Stock take...

Playlist
Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies
King Crimson – Jukebox Best of Playlist
Various – Best of 2006
The Bad Plus – Suspicious Activity
Reid Anderson – Abolish Bad Architecture
Various – The House That Trane Built
Various – 150 Favourite Albums of 2006 Playlist

Reasonable sleep and up at 6am and onto the computer to finish off compiling my best of 2006 for yesterday’s post – then burned a CD with 20 tracks, each of the top ten singles and a track from each of the top ten albums...

We are both still ill and so are going nowhere today...

Watched the New Year’s Day concert from Vienna – as we did last year – then I retired upstairs to exercise my shoulders while listening to the new compilation...

Fell asleep on the floor...

Back downstairs to find Anne watching “Mrs Henderson Presents...” of which I also then partook. A fine little film with good performances from Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins. The true story of the Windmill Theatre before and during WWII which you can read about here...

Reading the diary at the start of 2006 led me back to MoMA New York where I viewed some artworks...

One of the current exhibitions is by Brice Marsden – apparently he paints with twigs – though I suspect he didn’t always, judging by his older works anyway...



Compiled a 2,000 odd track playlist of my best 150 CDs of 2006 per yesterdays list...

Watched the second half of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, their use of Neuschwanstein Castle reminding us of our great Alpine Tour of 2003 – maybe time for something like that again in 2007?

What else for 2007?

Well, I have 15 songs ready to be recorded for my next album but the arm is still not in guitaring mode and I’m waiting for webmeister Craig to return from New York to set up the software to allow the proposed new way of musicking to commence...

I am supposed to be a musician and artist – yet I haven’t painted for years...



Perhaps I ought to paint this year?

I buy far too many CDs – over 300 in 2006 and, on average one CD EVERY DAY for the last EIGHT YEARS – this is plainly too many to allow me to actually get to know the music...

And so I should perhaps resolve to maintain new input to the collection to say around ten a month?

For, while the library of music available to me is expanding at a colossal rate, my time for actual listening is getting ever shorter as I hurtle towards death...

I have also noticed over the last couple of years that I define myself by the number of CDs I own – which is pathetic and I need to move away from that...

My social skills are almost non-existent – I need to get out and about a bit more in 2007 and have more people round to Crispycat Towers too....

I pride myself in not watching much TV but, in reality, it seems I watch it every night. In my defence, I would say that I very, very rarely watch telly for the sake of watching – I will usually have something “better” to do..

Oops, I’m getting a little into “dear diary” (thoughts and feelings) mode here rather than “this is what I did today” (action) mode...

So I can advise that, tonight we bought a couple of pizzas from the only place open in Corstorphine and watched “Coronation St” and “Match of the Day”...

We are DETERMINED to get out of the house tomorrow no matter how we feel...

We have both been ill now since 23 December and 10 days hanging about feeling sorry for ourselves as we cough our guts up and only making pre-arranged family visits is enough to drive anyone insane...

So it’s onwards and upwards into 2007...

Happy New Year!!

Highlight of the Day : Taking stock