For the long-time followers, you may remember that I used to enjoy my regular Wednesday trips to the Hartlepool Flea Market. I’m afraid to say that they will never happen again.

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.

One of the things I was discussing with Chad yesterday is my Flicke account, as there are a few scans I’ve put up on there of us as kids. It made me wonder, just how many images had I uploaded to Flickr, and how much disk space was I using on their servers?

It’s easy to tell how many images you have, both private and public (14,533 at the time of typing), but I still had to find out how much disk space was being used.

They use a third-party service called QOOP to allow you to do things such as print your photos out, back them to CD or DVD. After playing around with it, I found out exactly how much space I was taking up. Sit down for this, it’s a goody…

Final Backup Size: 39.67 gigabytes
Required Disks: 59 CDs or 10 DVDs

CD Backup media Price: $884.41
DVD Backup media Price: $199.90

This no doubt will have changed, as I’ve uploaded a few more pictures since then, about another 300Mb’s worth. Marvellous! Think I’ll run off another one of my own backups now.

In a vain attempt to rid myself once again of the feeling of shite, I have decided to go back on some ideas I had a few months ago, yet never actually got around to carrying them out. This time, it’s to do with music.

You may remember back in September 2008, I came across an idea where I’d review an album, picked by random, out of the weeks’ Top 40. Sounded like a pretty good idea at the time. However, obtaining the record legally wouldn’t really be cost effective, and although I could probably dispose ofthe CD on ebay if I really didn’t like it, it wouldn’t have been worth the chew.

But, that was September 2008. We’re all a year older. Unfortunately, I’ve picked a bad couple of weeks to start this again. The charts are still dominated by Michael Jackson. Sigh. You’d think he’d died or something.

Therefore, I’ll start this whole debacle with a “randomly” picked album. I say randomly, I actually mean “I wanted to see if all of the tracks are similar to the first. For you see, the album in question is…

La Roux – La Roux

Great. Nothing like a self-titled album to get us underway. I wonder if they named themselves after the late Danny La Roux? (You know that’s not how you spell his/her name – Ed) Oh, shut up…

(presses play)

01. In For the Kill

Played heavily on the radio. I never listen to the radio for more than 15 minutes per day, so if I think it’s heavily played, I can’t begin to imagine how many other times it’s played. I quite like this one, and it’s the only one of theirs I know. The vocals are particularly annoying, but distinctive. The “OoooooOoooooooooOOooOOOOooOoo” bit near the end has just made my ears bleed.

02. Tigerlily

The vocals aren’t as annoying as the first song, I’ll give it that. Near the end, there’ some bloke who sounds like the bloke out of “Barbie Girl” by Aqua.

03. Quicksand

I’ve decided that, even after 2 songs that I’m not going to be overly keen on this album. I’m sure I knocked up something similar to this track back when I was 15 on OctaMED. Actually, I didn’t think this track was too bad until the OoooooooOOoooooooOoo’s kicked in again.

04. Bulletproof

Intro reminds me of “Breath of Life” by Erasure. Chorus reminds of the same song. And it’s not bad. I’d probably play that one again.

05. Colourless Colour

According to Wikipedia, the singer is the daughter of that woman off The Bill, Trudie Goodwin. You know the one. The one that was in it for ever. Oh, right, back to the song. Er, I’m not overly keen on this one. Next!

06. I’m not your Toy

Oh, now I definitely did the introduction for this one in OctaMED. Actually, on closer inspection, it sounds more like SID music, something a C64 would produce. According to Wikipedia again, this is going to be the next song from the album.

07. Cover Your Eyes

The longest song on the album, and the slowest so far. Reminds me of something that Yazoo would have done back in the day. this is definitely on the “Play again” list. I’ve noticed that the majority of the songs have poor endings. And, although I quite liked this one, the ending suffered the same fate.

08. As If By Magic

Once again, a very 80s sound. Sounds a bit like a song I can’t think of. Possibly “King in a Catholic Style” by China Crisis. I’ve just head a line that would have made me laugh beer though my nose, assuming I was drinking beer at the time… “It’s not so tragic if I don’t look down”. Story of my life, that.

09. Fascination

That intro couldn’t be any more Erasure if it tried. A bit repetitive, but at least it (sort of) finished properly.

10. Reflections Are Protection

Remember “The Lowdown”, some type of documentary show for kids that was on the telly as I was growing up? No? well, you probably won’t care that this song reminds me of the theme tune from that. Slightly. It’s certainly “heavier” than the rest of them.

11. Armour Love

Hmm. Another slowish one, but not in a good way. This one is particularly dire, and certainly the weakest one on the album. It’s a bit of a crap way to end an otherwise acceptable collection of songs. Oh, and the ending on this one is diabolical. It sounds as if they just press stop on the synths, but keep one going for just a few seconds longer after that. A poor end.

And that’s your lot, minus the bonus tracks which I can’t be arsed playing. Overall, it’s not bad. Couple of good tracks, plenty of tracks which would set the “meh” meter off, and one stinker. I’d much rather just stick the radio on and listen to the good tracks which have all been released as singles anyway.

Gahhhh. Gutted.

Following on from the earlier post today, I have returned back from the flea market, with plenty of records and CDs. Unfortunately, it is a bittersweet moment.

