The Neasdon Queen of Soul - LIVE!

A couple of years ago I wrote a short post about my 20+ year long obsession with the original Voice of the Beehive herself Mari Wilson. Aside from the campery and retro glamour that she affected in the 80s, I've always loved her genuine warmth and that voice! Her version of "Cry Me A River" still gives me goosebumps.

Earlier today I was cruising youtube, as one does, and I happened across the channel of Julia Fordham, one of Mari's original back-up singers The Marionettes. Julia has posted a half dozen clips of Mari (and her, natch) performing live on various tv shows and in concert. Fabulous! Many of my favourites are on here like "Beware Boyfriend", "The End of the Affair", "Just What I Alays Wanted", "One Day is a Lifetime"... etc.

Bows to present... Miss... Mari... Wilson!

With Julia Fordham on backing vocals!

Don't Ever Say Never

So. I'm back!

When I said that I might return I wasn't expecting to come back so quickly, if ever, truly. I suspected I would miss blogging though, but I underestimated just how much I would miss it over these past 2 months.

Aside from missing connecting with you all, from a functional point of view it's hard to suddenly stop doing something you've done pretty much daily for around five and a half years. Cold turkey is a bitch! Almost every day I find myself stumbling on something that I think "oh, I must blog about this... crap!"

So I return, cap in hand, having cried "wolf!" only once.

The End, My Friend

Sadly, I feel the time has come to draw a close to this little old blog of mine.

My biggest problems these days are time and energy. Gone are the heady days of being able to web surf and blog at work, when what my employers lost in productivity my blog gained in amusing or interesting links found, or thoughts and experiences recorded. Now when I get home of an evening I'm tired, especially since I started working 2 part-time jobs, 6 days a week.

The death, or at least (I'm praying) long-term coma, of the lovely laptop I was using and switching back to a desktop pc has also meant that web surfing and blogging have to be done in the cloistered confines of my bedroom. Not being able to web surf while I'm sitting in front of the tv has meant that many nights I'd really rather just watch the tv. In fact I've even been hanging out less on the sites I used to frequent, like Flickr and Ravelry. Definite signs that I'm spending less time on the computer.

What a fantastic experience these past five plus years have been! Nearly 180,000 visits! Many hundreds (thousands?) of comments! In the heyday of this blog I used to hang out in the comments all the time, so much so that at times it was almost like a chat room. Ah, good times. How lively and what energy this blog had then.

I thought about taking a break, but in truth every time I have taken little breaks in the past I have come back with only a short term burst of energy. This blog loses momentum, and readers, each time also. I'd rather not go out with a whimper and of late I've been hearing the sound of faint whimpering. Reading back what I've written just now I'm struck at how much I've used the word 'energy', and I guess that is the key.

Thank you all for the good times. In over 5 years the bad times have been amazingly few, nothing harsher than the occasional and rare rude comment. I know I will miss not having a forum to write in, because I have discovered how much I love the art of writing. Sharing my photos has been another joy, and your encouraging comments have always really touched me. Maybe these will things will draw me back to this blog sometime in the future, but I don't know if they will and so I don't think it wise to make any promises. In the meantime I'll be leaving everything here, feel free to poke around and maybe one day in the future we can meet back here.

Love,
Andrew... the other one.

The Strangest Of Days

As I mentioned this morning we woke to the End Of Days the surreal orange skies of a huge dust storm this morning. I snapped these pics below within the space of about two hours. The first just after waking, and the last from the 28th floor cafeteria at work about 9am.

The view from my back door about 7am, a vibrant orange sky and
banana palms being whipped around in a gale.


Red dust everywhere on the walk up my street to the train station.
The air was thick and gritty with it.


Browny orange twilight and street lights at 8.30am on Newtown train station.


The sun struggling through, 8.30am on Newtown train station.


Somewhere out there is Bennelong Point, the Opera House and the Harbour.
The view from the 28th floor cafeteria at work about 9am.

By late afternoon it had pretty much blown over, the main legacy left behind being drifts of red/orange dust wherever the strong winds hadn't successfully blown the slate clean. A little bit of the red desert come to town.

