Musing on music

I can just remember when 45rpm and 33rpm vinyl records replaced the old, heavy and frighteningly fast 78s. I still have my collection of vinyl records but they are consigned to the basement and will probably never get played again. It all seems so much trouble now, to find the record, to take it from its sleeve, dust it, place it on the turntable, clean the stylus, place the stylus onto the run in groove and listen to the clicks and pops before the music begins and more clicks, pops and even jumps during playback.

Vinyl is making a comeback and there are people out there collecting the half century old records that I grew up with. I am pretty sure that mostly my old discs are battered and worn and of no interest to anyone, and that they will inevitably end up in charity shops or landfill sites.

Along came cassette tapes and quantum leaps in technology and soon we were compiling our own selections of music, recorded from our own, or friends LPs or even from the radio. The sound quality was quite acceptable and the tapes did not accumulate more clicks pops and scratches. I have a huge collection of tapes; they are also in the basement.

It was CDs that saw the demise of vinyl. Crystal clear digital sound from small, light plastic discs that were originally said to withstand all sorts of damage without the sound quality being marred. Nobody mentioned the effect of childrens fingerprints.

Then home computers with massive data storage enable us to copy our collections onto hard drives, select songs and play them at the touch of a key. Now there are no fiddly tapes or discs and the CDs have become redundant. I have hundreds of them and rarely play one; soon they will be consigned to the basement.

Now we have Spotify.  For a few pounds a month, I can stream from I don't know where, any music that I want and play it in any room in the house or even on my smart phone or iPad.  There is nothing else to consign to the basement apart from me.

Fortnite

For those of you, who think that the above title is simply yet another spelling error, it isn't. Fortnite is a computer game, and not one that I particularly like.  It has been around now for a couple of years and is a free download that makes it accessible to anyone with the means to play it. It may be free to play but there are in game purchases, which, if you are young and malleable are a vital part of the gaming experience.

I played it once, or attempted to. There are variations in the game but the one I played involved a hundred people parachuting down onto an Island with the aim of killing all the others. There are weapons, and ammunition statues and places to hide, but everything is very fast paced  and so I did not survive more than a few minutes. Your opponents are all real people from all over the world, and you can, if you are so inclined, interact with them by message or by talking to them.

I find it a little worrying.  Oscar is now nine and he is addicted to the game. He is not allowed to play it on school days, but when he is not playing, he watches Youtube videos of others playing it.
Watching him play is educational. His reaction speeds are quite something, and he knows exactly what he is doing. He only talks to his real life friends and their conversations are quite incomprehensible. Recently he has been more interested to the creative mode of the game, building and manipulating the landscape and setting lethal traps. It has a language and culture all of its own and is a huge moneymaker for its makers.

I guess that eventually the obsession will wear thin and the kids will move on to something new; whatever it is we will probably not approve.

Another day

I hope that my announcement yesterday was not too great a disappointment to some people.

In a town and at a time, not far away, indolence had become an art form. Never had there been such a concentration of idleness. There were some that just about kept the town ticking over but the bulk of the population had one purpose in life and that was  to watch TV. There were plenty of jobs that needed doing, but no-one prepared to do them, fruit and vegetables remained unharvested and bottoms of old and young alike, remained un-wiped. Hospitals remained uncleaned, cars were left unwashed, roads unswept and civic gardens un-manicured. Most of the factories had closed and taken their businesses abroad.  It was only when the pubs began to close that people began to even notice, and even then they could not wrench themselves away from their screens. Apathy was rife.

News of the unfilled jobs slowly leaked out and people from places, where if  you were lazy, you died, began to move into the town to do the work that the townsfolk had spurned. It was a slow process but gradually, the town began to improve. Hospitals were cleaned and bottoms were wiped again.  Fruit and vegetables were harvested and local farmers began to look happy with their lot.  Roads were repaired, and cars began to look sparkling new. The Civic gardens became a thing of beauty all over again.  Old abandoned shops reopened with unusual names and new exotic restaurants opened to cater for the exotic appetites of the new and growing influx of people. The town was growing at a steady rate as more and more of the vacant jobs were filled. The old and shabby houses that had long been abandoned were refurbished and inhabited by the families of hard working folk, and still the bulk of the people remained glued to their televisions.

All went along quite well, the TV made sure that the people were kept stupefied, and stupefied they were. They felt informed because they had seen it all on the telly. Everyone was an expert and so the real experts ceased to be listened to and so left the town. They knew who to vote for in elections because the television told them, and they knew that all was well with the world for the same reason.

One day a rather weird fellow arrived in the town. He wore odd clothes and an even stranger grin.  “Just call me Nigel.” he would tell the small crowds that would gather around him in the few pubs that were left. He would buy them drinks and tell them all sorts of outlandish tales and soon became very popular. News of his presence soon spread and people began to tear themselves away from their televisions to listen to him in the hope of being bought a drink.

