This doesn’t come easy. I’m not a mainstream person. Well, I am, really – that’s what all this is about, but I don’t occupy the middle ground that easily still. I’m 38 and it’s getting so much easier. My love of the Carpenters and Doris Day will be confessed openly soon (and if you think I’m joking, Stop, wait a minute Mr Postman and Move Over Darling).
I was sorting out the overcrowded and badly tagged iPod this evening for the first time … ever. The pleasure that a clean brak has given me is possibly a bit anal but I’m happy to admit that a tidy home is a happy home.
One thing that’s never been on there is FGat Boy Slim’s “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby” album from 1998. I never got round to burning it as Katie and I (and th near neighbours of our house in Gloucester Road, Cheltenham) had played it seemingly to death in 1998.
However, a bit of an audio audit has rekindled the flame that played it to death in the first place. Despite being a mainstream radio staple, The Rockafeller Skank is just a plain old killer and summarises the era. Chapeau, Quentin.
Today was a Baker day at Lily’s school so we took full advantage of the quietness by going off to Blackpool Zoo. Unlike Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom, who went there with young Albert, their son, we returned en masse, and a very happy family after a really great day out.
As things turned out, it was absolutely perfect. Better than perfect really, if that’s possible. When you bookk things online you can never be sure what it’s really going to be like, but Low Farm near to Brampton in Suffolk was a bull’s eye in terms of holiday accommodation. There was a fully fledges soft play area called Moo Play Barn and an indoor pool, alledgedly heated (well – it was pretty cold outside too), and a collection of farm animals specifically penned up for children to interract with them. (The Alpacas and their fluttering eyelashes were my personal fave.) A perfect place to be really if the weather turned bad. Except, strangely, it never did. Let’s face it, this was late October. But on three of the four days, we enjoyed pretty much uninterrupted sunshine. I find this type of cold, almost frosty sunny weather the very best time to be on a UK beach. I know they’re ace in hot weather, but there’s something about the quality of the air and the light that is so untainted.
The three days were spent well. Day trips to Great Yarmouth (ace model village), Southwold (Pretty, Posh and very very English) and Aldeburgh (quaint, full of corduroy and blazer wearing bafoons for some reason on the day we were there, but somehow real-feeling, and fisherman-like gritty).
