Blown away

 

Strong winds send everything in the air, caps, leaves you name it and we've certainly had a few of them of late as I noticed on Tuesday when whole sections of pavement were taken up with broken branches and trees making my way back home from having my Covid Booster.

Given how the weather was at the weekend I'd decided the best bet was to stay in read the weeks comics which also made sense given I was recovering from this virial infaction and got any chores done like taking things out to the bins out of the way.

I did watch the final of the BBC Young Musician of the Year which is comprises of a series of rounds where each performer choses works to showcase an element of the abilities and are judged by three judges leading to an eventual winner.

This year it was a Canadian pianist studying in the U.K. who gave a dazzling performance of the Russian composer Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto and so during the week I was listening to set of Beethoven's Piano Concertos on record that I've always admired while the booster symptoms slowly faded away.

Thirty One years of Numskulls

After a short trip out wednesday which helped after weeks being locked in we return to staples of sorts.

The Beano remains something of a childhood focus that has run throughout myself being the only comic continiously in production still we are marking an anniversary  this week.

Starting on 16th October 1993, a new comic strip was added to the Beano as it went A4 sized from it's old smaller exercise book sized semi colour self as the connection between iconic series like Dennis moved into multimedia.

The series was called Numskulls after the little people that live in your head and the adventures they had through the individual children they live in and has proved to be quite enduring even in an era of new series and added characters as in the Bash Street Kids.

Catching up in '87

Well it  is Friday and we're slowly recovering here after playing catch up for most of this week catching up with things that had to be put rather on hold last week as I wasn't really up to doing much at all to be honest.

Most of the things around the Now Yearbook series are on the other blog for a very good reason but as explained there because of the series of cds I bought back then really I had little reason for getting most of the late 80's ones.

The late eighties were interseting for me as I went from post to post with gaps when systems supposed to help just tied me in knots as I watched Network 7, Blue Peter, followed the 1987 General Election, Tomorrow's World and Brookside.

Tastes rather like me hadn't really changed from the early 80's and even beyond.

Musically while the scene was evolving with more attention being played to club related styles and associated artists much of what I had loved for a long time was still on the charts as difficult as it was to begin to start a cd collection while still buying new records and oddly enough tapes that year although the big back catalogue news was the Beatles albums coming out on cd.

The compilations series Now and Hits were out on cd in 1987 but their first two releases, Now 9 and Hits 6 only came out on single cds although the record and tape versions were doubles and in a way while much of the main Now Yearbook wasn't needed I felt this extra bit did offer some of the missing material.

By 1988 both series were committed to double cd issues and it wasn't until 1991 that I said "Goodbye" to them just buying albums by artists I loved.

Day off

 

While normally I'd be thinking back to ones school days, watching the procession past the house along the very route you walked all those years ago, today's a bit different.

Sat here I'm thinking more of the days I didn't get there which might of been things like the many hospital appointments having my disabilities brought for examinations and the like, miagraines of which I had a good many and the usual childhood viruses.

Colds were not uncommon and sometimes it would be the phone call from school, as I got older checking someone would be at home and making my own way or typically it would develop overnight and so Mum would ring in your absence.

This morning I just like I was being kept home sneezing away, on the cough mixture and limsips.