For some of us the Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon was one of those pivotal albums that as we went beyond more simplistic pop tunes usually in the form of 45's (aka "Singles") we explored usually with some support by older siblings to more deeper lyrical concerns and musicianship not that I didn't love (and still love) my Mud and Bay City Rollers 45's.
Sooner or later you move from hearing it a few times back then from tape to buying yourself the whole package and this album was such a thing being in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics, two posters and stickers.
The album explores the nature of the human condition specifically loneliness and mental illness using what were start of the art tape and electronic instrument techniques of the early 1970's.
My copy was a Canadian Capitol pressed edition with different posters I learnt several years back that Brits had in their own which to limit wear I taped to cassette for portable use and open reel tape for home use. You're welcome to try lugging such a machine and changing 7" tape reels on the move!
In the ever so fantastic plastic 1970's it wasn't enough to be thinking about sound from two speakers but four so a special four channel "Quadraphonic" mix was made and by some quirky math based science you could get four channels into the two channels of a stereo lp and (paws crossed) get four channels back out to impress the neighbours by surrounding them in sound!
They called it SQ standing for Stereo/Quadraphonic.
That lp jacket is of the UK Quad edition Q4 SHVL 804.
Quad had to everywhere like in our car so we had a Q8 eight track four channel tape player that was pretty swell and special four channel tapes were issued that offer better separation between the four channels than the fancy four into two and back as four electronics could manage from lp record and radio.
This is the UK tape, Q8 SHVL 804 that used the actual four channel mix direct as Capitol in making theirs took that funny 4 to 2 processed version for the SQ lp and decoded it before putting that on their tape which was silly as the actual four channel master existed and technically poorer but hey it's Capitol Record USA and they do stupid stuff at times.
Roll on March 31, 2003 and it's the thirtieth birthday of Dark Side of the Moon in an era that has seen the establishment of the compact disc as the pre-eminent sound carrier and the start of attempts to improvement on the sound it's had since the early 1980's.
It was decided to issue it in the Super Audio CD format that I mentioned on "the other blog tm" in the form of one disc with a regular stereo cd layer and a Super Audio cd (sacd) layer for both stereo and an improved form of surround sound called 5.1 often used for movies with a special remix being done for that version.
At the time only a few people had sacd players and because of this few heard that layer of the disc so when so-called audiophiles started debating all the 5 cm disc versions of this album all they heard the slightly compressed when it comes to the loudest and softest sound regular layer which has become a common trend since the mid 1990's and dismissed it.
I bought this sacd at the time and was very much encouraged to ditch it for a much older version by a certain forum but that ignored one thing. The regular cd layer and the super audio cd stereo versions were done separately and actually the stereo sacd layer sounds better than any of the cd only issues when played back on a machine like mine.
That ironically is why a decade on I ended up rebuying this disc and believe me its fantastic with clearer instrument sounds and effects like the heartbeat and chimes in "Time".
One moral of this story is don't let others tell you what to like and buy as they may be wrong.
We've been having some ahem, extreme weather this week of which this picture kind of sums it up as that temporary advertising hoarding shown is for the local Snow Drop walk at our magnificent Georgian Hall held for charity but the grounds covered by snow. Snow chance of seeing much today.
Actually as I'm typing this up we've had nearly two inches land in less than an hour and that was followed by even more which is a good deal more than I can easily get about in to be honest so I'll have to see what happens in the next day but at least I was able to get to the Post Office and use its ATM before this latest lot came down.
That is good for me given I'm unstable on my feet and I struggle at times with fears from when I fractured my upper arm when I was younger which was excruciatingly painful.
If that wasn't enough the overnight temperatures dropped to minus 8.5 overnight which I could feel in my bones despite having extra layers on in bed with Emma's winds howling around me.
I was glad to see our mailwoman get through with some things for next weeks around the sun activity just a half hour later than usual which is pretty good going actually having come out some three miles with the van to deliver.
Yesterday although the snow was powdery, there was sheet ice formed from the previous days snow melting and freezing over night that made it too slippy for me to venture out.
When will it end?
Today's post is likely to be a bit negative just because for the most part much of the news has been centred around some common concerns of mine one of which does go back a few years and the other was something I kind of touched on only about a month ago.
