Migraine

Wednesday didn't happen. I had a migraine. Twenty years ago I got these once very couple of months. This is the first one I've had in two years. So I cope. I struggle through. But it's still really unpleasant. And the day after I feel how I imagine someone would do coming down from a prolonged drugs trip - all over the place. And probably discombobulated.

Like all migraine sufferers, you probably would want to ask me about it. Here are my Frequently Given Answers.

A. Eyesight mainly. No sickness, but real photo sensitivity, and in bad ones, tunnel vision too.

A. If I act quickly, 24-36 hours. If I struggle on it can be three days.

A. Nothing specific. When I got a lot I tried cutting out wine, cheese, chocolate etc - it made no difference. I think it may be stress.

A. I need to be in a darkened room, and I need to sleep. This time I slept for 27 hours out of 33. Eating, reading etc are not on the agenda.

A. I use Immigran, and strong painkillers. Migralev does nothing to help me but makes me feel sick. To be honest, I think nothing really helps much more than paracetamol.

I hope those helped.

So I've missed a full day, and will spend the next two with extra sleep as I try to recover.  Not a happy camper...

Interval Training

Blog frequency has fallen to (about) alternate days. Sorry about that – I've just got quite a busy life at the moment – loads of kid related stuff to attend (one going into sixth form this year and one has GCSE options, so lots of school meetings) plus work and music.

I read something on the BBC website about High-Intensity Interval Training. Given I am time-poor and really don't enjoy exercising, I am happy to consider anything that offers better results. There is also a danger that gym routines get stale - so you either slack or "your body needs variety or the training doesn't work". And that last phrase highlights that fitness is one of the (many) areas in modern life which has rather too much mumbo jumbo surrounding it. As well as the spam for v1agra type drugs and dating agencies there isn't a day goes past when you get something offering an easy way to change your life through either health or fitness. Just what is a raspberry ketone anyway?

Last night I had my first go at HIIT. The idea is that you exercise as hard as you can for a minute, then rest a minute and repeat for the desired time (or until dead). The hardest I can exercise really isn't that hard, and after five repeats I had to drop to two minute breaks and then three. This is fine - apparently I can build up from there. The fat-burning benefits of this then continue for up to 12 hours afterwards though I do not know why.

And how did it feel? At one point I genuinely thought I might be sick if I carried on. Which is good, apparently. But other than that - pretty good. Right now I am putting that down to variety, but I shall give it another go on Wednesday and see how we get on.

That's it for today. Voxcetera tonight so likely no blog.

Fractal music

I remember someone telling me about fractals and explaining using a coastline. If you only have a very long ruler - say 50 kilometres - (OK bear with me) then as you measure, all the bits less than that - like say Anglesey - get lost as noise. Take it down to a five km ruler, and suddenly you can measure a little bit more, and the distance increases as a result.

Then go down to 500m - more again, and so it goes. Your measurement is longer, because eventually you are twisting and turning round every separate grain of sand. Until you get down to the Planck length - at which point - something else happens I think. (Actually you can't find rulers measuring 10 to the power -35 metre lengths, so I am not worrying about it.)

Where on earth am I going here? Music. I was at a rehearsal this afternoon for an audition for a big classical piece. And the audition pieces are about as clichéd as you can get. O Fortuna (the creepy bit from the Omen), the Hallelujah Chorus, and Zadok the Priest (pretty much the Champions League theme but without the Continental Tyres bit).

Three pieces that are basically strings of note, largely in one key, and with minimal dynamic subtlety - they are either LOUD or quiet and nothing in between. And at one level, we got them pretty good. They started at the same place, and ended together etc. But the tricky little runs that Handel apparently loved were often just a sort of smear from the start to the end. So at one level the piece was fine, but when it got into details it really was the 50 km ruler effect.

