Seb Palmer

Woohoo! Our new cooker arrived today.

The main element of the old oven went, again. It did so once before; I ordered a new one and fixed it. But this old stinky dirty broken down thing needed to be replaced.

Whereas for the gas hobs I need a ‘gas safe’ certified engineer, to sort us out, with the electric oven it’s a pretty easy DIY job. You just have to be safe, methodical and accurate.

Getting the old cooker out wasn’t too hard. Awkward and heavy, yes. But a one man job, nevertheless. What this revealed though, was pretty grotesque.

I gave the internal space a good clean. And then got the new cooker in position to be wired in. It is of course hard-wired to the mains, as it draws a lot more power than your standard three-pin plug socket outlets. This is fiddly, but pretty easy.

Done. Took a bit of sweat, some huffing and puffing. But it’s sorted now.

Rather foolishly I orders this oven – actually the same brand as our previous one (Russell & Hobbs) – without checking the dimensions! Could’ve gone horribly wrong!

But it didn’t. She fits the space like the proverbial glove. And once all the fuses and switches were turned back on, she powered up first time. Fab!

Very satisfying. Thanks again, Dan Ellis.

The old combo is actually two separates; a fridge and a freezer. Hence the extra height of the ol’ stack.

So I’ve plugged the new gal in, and she’s humming contentedly. I’ll give it a few hours, to reach operating temperature, and then start transferring the perishables.

What will I (we) do with the old units? I’d like to just bun them both. We already have a decent second fridge-freezer upstairs. Mind, the latter is in the guest room. For tenant’s use, as a d when we have guests or lodgers.

We have to thank our friend and brother, Dan Ellis, for this (and other kindnesses). Despite Teresa and I both working we’re right on the knife edge of survival.

This is quite largely due to my circumstances of the last fourteen months. Which hopefully, now that they’re resolved, will improve. What can we do in return, I wonder?

Recent listening to Charles Kynard has prompted me to recall a period, some years back, when there was a huge surge in folk online posting rips from vinyl, of obscure records not then available on CD (or even streaming).

This period saw huge amounts of less well known music being made available. It was a temporary boom, as there are obviously potential copyright issues. But it gave a small window of opportunity for those with eager ears to discover new and unknown material.

One of the sites I particularly dug back then was this one, or rather, this one, on Mainsteam Records’…

I hoovered up as much of it as I could. So I have a good deal of the classic Mainstream 300 series as MP3s. But it’s even better getting this stuff on CD. The three Kynard albums are absolute gold. Love ‘em.

When funds allow I’ll be getting more of the Jap’ reissues. I already have all the much vaunted Alice Clark stuff (that was released in the UK on CD, some while back). But it’d be great to get some Roy Haynes, Hal Galper, Pete Yellin, Hadley Caliman, Mike Longo, etc.

I hadn’t realised that Caliman is on Santana’s Caravanserai, an all time favourite album of mine, from Devadip’s purplest of patches. He plays sax on track one, ‘Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation’, and flute on track ten, ‘Every Step of The Way’, opening and closing proceedings.

To read more about The Shad-Meister, try this link.

Listening to my recently acquired trilogy of Mainstream albums by organist Charles Kynard, I’m overwhelmed by the general grooviness. From Kynard’s playing, which obviously gets star billing, to the supporting cast.

Arranger Richard Fritz deserves kudos, for his excellent compositions and arrangements. I read, on dougpayne.com, that he and Kynard were school chums! And then the musicians, who make this superb gumbo, really ought to be remembered and celebrated.

And it’s great to see that, in the instance of bassist Chuck Rainey, they are:

I put Kynard’s rendering of Joe Quarterman & Free Soul’s ‘So Much Trouble’ front and centre for three reasons: one, it’s a totally ace slab of funky fabulosity (and that’d be reason enough); two, Rainey’s bass is superb throughout… but three is the clincher; he gets to take a solo. Quite rare. His recording contributions are usually more ‘supporting’ than ‘featured’, if you know what I mean?

If I were choosing bassists that have made a great impression on me, and who I aim to emulate when I pick up an electric bass, he’d probably be right at the top of my picks. I particularly like his lightly bubbling finger style sixteenths, in his right hand. Along, of course, with his choices of notes (a favourite Ron Carter theme) with his south-paw.

What a great musician! Love you forever, Chuck!

