Back in the days when ITV actually had some athletics coverage, they used a guitar/piano type theme, which as a kid, I adored. I instantly knew I was in for an afternoon / evening of… erm, athletics.

ITV revamped their coverage for the 1990 European Championships in Split, and this awesome theme was dropped. Unfortunately, no video exists of the introductions that use the theme on youtube, or anywhere else for that matter, except for a realplayer video I have. It’s 35 seconds long, and 655K in size. You can imagine the quality.

I’d never heard this music anywhere else (except in an advert played once on the radio when going down the A19 when I was about 7 or 8).

In a series of mind ramblings involving Shazam (that mobile phone app that attempts to guess which song you’re listening to), and its inability to name this particular track, I typed into Google, “ITV Athletics theme”. The first few results were for the newer theme (which I’ve already got), but one hit was from Amazon…

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ITV-Athletics/dp/B002X3LOB6

I took one look at the ‘CD cover’, and the generic name / artist of this track, and thought “Yeah, Okay. This is going to be an awful re-recording of something”.

I pressed play on the sample. The wallet flew out of my pocket quicker than what a Shearas Punjabi Wrap flies out of my body the morning after a night out. It’s amazingly the very same track!

For anyone with access to Spotify, here’s the link to the full track:-
http://open.spotify.com/track/744rOmSP7eujHk5EbSy0hZ

For the record…
00:00-00:30 seconds was never played
00:30-01:00 was the main theme
01:00-01:10 was the bit Jim Rosenthal used to talk over.

NOTE: The timings above are entirely wrong, as I failed to notice a subtle edited loop in the original theme, despite listening to the track constantly for around an hour.

The rest of the track was rarely played, but occasionally edited for random purposes such as viewer competitions, etc.

I thought for many years it was by Argent/Van Hooke, as they knocked out many themes for ITV around this time, but no, it’s actually by the same guy who did the famous 1970s-2000s Grandstand theme, Keith Mansfield.

Right now, I want to be stood in the middle of an athletics track, in the pouring rain, looking slightly pissed off and uttering those immortal words… “Hello, from Brussels”…

The tune, in question, as I’m sure you’ve all heard before, is here:-

c64glen retweeted the above link (cheers man!), but at the time of typing, there was no response. Therefore, I’m asking on here, vainly, if anyone knows the above track. Here’s a copy ‘n’ paste segment from a ‘deleted’ I made back in 2007…

Way back in the mid to late 90′s, a guy called Tom Davies used to host a talk-in show on TFM, imaginatively titled “Tom’s Talk-In”. After ad breaks, etc, he used to play bits of music, usually announcing the telephone number to ring in and other bits of information like that.

If you do find out what it is, for god’s sake, leave a comment or something.

Needless to say, nobody did leave a comment. Technology has moved on, Shazam is now “free”, as in, I hope it as an app on my phone which is sponsored until the end of the year. No matter what aangle I point my phone at, it just will not name it.

I have got to the point where I’ve relied on Youtube’s “annoyingly fucking accurate” music spotter. If you have even a twinge of a song in a video, it’ll send you a snotty email saying that “XY owns the copyright, be careful, you peasant”. One of my videos got blocked in Germany because someone at [CENSORED] was dancing hilariously to the Pussycat Dolls. Another got ‘marked’ because I was on a walk with Gary, and I happened to be filming out of the car window while he had the radio on.

I thought I’d use this technology to my advantage, and upload the video you see above. Maybe it could give me some information on who owns this recording. Sadly not. It’s been a few days and their automatic system hasn’t triggered.

It was part of a bag of records given to me by a friend. As you can see, at some point during its life, it has been used as a chew toy by a mischeivous puppy, which means the vinyl really doesn’t fare much better. Due to its condition, and the fact I’ve never heard of Mrs Bennett, it almost went into the big green charity shop, but something’s made me keep hold of it. There’s a mystery surrounding it. I can’t find anything about her. At all. A few places have this record for sale on the internets (no, I’m not on the lookout for a replacement copy), but there’s no information on the lady, at all. the record doesn’t have a date on either, so I’m not even sure how old she would be now. If she’s still alive, that is, which I hope.

Somewhere in this terrace of unassuming, yet incredibly expensive houses, is number 76, the registered address of Nevis Records. Doesn’t really look like the type of place to be churning out platinum discs by the skipload,but let me give you the spiel on the back of the record…

This album by Jean Bennett has been made in response to the many demands from her fans. It contains many of the songs for wich Jean is known so well.

The expert opinion of Nevis Records producer Jim McLean and the musical direction by Nicky Welsh has combined to make this a Jean Bennett Classic.

