Another 12”, and walkies
I don’t normally blog about adding individual items to my collection, but this time I find it necessary, as I now have a UK promo copy of “Downtown” in my possession. Wooo!
I’ve been collecting as many different versions of this song, and I think now I’m coming to the end of my search…
This one has the catalogue number of AMY 476, the same as the released version, but the label is different. As with most promos, instead of being printed on the company standard labels, it’s printed on a plain white logo, with black text…

The tracklisting, however is exactly the same. The A side is the Adam Moseley mix, and the B side is the instrumental version, coupled with “Welcome To My City”, the only original track released by them which isn’t on the album “Mirror”. It’s a pretty weak track if I’m honest.
The best thing about it is the misprinted label on the cover itself…

One Two Many, eh? Wrong.
Cor. It seems that all I’m talking about in here is records, plus my long walks, complete with taking hundreds of photos of said pointless journey. This post is no exception, as I shall now blabber on about the walk I took the other night.
It had been a beautiful late-spring day. It started off with a trip tyo the flea market. As usual, I spent far too much on records, but I did pick up a Billy Joel double CD for 50p. 36 tracks. That’s less than a penny a song! I’d also received a parcel of 30+ LPs from ebay earlier in the morning. That means, throughout the day I’d been collecting a lot of music. In fact, my purchases for the week looked something like this…

I’d got back from the flea market, itching for stuff to do while the weather was nice. The answer came in the form of record cleaning. Not the ones I’d just received, but some of the ones I’d been given a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t in a blogging mood when they arrived, so I don’t think I mentioned their arrival.
Anyway, most of the day was spent in the back garden, sploding big gloops of lemon washing up liquid on them, and gasping in awe as 50 years of dust, grime and nicotine were lifted off. It also allowed me to sort the really damaged ones (they weren’t in good nick) from the ones just about playable.
I tried to stay in and watch the telly. I just couldn’t do it. It was at that point I decided that I was going to make use of this weather, and go out to Hart Village and photograph the sunset.
It was a walk that would consist of 114 photos, 5.41 miles, and another visit to Sainsbury’s.
I tried to time it nicely so I wasn’t waiting too long for the sun to go down. Therefore, I set off at about 7:30 I decided to go the long way round, through the new estate and along the Hart Road. Basically, the reverse of the journey I took the other week.
It gave me the chance to photograph the construction of the carehome which is STILL being built. It must have been at least 18 months now…

After a power-walk (or rather, it looked like I was having a strop), I made it out of the estate, and continued along the Hart road…

At this point, somebody ran past me. It was either Coatesy, or someone who looks the exact spitting image of him.Nothing was said, it either wasn’t him, or he’s forgotten what I look like. After all, it’s been nearly six months since the last contact with him. I also noticed he’s deleted me from his MSN Messenger list.
Anyway, I arrived at Hart Village, and the sun was just reaching the point where it was starting to get low enough to make everything look orange.

After a road called “Nine Acres”, the footpath ends. After all, there are no more houses. This didn’t stop me, however, and I kept walking for another few hundred yards when I came to an opening in the hedgerow, leading to a field.
By this point, I was steaming, literally. The power-strop and the full walk uphill caused me to have the appearance of a racehorse after a particularly gruelling steeplechase. I decided to have a sit down in this field for a bit to recover, cool down, and watch the sun going down.

Er, that was the field. It;’s quite interesting the fact that I’ve managed to type all of this about going to see the sunset, yet I’ve not actually managed to post one image of it yet…

There, that’s better. Now, I was listening to music this entire journey. You’d think I’d be listening to something “sunsetty” at this point. You know, something chilled out. Something mood-setting. Mike oldfield, maybe? Enya? Both good choices, and both artists I had on my MP3 player at the time.
Ladies and gentlemen, I was listening to Jive Bunny. I found this rather amusing, and a reflection of my awful (to everyone else) taste in music.
Eventually, the sun disappeared behind the cloud in the above picture, and there was no more to see. I began to walk home. The sunset pictures kept disappearing, and although the sun was no longer visible, the sky was still dramatic enough to allow for possibly my favourite photo of the evening.

There were still photo opportunities to be had despite the fact that the sun had long gone. Something Hartlepool (or rather, Hart) is famous for, is its disused windmill, and the wind turbine near it. I noticed two runners on the path behind me. For a bit of an experiment, I wanted to see if they’d say anything to me if I obviously stopped off to take a photo. The result was this…

The female runner was passing me just as I turned around to rejoin the path. She looked at me as if I was mad. I just smiled and nodded politely. After all, I have something to show for it. And what do YOU have, missus? Aching muscles and worn out trainers. I win that one. The walk home was slightly diverted by a visit to Sainsbury’s, where I picked up a kitkat, carton of orange juice, packet of own-brand chicken curry noodles, and a jumbo sausage roll. Bugger, the amount of calories I’d burned off on this walk were about to be instantly put back on.
Saying that, I haven’t eaten the noodles yet and have only partially drank the orange juice.