Most nights nowadays I listen to a video such as the one above, which helped me sleep last night.

I have the volume fairly low. And I might place the phone face down, so the light from the screen doesn’t undo the good work the audio is doing.

I started listening to these things at night during a period of appalling insomnia, probably about a year ago. These days, or rather nights, I’m sleeping like the proverbial baby.

And videos of this sort have played a part. I like ones in which one can discern the ‘plop’ of individual drops. As opposed to the ‘frying bacon’ effect of some. I guess that could be described as ‘slow heavy’ rain, as opposed to ‘light fast’ rain?

There are loads of such videos, and channels devoted to them. One hopes they are benign!? The good ones – and most I’ve tried seem pretty good – are 8-10 hours or longer, in duration. And, crucially, are not interrupted by the evil blight of advertising.

We’ve been considering letting out a room for aeons. Indeed, we did so, via AirB&B, briefly, five or six years ago.

I’ve been very much opposed to it, to be honest. We’re in our 50s now. I don’t want to be sharing our home with strangers!

But circumstances have arisen whereby our brother in law Antonio needed somewhere to live. And we were able to provide a solution.

He moved in today. Or rather tonight. Arriving after 9 pm, having travelled from Spain the same day.

* Photo taken 21/4/24, i.e. not the day he moved in.

Woah, Nelly! I just roused myself from a rather unpleasant dream. I wonder why such things happen? Is the mind rehearsing scenarios from which to practice escape? Or is it just the morbidity of plain unadulterated fear?

I kind of don’t want to give the ideas in the dreams the oxygen of further thought. And yet at the same time they’re darkly compelling and fascinating.

At one point there was a veritable maelstrom or kaleidoscope of imagery. Indeed, it’s my suspicion most dreaming us like that, with the conscious part of the mind trying desperately to parse some of it into meaningful narrative threads.

Amongst the tsunami of weird stuff there were pleasant bits – banks of daisies in twilight meadows (the source of that easy enough to discern; something I saw last night whilst out delivering*) – but I didn’t see anyone driving a car in reverse at breakneck speed, over massive potholes, eventually causing their vehicle (a steampunk altered Robin reliant type affair, with rear view periscope doodad!) to cartwheel through the air.

One of the darker threads revolves around finding oneself trapped in an imminent demise you can’t prevent scenario. And the feeling of unavoidable impending doom was what caused me to wake myself up. Why allow my own mind to inflict such a horror story in itself?

My dad has said, very often (and esp’ so in recent years), that he’s disturbed a lot by nightmares. I’ve had spells. But not recently. And that’s despite real life circumstances that one would’ve thought conducive to deep anxiety. Might there be a genetic hereditary component? Or perhaps this just overspill from all my recent psychic trauma?

Another theme that emerges from this nighttime psychic Freak Out (hence the above-linked video) concerns how we as a species seek to control our own and others minds.

But one upshot of this moment of weird brain activity is that some aspects of it seem like perfect material for a crime thriller short story plot. Albeit a potentially psychedelically surrealist one…

*

A company selling groovy music posters appeared in my FB feed. They have several I really like, including the above.

Pangur Bán and I at work,
Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:
His whole instinct is to hunt,
Mine to free the meaning pent.
 
More than loud acclaim, I love
Books, silence, thought, my alcove.
Happy for me, Pangur Bán
Child-plays round some mouse’s den.
 
Truth to tell, just being here,
Housed alone, housed together,
Adds up to its own reward:
Concentration, stealthy art.
 
Next thing an unwary mouse
Bares his flank: Pangur pounces.
Next thing lines that held and held
Meaning back begin to yield.
 
All the while, his round bright eye
Fixes on the wall, while I
Focus my less piercing gaze
On the challenge of the page.
 
With his unsheathed, perfect nails
Pangur springs, exults and kills.
When the longed-for, difficult
Answers come, I too exult.
 
So it goes. To each his own.
No vying. No vexation.
Taking pleasure, taking pains,
Kindred spirits, veterans.
 
Day and night, soft purr, soft pad,
Pangur Bán has learned his trade.
Day and night, my own hard work
Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.

Seamus Heaney’s translation, from 9th C. Old Irish, of an anonymous monk’s poem.

Faith, the cat, of St Augustine’s Watling St:

‘… beyond the fatuous clamour, the silence…’ Samuel Beckett

Wow! I love that.