And Nary a Word Was Spoken

The latest ADBS was very good. I'm finding that I can down-load it mid-afternoon and listen to it on the above-ground portions of my journey home and on the walk to the station in the morning. If you see a tall, blond, grinning fool on your commute, that's me...

The Northern Line was utterly chaotic this morning, although I seem to have been really lucky with my journey, as I just happened to change at the right place and time. There was a heart-stopping moment when the driver annouced 'this train is having a few problems, but we should be able to fix it'. I exchanged glances with a rather attractive woman across from me...

Instrumentals only today. I've excluded much of the jazz and classical stuff and focused on instrumental rock/pop:

Darshana (Remix) - Future Sound of London
Peaches En Regalia - Frank Zappa
Schooldays - Stanley Clarke
Midwestern Night Dreams - Pat Metheny
Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape - Porcupine Tree
Another Green World - Brian Eno
Where's My Thing - Rush
Nuages - King Crimson
Theme 1 - van der Graaf Generator
L'Auberge du Sanglier (Suite) - Caravan
Oxygene (Part IV) - Jean-Michel Jarre
Solemnity - The Mighty Strinth
Tempo Block - Raymond Scott

Oxygene brings back happy memories of a chaotic school trip to France back in 1983 or 84:

30 secondary school kids on a Geography field trip to Le Havre (via a 6 hour coach trip from Yorkshire and a 4 or 5 hour crossing (Newhaven-Dieppe) on a tiny ferry with nothing to do). The only thing to do on the coach was listen to a cassette that someone had brought along: 'Oxygene'. I'd never heard it before, and I don't think many others had, so we were all amazed and must have listened to it dozens of times during that week, as it was the only tape.

The trip itself was a fiasco: Nobody (including the teachers) seemed particularly bothered in Geography; we mainly spent our time on Le Havre beach, ostensibly sketching cliffs and interesting rock formations, but instead playing football and nipping off to the local supermarché to buy and consume some wine. We were eventually kicked out our hotel (after a stern lecture from one of the teachers about being poor ambassadors) because a couple of the 'hard' kids had been sick on a duvet and tried to wash it in a bidet. They broke the bidet.

The next phase was in Paris. More interminable coach rides and Oxygene, then vague sketches of Notre Dame from a boat on the Seine. Lots more drunkenness, including a very strange conversation in a bar about clouds with a drunk Frenchman. We were almost kicked out of the Parisian hotel for yelling across the central quadrangle to each other, despite having been told not to immediately on arrival.

We were basically young, 15-16 year-old innocent kids, given free rein in a land of abundantly-available alcohol. Nothing malicious, just chaotic.


I got to work this morning to discover that the thing I'd been running on my computer over-night hadn't completed because Windows had chosen to Upgrade and re-start itself. Still, if I have to re-run it that's something to do whilst waiting for the weekend to come round.

T - 2; M - 4; D - 4.5