My first stop was to buy some singles from a stall I’d previously visited several weeks ago, and picked up a shit-load of really good singles (or, as most other people who know my music taste would put it, a good load of really shit singles). I was hoping that this time I’d be able to repeat this.

Indeed, he had a couple of boxes of singles on display. Some older ones, which appeared in good condition. Hurrah!

I’d picked up 8 for the measly sum of £2, and headed off in the general direction of Eric’s stall. Whilst flipping through the CDs, some stranger asks me a question, after noticing the wad of singles in my hand…

“Did you get those from that stall over there?”, he says, pointing in the direction of the stall over yonder…
I answered affirmatively.
“Oh, because when I looked at them, every single one had a great big gouge in them…”
My heart sank.
“Oh, well there ones ‘looked’ OK”, I replied, whilst contemplating the fact that I could very well have 8 pieces of completely worthless plastic in my grubby little mitts.

I purchased a couple of CDs from Eric’s stall. For those who care, they were “Set The Mood” by David Jordan, “Unplugged” by The Corrs, and “Purple Rain” by Prince.

At this point, I went to check my vinyl. Indeed, my vinyl was ruined. In fact, this one was so deeply sctarched that it actually cracked the record…

So, I’m a bit gutted at the minute. Every single one had some type of purposely made scratch. I’m more gutted at the fact that someone purposely destroyed a whole collection of records for no logical reason. I could have taken them back, but for £2, it wasn’t worth the hassle, and I probably should have looked a bit more clearly than what I did.

Every cloud has a silver lining, however, and I suppose I could use the sleeves (which, were all, except one, generic or company sleeves) to replace some of the more “crumbling” sleeves which house some of my records.

So, with that disappointment confirmed, I headed off to what looked like a new stall. Some guy who I hadn’t seen there before had several large boxes of CDs. Now, on initial inspection, the CDs were garbage. Hundreds of worthless CD-ROMs. My favourite had to be the “interactive guide to weeding”. However, underneath the crust were some actual music CDs, and some good ones at that.

Now, you may remember, that back in September last year, I mentioned that if I was ever listening to a song on my phone (which I do every time I’m at the flea market), and it appeared in the collection of records / CDs I was browsing at the time, then I’d buy it. In fact, that was an almost exact copy and paste from that posting).

This time, I just happened to be listening to “You Got It” by Roy Orbison. One of the first CDs I picked up just happened to have this track on it. The album was “Smash Hits Party ’89″. It suddenly occured to me that I actually have this album on cassette. It was given to me by Narbi Price when we were mere children. I still have those tapes, though no longer have any method of playing them, so it was nice to be able to upgrade them to a format I can still play.

Also “upgraded” was my copy of “Chorus” by Erasure. A song that will always remind me of our annual holidays to Sandy Bay, a little caravan site just south of Newbiggin-By-The-Sea. Chad used to call it “Sandroid Bay”. Overall I paid £3 for 9 CDs, and I even managed to sneak a Michael Bolton one in there, because I do, unfortunately like one of his songs. ONE of his songs. Just one. Uno. Ein. I hope I can’t make that any more clearer. Well, OK, I like two of them, but that’s as far as I’m going.

Moving on very swiftly, before I admit to liking three Michael Bolton songs, I’ll just recap on something I talked about the other day. Sunburn. Yes, after last Wednesday’s day out, I ended up with severe sunburn, which caused much amusement “in the office”. Unfortunatelt, it did leave me looking like some type of alien creature for a few days this week…

The satisfaction of being able to peel great big chunks of skin from my forehead has thankfully allowed me to look a little more human. Now, I have to get a few hours sleep before I return to hell…

Everyone has a favourite CD. A favourite piece of plastic which life would feel so different if it hadn’t existed. My particular favourite album is an upbeat little number by Bruce Hornsby And The Range, entitled “The Way It Is”. Of course, the title track is one of my favourites, as any fool reading this website will know.

However, as I originally had this album on one of those odd things called a “Cassette tape”, in order to get to the good stuff, you had to listen to the rest of the tracks, and eventually, they became as much an integral part of my musical life as the afore mentioned 4 minutes and 57 seconds.

Whilst Chris and I were listening to the CD, and discussing the front cover of the CD, and the significance of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, I headed to the fridge.

On my way back from the kitchen, Chris said “Is that supposed to be spelled like that?”

I took one look at the back cover of the CD box, and instantly burst out in a fit of laughter…

Yes, that is a typo. Sklyline indeed. I have, in the past, made fun of obscure typographical errors, and I was truly amazed that after at least 10 years of owning this particular CD, I had never spotted such a glaring error.

And no, it’s not just down to one pressing. I have two. B-5734 A on one disk (the original), and B-5734 C on one I bought several years later. Both of these have the exact same typo. And it IS a typo, as the disk lists it as “Skyline”, and so do the lyrics on the inside booklet.

It’s one of those things I’ve been thinking of all day. In fact, I was even in Netto, staring at the Twirls at the counter, and thinking “Hey, my favourite CD cover has a glaring typo on it”. Unfortunately, my mind soon changed to the fact that if I’d decided to get a 9p carrier bag instead of a 3p carrier bag, I’d have been entitled to 2 doggy stickers.

And, before any Bruce Hornsby fans comment on my typing and spelling erors, do I look like I work for RCA?