I found a new radio station. Our painter/decorator/all round get shit done person had it on his phone. And it is just great. If, like him and me, you are mired in music of the 60s, 70s, 80s. He told me it was ‘absolute classic rock’ and now, having passed Chinese censorship rules, Alexa plays it for me. I love it. Even though it upsets Mel because they never play Ed (fucking) Shearan, James Blunt and only rarely do you get Van Morrison. It’s one of those stations that needs playing at volume ‘11’. And they just played Bachman Turner Overdrive. But, like, without any irony. They just played it. Like they’d never seen the Harry Enfield/Paul Whitehouse spoof. As if you could play the opening bars of ‘you ain’t seen nothin’ yet’ and not just laugh. It’s not just slavery that gets misappropriated. Happens to rock songs too.

Last night we went out for dinner. Not to a restaurant. Who really could be bothered with that? Chicken Tikka Masala and a face mask. Or through a face mask. Whatever, there’d be a lot of ‘red’ about. So instead we went to friends for a ‘garden barbecue’. Safe, distanced, mask and gloves, detol, sanitiser, outside. Perfect.

Then it started raining. Ok, inside we came. And what do you grab first? The cleaning agents or the plate of meat? Just asking. Vegans don’t need to answer. And we sat at a table inside a fucking house!!! Like… like… like… inside!!! Almost as if we were in a restaurant, which would be legal, but we were in a house. In much much more space, far fewer people, open windows and doors, so it was illicit, if not strictly illegal. Go figure.

And as my mate pulled up Spotify on his phone, we just kind’a stumbled into a game of ‘beat the intro’. He scored really highly. Then I thought; ‘it’s his phone, his playlist’, sodding cheat. And it is quite amazing not just how many songs, complete with lyrics and guitar riffs, the average person can access in their personal soft drives, but how quickly songs that you haven’t heard for years just appear in your head. It’s enough to make you want to challenge intel or Apple. Or realise that AI has a long way to go before it can identify ‘whisky in the jar’ from just one note, as probably 95% of 50+ people can. And I really don’t ever want to meet the other 5%. Or Hendrix’s ‘all along the watchtower’. ‘The boxer’. ‘Born to Run’. Or, obviously, ‘you ain’t seen nothin’ yet’.

Happy much-too-windy-for-tennis-but-we-played-anyway Day

A xxxx