Now, everyone's hearing is not the same., but I recall seeing something about the shortest musical time that can be perceived - known as a Tatum (after Art Tatum). And there must be a division of pitch that at least the average person cannot tell the difference between. Again I recall watching a program which talked about how concert pitch had varied across the years - and it played some examples which I thought were distinct. The person listening with me however needed to get pretty much to A flat before she heard a difference. That's I think about 25Hz different - where as I could hear a difference of 2 or 3Hz (or thought I could). [Plus when really close there's a beat effect that helps, so perhaps I couldn't really hear it.]

And our tempered scale, which allows us to play every piece without retuning the piano in between, makes sacrifices. Some intervals are effectively bashed into shape with a big hammer to fit where they belong. So in some keys the true note really feels some way off the note the piano gives you. (If you are a non-musician you will have lost this two paragraphs ago - sorry - I'll write about something else tomorrow.)

But I am guessing computers could play things with such tight intervals and such short times that we can't spot the difference. After all, the Hertz is just a measure of frequency - the number per second. A note doesn't have to be precisely an integer number of Hertz in frequency - so it can have an infinitely long decimal string. And likewise time is thought to be continuous (there's some dissent about a thing called a chronon but that's not viewed as sound science right now). So a note can be shorter, and shorter still.

Yep - the set of people following this blog has now been reduced to musical mathematicians. Sorry!

So to a sentient computer listening to our music, even the finest tuning and timing that a human can produce could be 'off' by 'miles'.

So I need to be a bit more forgiving - at some level, literally nobody is perfect.

Benefits Street

I ran out of time to blog yesterday. Work is pretty full on at the moment (always in fact). Then, by the time I took boy 2 swimming, and went to the gym, and had a bath, the time had gone.

At least my busy evening means I don’t need an excuse for not watching Benefits Street. Not that watching a programme is a prerequisite to criticising it – remember the outrage over Brass Eye? So, either the people in this programme are scum abusing the benefits system, or people struggling to make ends meet, having been let down by education and the post-industrial UK. Apparently. I’m guessing it falls into the 99% of life that is ‘much more complicated than that’.

I am acutely aware that I had a very safe and supportive environment in which to grow up. I had parents who were generally there, fed me, provided (both buying and through the library) all the books I could want, and encouraged me to ask questions and find things out.

I went to the local comprehensive, but it wasn’t exactly St Stabby’s Academy for the Criminally Deranged. Yes, there were kids with issues but not so many as to disrupt learning (though they got close in Mrs Fisher’s English lessons). And kids who wanted to learn may have had some name-calling on (rare) occasions, but were left to get on with it.

And I was in the last year which had no university student loans at all. My education was provided free to me (grant and parental contribution). Have I paid that back in extra tax since? Definitely. Did I take it for granted at the time? Sure did. But I am now aware of what a huge privilege that was.

My (admittedly somewhat rambling) point though is that the world I grew up in gives me no valid frame of reference from which to analyse Benefits Street. And that is likely to be the same for most of us. The world of the cheat and the world of the struggler are equally far from me. And I don’t really want the television to tell me how to feel about them. (Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe got this spot on – as usual). It’s the equivalent of the Two Minutes’ Hate.

What with government spin, surveillance, prolefeed, and the Lottery, Orwell seems ever closer. Though in my darker moments I do wonder whether his should be congratulated for his prescience, or seen as the writer of the instruction manual that everyone since has copied.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

I woke up this morning (du nu nu nu NUH) .

No seriously, today has been one of those days where everything has been an effort. To tell you how lazy I have been, I had to plug the I-Pad in to charge up half an hour ago. Yes, without any movies or music, I drained an I-Pad battery in a day. I guess there are some days when you need to have a bit of a recharge yourself, and for me, this must have been one of them.

I've drunk lots of hot drinks, listened to some music - today's soundtrack is Loss by Mull Historical Society - charmingly eccentric, tried to learn some Britten (but I don't think it went in) read about half a book, watched some snooker, and talked to my kids.

