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Several more groovy CDs from Japan arrived today. Chet replaces a vinyl album I used to have. And what a great super-mellow album it is.

I’d actually forgotten that Herbie Mann is on Chet. So he appears on both his own Love And The Weather, and Chet!

I bought four copies of Love And The Weather, just as I’ve also done with a four (and a bit) album of Dot Ashby recordings. For Xmas giftage. I just hope it ain’t poils before – soz folks – swine!?

Maybe it’s a form of egotism? But is it so wrong to want to share the joys certain music has given me? I just hope the giftees enjoy the music…

Oh, and we’ve driven dahn sarf, to ‘orrible ‘ol’ London Town, to visit Teresa’s mum and sister. Who’ve been de-cluttering the family home. Po’ ‘ol Clem, didn’t live to see the change.

We stopped by Weston Drive on arrival. And then at 3 pm we travelled to the AirB&B, just a few minutes drive away. Teresa went back to her mum’s. I stayed at the accommodation. In fact I turned in at about 5.30 pm! Utterly exhaustipated

I need to do a post that collects together groovy green album covers!

I’m typing this at roughly 5 am, having woken abruptly from a dream ‘about’ the frustrations of making art, and just communicating generally.

I put about in inverted commas ‘cause God only knows what if anything such dreams are for! And did I awaken cause of the dreams disturbing me, which they kind of were. Because I needed the loo? (I did!) Or was it simply because the YouTube rain video I was using to help me sleep suddenly kicked into an heinous ad’? (It did!)

All of the above, I suppose. And the clock read 4:44! All the fours, as a Bingo-caller might style it…

I had a bottle of Shipyard Ale last night. And I’ve been drinking a bottle or two, mostly that brand, most nights, for a while now. Days are becoming weeks. I know this bugs Teresa. And I’m concerned about it, as well

I also bought a small bottle of Napoleon brandy, yesterday. But I didn’t drink any. That’s gone straight into Teresa’s custardy! To protect me from mice-elf.

It seems to me my body chemistry is so volatile, my will so weak and prone to impulsive behaviour and addiction, and my mind/spirit correspondingly vulnerable, that I’m left caught between my usual lax m.o., and an awareness that some form of Monk-like moral dispensation seems called for.

But… I’m just not that way inclined. As I’ve put into song, I’m a Tumbleweed Soul!

This post is, as the title suggests, something of a middle o’ the night/early morn’ grab-bag or miscellany. I want to record some thoughts and memories that just feel like they need saying, or ‘fixing’… if y’all know what I mean?

First off, I’m having a wee two day break from delivery work. Because we’re going down to London, to visit Teresa’s mum and sister. We’re staying at a nearby AirB&B. I must let our host know our arrival time.

This trip necessitates the payment of two days of ULEZ charges. I have other car related stuff hanging over me: the recent bump, with Aby’s Audi; a parking fine, from Ely Waitrose car park; and Flo’ needs a service.

More happily, I’ve made a charming friend, or two(?), at the Amazon Peterborough depot. Nat. She’s just a really lovely lady. And we appear to have become friends. Which, in this hard, lonely world, is a very nice and welcome thing. Another lady there, Maz (actually Marina!), is also very nice. And I get on well with a few of the guys, as well: Ivan and Keith spring to mind.

I posted a number of Xmas cards yesterday, during a brief visit to the Hostmoor Tesco. Had a very pleasantly friendly interaction with the Customer Service staff there, whilst doing that. These small niceties are, whilst humble and mundane, very important, I think. Such moments make life bearable/better.

I still need to do a stock-take, or inventory, of this years Xmas gifting. I’ve already done so re Xmas cards. I disappointed myself by buying stuff to make Yule cards, and then failing to do so. In the end we just bought a couple of batches of cheap off-the-shelf Xmas cards. Never mind!

Altho’ we’ll be off to Stanmore today, I have a delivery arriving from my Japanese CD/music source, due today. It’s supposed to come ‘twixt 8-12 am, this morning. Teresa wants us to leave around 10.30. How will this work out, I wonder?

This order contains Xmas giftage. I wish I’d’ve thought of something earlier; I’d like to have gifted the Dowland, Complete Lute Music recordings, by Nigel North, to several family folk. But I’ve left it a bit too late!

Listening to Mr Magic repeatedly recently, and absolutely loving it, has lead me to desire expansion of my Grover collection.

I used to have Mr Magic and Feels So Good on vinyl. I’m not sure I have either any more? Straitened circumcisions have lead to my flogging off a lot of my records, alas!

I re-acquired Mr Magic, albeit now on CD, only very recently. From Japan! And I’m now very keen to collect everything by him, from his ‘72 debut Inner City Blues, up to Live At The Bijou, and Winelight.

