Pictures

This last week, aside from just getting on with life, I've been listening to a lot more music than usual and not listening to the news. It's been a comfort.

It occurs to me that I don't actually listen to a lot of music. I play a lot, obviously. I play a lot of the same, I suspect. I've effectively created my own bubble. Perhaps that is an inevitable risk of growing older, but I take comfort and inspiration from the few friends I have older than me that have clearly found a way past this trap.

Picking random playlists off Amazon Music to listen to in the car and on my headphones at work has been a refreshing adventure.

It's been a busy weekend. A mad, frantic, lively gig Friday evening at The White Swan in Downend, Bristol made for a promising start.

Then up early Saturday morning and running around town doing "stuff" for my wife. I don't even remember what now, but it I think it involved shopping. Saturday evening was our Company's annual Christmas party; ate well, drank too much and then stayed over at the Frogmill Hotel in Andoversford. A lovely place, and a good evening had with good friends.

Sunday morning got up early, showered off the hangover, skipped the hotel breakfast to drop Nikki back home and then headed straight back out and down to South Cerney Sailing Club to race for a couple of hours, crewing for my friend Mark in his Albacore. Both his crew and mine are currently injured and resting. At least we still have each other.

The sailing was very good, nice lively wind and a big fleet out on the water for SCSC's last race of the season.

Got home Sunday afternoon just in time to head straight back out for another gig at The Old Neighbourhood in Chalford, just outside Stroud. This one was unexpected; we got a message Wednesday evening asking if there was the slightest hope we might be available, and by lucky chance we were.

A lovely early Sunday evening crowd, and a quite different mood to Saturday night in Bristol. Some faces we knew well, some fresh faces we'd never met before. The perfect way to finish off the weekend.

I came across a gorgeous song that popped up on whatever Amazon playlist I was listening too as I drove into work this morning. It perfectly caught my current mood. "Pictures" by somebody called Benjamin Francis Leftwich, apparently released in 2011, although he has until now completely passed me by.

Which is a loss, now remedied, but no surprise. As I said, I don't listen to enough music.

"If you are afraid, don't be / I have the whole thing planned" - Benjamin Francis Leftwich, 2011