Under A Bloody Sun

I've been in a habit of waking up earlier than I need to for the past week or so, instead of 7am I've been waking up at 5.50, 6.05... any number of really, really too early times. So when I woke up too early again this morning, I cracked an eye open and saw bright orange light against my window blinds. "Wow, bright sunrise." I thought and rolled over to try and catch some more zzzzzzs.

Except, an hour later the light was still bright orange.



This is how Sydney looks this morning. Early this morning gale force winds drove a huge dust storm of red dust in that has blanketed the city. A 'once in a lifetime event' the morning news shows are calling it. Everything looks surreal, like the city has been blanketed in bright orange fog. I nipped outside briefly to see what was going on, and I could feel the dust in the air in my eyes and the back of my throat.

They are recommending anyone who can should stay indoors but I'm still going to try and get to work, as I don't have any ongoing respiratory issues to be overly concerned about. (Plus, I'm going to grab my camera and see if I can't get some pics of my own.) I am going to set out much earlier than normal as well, I can't imagine that our already fragile public transport system hasn't gone into complete chaos.

Wish me luck.

[Pic via The Sydney Morning Herald.]

5 Things Found Rolling Around In The Bag I Carry To Work: Ewww, What's THAT? Edition

• 3 biros from The Big Christian Charity where I used to work. They sit nicely in the hand, write well, and given that they ordered 1,500 of them with the wrong phone number on them, not stolen. I actually had to stay "Stop! I have enough pens at home!".
  
• But the packets (2 sizes, 1 each) of Post-Its are definitely stolen a Gift With Toil from some workplace or other.
  
• A packet of blood pressure pills with no actual pills in it. Likewise a purse pack (whatever) of aloe vera tissues with no actual aloe vera tissues in it.
  
• A $9.95 radio, bought from a novelty/bits of everything shop in Little Vietnam in Bankstown. Amazingly it works ok, and kept me company on the lonely hours I was archiving files in the bowels of more than one bank branch.
  
• Old payslips. Old bills. (Paid, I think. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm fairly sure. I mean nothing has been cut off or disconnected yet.) Old fliers for various things. Apparently there was a food fair in March that sounds like it would have been good.
  

Indulgence

Oh my gah, I'm pooped.

• Many, many beers on Friday during a Most Excellent night out.
• Four and a half hours sleep and then up for work on Saturday at the yarn store.
• A long, torturous train ride home thanks to my Arch Nemesis (aka CityRail) doing PLANNED track maintenance, a fact they like to stress lest you think they were lurching from self induced crisis to self induced crisis.
• A train ride that ate up most of my potential nap time before going out Saturday night to a very fun event called Underground Underbear (so named for a) the basement venue and b) the large number of hirsute/stocky men in their underwear) where many, many more beers were consumed.
• Finally to today, waking up waaaay too early after a very late night, catching up with my friend Judy, going to knitting at the pub as per usual and then meeting friends at another pub and having dinner.

Total alcohol consumed today, one light beer. Even I have my limits.

Apostrophe Catastrophe

I admit to being a bit of a pedant about apostrophes. Not saying that I get it right myself 100% of the time (I would cop to 99.8% though) but I keep seeing this particular gem cropping up more and more.



"Your" versus "you're". In this instance it's from a clip from the second season of "Project Runway Australia". The tricky old apostrophe of contraction. "Don't". "Can't". "It's". And in the old days, before falling largely out of use, "'phone" or "'bus" even.

Every time I see someone type "your stupid!" on a bulletin board I feel like asking "their stupid what?"

This One Is Goes Out To My Friend James O'Brien

James is one of the world's great Swede-o-philes. In fact, as I write this he'll be sitting down to his weekly Swedish lesson. Don't get me wrong, I admire the Swedes. I buy their furniture. I appreciate their massage. I think they do a natty line in pop music.

But there is a line I draw that others cross.

Anyhoo. The brief yet classic "Swedish Chemist" sketch from Alas Smith & Jones. This sketch has been a long running part of the zeitgeist amongst one group of my friends for as long as I care to remember. (Along with other gems such as the Licky Licky Bumsex Song.) Comedy gold, just the mention of "Ball? Or aerosol?" is enough to set us off.