Do you have children, dear reader? If you do, then (unless they are creatures born in the 2010s) you will know how they change so much, and your relationship changes with them. In our fathers' age, two of mine would now be working - and the third one only a year off. They would have had many of the responsibilities of adulthood, though I suspect fewer of the privileges. And, gradually, without that Damascene, donkey-barbecuing moment being apparent, they have turned into adults in many ways.

I never really expected this. OK, I expected it in one sense. But it did not occur to me that we could be talking about snooker, football, holidays etc, on a completely adult basis. And it's really lovely that we can. I am sure that arguments lie ahead (one very soon if the dishwasher hasn't been attended to by the time I finish this post) and their umbilical links of the two younger ones to my wallet remain as strong as ever, but it is a privilege for all of us to spend the day sitting in our dressing gowns and shooting the breeze.

Next week looks a pretty normal one for me - largely office-based, nothing exciting to do or expected, but if anything does happen, I'll be sure to let you know.

Language - good, bad and foreign

The bliss of a weekend and a change of routine.

Today - some offspring delivery, and an early visit to the gym (always amazes me that they don't have paramedics on standby for spin-classes - looks like a short-cut to Heart Attack City). Since then, some music, some snooker and a bit of reading. Maybe a little potter down to the town in a few minutes, and then dinner and either more of a book, or a film. Nice and relaxing.

I'm reading a rather odd, and in places downright filthy novel called Pompey, by Jonathan Meades. He of the arty shots, acerbic wit and architectural pronouncements. A man with a fabulous vocabulary (and I love to learn new words) - and if there isn't an appropriate word he invents it. Words for today - "kine" - an archaic for cows - and for a car creeping round a corner a new verb to "tiptyre". The vocabulary, and indeed the sentence structure means this is a book I have to concentrate to read, but it is repaying the effort right now.  I'm rather pleased that whilst I have needed a dictionary for quite a lot of the English, I am so far coping fine with the French.

Which leads me to today's thought - I want to do more with languages. We Brits tend to assume we don't need them (usually correctly) and I suspect within my lifetime that computers will provide translation of 95% of what we need on the fly. But the understanding of another culture relies on its language - A friend of mine who has more languages than -  well than I do anyway - says that when he thinks in English it works differently to thinking in German - and I'd like to experience that. I haven't really spoken French since O Level - German since a couple of years later. I can manage pretty reasonable Welsh (yes, really) and "two beers" level Spanish. So, I am going to see what I can get in the way of free learning stuff on the I-Pad, and see if this can be another thing to enliven train journeys.

I will let you know how I get on. Right - walk time!

How should we spend £50 billion?

I did the Building an Ark line a couple of weeks ago, which is a pity, because today would have worked just as well for it.

The flooding down towards Brighton really mucked my day up as two of my three London meetings this morning got pulled because people were staying towards the South Coast. (Kudos to the guy who still made it despite having the furthest to come - who found a route to London from Worthing via Horsham, and other odd places, like Timbuktu or something.)

I didn't know until today that there is a plan to build a second main rail line to Brighton – known imaginatively as BML2*. I don’t do the Brighton journey often, but it is usually – to coin one of my dad’s phrases “hoaching ”. This is a plan that would reopen track that Dr Beeching took away and looks quite sensible.

Like many people, I am struggling with the £50 billion cost of HS2 for getting to Birmingham twenty minutes quicker - whatever Kojak thought. [Inset your own joke about how much you would pay not to go to Birmingham at all here.] And I see why all possible governments want to spend money outside the South East where they can. But it does feel like there are some great opportunities like this – more local projects which would relieve congestion, or open up whole new public transport options.

For example, there have been plans for years to extend the Croydon Tramlink, which have been stalled due to money. And yet this is a system that works – come rain or snow. Not admittedly come wholesale arson in Croydon in the 2011 riots but nothing’s perfect. And it allows people to get to and from otherwise very disconnected places.

So, dear reader, let me know. We have £50bn to spend on transport. Let me have your bids.

