Where does the time go...

Playlist
Caravan - Canterbury Tales
Deep Purple - Made In Japan
Various - A Brief History of Progressive Rock 1968-1979
Steve Hillage - Live Herald
Anywhen - The Opiates*

What did I do today?

Nothing much....

I ran through the new set for tomorrow night - without much singing as I'm still suffering from this strange affliction...

The new song sounds like it was written by someone else - but I like it a lot...

Since Anne is out with friends tomorrow night and I am performing, we ordered an Indian tonight rather than our usual Friday night pig-out...

I'm afraid I must report it to have been very disappointing - most of my vegetable pathia went in the bin....

Then a visit from our neighbour Fiona and her second eldest daughter, Gabriella.....

Fiona's husband, Pietro has recently undergone major heart surgery and has just arrived back home from hospital - we were glad to hear he is dong well...

The reason for the visit was that Gabby needed to use our computer to print something....

She's 24, very attractive and a buyer with a fashion chain, jetting off to Milan and Barcelona as required - tomorrow she's supposed to be going to Amsterdam but with the new clampdown at airports announced today due to suspected terrorist plots to blow up planes, perhaps not...

When we moved to this house Gabby was just 5 years old and we've watched her (and her brothers and sisters) grow up. When I look at them now, they remind me of how old I am and how quickly time passes us by...

While Gabby was on the computer, we had a good chat with Fiona - she always has all the gossip about the neighbours. There are people who've been living around here for years, to whom we've never spoken, and some we do actually know...

I refer to our neighbours as variously:-

The man with the beautiful daughters (the daughters are long gone but the man and his wife remain, receiving visits every so often from the daughters and their children)...

Vera (her husband is very proud of his garden. They have two sons, both now gone from home)...

The students (one of the student's parents owns the house - three Irish girls share it)...

The people on the house where the man who went under our floorboards used to live (they do a lot of sunbathing in their front garden and have two small children who like Meg the Black Cat - the previous owner went under our floor when I accidentally flooded the kitchen) ...

The strange couple who sometimes argue and of whom the man once slammed their front door and smashed their window (they have a young daughter who also likes Meg the Black Cat)...

The people at the end (they have an indeterminate number of children who also like Meg the Black Cat)...

The nutters at the end (they are always shouting and swearing at each other and fighting - their children look like Dickensian street urchins and are sometimes seen crying)...

Candy’s mum (Candy is a cat who was once an adversary of Crispy and is now an adversary of Meg the Black Cat - Crispy was never a friend to children - but she was our baby) ...

Cameron (actual name Kamran I think - he sometimes partakes of one of those big smoke things you see in exotic bazaars in films set in Egypt or Turkey) ...

Fiona and Pietro (they have three grown up kids and a teenage son who used to be a bit of a handful but is a fine young man now. They also have a small barking dog and used to have a rabbit, who I looked after once when they were on holiday and who bit me - I liked her despite this, but she had a terrible life)...

The nice couple at the end (a nice young couple, he smokes drugs in the garden apparently - they have a small constantly crying child who is not yet old enough to be a friend of Meg the Black Cat)....

The sandwich lady (just moved in - she owns a sandwich shop and has a big house for one person but has a lot of "men friends" visiting - just visiting, mind)....

The lady whose husband died from motor neurone disease and whose son was once a peeping tom - according to Fiona anyway (she always seems so sad - her husband was a good man) ...

Moira and Ian and their two nice kids (the taxman and his lovely wife - he sometimes plays the bagpipes in his house - their son plays tennis in the street at Wimbledon time - just as I used to do outside my mum and dad's house in the 70's)....

The Hearts fan and his Canadian ladyfriend (Fiona advises she's just been diagnosed with breast cancer)...

Mrs Boag (former owner of Mrs Boag’s cat and oldest resident around here - Fiona thinks Mrs Boag is a bit mad but she seems like a nice old lady to me) ....

The cycling couple and their daughter (always cycling here and there - very eco-friendly although they do have rather a large car to carry all their bikes at the weekend)...

There you go...

After Fiona and Gabby went on their way, I watched Alice Cooper Live at Montreux - a great concert - 90 minutes of action (unlike the Hearts game last night)...

Then a bit of Newsnight and then bed...

Happy Birthday today to Alan Brodie - wonder when we'll see him again - he's just too elusive...

Highlight of the Day : Alice Cooper Live in 2005...

*for five years I have laboured under the misapprehension that this was an album called "Anywhen" by The Opiates - until today when I Googled it and found that it's the band (from Sweden) who are called Anywhen - a very good album by the way...