The first thing to say regarding the sex scandal enveloping the charity Oxfam is if there ever a way to totally mishandle a serious matter then my goodness they did it with style being a state of denial until the the eleven hour and whole world knows all about it.
The second is I fear the business around the actions of staff both soliciting for and forcing people to provide sexual services in Haiti both staff and ordinary women are the tip of an iceberg where a culture that went beyond turning a blind eye to such things was common place.
One has to remind oneself of what Oxfam is for - helping often in relief situations the very poorest in the world - and ask oneself why anyone in that situation would be looking at no only abusing fellow staff but also using women in that society.
We need to remember much of world is not like Las Vegas where Women themselves may own and control such services but instead are controlled by men who take any money from them, where health services are poor and young girls may be pressed into it too.
In those situations whatever ones personal views on paid sex work happen to be, to engage with it is whole morally repugnant because you are exploiting such women and girls.
Moreover in many organizations there are clear rules that say you may not engage in such practices while being employed there.
Those men let not just Oxfam but the people who they came to help down the minute they crossed that line of decency as well as the tens of thousands who fund raise for necessary relief.
The is the eventual sentencing for 31 years of a soccer coach who lived but a few hundred yards from here for sexually abusing boys as young as nine in youth teams which for personal reasons I am pleased he has been given even though the way in which one team for which he did a lot of work and sadly caused real emotional harm to boys in the course of still cannot account for why he was allowed to be employed after the first allegations were made and deny the word of a management board member who says it was raised as a specific item in the presence of the then manager twice.
Thankfully safeguarding procedures in the last few years have been improved no end since those from the late 1980's onward but even then a person who kept inviting children to their home sharing a bedroom with no other responsible adult present would of raised questions.
As someone who worked on child abuse cases as a job what happened in both instances sickens me to the core.
I have been away for six days the full account needless to say will be posted on the other blog after the weekend having had a fun time.
One thing I did do quite a bit of unexpectedly was nature walking although I can't say exactly where due to the rules of the group but it was in East Anglia so I did take my camera with me.
Walking and from that general fitness is something I have been working on since third quarter last year where I noticed I was having difficulty staying in breath after relatively modest exertion, feeling everything was becoming more of an effort.
I took a number of photos of which this one was one I was most happy with and I've shown with absolutely no processing whatsoever on a day that although relatively cold at about 7 degrees C was quite sunny out so one didn't feel it so much so long as obviously one wrapped up well.
I think it came out rather well.
I'm away for a bit thanks to my more overt littles/middles real world life with friends having the kind of fun I badly need so I thought it's time to return to our book series, Nancy at St Brides/Maudsley and its heroine.
Originally written in 1935 it is a little more modern than the earliest adventures although we are still very much in a twentieth century mind set where girls would just wonder around woods by themselves with just a bike.
This picks up from The Best Bat although that was a mini novel and sees Nancy and her chums return as they thought to would be the Upper Fifth having taken their School Certificate examinations (a kinda precursor to the British GCE O levels people before 1987 took in the Fifth Form - aka Year 11 in post 1990's terms showing competence in the "Three R's" and other subjects ready to leave school for further study or employment).
I say that because we learn though family circumstances some who would of been in the Sixth left for overseas Colonies of our Empire such as South Africa, some to gain employment needed because their families faced lack and others won scholarships to colleges and this meant the Sixth for this term would have precisely seven pupils which wasn't viable.
The Head Mistress, Miss Hale, sees actually her Fifth forms are unwieldy with rather more pupils than desirable and decides to move up those more academically capable in other respects mature members such as Nancy to the Sixth.
This is where the story proper begins because on the same day Nancy got moved up to the sixth she was promoted to a vacant prefectship triggering much trouble at Maudsley, their day school.
We learn about Clemency Walton's long standing jealous of Nancy that was triggered by a big misunderstanding that was not discovered until terms end and this jealous came to a head when the games committee proposed to make Nancy the captain of Cricket, this was far more than she could bear.
By the use of school gossip, not least the idea that an offer to play for the Lady Foresters cricket team had been accepted and to whom did play against Maudsley when in fact Nancy had not more for getting between work for the Guildry, Clemency manages to divert this honour -a mere formality given her cricketing and captaincy skills - from Nancy to herself.