* The BML2 website also has a page called “Why avoid East Croydon”. Hmmmm, how long have you got?

Marking Time

A couple of nearly blog free days - busy with work and some IT issues.

So just to let you know I en't dead, normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Routine

I may be starting to cope better with the 5:2 diet - sleep seems to be normalising and I haven't felt any more hungry today than I usually would. This is good as I'd been starting to feel this wouldn't work for me.

Overall, in fact, the year seems to be becoming normal - or in other words I'm getting back into a routine. So, I now need to get back and revisit what I want to do with my time this year. I can't say blogging is routine yet - I'm still having to force myself to find time. But I am determined to continue with it, even if certain blogs (this one) aren't going to be the most enlightening.

What isn't normal yet is that I am struggling to 'get into' work in the way I would like. I am having to force myself to do things. Luckily there is loads to do, but I've yet to build up any enthusiasm for doing it.

So what you might think? Why does that matter? Well, in part, I may be more likely to do things better if I am enjoying them - though this is arguable. But without doubt, I need to enjoy work - it takes too long out of my life to only be a slog. Seven days into the year, this doesn't worry me yet. It usually takes a couple of days to get into it. But I am hoping to see a shift by the end of this week.

That's it for know. Off to rehearse Mozart's Requiem.

How far has this society fallen, Mr Wonga?

So, back to the 5:2 diet today. And I managed to go to the gym. But, god, I'm tired now. Really wanted to watch the programme about the Bank of Dave guy and payday loans on C4, but I'll have to catch it up tomorrow.

I think the presence on these companies, and the glorified pawn shops on the high street show how far down this country is. Yes, I'm pleased people have an alternative to loan sharks, and that someone with no cooker can get a loan for a new one to feed their family. (We used to have something called the social fund that did that.) But not at two-fucking-thousand percent APR. I'm quite a small 'l' liberal; I don't like banning stuff. But I have to say, any loan that costs half as much again per year to pay off, let alone twenty times, should be prohibited as usurious. Easy as that.

Then we can get on with being a proper human society and getting rid of that kind of poverty.

I've yet to see a politician who admits that we are going to have to pay more tax in this country, but if we are ever to balance the books we will. But whilst we may differ over Trident, or the probably unaffordable triple-lock on pensions, lifting people out of poverty must be the easiest area for us to agree on.

Crying

No post yesterday - I was having too much fun on my vocal weekend away with Voxcetera, up near Milton Keynes. When we took a break from socialising at about midnight and went out for a walk, it was a change to be able to see the stars - it's easy to forget how much light pollution there is in London.

But I'm sort of back in the real word now - home to do ironing, accounts etc, before being back to work tomorrow. Oh well.

I have always found music a very strong emotional trigger. There are still tracks or albums that I associate with a specific period of my life, and I can't listen to that music without bring back all those feelings, good or bad. Picking one at random - I listened to the album "April Moon " by Sam Brown (now singer with Jool's Holland's big band) a lot while revising for my finals - and if I put it on now I know I would be back in  that room.

And creating music is even more emotional. So having spent time over three days with some beautiful music (Esenvalds' "Long Road" here being an example - this version is a little recorder-heavy for my taste but the piece still stands listening), I've certainly been emotionally fragile today. How do I know? Because I started crying whilst doing the ironing. I was listening to something slightly soppy (not saying specifically - a bit too Country to own up to)  and out came the tears.

Is this a normal thing? I've always done it - when I've been emotional or tired so I see it as perfectly ordinary. But you know how blokes are - we don't really discuss emotions. So do others of you do this? Or are you all now whistling and edging slowly away from me?

I'm not getting into the clichéd "men should be more in touch with their feelings rubbish". Most men I know would get emotional about the big things in life - births deaths and marriages etc. (And look how emotional some blokes at a London football match got last week when a player chose to remind them of the score.) I'm specifically talking about irrelevant stuff. When was the last time a film, or a picture, or a sunset, moved any of you to tears?