Right you are, then. I’ll take your “expert” word for it. Now, the stylus on my record deck is broken anyway, so I’m going to play myself a couple of tracks. I’m not too bothered if I hit a canine-induced crater. Track 1, “On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep” is a no-go. the teeth marks are too deep to even attempt it, so let’s start with Track 2, “Bless This House”…

One thing that strikes me straight away is that this record is badly manufactured. It’s off-centre, which means everything’s wobbling about, making it sound off-pitch.

I played that side to the end, and although not my cup of tea, it was acceptable. There are probably worse ones out there. Either way, I’d love to know what happened to old Jeano, and if there are any fans of hers still out there… and can anyone explain those clothes she’s wearing?

EDIT: Got a suggestion of adding the tracklisting for this album. So here you are…

A
1. ON MOTHER KELLY’S DOORSTEP
2. BLESS THIS HOUSE
3. MARTA
4. IF I WERE A RICH MAN
5. SUNSHINE OF YOUR SMILE
6. MATCHSTICK MEN

B
1. PEOPLE (WHO NEED PEOPLE_
2. WHAT I DID FOR LOVE
3. IT MUST BE HIM
4. LOVE IS ALL
5. SALLY
6. FOR ALL WE KNOW

I obviously wanted something more “my style”. A fun day was held at the now-demolished Queens pub. One of the stalls was selling records. I bought one. It was “Secret Garden” by T’Pau. I also bought an album, but I won’t tell you what it was.

No siree, I will not mention, at all, that the first album I ever purchased was “Ten Good Reasons”, by Jason Donovan. No, I’ll never do that.

Anyway, since those fateful purchases, I have allowed my music collection to grow massively, to the point where it can barely be contained in the walls of Mercuryvapour Towers. Something I have always struggled with, is the ability to actually *tell* what I have, never mind know which tracks are on which CDs / albums / records.

I’ve made attempts in the past. Firstly, these were on paper, and pretty pointless, as I only had about 20 records. I probably did one on my Amiga, definitely did one on my old green screen 8086 PC, using Dbase III. I promptly forgot the password for the database, however.

My record collecting started to grow during the 1990s. I began to earn my own money, and promptly discovered the flea market and car boot sales. I collected a lot.

The internet was the “next big thing” when it came to my record / CD collecting. Ebay opened up new opportunities of “collecting”, and I’d often buy boxes of CDs / records, just to get a couple of songs I wanted. This may look like a false economy, but it really wasn’t. Every single time I bought a “batch”, there’d be CDs in there I didn’t know I wanted (as in, tracks I didn’t notice the name of), and ones I could resell to make the money back.

Someone in Italy paid £17.50 for a CD single I paid the equivalent of 20p for. Woooo, etc. I think I spent it on booze the very same night.

My collection grew, and it became clear I had no actual idea what I owned anymore. On 26th December 2005, I started the gallery. I took photos of every CD I could lay my hands on, uploaded them to the gallery, and added tracklistings. It was, however, just a gallery. It’s not designed to be a music collecting tool. Although it was functional, it was messy. I still have it online here, but its days are numbered.

OK, so I at least had a temporary way of cataloguing CDs, but what about records? By this time, I was in a similar situation with the vinyl. It was unorganized, and all over the place.

Whilst on jury duty in 2008, I set up plans for a database. There really was nothing better to do. I tapped my ideas into my phone, and within a few hours, had a working template for it. It’s still in use to this day, and looks a little something like this…

Bigger picture on clicky-to-flickr, naturally. I didn’t realise I had that many Diana Ross singles either. Even I raised an eyebrow when I noticed that.

I’m 573 words into this, and I haven’t even explained why I’m telling you all this… I’ve started cataloguing it all again. In what could only be described as a moment of fever-induced insanity, I bought the “Music Collector Pro” software from collectorz. It has some useful features such as the ability to look up bar codes, cover scans and generate listings of what CDs and records you have. You can even run graphs on them…

Of course, as you can see, this list is nowhere near complete. I have a stack of records to go through, as well as over 1000 7″ singles. I have no idea how it’s going to cope with that.

I’m also sure you’ll want to see the collection as it stands now. Here’s a HTML view of the collection as it stands. There are a number of empty images. I’ll correct these as time goes on.

I’m also sure that somewhere in Japan, Chad’s just lost the contents of his testicles after reading this utterly fascinating post.

