Re-repair.

My happiness with finding all my old tunes on my old computer became somewhat dulled when it fell on its arse and refused to come out to play. I spent the next couple of weeks lamenting the loss of all those tunes I had found again, and moved over to streaming Radio 6. However, last night something struck me. I cannot quite remember exactly what tmy inspiration was, but whatever I did, means that I'm now sitting happily typing very badly, listening to all my old tunes, on the newly resurrected Itune sound bank. Am I a computer genius? Am I fuck. Cool tunes though....

Kill or Cure.

There are often reports that MS can be cured. Usually once I check into them, they turn out to be bollocks, pitched by a snake oil salesman, or by a deluded well-meaning sort, who,
" Really has got a hold of this beast!" Bless.
This is why I don't ever get my hopes up. However, the clinic trial in Canada does look very interesting. All the reports I've read about it say the same thing. If it works its amazing, if not, it can kill you. Its an ultra aggressive course of chemo therapy, where your immune system is destroyed, and then replaced with one built from your blood which hasn't yet been affected with MS. One person has died doing it. The infusion regime I do once a month has killed a lot more people than that. The fact that they admit just how dangerous it is, makes me think that this really might work.
Its like a greasy spoon thats been shut down a few times. So what if they got caught out, you know that it will taste great, and you can't fault them for effort. Does this mean that I'm now taking the top bacon sandwich approach to health? Well, I've tried everything else.

Shopping.

Beth and I decided to do our food shopping n the worst afternoon of the week. We entered he Friday fuck-fest, full of people hoping against hope that this time it would be a much better party than the last. No crying. no sirens, no permanent wreckage.This afternoon is often followed by buggered brunch sunday, where a table of the surviving friends try to peace together exactly where it all went so wrong. The tipping point usually has a name, which will be sneered into dust over over-priced eggs.
But, today I found a jar of dry roasted peanuts. The firat one I ate took me back to a New Years Eve in the 70's. Kev and I were at my Nan and Grandad's house, playing a game called Knightmare on our 48k ZX Spectrum! We drank cokes.  ate peanuts and cheese, it was great. I think our friend Stuart Bradley's sister was banysitting.  She was really cool, and we played records, you know, on a record player! Top memory, cost me a peanut.
So, if your party kicks off,go home and eat something you haven't had for ages, Little Debbie maybe? Cheaper than frowning, hung over a slowly decaying  Sunday platter, that you can'r remember ordering in the fist place....

The joy of books.

Our new library is now open on Parsons Ave. Its around the corner from our house. I joined it yesterday. I hadn't been in a library for far too long. There is something about being surrounded by books that I adore. I could look through them for as long as I wanted, then choose something that caught my eye, but that I knew nothing about, and then sit in a comfortable chair and read for a while to see if I liked it. I really did.

The book is by an author I'd never heard of, Antonya Nelson, her short story collection Funny Once. I was halfway through the first story when I knew that I'd been taking her book home. I get to keep it until the end of June. Her writing is excellent, I don't think i'm going to need that long.

The library is a modern take on the old staple, there is a lot of space, a lot of computers, and you check out the books using barcodes on terminals near the main desk. The library was full of people. A lot of kids doing projects the library had set up, adults frowning in concentration at computers, doing work they were trying to get their heads around. And, there were people just sitting around reading. Perfect.

MS stopped me from reading properly for years. Optic neuritis blurred everything into a mangled mess. This began to sort itself out a few years ago. While my eyesight holds up, I will be visiting this little slice of heaven a lot.

i think that I said it before, my kindle is great, but it's not close to the experience of reading a physical book. This was something that I couldn't do for a long time, see mangled mess comment above. 

We ended the day by going to the House of BBQ and Blues, a food truck on Parsons, If you get the chance, go to the library. If you're as lucky as I am, you'll get to end your day with fantastic BBQ.

Post soundtracked by Radio 6.

Food Folly.

I think i was inspired by the Play post of this morning. Beth and I went to an excellent Vietnamese restaurant on Bethel Road. I decided to push it a little. I don't know if you've ever had shredded pork skin. My advice? If you know whats coming. and that  you are not going to sit there looking at a perfectly good dish, whilst it slowly dawns on you  that shredded pork skin is a little to on the nose  a description for you to handle what is coming? Have at it. I tried, but the description defeated me. My fault entirely. Still, nothing ventured....No. I should have known better. Sod it, I did know better, and I ordered it anyway.
Great dessert....

Play.....

LBC radio is currently running a program on how kids are being molly coddled, and not being trained about some of  the risks of out and about. The show's premis is based on how many times we should have been killed when we were kids.
 I had a bit of a think. My number of narrowly avoided deaths is quite high. Do I think these were valuable lessons? Well, sort of. I still make potentially fatal mistakes every now and again, but I do spot them coming a lot quicker. I wouldn't try and build a treehouse out of rotten wood from the garden again. I still have the scar on my left wrist as a salutary reminder. Is that the worst thing I ever did? No, not even close.
Did I get knocked down by a double decker bus? Yes. Was it my fault? Yes.  Did I nearly fall in a lake in the pitch black at midnight last weekend? Yes. Was that my fault? Hell yes! Come to think of it, I'm not a great safety mascot, though I am the poster child for the.
"Have fun, you never know!"crowd.
Is that a soubriquet I wanted? No. But, would I change anything? I could do without the MS. but other than that? I don't think so. I am a terrible example, but I do know this, be comfortable with yourself, let no one tell you who you are, throw away the rotten wood in the garden, and you will be fine. Don't bounce it up with a Double decker bus either, I still have no idea how I walked away from that one.....

Day two in computer past

This computer is not that old. The keyboard is much better, I can actually read the screen, and my tunes sound much better than when they were being produced by my laptop. The laptop's half hearted pitch through its abysmal speakers always came through as a sneer.
"Buy some decent speakers to plug into me you cheap fuck! Bargain basement computer fool, just my luck."
"Yeah, well it turns out you cant sing or swim for shit!"
No response, as my narky laptop is now an expensive aluminium ornament.
The internet is working slow but ok, the email is like a distressed old lady lost in a supermarket, being guided by a kid whose first day is not working out as well as he had hoped.
What I seem to have is an excellent word processor with top tunes, and intermittent communication with a future world its creator did not foresee. Not as easy, but way more productive.

Reconstruction

I leant my mate Patsy my desktop computer a long time ago.
"What do I need that for? I have my lovely mini laptops."
 The laptops are now all dead, all drowned, by accident, by me. Patsy delivered my old clunky desktop back to me last night. Its fucking great! Its a little slow, but it does exactly what I ask it to do. It also has a massive Itunes library, that I had forgotten about No streaming, just a ton of cds that I love, and had ripped to the hard drive over the years. Much like a beautifully designed book that wins out over a kindle, though I love my kindle. This old school hard drive was always full of that I wanted, and has been waiting patiently all this time, knowing that I would be coming back eventually....Old school technology for the win. Ah.....