Welcome to Milton Keynes

.... Is what someone might say if I ever get there tonight. I am stuck on a train somewhere at the back of the monument to 21st century Mammon that is Westfield. The place where the trains go from third rail to overhead. And my train to MK is now only going as far as Watford Junction.

Piss ups and breweries come to mind. 

Anyway, all I am trying to do here is see if I can post a blog using the Blogger app. If so, some more relevant content may follow later or tomorrow.

Perchance to Dream

Miserably failed to post a blog yesterday. In fairness I have slept very little the last three nights, and I don't know why. Don't think there is anything on my mind.

I have these episodes about once a year - where for a week or two I can only get about 3 hours a night. Usually no reason, and they go as quickly as they come. As I get older I find it harder to deal with them though - I feel like death warmed up today. This is a pity because I am off this evening for a weekend of singing with Voxcetera - doing the groundwork for our concert on 20th March at St Sepulchre. I will get a lot more out of it if I am not yawning through it.

Plus got invited to do quite a bit of other singing stuff from March through to June yesterday. Have to see if the diary can take it!

Am not going to talk about last night's Question Time - with Dorries and some bloke called Nuttall from UKIP it was always going to be heavy on the irritation front. (I thought @fleetstreetfox was excellent though.) But staying tuned in for This Week only to find that the guest was Katie Hopkins was just too much to bear.

So, I will try to blog when mobile later while travelling; if not - well I will write them anyway - may just have to wait until Monday to post. Hope your weekend is as good as mine promises to be.

The Christmas cake is no more

Not sure if doing something twice, other than perhaps crystal meth, could be deemed a habit, but two lunchtimes back at work and two blogs written. Although Blogger does have an IPad App, I’m not confident in getting everything right with it, so I type the text into email, mail it to myself and then correct /format, tag and post on the desktop machine. At the weekend I shall be away from a computer for 48 hours so will be forced into posting direct – let’s see how it goes.

Yesterday I was both quasi-jet lagged (going from getting up about 9am and going to bed past midnight to having to be up at 6:30) and on day one of my 5:2 eating plan (not using the ‘D’ word). Result was that by about 7:30 I was really lacking in energy. This may need a rethink – how am I going to manage the gym and not eating? Obvious answer is to shift the two days to non-gym, so likely Tuesday and Thursday. But that feels unbalanced. My immediate concern with the 5:2 would be that I'd just go crazy on the next day and eat twice as much. It's early, but at the moment the desire to get a benefit in return for yesterday's hunger is holding sway.

Still, hot bath, in bed by 10, asleep not to long after, and a good night’s rest, followed by the last (small) piece of Christmas cake for breakfast, and I feel much brighter today. And that’s just as well, because I have my first Voxcetera rehearsal of the year tonight. We are starting to work for our March concert – the Mozart Requiem, Britten’s AMDG, Purcell and Essenvalds (no – I haven’t either). Can’t wait.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

I’m sure many of you had a similar experience this morning when the alarm went off at 6:30 or similar. Can it really be this dark/cold and windy? Oh yes.

I was pleased that my train was only a couple of minutes late, and reasonably quiet – the posh schools either had an inset or a late start.

Today is apparently Blue Monday - the most miserable of the year (copyright all newspapers) as people face up to the never-ending bleakness of January and being skint etc. I was actually quite looking forward to today – my first in work since 20^th December, so I've had the same holiday as most school kids. And I feel much refreshed for it, but did feel that I was starting to drift. Yes I was making it to the gym etc, but I probably got to diminishing returns by about New Years Day. So this morning (I write this in a snatched early lunch-break) has been about trying to figure out what is urgent and what is important, and how I should be spending my time over the next couple of weeks. I have that horrible feeling that there is something really urgent that I should be doing but haven’t remembered.

Oh well, it will probably occur to me this afternoon.

