, so we’ll see how that goes!

This inaugural blog entry is named in honour of this guy who has a knockout tablet recipe on his site and is my blogging inspiration. It’s also a little topical, given my initial subject.