He was the biggest news that the town had seen in years and before long he was making appearances on local television, ironically dragging more people away from it and towards him. People would find out which pub he was going to be in and they would flock to it. Pub managers soon began offering him appearance money as well as free beer. His band of followers grew and grew, they hung on his every word, unable to distinguish between lies and truth.

Then it happened. He began to turn their attention to those who had no televisions because they were too busy working. He made the suggestion that the reason that his followers had no jobs was because of these newcomers. Pretty soon they all agreed with him, after all , if you repeat a lie often enough then people will believe it. He told them that all of their problems were rooted in this group of outsiders and convinced them that he could put things right.  Soon his supporters began to organise marches and protests outside the town hall and the Mayor and the town council began to get very worried.

“We want our jobs.” they would chant as one voice, which was strangely ironic as most of them had never had any sort of job. “Nigel for Mayor.” was much more worrying for those in the town hall, who had enjoyed a quiet life for a long time and had got quite used to it. It was clear that they had to listen and so the Mayor arranged a meeting with the strange man. By this time Nigel had gathered around him a group of tough looking men and one or two large muscular  people of indeterminate gender. Annette and Loretta looked more fearsome than the rest of the gang whose members tended to give them a wide berth.

Nigel, flanked by Loretta and Annette stalked into the Mayoral chamber, and without being asked, sat down.  Nigel grinned in his usual inane fashion and waited for the Mayor to speak. Loretta picked her nose while Annette scratched her rather large belly.

“Well, Mr  ummmmmmm” said the Mayor. 

“Oh Just call me Nigel, everyone else does.” The grin widened almost to the point of his head splitting into two.  His companions grinned awfully too.

“Well ummm Nigel.” Said the Mayor, staring at Nigel’s ghastly tie. “You seem to have made an impact on the town. The council don’t like it.” Loretta and Annette stopped grinning and leaned forwards menacingly. The Mayor blanched and continued hesitantly.  “I have been authorised by them to offer you a substantial reward if only you will put things back to how they were and frankly, just go away.” 

Nigel smiled and Loretta and Annette leaned back.  There was a long and pregnant pause before there was a reply.

“How much?” said Nigel through his grin. He was mercinary if nothing else.

The mayor took an envelope from his desk drawer and passed it over the desk. Nigel’s grin broadened even further as he opened the enveloped and then pocketed the cheque. The Mayor wondered how his head stayed together.

“Consider it done. As soon as the cheque clears.” said Nigel and stalked from the room without another word. His bodyguard trotted behind like faithful Labradors.

Over the next few weeks, Nigel and his gang visited each and every newcomer to the town, and strangely, each and every one of them left soon after.  True to his word, Nigel left too and his gang of followers no longer had anyone to follow and so went back to their TV sets. 

Soon there were no dentists, so teeth went rotten, many bottoms remained un-wiped, the old and insane had to be looked after by their families and the hospital had to close because there were no doctors, nurses or even cleaners. The streets remained unswept and un-repaired. Many high street shops closed along with all of the takeaways that had gone so well with the TV. Fruit and vegetables on the local farms rotted in the fields and the few businesses that had moved into the town closed down.  Even the charity shops began to struggle.

Now there were plenty of jobs that they did not want, the people were happy and went back to their TVs and got fatter.  As for Nigel, he took Loretta and Annette and moved to another town also not far away. 

I am still alive.

It has been a while since I even looked into this blog. I know that I vowed to write more but somehow things seem to get in the way.

I turned 70 this year and though my mind finds it hard to accept, my body reminds me on a daily basis. Since I last wrote I have had a knee replacement and another lens replaced with plastic. Pretty soon there will be less of the real me than the replacement parts. I am not complaining though, without those interventions I would not be able to function at all well, so I blunder on through what some call the twilight years.

My main reason for being here in blogville today is to revisit and copy some of the entries into a printable format. It is a vanity I suppose that makes me want to pass on the contents of my mind to my children and grandchildren, though I don't suppose in reality, anyone will be at all interested. That is the nature of our endings. Nothing that is not materially of value will be committed to black plastic bags and either binned or donated to charity shops, ready to complete another cycle.

Since I last made an entry here the only writing I have done has been with a creative writing group. It is a small selective group of old ladies and myself and we meet when everyone is available, which seems less and less often. The world has a habit of getting in the way of things. It is an outlet however and I need outlets.  Most of my time is spent at home and much of that time I am alone. I find that I like people less and less and choose not to venture out unless I have to.  Pubs and restaurants are noisy, it seems that many find it necessary to shout and I find it very hard to follow a conversation.

So I have become the grumpy old man who is losing faith in the human race.  I am out of touch and largely out of sight and mind, and what is more it suits me.