I’ve got all the albums pictured in this post on order. Soul Box and Feels So Good will have to wait, I guess…

Aby has been messaging me about her Audi:

I’ve sent my photo of the damage to her car to a local bodywork repair specialist, who advertise that they do insurance claim repairs. Let’s see what they have to say…

Meanwhile, I’m going to see what I can do to buff out/polish the scuff on Flo’, later today.

I’ve read about people using stuff like toothpaste, and WD40, to fix this sort of thing. I’ll watch some YouTube videos and see what I ought to.

Yaaaasssss!!!

I’ve been searching for this for years. Literally decades.

I may have ‘discovered’ it before? I’m pretty sure I learned about husband and wife animation team John and Faith Hubley many moons ago. And in doing so, published a post about them. But I can’t find it!

What lead me to discover them was my occasional searching for a ‘Creation Myth’ type animation featuring the voice of (and possibly also music by) Dizzy Gillespie.

I found that an obscure (to me, at any rate) artsy American publication had done a feature on them, which included a DVD featuring numerous animated (and other*) works of theirs. So I bought a copy.

But my quest for a decent quality full length version of the elusive Creation Myth style animation remained – I think? – unfulfilled. Or maybe I’m remembering this all wrong!?

Anyway, whatever, as folks say these days. I finally found what I was looking for, and learned that it goes by the title Voyage To Next. Here it is, in an HD format that finally does it some justice.

*I recall that the aforementioned DVD featured this:

All of this has lead me to another Hubley animated work, Windy Day, from 1968. I’ll be looking to watch that ASAP. Meanwhile you can read more about it here. A short article on the Hubleys can be found here, on a Muppet related website!

Out delivering, 17th Dec’, and this happened… Outside a very busy school, at drop-off time, I bumped into a car.

As the video above shows. The contact was minimal. And has done little if any real damage to either vehicle. Both have what look to me to be very minor scuffs, basically. It was my fault. And I wish it hadn’t happened. But I’m not sure it warrants making an insurance claim.

I think some buffing will remedy the ‘damage’ to Flo’. I’ll be doing that tomorrow.

The lady whose car I bumped into seems set on getting me to fund repairs to her car. She has asked me to settle outside of insurance. I can’t afford to do that.

Personally I don’t think the damage to either vehicle is sufficient to warrant ‘repairs’. I believe both her car and ours will be fine with some buffing. I don’t believe the scratches go through to the metal bodywork.

I gave the lady, Aby, my number. And I’ve contacted my insurer. I guess we’ll have to see what transpires?

I watched the above short video, by Lindy Beige, which deals with a similar yet slightly different scenario.

Teresa was watching Wolfe Hall, The Mirror & The Light.

This got me interested in learning more about John Lambert – who is depicted in the episode we saw today – and that lead me to this post, on a blog called apuritansmind.

Lambert appears to have been one of those ‘simple souls’ that combine a fierce native intelligence (albeit of a very limited parochial sort) with an ornery conscience. The kind who dares speak their mind, and may even be willing to die for their beliefs, or ‘Faith’.

In the context of the febrile politics of Henry ‘Mad Butcher’ VIII’s Reformation period, such independent thinking, allied with sufficient conviction to stand by one’s beliefs, could and did bring those espousing them to rather nasty ends.

Reading the admittedly very obviously jaundiced account of a modern day Yankee Puritan makes Lambert’s trial look – and it most likely was – like a Nazi or Stalinist show trial.

One is reminded of the pathetic figure of General Field Marshall Erwin von Witzleben (no religious innocent, like Lambert, admittedly), holding up beltless trousers, as Judge Roland Freisler and the assembled Nazi jackals jeer at and mock him. Truly awful!

But, as Bl’Adder wittily remarks, in Ink & Incapability, ‘Sir Thomas More, for instance, burned alive for refusing to recant his Catholicism, must have been kicking himself, as the flames* licked higher.’

*Actually beheaded, not burned.

Gor’ Bless ya, Chester.

It’s amazing how having a little furry quadruped about the place can bring so much joy.

I’m going through one of those phases, where I want to soak up loads more ‘new’ old music. This album features the husband and wife rhythm section team of Carol Kaye and ‘Spider Webb’.

I love the lithe funky grooves of ‘Mister Magic’. Evidently so did Grover, and the folk at CTI, as it became the title track of the saxophonist’s 197? album.

As well as being all over tons of amazing music – the track that first made me pay attention to him, way back in my early teens, was George Benson’s version of ‘The World Is A Ghetto’ – Ralph MacDonald wrote some stone cold classics.

He also wrote ‘Where Is The Love?’, a hit for Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, & ‘Just The Two Of Us’, famously performed by Bill Withers, with Grover Washington.

There’s a good longer piece about Ralph online, here. Definitely worth a read.

I’m not really playing at all these days. But the video above is good, nevertheless, showing a particular groove MacDonald often used. Maybe I’ll give it a try, at some point?

Here’s a video of Ralph taking about his illustrious career:

And to finish, Ralph gives Grover a run for his shirt-off money!