But this isn't all in this story of jealousy running amok for Nancy had been down to play for an important school match encounters Ryllis Rutherford also of the the Sixth in something of a scrape offering her the use of her bike only not to make the match and facing being accused of 'cutting' it.
Clemency seizes her chance aided by the Second Form teacher who is the only other person with the final say on the team selection who is out of action with a cold, for malicious action to remove her from one selection and to call for practice sessions in away that Nancy would not of know and to which it would be easy to belittle her.
In the midst of this there is a scholarship -the Woodford-Leigh - for organ playing to which Nancy and Clemency are practising that requires a suitable instrument to practise on for examination. Clemency swaps days to use the organ at St Ninians church with Nancy which would be fine other than several stops of it were damaged which naturally upset their organist Mrs Patterson apart from requiring repair. Because of the day it occurred on, all involved conclude it must of been Nancy as the swap was only agreed between the two girls before Bijah, a junior, who had attended thinking she'd hear Nancy playing saw Clemency but fell asleep and was rescued by Mrs Patterson makes an unplanned intervention.
It was a chance remark by the new junior schoolgirl while taking tea with Mrs Patterson talking about her dog, that she know Clemency was playing that very day that unmasked Clemency's refusal to own up and let Nancy take the blame for something she was not responsible for.
Clemency is demoted not just for her use of a rumour she knew not to be tested to get Nancy removed from the cricket captaincy and even for selection but even as a prefect for her underhand ways.
The sorts of issues are not even today untypical of school life or indeed in other fields where we observe others work against people either making unfounded accusations or letting them stand because however wrong they are (and they know it) it suits them to let it happen and not hold out for what is true.
The moral lessons set I feel still stand in Twenty-first century Britain.
While I'm preparing to be off having packed my case, tote bags and lord knows what else you take and find you really didn't need as much here's this weeks main post, a day earlier.
There are times not least with the more middles life I have I feel that we over complicate things not least compared to how things were in the past where we may of had less options but we just got on with it.
Like today we download things or stream them but there are different places, different formats and you're never quite sure if even an album will playback in the right order as different software works different sometimes having things playing in alphabetical order before now.
It was so much easier when this and it's ilk ruled the home entertainment roost as you just put a record on and it just played it and if you wanted to hear the latest sounds you just spun the tuning dial and that was it no need for software upgrades and the like.Need to make a personalized selection then the cassette unit would let you do that from any source and play it on the 'Walkman'.
There are times when there's something to be said for keeping it simple.
The origins of prejudice can be many-fold as those of us who have faced it and even perhaps unthinkingly acted upon it can certainly vouch for.
Sometimes it is a prevailing view that we are brought up with such as to see those who don't share the same religious beliefs we do as a threat, to view those of certain ethnic minorities as lesser, almost children limited by design in ability or to see those with disabilities as a drain on society.
As repugnant as each and all of those opinions are the bigger thing tends to be what it is that people do with them as if merely having an prejudiced point of view were a crime I dare say most of us would be paying for it in one way or another.
Sometimes were bear one less than something we co-opted from others so much as it is the result of drawing the wrong conclusions from something that was real that involved us such as the bullying and physical assaults I experienced from 'normal' kids at junior school where amongst other things I was being falsly accuse of damaging school property by a known school bully and every other child refused to speak out even though I could not myself. In the end one girl did and was ostracized for a period for it.
It could be the verbal assaults and insults you may get from others for things you simply cannot help in the street or online.
It would be easy for me to form the view that those of you who are not disabled cannot be trusted to treat me with respect and to hide away fearful of what an encounter might bring given how those experiences (and others) left me.
The thing is I'd then be treating you little different, forever suspecting you, keeping you away, persuading others to join in cos that's what prejudice is like: it removes the individuals personality and identity and replaces one based upon an encounter with one or more others who share something in common with them and convicts them upon this collective image you have formed.
Sometimes too a person having done something really hurtful may begin to see just how that impacted on another and yet it would be easy yet again to refuse to forgive them personally and any group you associated their actions with.
Circumstances bring us together albeit a chance encounter on the street or as one social media site or forum closes and we move to another.
How are we going to treat our new friends and neighbours?
