I ordered a Mica Paris CD as an upgrade to the vinyl copy I've had since 1990. Amazon sent me Beethoven's Concerto no. 5, performed by the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

On the plus side, when I initiated the return process to get a refund, they said I could keep it.

In 2020 I rode to historic Worcestershire and back, via a route which I've come to know as the "Dad's Army route" - simply because during the ride, I kept myself entertained by listening to radio adaptations of the BBC TV sitcom of the same name.

I've been meaning to do it again for a long time. I've been part-way down there quite a few times; the deterrent to doing the whole thing really is having to do a couple of miles of the A5.

So I thought I'd do it again today. The basic idea was to do a Twycross Bypasser, with the Dad's Army route as a there-and-back extension to the south-east.

After the first 15 miles or so I began to notice that my left cleat wasn't engaging properly with the pedal. It felt sloppy. So just before the A5, I stopped to check it. One bolt was missing and the other two were loose. Exactly the same thing that had happened to the right cleat a few weeks ago. I guess I didn't tighten the bolts down hard enough, or perhaps I over-greased them. Fortunately this time I had an Allen key on me and was able to secure the cleat adequately by tightening the two remaining bolts.

Well - the A5 episode wasn't too bad. Not too busy. I was pedalling through Kingsbury another three miles later. The route looks pretty direct easy on a map so I tried to memorise it rather than uploading it to a phone or an eTrex. So I just kept going. I passed a garage called Kingsbury Service Station. Weirdly, about twelve minutes later I passed another place called Kingsbury Service Station. It looked identical to the first one. Because it was. I'd somehow managed to loop round on myself.

So I took a different turn at the next roundabout this time. By now I was pretty sure I wasn't on the route I intended, so I gave up on that and decided just to follow my nose and explore. I took a road called Coventry Road and kept going for another ten miles or so. This was quite a nice stretch of B road apart from being a bit hilly, and not having any petrol stations or shops. I'd only brought two sausage rolls with me and I'd already eaten both of them.




I stopped when I hit the outskirts of Coventry, and turned back. Two miles later I decided to take a right turn signposted to Nuneaton, rather than go back the same way. Just to do another stretch of hitherto-undiscovered road. Again this was really nice, until I hit Nuneaton. I hoped I wouldn't have to go right into the centre and I didn't, but the bit I did go through was pretty urban and partly a bit grim. I passed a few convenience shops but didn't particularly feel like leaving the bike outside any of them. I did stop and buy some food at a petrol station a bit further out. Then I followed a sign to Fenny Drayton which is at the south-west extremity of Fenn Lanes, part of my regular cycling territory. I took a left along Atterton Lane and up to Sheepy, then came back from there as if doing the second half of a Bypasser, up through Bilstone, Newton Burgoland and Swepstone.

Quite an enjoyable ride overall. Nice to do quite a bit of new territory. I don't often venture the other side of the A5. Very nice sunny weather and I had to declothe after the first few miles; more than warm enough for bare legs.

One minor irritation apart from losing a cleat bolt was that my right contact lens was a bit uncomfortable, and I managed to lose it under my eyelid while rubbing my eye, about half-way through the ride. It's still up there, it'll work itself out in a couple of days.

Listened to the last couple of hours of the Reacher novel, then footy on 5 Live. Back on 68.77 miles.

https://www.strava.com/activities/11331285002

The Premier League bottom 4. All have played 36 games now. I was looking for Forest to do better than Luton this weekend, and they've delivered.

There's also the tantalising prospect of getting a point back from the appeal against the four point deduction.

Wordle 1,050 4/6*

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Lucky on the third word, or unlucky depending how you look at it. Three mins.

Quote from: Slim on April 02, 2024, 01:53:11 PMBought tickets to see Mica Paris later in the year. Not having seen her sing for decades, I'm starting to think it might have been a mistake unfortunately.

This was last night at the Jam House in Birmingham. We'd been there once before to see Mamas Gun but it was packed out last night. Despite my expectations she was really good. Lots of geeing up the audience, she's a natural frontperson and she really belted them out.

She has a lot of original material to choose from; despite this her set was at least 50% covers. Fantastic versions of Tom Browne's Funkin' For Jamaica and Jacko's Remember The Time especially.

Her band is good, not great. Talented guitar player but more a heavy blues player than jazz or soul. A bit more restraint and subtlety would have gone a long way, probably true for Mica's vocals as well but there's no doubt it was a hugely spirited performance.

Soon you'll be  able to talk to a business DB in natural language, do searches based on content, etc. Larry Ellison, the man being interviewed here, will be 80 in August.

Wordle 1,049 3/6*

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A minute, I think.

My vinyl copy of Grace Under Pressure has the same label stuck to both sides.

I don't even recall a liner with lyrics in my copy of Permanent Waves. I'll go and have a look in a minute.

Wordle 1,048 3/6*

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40 seconds.

I haven't seen one of his "wrong" cycling posts so far and I do follow him on Twitter. Will keep an eye out for one of those.

I'm in a small room, possibly my old bedroom in Hartlepool. The bloke from the Classic Rock Review channel on YouTube is there, sitting next to Mark Knopfler. Both of them have acoustic guitars.

Classic Rock Review bloke hands me his guitar. Oh no. I've got to play in front of Mark Knopfler. But wait .. I pick a couple of notes and it's obvious the guitar is in a weird folky tuning. I have an excuse. Phew.

I mention to Knopfler that I enjoyed an interview he did a few weeks ago, in which he mentioned that he used to window-shop guitars at JG Windows in Newcastle (this happened in real life, it was the Patrick Kielty show on 5 Live). I tell him that I bought a guitar myself there in 1983, a second-hand Les Paul (that happened in real life as well).

Mark hands me his guitar, it's a Takamine. OK I'll play a few bars of Blackbird (McCartney's tune from the white album). That'll be easy enough. But my fingers won't obey my brain! I make a total dog's breakfast of it. In front of Mark Knopfler.

Nice day here as well yesterday, apart from the wind. Raining again now.

Quote from: Fishy on April 30, 2024, 10:00:40 PMMoved my local music streaming stuff from a windows 11 box running subsonic to a Debian vm running subsonic.. much smaller footprint and working well.. thank god for  AI cos I'm shit at Linux stuff..

I need to find some domestic Linux projects to do to keep my hand in once I leave my job at the end of June. I've been typing ls, du, df, mv, tar etc for a living since January 1990.

Wordle 1,047 4/6*

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4 mins.

Wordle 1,046 3/6*

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Nine seconds, lucky second word.