EDIT: As a bit of an experiment, I want to see how “static” the generated pages are. Here’s a link to Mirror by One 2 Many… http://www.mercuryvapour.co.uk/music/details/2754.html

Some of the worst tracks came from another album entitled “Sixteen Small Screen Greats”, with the “Polydor 2384 107″ catalogue number. I commented on how I’d like to get my hands on a copy just to hear the rest of the tracks… well, thanks to a case of finding a virtual needle in a haystack, I now have a copy right in front of me.

ATIF recently acquired a large collection of records and CDs, and I was invited over to Iridium Mansion to have a flick through and take what I wanted. The records were located in the attic, which was only partially lit. Now, for most people this would be a problem, but not for ATIF. He came upstairs to the attic, carrying a Phosco P678 streetight. It was plugged into the wall socket, and the CD/record browsing commenced…

The first photo contains streetlights, records, CDs, and a packet of Maynards Wine Gums. All this photo needs, is a pint of beer, a vindaloo and a pair of tits, and I’d had been in heaven.

Very quickly after a short flick through the CDs and records, I found that the original owner of the records and CDs was an avid theme music collector, which means that there was a lot of old 1980s TV theme vinyl in there, and some of them were brilliant. There was a load of the re-recorded variety, but several were the “genuine article”

Aside from the afore-mentioned Ronnie Hazelhurst LP, I pulled out a number of different albums, including “The TV Hits Album”, released on Towerbell Records, volumes 1 and 2. I had downloaded these particular albums (naughty naughty) as horribly compressed and scratched MP3s, so I knew the tracks included were genuine. The vinyl on these, as with all of the records, is mint, so I now have a copy of Su Pollard’s “Starting Together” to call my own… that is, if my record player’s stylus wasn’t running low on sharpness.

Speaking of Stylus, there was one of the theme albums released under the “Stylus” record label. I’ve had ‘bad’ records from this company in the past, where the tracks are either edited down, or re-recorded, so I wasn’t expecting much. I slapped it on the turntable, and played Track 1, the “Cagney And Lacey” theme. It’s a piece of music I like, but have never been able to track down the version used on the programme. I pressed play. The turntable sprang into life. The sax intro plays…. it sounds almost genuine. The main theme kicks in, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s the exact version used on the programme, even down to the seldom-noticed xylophone / glockenspiel / whatever percussion instrument it is, barely audible, 40 – 52 seconds into it. Any re-recording would have lost this entirely. There’s also the piano buried back there too, just like every good 80s TV theme.

Er, anyway. there is a reason why the C+L theme is almost impossible to track down on CD… it’s because it was recorded in mono, and it’s 1′ 15″ in length. Every version commercially available on CD is re-recorded, made longer and recorded in stereo. Don’t tamper with the classics, eh?

My plastic-browsing was brought to a temporary, yet abrupt halt, when the streetlight providing our illumination, suddenly went phut, and plunged the entire attic (and the rest of Iridium Mansion) into darkness, with the only illumination coming from the red-hot, yet slowly cooling arc tube. Within seconds, bellows of “ANDREW!” came from downstairs… Now, there could be a couple of things that caused the leccy in his house to trip. His parents seemed to think he was toying with something, but at the time I knew he wasn’t, he was sorting some photos at the time. My opinion wasn’t asked, so I kept out of it. Should it be needed in the future, when the lights went out, ATIF was looking at photos. I was looking at CDs, Neither of us were holding screwdrivers. Bit late now, but still, Awwwwkward.

For the first time ever, my phone came to the rescue. I thought its “flashlight” feature was a jokey gimmick. Honestly, it’s not. It’s not the brightest thing in the world, but my word, it’s worth its weight in LEDs.

The visit to ATIF’s ended as usual, with the obligatory photo of me holding a streetlight. This time, I went for the SOX variant of the GEC Z567x series…

Yes, I’m quite aware my hair needs cutting…

I know it from something else, or at least I know that guitar riff. I probably have it on CD somewhere, I’ve bought a load of chillout albums over the years.

It’s personally been an appalling year for music. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. Mine is that it was dreadful.

One song I did like was “Famous” by Scouting For Girls…

Unfortunately, I can’t embed official video link. I first heard this song somewhere in the Great Ayton area, after winning an ebay auction for many 80s LPs.

Thankfully, I have jst remembered another song from this year that I liked, namely “Choices” by The Hoosiers. It’s another horrible video rip-off I’m afraid…

The official videos don’t like being embedded, unfortunately.

Overall, there’s one piece of music that’s had an impact on me this year more than any other, and although it was released in 2009, it deserves a place in this posting. I posted about this in April, so instead of duplicating it, I’m just going to link to the post…

The Golden Age of Video

A stunning piece of work.

