Yay! I saw my first ever fox tonight - it ran past the taxi just as I was entering work. That was cool. It was something that always bugged me, that. After watching The Animals of Farthing Wood as a kid (or rather, as a teenager), it dawned on me that I’d never actually seen one. And on long bus/car journies, whatever, I’d be looking across the fields to see if I could spot one. Obviously, due to the fact they’re nocturnal, that’d be a no.

So, that brought a sparkle of light to an otherwise drab day. Well, I say drab….

After leaving work at 8:00, I had a walk along to the town (or rather, I got a taxi halfway) and had a look around the flea market. Seeing as it was only 8:15 by this time, everyone was still unpacking their junk. It was its usual self. Same old stalls. Same old pack of tat, same old bacon Van, spewing out the smell of hot grease along the entire place.

You always have to be wary when at places like these. I know I go on about them often, but I feel there’s good enough reason to. Imagine you’re in Australia. Every time you lift up the toilet seat, you need to check for funnelweb spiders. WIth the flea market the principle is there same… every time you go rifling through a box of records, you need to check there are no dirty knickers underneath.

Well, for me today, there was. You reach the end of the pile, and no matter how good the selection of tunes was, you still feel like some kind of dirty pervert, and that you think everyone in the surrounding area thinks you were looking at those and not the records. Ugggghhh…. I walked away from there, rubbing my fingers along everything.

Anyway, I then decided to go into the town centre. It’s a funny place at thaat time. Not one of the shops is open, except for MankDonalds, and even then, I think they were only serving coffee.

It was weird to see all of the shops with shutters on them. Even the mighty Woolworths only had half of the lights on, and I could see the cleaner pottering about inside, presumably charging the aisles with static electricity.

Every so often, the squeal of a burglar alarm warning would break the eerie silence, as one-by-one, the shutters raised, and the shops sprang into life.by 8:45, Greggs was open. I grabbed a pastie, and returned back to the market of fleas.

One of the main stalls there is a shop that sells CD’s and records, known to everyone on there as “Erics”. He’s got a shop too, in Hart Lane, I think. It’s top notch for CD’s, and even topper notch for records. if he gets any 12″ singles in, they’re priced at 30P, and they’re always good quality. I’ve bought a load of stuff from there (including a rare-as-rocking-horse-shit CD by a failed band called HeavenWestEleven), and I feel it’s a waste if I don’t leave with a carrier bag full of stuff.

Today was a prime example. Looking through the records, there were a few new 12″ers in there. Great! Purchased 3 of them. Namely…

“Real Wild Child” by Iggy Pop.
“It Doesn’t have to be” by Erasure, and
“Waiting for a star to fall” by Boy Meets Girl.

I was amazed to find that “I wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”… you know the Whitney Houston track… was written by Boy Meets Girl, and their original demo version actually features on this record. Believe me, it’s shit. It’s like listening to a re-recording of a perfectly average song.

You know, that’s one thing that absolutely grinds on me… when you get those cheapy tapes that state shit like “To give you the ultimate sound quality, some of these tracks have been recorded with all or some of the original band members”. WHY? Please god, why inflict this pain on the human condition? There are enough bad songs out there without ruining good ones!

I unwittingly bought such a collection from the town on Monday. It was £3 for 3 CD’s worth. The contents seemed OK, there were a few tracks I’d pay money for. But for £1 a CD, I should have known what I was getting. This was confirmed when I played Track 1… namely “Let Your Love Flow” by The Bellamy Brothers. Jesus christ. It was crap. Synthed up to the eyeballs, and not a patch on the original. The original did not have a Casio keyboard pretending to be a guitar. It does not have session singers on there struggling to remember what the next line is. After staring at the CD player in disbeleif for 56 seconds, I hit the fast-forward button. Next track was “Words” by F.R. David. They couldn’t kill that, could they? Thankfully, no - they used the original version of that great track. Luckily, that was the one I wanted most.

Next was some Beach Boys song. Synthed up to the eyeballs, with the same tacky keyboard. I could stand no more. I took the CD out, and the remaining 71 tracks will probably never see the infra-red glint of a CD lens. Awww.

Why can’t these companies realise that “re-recorded” does not mean “better”. They claim that, for my listening pleasure, I’d rather listen to something resembling karaoke? It’s deception! Nothing more, nothing less. I want to listen to the versions I’m familiar with!

Same goes for albums. Quite a lot of songs differ slightly from the single version to the album version. “Good Morning Britain” by Aztec Camera is an example. The single version sounds crisp, a hell of a lot clearer, and a better song in general.

And although the album version is the same song, it sounds flatter, and it misses the end off. Most people probably don’t notice, but I did, and I was trashed.

Anyway, back to yesterday.I had a bloody good sleep, which is surprising for a night shift. After getting in from the flea market, I went to bed at about 10, and there I remained until… oooh, 6:30. Yay! Imagine my surprise when I came out of my bedroom, and found the staircase bright purple. I shit you not. Purple. Daddykins went to B+Q a couple of days ago (coincidentally, the same day I picked up that crappy CD) and picked up a tub of purple emulsion. I assumed he was going to do the bathroom, seeing as that currently doesn’t have a carpet in it. The bathroom is blue at the minute, and doesn’t really look that good. My assumption was wrong. I dragged myself out of my pit, and staggered out of the door, and fell into a stairway that even Lawrence Llwellyn Bowen (or however the hell it’s spelt) would vomit at.

Hopefully, when it’s complete, it’ll look good, but the prognosis isn’t looking good. Saying that, gotta give my dad top marks for actually making the effort, unlike me…!

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