Elsewhere, I rather enjoyed Sherlock last night – my only criticism after last week’s trains farce being that I wish Benedict could have mimed playing the violin a bit better – using perhaps two strings and a little hand movement. But a nice episode that wandered seemingly aimlessly, before coalescing around a rather nifty plot. The programme was called “The Sign of Three”. There is a Holmes short called “The Sign of Four” which I haven’t read for years, but the name Sholto and killing at a (temporal) distance rang a bell – not sure much else did, but correct me if I am wrong. (I have tried to write this obscurely enough to avoid spoilers.)

And today is my first day of 5:2 dieting – after so many friends and work colleagues have extolled it. I am skeptical (of course) – as much of my willpower as anything else. I eat healthily anyway, but like Goldie the Blue Peter dog, do not know when to stop.

I won’t be writing a blow-by-blow diet blog but will let you know how it is (and I am) shaping up as we progress. 

I'm building an ark

The rain continues, and B&Q has reported a run on gopher wood. Also, whilst we do have two gerbils, the fact that we only have two gerbils suggests they are of the same sex. And what good is a future world populated only by gerbils anyway. We would need a smaller ark though, I guess.

I've left lots of return to work (and return to school) stuff until the last minute, and I now have to go out to sort out train tickets, collection of clothes from dry cleaners and first trip to charity shop with clothes (result of research- have gone with Salvation Army - overly and overtly Christian, but do a great job and I'm a sucker for silver bands and Guys 'n' Dolls).

So today's blog is being composed whilst waiting for a break in the clouds.

I can heartily recommend Martin Stephenson & the Daintees' 1990 album Salutation Road which is today's blogging soundtrack.  I don't know how to describe his music style - there are elements of soul, blues and gospel in there but also something definitively of the North East of England. It's like a less pretentious Prefab Sprout. (Don't get me wrong - I do love Paddy McAloon, but there are times when he tries very hard.)

Last night, I finished reading the last (so far) of the Game of Thrones books. I started these about six months ago as airport reading and, like other writing of this genre, it has at times been close to unputdownable. (Sorry, spellcheck - as far as I am concerned unputdownable is a real word.) Not watched much of the TV series, which I think is somewhat more, shall we say, graphic, but I like the way the books are written - with each chapter written from the point of view of a different character. They drift in and out of the story as events come to pass. So, whilst most of us think - "Ewww - fantasy" it isn't that bad. I do wish he'd stop killing off all the characters I feel any attachment to though.

As with many series, the books have got longer and more complex as they have gone on - so book six may prove to be a 2,000 page behemoth which a good editor could have got down to 500 pages*, but we will have to wait and see.

Anyway, a dove bearing an olive branch is tapping on my study window, so it's time to don the coat and hit Balham. Until tomorrow dear blog!

UPDATE: it has rightly been pointed out that the series of books is of course "A Song of Ice and Fire" of which "A Game of Thrones" is book one. Happy to correct this.


*Yes JK Rowling, I am thinking of you as I write this.

On consumerism

In the post-festivity and pre-work lull of the last couple of days, I had my normal "spring" clean (well the weather is mild right now).

Having noticed that drawers are getting harder to close and my wardrobe is so full it's hard to get stuff out, I thought I would change tack this year. Normally I chuck out all the stuff that is too old or tatty to wear. This is usually not very much - maybe one bag-for-life's worth for a charity shop, and one for the rag bin. Groaning rails evidence that my clothing input is much greater than this.

So I went a bit further - what haven't I worn, and just can't see myself wearing? What is a bit tatty but. in my normal view would do for a while longer? What did I buy - in a sale or online usually - wear once (if that) and thought nope, but is too good to throw out?

The result: Still only one bag that is fit for the recycling/rag bin. But a minor mountain of decent stuff that I am not going to wear. Judging on the space I now have reclaimed, about two foot of hanging rail and one 3 foot wide drawer's worth. And I think I probably still have too much, but didn't want to be too ruthless yet.