It’s time now, for my “guilty pleasures” – the songs I’d never actually buy, but wouldn’t reach for the dial if they suddenly came on the radio. The first is ‘Alejandro’ by Lady Gaga. Yes, I know, I feel like scraping out my own eardrums for this, but I’d heard the song at least 20 times before I knew who sung it. I’d actually convinced byself that Ace of Base had reformed. For those of you who know the Lady Gaga song, take a listen to this and tell me they’re not the same song…

My other guilty pleasure is “Raise Your Glass” by Pink. I probably shouldn’t like it, but I do. Sorry.

So, that’s it. My music purchases this year have been many and varied. Very little of it has been from this year.

You give a friend a C90, it returns several days later, filled with questionable music. It was like the Napster of the Nineties. Or the eMule of the Eighties. And possibly the WinMX of the Sev… wait, that one doesn’t really work.

Andy the Iridium Fan is someone who still embraces the analogue era, and likes nothing more than to slap on his walkman, and ride around the streets of Hartlepool listening to his compilations of C120s, entitled “Music for the Weekend”.

You may know that I’m currently borrowing it a tape recorder of his, in the vain hope of getting the majority of my decaying tapes onto some type of digital media. This is a job not for the faint hearted. In payback for the loan of the tape deck, he thrust a C120 tape into my hand and DEMANDED I fill it with shit. OK, a little bit of artistic license there, I just had to fill it. Now, for obvious reasons, such as I don’t particularly want to be sued, I can’t divulge the contents of the afore-mentioned tape (Dear Lawyers, for all you know, it’s actually 120 minutes of me gargling in the bath), but choosing the tracks to go on there was extremely difficult.

I started the tape about 6 weeks ago, and only finished it two days ago. What was odd, is the complicated procedure that some of the songs…. no, sorry, sounds of me gargling in the bath, went through… it would have started life on record, recorded via USB turntable, compressed to MP3, written to CDR, played on CD player, recorded onto tape…. in fact, this tape…

It did drive one thing home, how much I missed the whole “mixtape” idea. With archives of entire music catalogues at our disposal at the click of a mouse, it seems that a once fine art is dying out, replaced with faceless playlists, on third-party websites. I still have tapes recorded for me by Chad, and I’m sure I’ve blogged about them in the past. As much as I hate to say it, these were my greatest influence when it comes to music I listen to 20 years later. In 2nd place, are the tapes Daddykins used to get from the petrol station. In fact, I’m listening to “No Regrets” by The Walker Brothers, which I first heard on one of those tapes.

And, for those of you of a nosey disposition, here’s a little behind-the-scenes look of me taking the above photo, courtesy of ATIF…

Resting my camera on a mug half-full of tea. Quinticenstally British. For those who have been following, I named my tape “Music For the Weak End 1″. I have no idea if there’ll be a followup.

So, because of this, blogging has been on the back burner for a while. I must admit, the past few weeks have been hectic as hell. Some of you may remember over the last couple of years (well, since about 1998), I have been complaining about the heating system in Mercuryvapour Towers, and the fact that it’s been completely knackered for about 10 years. Over the least couple of years, I worked out that if you don’t run the hot tap, the heating will kick in after a couple of hours, with its distinctive “chink….. whoooof” noise, and all will be well until someone runs the hot tap. The house will then be plunged into the murky depths of coldness, and if we had a winter like we did last year, that clearly isn’t a good thing. There was only one thing for it. Invest in a new boiler, and invest we did!

Boiler has arrived, early. I’m either going to end up in hospital or prison 8:04 AM Sep 28th via Twitter for Android

I know that most people probably got sick to death of my incessant tweetings about the status of the boiler, but this was a big step. It was certainly something I was dreading. When the original boiler was installed back in 1994, the house was in uproar for about a week. I think every floorboard got lifted. I expected something similar. It wasn’t as bad this time, in fact, we even got the “blue carpet” treatment for a couple of days…

I expected having to completely dismantle everything in this room, as the old water filter is in my cupboard. The “crystals” in it haven’t been changed since it was fitted, so according to the plumber (whose name I can’t remember, but he had an apprentice called Lee), it was no surprise the old boiler packed up.

Thankfully, they didn’t need to get access to it, so I was safe. In fact, they only entered my room once….

