Breathing calmed down so went for a short walk to the corner shop with Kid A where he bought a can of baked beans with his own cash. Then we walked around the long block talking about how those beans are now his beans, what would happen to the beans if I reimbursed him with a bank transfer, what he could do with a bottomless backpack, the striking similarity between the Chinese lion adorning a neighbour’s drive wall and the Chinese lions outside the Chinese restaurant in Spilsby, and how Lime bikes are taking over the world.

Retreated to the relative safety of the bedroom where I’m finding solace with Radiohead and OK Computer on a loop. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } An airbag saved my life

DUA LIPA'S TINY DESK CONCERTS

Dua Lipa’s Tiny Desk concert at home in between covid lockdowns in 2020 is the most watched Tiny Desk concert ever. Which doesn’t surprise me at all as we must have watched it literally hundreds, if not thousands, of times. My little boy absolutely loved it, and even me and big kid secretly liked it, too. Love Again is my favourite. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .

JON BATISTE'S TINY DESK CONCERT

Jon Batiste, like Alicia Keys, is a supremely talented musician and performer. This is another must watch Tiny Desk concert from 2019. This is another video my little kid enjoyed watching, singing along to (before he could talk), and dancing to with his big brother (before falling asleep). Don’t it make your soul shake? .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .

ALICIA KEYS' TINY DESK CONCERT

If you haven’t seen and listened to Alicia Keys' Tiny Desk concert (Feb 2020) then I highly recommend that you do, even if - or especially if - you think she’s not your thing. This is a video my little kid loved to sing along to before falling asleep for a mid-day or afternoon nap. We all just wanna be shown some love .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.

LIVING AND BREATHING

I have vague memories of seeing Florence + The Machine on the BBC at Glastonbury, possibly in 2009. She was the big new thing, breathlessly jumping around all over the place, climbing up the gantry, as she showcased her debut album Lungs. Lungs album cover photoshoot stills - Tom Beard 2009 Or maybe it was 2015. Ship To Wreck sounds so familiar and like it would have caught my ear.

I recently read: How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy (of the band Wilco) 📚. It’s full of practical if fairly obvious tips on how to write and get your creative muscles going. Here’s a poem I wrote based on two books I regularly read to my little kid at bedtime.

Finally feel like I’m getting my breath back after four days of having trouble breathing in, wheezing and feeling like I’m emphyseming.

Noel plays his guitar as if he’s scared it will break, and Oasis’s funkless, sexless plod is always carefully pitched below the velocity at which fluid dynamics dictate that you might spill your lager. I like some Oasis stuff, the early stuff. I like some woke stuff. This quote and picture are true enough and funny, though.

Never listened to Buffalo Tom’s eponymous first album before. Produced by one Joseph Donald Mascis (as was their second album Birdbrain, although there he was credited as the more familiar J. Mascis).

When I first went to university, one of my first mates was a very quiet and shy bass player, a Geordie skinhead called Tim. Tim was into getting stoned and listening to Frank Zappa. I never got into Zappa. But I am now. Your browser does not support iframes.

CURRICULUM VITAE (REPETITUM)

Following on from my success delivering the news to my local community, I took a break from the world of (very part-time) work to focus on… playing in my first bands. And learning to play the guitar. Much of which came at the expense of any interest in or motivation to study, or revise for ‘O’ Levels, and later ‘A’ Levels. Living in a small rural market town, some of my friends, and my own younger brother, in fact, had Saturday jobs bush beating - literally (as far as I know) beating bushes to encourage game birds to fly to their sporting deaths.

TOO MUCH PRESSURE

Inevitably, as I sit here in the cafe next to my son’s swimming lesson, unable to drink coffee because the cafe is permanently closed, my mind wanders and starts thinking about coffee. For most of my adult life, I’ve started the day with a cup of tea. Regular English breakfast tea. PG Tips, Tetley. Milk and sugar. Tea was always my preferred drink, but I did like a cup of instant coffee or two later in the morning, but only if it was one I liked.

Big kid’s current favourite song.

My little lad’s current favourite song.

A NEW INGERLAND

Warming up for Ingerland’s opening match in the World Cup by practising penalties.

PUMP DOT IO

Muskovite Twitter’s demise is imminent. Everyone’s go-to Twitter-alternative place of refuge Mastodon is swamped with an invasion of Tweeters seeking a better life. What better time for a reprise of Pump Dot IO?

Wife: “I don’t like the words. I don’t like the music. You sound like a hooligan. I couldn’t care less about fucking Jimmy Carter.”

Teaching REM’s The One I Love to 7 yr old. Had to change the words to ‘The One-Eyed Bug’.

Are you listening to Joy Division?

NO ONIONS, BUT PLENTY OF FIREWORKS WITH BIER

Abstract: Gertcha by the wiener. Tags: fireworks, photos, video, bier, Chas ‘n’ Dave, hot dogs Last night, eight of us from Enfield Clubhouse went to Alexandra Palace to see London’s largest and most popular fireworks display. Here’s a video I took. The fireworks were pretty and spectacular - worth seeing, if you like that kind of thing! After the fireworks, we climbed up the hill to the Palace itself and queued to get into the German Bier Festival.

(THERE'S ONLY ONE) JIMMY CARTER (THE FOOTBALLER, NOT THE PEANUT FARMER)

A long time ago, back in January 2010 in fact, Dan Lynch’s band 20lb Sounds released their song Jimmy Carter (20lb Sounds) / CC BY-SA 3.0: This is our first original release. It’s called Jimmy Carter and as you might expect it’s about… well… Jimmy Carter, the former US president. We didn’t set out to write a song about him particularly, it’s just that someone came out with the line “Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer”, and it had to be put into song.