Senses working overtime #502

1 'Twas the week before Christmas

2 Reading: Jimmy Barnes - Working Class Man

I bought this after finishing Working Class Boy (inspired by Anne Marie's week on WTWMC - Loved Ones - see below). WCM's not as visceral or as wildly funny as WCB but great on the background to Jimmy's solo career and reuniting with Cold Chisel. 

3 Listening: WTWMC - Loved Ones

Last week was Anne (no hyphen) Marie's turn, next up is my dad - Graham Purdy. Then, after him is the final week with Kev's mum - Barbara Simms. It's a fabulously eclectic playlist that the amigos have conjured up to celebrate their partners and parents. Listen to it best on shuffle mode.

4 Listening: WTWMC - Christmas Crackers

Our seasonal playlist of 21 songs is indeed a manageable Christmas cracker.

5 Reading - When We Was Fab - The Beatles

Jade gave me a copy of this for my birthday - it's full of great memorabilia, photos, and text relating to the Fabs 1964 world tour, but concentrating on their Australasia section.

The forensic nature of the book is amazing - i.e. the letters and captions detailing the people. The Jimmy Nicol incident (replacing Ringo for the first stages of the tour while he was in hospital) is especially detailed and great to read.

Overtime: 

It’s officially “Let’s circle back in 2025” season (according to Morning Brew)

Senses working overtime #500

Photo by Tessa Edmiston on Unsplash

This is the 500th edition of Jewels For The Thirsty (the blog's title comes from an XTC song called...Senses Working Overtime - see what I did there?) 

I've selected one item from each of the top 6 most popular weeks of all time (well, since it started with week #1 in April 2015).

1 The most popular week so far has been #178 - 

 John Cage's 10 rules for teachers (#178 from 2018)

2 Christmas is football (# 193 - below is from 2019) 

Always a frenzy of activity over the festive period - notably Liverpool lost their 100% winning record and Man City lost three games! Loads of drama to follow on MOTD.

As to my teams - Rochdale are solid in the lower reaches of League One and the gunners wobbled. But we still beat Spurs 4-2!!

January transfer window is always interesting. We need some defenders please.

3 The Fab Fabs (#263, from 2020)

They heighten my senses every day, let alone every week.

4 Vinyl celebration #213 (below is from 2019)

 
It's been a funny old week. But then I connected up my turntable after a long time in storage. It felt good! This week's edition is late. Wah wah. Cry me a river. Here are five plus vinyl celebrations.

 

5 Waterloo Sunset (#209, below is from 2019)

 

The Kinks masterpiece goes under the Thom Hickey microscope on his great blog - The Immortal Jukebox.

Overtime: Senses working overtime #57 (below is from 2016. This one is a peach. Hard to pick just one item so do yourself a giant favour and go to the link. But if you shove...try):

Cool

I was never a cool kid, never hip, so this piece from a kindred spirit struck a nice chord.

Senses working overtime #493

1 Theme of the week: Slow recovery

Photo by Sofia S on Unsplash

2 Reading: Joan Baez - And A Voice To Sing With

3 Listening: Joan Baez - Diamonds and Rust

One of her best, try Hello In There if you just want one.

4 Watching: Macca doing Now and Then

Another view of The Beatles version here (but be warned - it gets emotional)

5 Listening: WTWMC - Beasties

75 songs now with two weeks to go.

Overtime: Kindness

Being kind to others is mostly about your actions.

Being kind to yourself is mostly about your thoughts.

James Clear

Senses working overtime #459

1 The feeling this week

Photo by Dan Freeman on Unsplash

2 Listening: Across The Borderline (Van Dyke Parks, Gaby Moreno, Jackson Browne, Ry Cooder)

3 Watching: Argylle

After a full-on week (see #1 above), Jacky and I went to the movies to see this one. Perfect action/comedy fare for us on Friday night.

The movie features the Beatle song Now And Then quite a few times so, of course that's been back on high rotation at Maple Grove.

4 Listening: The Beatles - Now And Then

5 Reading: The Anne Tyler from last week and the latest Mojo on my coffee table (# 361)

Overtime: Work

Lettering artist and illustrator Jessica Hische on what procrastination reveals:

"The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life."

Source: Humble Pied (courtesy of James Clear)

Senses working overtime #443

1 Start of the week

2 Listening: Courtney Barnett - End Of The Day

3 Watching: Quarterback (Netflix) 

Really enjoying this one (although Jacky isn't). A lot of leadership lessons to be drawn from this series.

4 Reading: The Beatles - Now and Then

5 End of the week

Overtime: 

Haiku 307

I feel autumn rain
Trying to explain something
I do not want to know.