There are strange people in my room. THERE ARE STRANGE PEOPLE IN M…. oh, he’s only bleeding the radiator. 29 September 2010 12:31:09 via web

I will never know if ‘Lee’ saw what I was typing. He was a bit shy, and if he had to ask the main guy a question, he referred to us as ‘The Customer’. I felt sorry for him in a way, obviously having to follow the rules to the letter. I felt like saying to him “Please! You can call me ‘His Royal Highness”, but I didn’t. My room must have been a whole new experience to him. Clean(ish) floor, yet a bed that had clearly not been slept in for days, as it was piled up like Steptoe’s yard. Either way, a day and a half after it started, the blue carpet was lifted, we were left with a terminally scarred bathroom floor, but most importantly…

It’s all over. We have heat! 29 September 2010 15:59:39 via txt

I clearly can’t decide on the best way to tweet, but yes, everything is warm and cosy here now. Unfortunately, I’ve left it a little too late to book a place at university to study the timer controls, so I’m making to with “off” and “on” at the moment. It does, however, mean a trip through the long dusty corridors of Mercuryvapour Towers each time I get too warm, but that’s a small price to pay.

In other news, I’ve bought a CD. No, really. I’ve invested in a dying format. Yes, I was drunk. Yes, I’d watched *that* episode of Eastenders where Peggy Mitchell “walked away”. Yes, I googled “Peggy’s Theme”. Yes, the result ended up with me buying “The Simon May Collection: Eastenders and Other Themes”. Yes, the arrival of the afore mentioned CD caused the postie to ring the doorbell, while I tried to gather some digtnity (in other words, underpants), while I went downstairs to collect the parcel. Except that the “parcel” fitted through the letterbox. Yes, I ended up stood on the doorstep, with hair half-past Wednesday, with the postie shouting “Oh, it fitted through your letterbox”. Of course it did. It was a CD.

Therefore: I was the proud owner of…

I intended to do a full review of the CD, in fact, most of the drafts I wrote centred around this particular purchase, and my attempts to review every track. It’s simply not possible, as it’s got to be the biggest hit ‘n’ miss CD I’ve ever purchased. The ultimate track, which I didn’t even know was on the CD, is “Barracuda”. You won’t recognise it by the name, but it’s the jazzy, synthed up end theme to “Howards Way”… linky here for those who missed my facebook jizzfest over my discovery of the afore mentioned theme. That alone is worth the £6.99 I paid. The ultimate downside to the entire CD is track 22, named “Glory Be To God On High”. When you realise that all of the lyrics are sung to the Eastenders theme tune, and sung by a bunch of kids, it equates to the most painful 3 minutes and 18 seconds known to mankind. If you’re after a song constructed around the Eastenders theme, however, you do get Anita Dobson’s “Anyone Can Fall In Love” as track 17, and in a rare move of theme-tune availablility, the 2009-present version of the Eastenders theme is included, though there’s no “extra” bits in this version, it’s literally just the theme, clocking in at a measly 1:10 in length. The other versions have been at least a little different from the ones used in the programme.

As I approach the sacred 1000-word mark, I’ll have to turn my attention to work. It’s been busy, and I can only assume it’s only going to get busier. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I’m enjoying it being busy.

Oh yes, I’ve also got a new phone, if you couldn’t work that out by the last post. It’s also less than a month to this blog’s 10th birthday. To add to my ever growing of dead celebrity obituaries, Norman Wisdom left the station yesterday. A shame, but at 95, “bloody good innings”, etc.

The residents of the quaint little fishing village of Hartlepool can breathe a sigh of releif, as the town slowly returns back to normal following the Tall Ships “festival”. Regular viewers will notice the lack of updates regarding this particular event, that’s because, as I mentioned, I was in Employment Palace 3 of the 4 days, meaning I was only able to pick up one of the 4 main days. No fireworks for me!

The weather actually began to change. the gloomy skies were, for the first time, being replaced with bright sunshine. Of course, this didn’t last long, and before we knew it, we were once again running for the shelter of the vacant tents. It was at this point I noticed Craig had texted me

…. and, that’s where I left it, suspension fans! You’ll never find what the text contained, or whether Craig made it. Actually, he didn’t. I’ll cut to the end of the day, as it was weeks ago now, but after most of the ships had sailed out of the port, me and Gary headed up to Crimdon for a view up there…

A unique view that will probably never be repeated again.

Right, that’s the end of my Tall Ships coverage. Well, OK, not quite. I’ve got possession of Andy The Iridium Fan’s “Tall Ships” archive. He was lucky enough to be down there all four days, and also get hold of a photography pass, meaning there’s 3,768 photos for me to go through… watch this space.