This makes me feel really quite uneasy. I don't see myself as a big shopper, and yet over the years I have obviously bought so much stuff that I haven't needed. This amounts to a huge waste of resources - and cash - though I feel worse about the environmental aspects of all this right now.

So, a new regime begins today. No new clothes are to be bought without a demonstrable need. Something has to fall apart before I can consider a replacement, and even then, particularly when it comes to shirts etc., I should wait. In fact, waiting is the key. I think that a month or two needs to pass to give the item a decent burial and if I am finding myself short of stuff I will buy.

As my cull came from a desire to free up space, I know there is more I could do, but with much less effect. I think I wear a tie about once a month, but I have about 30. Well - they don't go off, and I used to wear one five days a week. So that could come down. Something for a cold February evening.

Now I have a clothing pile to go to charity, I need to figure out which of the local shops to take it to. The nearest and most convenient is one for a local Steiner School. I don't know much about their education ideas, but Steiner himself had some unusual beliefs, which are as hard to swallow as they are to say - see Anthroposophy here. And he had the charming idea that plants grow better according to the phase of the moon when you plant them. Looks like a duck, sounds like a duck? Yes - it's probably a quack of some variety.

Which got me thinking, rather than viewing a charity shop as a way to dump my decent older clothes, I should be favouring the one(s) that I agree the most with. Oh dear, that means the pile of clothes is going to have to stay there for a while until I do some research.

No Accounting for Taste

I am delighted by my decision to take a full two weeks off work at Christmas time this year. Looking in a leisurely fashion at the articles on line about "what you have missed over the holidays" when I don't have to get back on the train until Monday has proved as much of a boost as the holiday itself.

But reality and normality do have to bite at some stage, and this morning's little nip was sitting down to straighten out my accounts for the last days of 2013. Ouch - I spent a lot of money in December. None of it on me (except for a couple of books and a new pair of headphones for a tenner) but a lot of cash swam out the door in the run up to Christmas.

Anyone who knows me will gather that I am quite picky about tracking these things - I've kept proper accounts for my life since about 1995 - originally through MS Money (a great program - why did they discontinue it?) but latterly through spreadsheets. I usually sit down on a Sunday morning, sort out any bills that need to be paid, and check account balances etc. Bank statements and credit card bills get filed away and the next week can safely begin.

Writing this down makes it seem slightly weird behaviour - mildly OCD'ish I guess. But its roots are from being a student and (genuinely) forgetting about cheques written and bills due and spending the money twice.

By the way - I come from a time when there were no student loans. Tuition was free and there was a grant / and or parental contribution for maintenance. Everyone moaned about how much the value of the grant had been eroded, and it would have been hard to live on the grant alone. (Well, not hard to live - hard to live as a student would want to.) But I graduated with a modest amount of overdraft debt. About £600 I think. Even with inflation, that is some way short of £27,000 for tuition alone.

Then, on joining the working world, I needed stuff - like suits and shiny shoes, and flat deposits. And I wanted stuff as a reward for being a working man - like a car (1982 Ford Escort 1.3L in canary yellow since you ask) and a synthesiser.

Easy, I thought. Get a loan, deal with the OD and get the cash for the car etc. My bank was delighted to lend it to me.

Then I wanted (not needed) more stuff (a Commodore Amiga to link to the synthesiser), and was starting to want to go out and spend cash on just going out (student living was all about cheap beer, and cheap clubs - not so much of this dressing up and spending monstrous amounts on drinks with umbrellas*). So I started getting into a bit of debt at the end of the month, then the middle, and then got to that point where I was in the black for about two days when I was paid.

Easy I thought (again). Rework the loan, borrow some more and I'll be fine. So I went to see the bank (Midland Bank in Ipswich). And I got to see the manager, who much to my surprise said "No". I remember the conversation even today. "You can't borrow your way out of trouble" she said. "You need to learn to budget and live within it". And then she said that "you can find other people who will lend you money, but you need to learn to save up for things".

And I listened. And I had about three months where I spent very little and straightened myself out. And started to understand where my money went, and what I could and couldn't control.

