It’s a grey misty morning but pleasantly mild for a change and I’m in the process of recovering from yet another bout of really bad toothache. The dentist has put me on a course of extra strong antibiotics so that should sort things out. I am pleased to announce that I am now, at last, a non-smoker! Not a giver upper you understand, ‘giving up’ implies a temporary hiatus in an activity that one would rather continue to pursue, so I am officially a ‘NON SMOKER’ make no mistake.
I’m waiting for some appropriate lighting conditions to facilitate another round of local photography. I keep noticing little things (details) that I think are worth recording. My locality is full of trivial curiosities if one is open to such things, items like vintage 1960s bus stop signs nestling in hedges and those rather stylish 1960s design municipal bins inside a wooden frame. We did have an original one with the red bucket inside on a neat grass verge. I know it sounds trivial but I can make something of these things with photography and I think details like this are interesting to record for posterity.
This is going to get super geeky but I also noticed on a recent ride that a run of very old pylons near Bollington Cross had disappeared! I took a few snaps of the petite lattice towers about five years ago with a little PAS 2Mpx camera.
These were quite interesting, as they were very old dating back to the earliest days of the national grid infrastructure when the highest system voltage was around 135KV. Judging by the insulators this line was operating at about 30KV and the conductor gauge (which was large for a ‘feeder’ line) suggests a current capacity of around 500 amps which equates to easily enough power for a village the size of Prestbury but the line headed in the direction of Butley Town.
The cable catcher arms were a common feature on these older pylons where the wire span crossed a road.
Last minute update at 11:02pm, Just listening to last weeks excellent GP show literally at the last minute — well almost. It is the first Brownswood Basement show of 2009, always good for rarities and collectibles and also featuring a tribute to Blue Note with a vintage European psychedelic jazz trip coming up — I’m in heaven.
Roberta Flack “Feel Like Making Love”
Music of the moment includes a classic and much loved oldie from Roberta Flack. Giles just played the “I Can See the Sun in Late December” track off the Feel Like Making Love album from 1974. I had forgotten just how good and original sounding this song was until just now. Loads more obscure 70s deep R&B Jazz goodness to come.
Friday was another moderately eventful day for yours truly. This was my first active visit to the new dentist in Macclesfield, a state of the art practice if ever there was one that seems to be manned by a team of Asian dentists and all with doctorates so I assume I am in good hands. Unfortunately, I did have to have another tooth extracted. This time it was one quite near the front (adjacent to my right canine or eye-tooth) but fortunately, it has not had an adverse effect on my speech and I was more worried about that than anything else at the time. Now of course I have a rather fetchingly roguish gap to the far right (your left) of my smile, the tooth deficiency equivalent of a facial scar no less — how cool! I seem to remember that Tony Wilson had all of the teeth on his left upper jaw missing and it didn’t effect him adversely. I’m glad that it has gone though, my mouth now feels at lot more healthy and I am looking forward to some cosmetic treatment on my remaining good teeth — of which there are still quite a few I hasten to add.
The wait in the dentist’s surgery was probably the most painful thing of all in truth, as they had GMTV on the large LCD TV that was difficult to avoid. A pre-valentines day schmaltz fest for simpletons is probably the only way to describe GMTVs theme for the 13th. God, to think if the Daily Mail lobby got their way all of British media would resemble GMTV! I’m not so sure about Valentines Day this year, it has temporally joined the ranks of those pointless and annoying commercial festivals that I despise such as Halloween.
If Halloween is the commercial celebration of the kind of unscientific naffnes that only makes sense to histrionics with learning difficulties and gives ill mannered kids an excuse to throw eggs at their neighbours front doors. Then Valentines Day is an aid memoir for disingenuous lovers, a green light for creeps and another Christmas for insecure self-centred adoration seekers. Valentines Day actually causes more strife in relationships than it solves apparently and this day sees the largest number of break ups and bust ups than any other day in the year. Some people take this crap far too seriously — bar humbug!
Sometimes I feel that capitalism would not balk at the idea of mapping every event, feeling, and motive in our lives in terms of some stupid ‘day’ for the purchase of thematic trash. Is this all part of the consumer moron conspiracy to turn us into unthinking homogenised fashion victims that need to ‘purchase’ every aspect of our being and can only express self identity and the finer feelings through consumption of product and the giving of ‘gifts’?
On a lighter note, I went for a little local explore and decided to take myself off across a field that leads from London Rd over toward the railway. I have never been down there before, I always thought it was private land but there is indeed a foot path which leads up to a rather large over-bridge crossing the railway. It’s is quite an interesting vantage point and I intend to try a few photos around there soon. Both of the very old ‘pebble concrete’ crossing styles are still in place. These enabled walkers to surmount the old railway fence but freely walking across the main line to London (on a 100MPH stretch) is not advised so they had to build this very elaborate over bridge in the middle of empty fields to satisfy the foot path bylaws. Nobody ever uses it of course.