Photo opportinities have been few and far between, thanks to a few reasons. My complete laziness, “Just Cause 2″, and the weather. I’ve not even been out to get any sunsets recently, though I did attempt a bit of sunset photography with ATIF the other week. Unfortunately, the sunset was an abortion, so we just hung around until it got dark, and tried a bit of long exposure in a field… wait, that sounds wrong… we sat in a field and took photos of each others equipment…. hang on, that sounds worse… look, this is what I mean…

Actually, the rest of the set turned out quite good too, you can have a look here

20th August saw me obtain a few plastic crates from work, in the vain hope of being able to sort something out of my record, CD and tape collection This is something that is ongoing (i.e. not started yet). though one of the crates has already been filled with old videotapes.

The 22nd August saw the end of an era. Yes, it was the last ever gig of “Accidents By Design”. I wouldn’t say I was their only fan, but I’ve been to as many gigs as I could possibly attend, fighting my way through rain, hail and snow. Here’s some video of their last ever gig.

Part 1
Part 2
Part3
Part 4

Parts 1+4 have feedback noise on them, unfortunately, thanks to a dodgy guitar pedal left by a previous band. Had a great day overall, and the sunburn I thought I’d end up getting wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.

Two sets of photos on this one, firstly, mine hosted on flickr, and ATIF’s which are hosted on here. Despite the lure of cheap beer, with some of the money going to charity, I didn’t touch a drop.

EDIT: Ooooh, seems I missed a couple of things out of this post. Just had a comment from Jamie S, as I failed to mention he actually turned up for Pitch Invasion. I mentioned he didn’t turn up for the Tall Ships, but he broke his 100% record for not turning up to stuff, by er… actually turning up.

The first time he didn’t turn up for something was when we were going to Middlesbrough to see Wheatus. Which, in some type of weird juxtaposition of the present and the past, I received this email from someone who you may remember as “Poolieboydave”…

Alright

Odd how these things crop up! I still check the blog weekly!

Bloody hell, three readers!

Unknown song

I really don’t know much about this song, though I did actually buy it, or at least the magazine it was given away on. It came part of a free tape on the front of a music magazine from around 1989, possibly 1990. I can tell you I bought it from King Oswy shops, the original tape was black, and came in a slipcase. It may have featured “Inner City Mama” by Nenah Cherry on the tape too.

Not that it helps much.

Unfortunately, the original tape came from a manufacturer who made tapes that didn’t agree with my tape deck, and it probably got chewed up and binned. I certainly don’t have it anymore.

With the borrowment of Andrew’s cassette deck, I’ve been able to source one of my old C90s which had a copy of this song on it. Unfortunately, it was copied in high-speed mode, meaning the above track sounds tinny as hell. Just for old times sake, I’d like to know who it is and who by. Don’t bother googling the “lyrics”. “Blip Blipiddy Blop Bleep” doesn’t bring up any usefull results.

Feel free to comment / email. If it sounds familar, that’s great, but unless you’ve got a *really* good idea of who it is, then don’t! Also ,comments about my questionable taste in music, then, you know that already.

Chris was round tonight, so a night of vegetation in front of the telly was in order. The afore mentioned programme sparked enough interest in the room to warrant its watching. On the other hand (ho ho), there wasn’t much else on.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable look back at the man’s life, with clips from shows I didn’t even think existed anymore. The end theme, however, made me shout of with amazement.

Let me take you back to 1992, 1993ish. My record collection was still at a minimal level. Few singles, fewer albums. This was boosted by an old relative clearing out her cupboards, and a stack of mainly uninteresting LPs were given to me. Out of all of the albums played, two tracks stood out. One of them featured on a scratchy old Telstar compilation album named “More Green Velvet”, and was entitled “The Lonesome Boatman” by The Fureys + Davey Arthur. It was a short, flutey, instrumental with a great guitar track and very 80s sounding seagull samples.

Now, thanks to the tinternet, I was able to find many different recordings of this, but not the one featured on the More Green Velvet album. The online stores only stocked the same CDs which had a different version. Even Spotify didn’t have it. Thankfully, I managed to find a version of it on youtube. It was longer than my vinyl version, though it would appear that the disc it came from was long out of print, and therefore went for an absolute fortune on ebay. Sigh. This was the only time I’d heard it coming from a source other than my own record collection.

Years pass, and on Friday, I’m awoken with the tune in my head, and the realisation I’d not tried any of the digital download sites. Within minutes, I was 69p lighter, and downloading “The Lonesome Boatman” My long search was over! In fact, I tweeted about it…

Finally got a digital version of “The Lonesome Boatman” by The Fureys for 69p… had it on vinyl, given to me by a long dead relative. 11:45 AM Aug 13th via web

All was not right, however, when I played it through headphones for the first time…

Ugh. Disregard my earlier “Lonesome Boatman” tweet. Awful analogue tape damage on this version all the way through. 69p wasted. Grrrrr. 1:48 AM Aug 14th via web

If you’re listening through speakers, it’s not too bad, but on headphones, the right channel is terrible! This version is taken from a “greatest hits”, so I’m hoping for a better version out there somewhere.