Richard Wright (1960)

Senses working overtime #394

1 Qatar's stadiums for the World Cup

2 New Beatle videos

I'm Only Sleeping and Taxman get stunning new animated videos.

3 Why we love the music we love

4 Walt Whitman and what makes life worth living

He would have added the FIFA World Cup every four years if it was around back in the day.

5 What happens to spelling bee champions when they get old (a.k.a. the story of Brad Williams, now 62 years old)

Brad age 12

Overtime: All of those controversies around Qatar's World Cup laid out for you here

Senses working overtime #392

1 Hollow City

Edward Hooper's portraits of urban alienation.

2 The Beatles' Revolver redux.

An article cunningly title 'How Peter Jackson broke up The Beatles'

3 Too many songs, not enough hits. 

And no stars. What's wrong with today's pop world!

4 Awareness and acceptance

Why it's important to build a bridge.

5 The CD revival

Overtime: Commitment

"One good day does not mean you can coast tomorrow. You never have it fully licked. Making good choices is an endless process. Many areas of life that we value most—our relationships, our fitness, our craft—require a continual commitment."

James Clear

Senses working overtime #390

1 Why we enjoy a good scare (well, not all of us - Jacky Purdy hates getting scared)

2 Giles Martin talking about Revolver

3 How brands get those crazy names

4A Why Liz Truss only lasted six weeks and 

4B Here's what to know about Rishi Sunak

5 The best sci-fi movies to watch on Netflix

Overtime: Bob Dylan on life

Boy, I hurried… I hurried for a long time. I’m sorry I did. All the time you’re hurrying, you’re not really as aware as you should be. You’re trying to make things happen instead of just letting it happen. You follow me?
 

Senses working overtime #365

1 Miniature dioramas

2 Tsundoku (literally translates to mean 'reading pile')

3 Proof - Tiana Clark

I once made a diorama from a shoebox
for a man I loved. I was never a crafty person,

but found tiny items at an art store and did my best
to display the beginning bud of our little love,

a scene recreating our first kiss in his basement
apartment, origin story of an eight-year marriage.

In the dollhouse section, I bought a small ceiling fan.
Recreated his black leather couch, even found miniscule

soda cans for the cardboard counters that I cut and glued.
People get weird about divorce. Think it’s contagious.

Think it dirty. I don’t need to make it holy, but it purifies—
It’s clear. Sometimes the science is simple. Sometimes

people love each other but don’t need each other
anymore. Though, I think the tenderness can stay

(if you want it too). I forgive and keep forgiving,
mostly myself. People still ask, what happened?

I know you want a reason, a caution to avoid, but
life rarely tumbles out a cheat sheet. Sometimes

nobody is the monster. I keep seeing him for the first
time at the restaurant off of West End where we met

and worked and giggled at the micros. I keep seeing
his crooked smile and open server book fanned with cash

before we would discover and enter another world
and come back barreling to this one, astronauts

for the better and for the worse, but still spectacular
as we burned back inside this atmosphere to live

separate lives inside other shadow boxes we cannot see.
I remember I said I hate you once when we were driving

back to Nashville, our last long distance. I didn’t mean it.
I said it to hurt him, and it did. I regret that I was capable

of causing pain. I think it’s important to implicate
the self. The knife shouldn’t exit the cake clean.

There is still some residue, some proof of puncture,
some scars you graze to remember the risk.

4  A Joni Mitchell reading list

5  Memory lanes: Google's map of our lives

 

Overtime: Half Baked - Seth Godin

Seth on the Beatles and the Let It Be sessions.

Senses working overtime #344

1 Ghost Signs

They are still to be found in London.

2  The sublime spectacle of Yoko in Get Back

John, Paul, George and Ringo, and Yoko.

 

3 The year in vibes - Kyle Chayka  

"Maybe we used the word (vibe) so much because 2021 itself has offered an unplaceable vibe. It is a year that feels as though it does and does not exist, a hangover from the depths of terror in 2020 that provides a significant improvement and yet remains vacuous and unstable".

4 The 50 best albums of 2021 

#1 according to Pitchfork

I own none of these albums, nor I have heard any of them - even Adele's. And I call myself a music fan. 

In a year when I bought a huge number of records, this tells me I am completely out of touch with popular music in 2021 (but that's not news - I have been for the last twenty years).

I will make an effort to listen to some of these in the next few weeks.

5 Mel Brookes

 

Overtime: How we became weekly

This one is apposite as Jewels For The Thirsty is my own artificial weekly contruction - this one is my 344th edition. 

It neatly marks my end of a week. and the start of a new round for my other blogs.