Result: I learned to budget, and avoided a debt trap that so many others have fallen into, almost solely because of a bank manager with a more old-fashioned attitude to lending. I can't imagine her career went terribly well in the lending-target-driven 1990s and 2000s. But she helped me to learn a healthy and prudent attitude to money. And if my accounts-driven partial OCD comes with that, it feels a reasonable price to pay.


* I never actually drank any drinks with umbrellas OK? Allow me some artistic licence here.

The year just gone

Given that the idea of blogging for the year is in itself clichéd, I am going to maintain the cliché level by reviewing last year.

This is purely from my perspective of course. I recognise it wasn’t a very good year for people in countless areas of the world, or for people forced out of their homes by the bedroom tax. And, moving a little closer to home, I am now of an age where a number of friends’ parents are dying.

Compared to any of these people’s situation the word to sum up my year is probably “trivial”. But it’s my year, and so that’s what I am writing about.

Overall I had a pretty good year in 2013. Not everything in my life is great, by any means, but generally I look back on the year with some satisfaction, and I think I am in a much better place now than I was a year ago.

Music

Music is important to me, increasingly so each year, and I’ll write about why in a future blog.

Totting it up, and I might well have missed something, I sang in twelve concerts in 2013. I think this amounts to about 40,000 people. Admittedly, playing the Albert Hall seven times (three different shows) amounts to 95% of this, but it’s still an impressive number.  I also, for the first time, did some proper big band gigs – alone in front of an audience with only seventeen fabulously talented instrumentalists. When they kick into gear six feet behind you, the sound is incredible.

By no means the biggest gig of the year, but the one I am proudest of, was with the Voxcetera Chamber Choir. Looking for further challenge I joined this fabulous group of singers in September and our Christmas concert was an incredibly special event for me.

Life and Health

After years of trying, I think I’ve finally got into the habit of going to the gym. Not sure I am doing exactly the right stuff when I am there, but it’s a step in the right direction. There’s a new and cheap gym opening opposite work in a month’s time, so I am hoping this will allow me to continue to get healthier.

Alcohol (the cause of - and solution to - all life’s problems – Homer J Simpson) and I have a bit of a chequered history, worthy of its own blog, but from a long-term perspective, my decisions here have definitely been the most beneficial.

On other life matters – I will only quote Tracey Thorn (and yes – I know Danny Whitten wrote it). Ho hum.

Holidays

I took my kids away for a big holiday for the first (and, given their ages, increasing self-reliance, and my bank balance, probably last) time. Orlando probably isn’t my dream destination, but they loved it, and I enjoyed two weeks with them, with no greater pressures than deciding what and where to eat that night. Plus I got to see the Space Shuttle!!!!!

As the boys reach adulthood, I don’t think I love them any differently, but we relate to each other now as adults, and that’s a big plus for me.

The other benefit of the holiday was that I got to read lots of…..

Books

I used to read a huge amount. In terms of amount but also breadth of stuff. And over the years it really tailed off. Lack of time, tiredness – lots of things played a part. Two weeks of fairly solid reading reminded me of what I have missed, and I have been busy catching up ever since. There is so much cheap stuff available on the Kindle store.

Work

A really busy year. I’ve vowed this isn’t a blog about work stuff, but that doesn’t stop me from saying that it has been really tough at times – great fun on lots of occasions, and frustrating on others. I do find myself thinking – worrying really, that I’m not sure I can, or want to, go at this pace for too much longer. Partly because I am an overweight middle-aged male, so am entering prime heart attack territory, but mostly because there is so much more I want to do with my life, and I need the time and energy to do it.

So I don’t foresee any changes right now, but am going to start thinking about what else I could do to pay the bills and make me a little less time-poor.

Friends

I don’t have lots and lots of friends. I don’t want lots and lots of friends either. But I do have some very good friends, and (cliche-ometer to max) they really are what life is about. You know who you are - thank you.