Er, anyway, back to the telly theme link…. two days after purchasing it, the very same version was used as the closing credits for the Jeremy Beadle thing. I find it really a bit spooky and coincidental that I would buy this tune almost immediately after waking up thinking about it, and two days later, for the first time in ~18 years, actually hear it broadcast on TV. It’s just weird, and a little too concidental.

Oh, and, to end this posting with yet another “death” announcement, according to the UKGameshows mailing list, Jack Parnell, one of the two composers of the original “Family Fortunes” theme (Bob Monkhouse / Max Bygraves era), has died. The other composer, Dave Lindup, died in 1992. Lindup’s son, Mark, is the keyboard player from Level 42.

This is now a view that will probably never reoccur, for you see, the fleam market and the regular market have been combined to form one large market. A “supermarket”, possibly? Well, with some of the tat on offer, I’ll not use that phrase.

Today was my first visit to the afore-mentioned “merged” market. The whole day started off extremely un-promising. Thursday is our bin day, so imagine my disappointment when I go and collect the bin, only to feel the depressing feel of cold rain on my balding head. It looked that I’d be missing out on another week of erm.. new market activities. Thankfully, the rain disappeared instantly, and after a shit, shave and shower (only one of those is true), I donned my replacement phone headset, and headed off in the general direction of the town. It’s the first time I’d been out early enough on a Thursday morning to see everyone’s bottle/can recycling boxes full. It would appear that quite a lot of people on this estate have a lot of parties or alcohol problems.

By the time I’d reached the town on foot, the sun was beginning to break through. I had the misfortune of watching a seagull devour a pigeon to within an inch of its life, in the middle of one of the busiest roads in the town. This thing was going hell for leather on this poor pigeon. Traffic eventually forced the seagull to fly off, leaving a mangled, barely alive columbiform in the dead centre of the road. It was one of those “Wish I had my camera” moments. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I’m assuming, neither had that bloody pigeon.

Shaken up by this whole ordeal (not really), I yoinked some money out of the cash point, and headed in the general direction of the market. I wouldn’t say I’m overly impressed with the whole layout. There seems to still be a great divide between the “flea” and “standard” markets, yet the flea market feels horribly crowded. I can’t be the only one who thought this. While I was exploring the new CDs on Erics’s stall, Andy the Iridium Fan (ATIF) stood right alongside me (plus bike), and didn’t even recognise me until I uttered “Not talking to me, then?”. I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or not that I’m not instantly recognisable from a distance…

Anyway. I got some “classics” from Erics stall, including Mike Oldfield’s “Music of The Spheres” for £1. I’ve been after that album for a while ever since I “heard” an “advanced” “copy”. It’s not my favourite of his, but it has its moments. I remember almost paying £14 for it in the now defunct Zavvi store in Middlesbrough, but I thought “I’ll come back later”. I never went back.

In all, I spent £10 on Eric’s stall. I got some absolute garbage which only I remember, such as “Sacred Spirit / Chants and Dances of The Native Americans”. I remember it for its classics such as Ly-o-Lay Ale Loya, and Yeha-Noha. Honestly, I’m not shitting you. I know these tracks. Imagine my shock when ATIF knew them also, as his dad had it on LP. After purchasing the CDs and departing with ATIF, I headed into the town centre. I decided to miss out on my usual pastie, and instead headed to Iceland to see if they had started stocking the “Birds Eye Essentials” chicken curry again. The answer was negative, and left the store empty handed. I turned my attention to Heron, where I picked up 4 rasperry Ribenas for £1, and two Ross chicken curries for £1. The latter curry is, if I’m honest, diabolical. Small, hardly any rice, full of peas, complicated instructions which suggest the use of the “Defrost” section of the microwave, and they almost always come out drier than a nun’s (Don’t go there -Ed). The Ribena, however, was awesome, despite the fact I drank three of them, and then realised I’d hit my recommended sugar level for the day. No, seriously.

A 288Ml serving of Rasperry Ribena contains 30 grams of sugar. A 500ml can of Carling contains 11 grams. You’ll forgive me for sticking with Carling, then.

Home Bargains was my next stop, where I stocked up on Wispas, cherry coke and rice. Oh, and handwash.

I decided that I couldn’t take the town anymore, and grabbed the next bus back to Mercuryvapour Towers. It arrived in only a few minutes. Unfortunatelty, a phone malfunction meant that I couldn’t listen to music on the way home. Instead, I was left listening, and unfortunately, taking in the conversation from the two old biddies in front of he… “Eeeh, well you shouldn’t let her upset you…. that’ll be what she wants…”. I clearly never got the full conversation. I didn’t particularly care. Hopefully, typing it in here will help me forget.

Daddykins was out when I got home. I ate my curries, and spent the rest of the afternoon in a vegetative state. One thing I was looking forward to was Wimbledon. I never thought I’d say that on here, but I was hooked on what was the most historic day of tennis ever.. I was more interested in the fact that the day before, I’d noticed that the scoreboard had crashed at 47-all. It was something that should never have happened. It did. History was made. It was the first time a flip-dot display had made the news since… well, Chad liked my last post, I can’t have that happening twice.

Scoreboard glitches were rectified, and eventually, the match ended with Isner winning. The final score was something stupid.

ATIF came over, after our meeting at the flea market. I’ve got a few hundred more images to add to the gallery in the very near future.

2010-05-18 11:34:10: Started walk

After going to bed at 7, and waking up at 9:30, thanks to Daddykins on his rig, and me not turning my speakers off, I thought I’d get up and make use of the day. I demolished some oven chips whilst watching Homes Under the Hammer. The sun was cracking the pavements, so I thought I’d walk off the chips, along with the night before’s kebab wrap.

As you can probably gather, I left the house at that time, and headed along the coast road and up “Hart Road” towards Hart Village.

2010-05-18 12:09:10: Mmm, farmy

This tweet referred to the overpowering stench of shit that filled the patch between Clavering and Hart Village. It was a hot spring day, and the smell of some nearby horses wafted around the place.

Oddly, this was my last tweet of the walk. Instead, I had to work out where I was going to go once I’d reached Hart Village. I could head home, or I could risk crossing three lanes of traffic, and head off to photograph the nearby turbines. Despite them being there for many years now, I’d never actually been near them.

Thanks to Google Streetview, I knew that the journey would be pretty uneventful, except for the afore-mentioned road crossing. I headed up the road that would take me towards the turbine, only to be infiltrated by the locals….

Next stop was the road I feared. I almost felt like King Canute, as when I got to the road, it was entirely empty, and I could quite happily stroll across the carriageway without fear of getting squashed.

I was happy to find that when I got there, the field the turbine was in, was growing oil seed rape, meaning that it gave everything a lovely yellow colour…

The walk back seemed to take for ever. I’d slightly misjudged just how far it was from Mercuryvapour Towers. Turns out, it’s a 5-mile round trip. I think I can safely say I neutralised those chips.

The rest of the day was spent in bed after watching some telly. Daddykins commented about repairing “the door”. For anyone lucky enough to have received a guided tour around Mercuryvapour Towers, you’ll know that the “games room” has had its back door hanging off for several years after a storm snapped it in half. I’d be interested to see if this would come to fruition.

2010-05-19 09:06:28: Off to the flea market. There is a strong smell of rapeseed in the air.

Well, I can’t keep away from the flea market, as much as I try. After waking up stupidly early on Wednesday (5AM), I headed off to the market of fleas. I’d spent the previoous hours changing the music on my phone. I realised, mere minutes into the walk, however, that I should have avoided “Now 40″, as my ears bled along to the sound of Steps.

The walk took me along the scenic vistas of Raby Road, along York Road, and then to the flea market. CDs were purchased, so were records. I couldn’t help myself. I have bought some cheese in the past, but this is pure, ripe Stilton of the highest order…

It cost me 50p, and to be honest, after playing it, I like it a lot more than I thought I was going to. Clare Torry is (only) known for Pink Floyd’s track “Great Gig in the Sky”. Apparently, everyone who purchased her album from Amazon bought it on the strength of that Pink Floyd track.

2010-05-19 09:48:51: On bus home. Flea market poor

On the way home, Daddykins texted me asking if I had my keys. Without a single hint of sarcasm (that was sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell), I replied “Yes. Let me know if you still want to attempt door this afternoon”. Imagine my shock and horror as, at 1PM, we actually went on the search for some wood. Or, at least, some material that a door could be constructed of.

Imagine my horror when these materials were actually purchased…

We were about to attempt DIY on a scale never attemped before in the ground of Mercuryvapour Towers…

EDIT: Fixed webcam photo as it was broked.