Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Freude, Schöner Götterfunken and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair

Possibly following Vaughan’s suggestion that I should listen to Beethoven and The Beach Boys, I had a strange dream in which I heard Good Vibrations and the fifth movement of the Ninth Symphony kind of spliced and diced and mixed and muddled together in such a way that it sounded really very good. I have since been trying to recreate this wonderful sound with Adobe Audition, I think I’ll call it Ode to Vibrations. One of the best bits is if you get the baritone “freudenvollere” (elongated somewhat) up against “I hear the sound of a gentle word” – that sounds great. Also if you get the predominantly soprano “Wem der grosse Wurf gennlungen” bit up against the second lot of “I’m picking up good vibrations” – wowza!

Of course, I’ll spend hours trying to get this thing like I heard it in my dream and it won’t be quite right and if anyone else heard it, they wouldn't hear it at all and they'd think I was completely insane. I would perhaps acheve a lot more in life if I didn’t let these little things distract and obsess me. But it did sound really good. Honest.

I have heard entire new songs in my dreams, a few of which have been worth writing down. Actually one of them I was very pleased with, but I was fifteen and on reflection the lyric was pretty awful – it moved between English and French mid-sentence at one point. But the song I still get in my head from time to time. Paul McCartney got Yesterday like that, apparently.

Health no better but I’m coping better. Ish. Yeah I am, I must be. Actually I feel my health is subtly improving as well. Things which suggest my immune system has woken up even if I still feel like shit, like my skin being somewhat clearer. I feel rather panicky about the speed in which this month has passed. I very almost missed the deadline for our credit card payment, which is not at all like me. We pay the entire balance off every month – we only have the credit card because it’s with the Co-op who award dividend. It works a bit like this;


There’s a shop in the high street called the Co-op

By gum, what a great idea!

For out of what you spend, you get a dividend

Three times every year.
When Ma gets a shilling for her share
She shouts as if she was a millionaire… etc… etc…

I have no idea how ancient that song is, whether it was originally on the television or radio or if it was some sort of pre-Christian tribal chant or what - perhaps someone can enlighten me. I was a member of the Co-op junior choir and thus it became embedded in my consciousness forever. I don’t know how much a shilling was worth, so I can’t comment on the likelihood of a person receiving this amount nowadays. However, [...]’s father always tells me that I am short of one; everytime we speak on the phone he concludes the conversation “You’re short of a shilling.” which I have never understood and presume is some sort of quaint Mancunian compliment.


Anyway, I had put the statement to one side and then yesterday found it, panicked and paid on-line which was the only way that (hopefully) means the money will get there before we’re charged interest. What is worse is that the Excel file upon which I keep all the transactions is in a mess and I really need to go through every transaction on the credit card and the bank account for the last three months to check everything is as it should be. Which with my current state of brainlessness, is a considerable task.

3 comments:

pete said...

A shilling or bob was worth 5p. But not being that old I had to ask marmiteboy!

Your Audition D-Beats sound interessant, wuerde ich mir auch gerne anhoeren!

Dein bild von Beethoven beim Surfen finde ich Wahnsinnnnnnnnn!

Anonymous said...

LOL, Pete, marmite will be greteful for that comment you made about him, I'm sure *grin*

Yes, I can understand how easy it is to get muddled with credit card transaction recording. Even with a reasonably sharp working brain, I always make some hash of it. More like that I set up the spreadsheet on payments, calculate the answers and think... what am I doing wrong? I'm getting the answers that I already know. I'm supposed to be learning something here. Then, I neglect the spreadsheet and just forget about it. If I forget to enter transactions, I give up thinking "I can't catch up with this!" Lack of confidence in my spreadsheet abilities. The ECDL course will sort that out. I'm gonna have another go at doing my accounts, what money goes in, comes out. Hmmmm... I'll be glad to get onto the subject of spreadsheet use next year.

I'm glad your health is going in the right direction *smile* May it last for a long as possible. I'm feeling rather bloated lately myself. Think the stomach virus I had two weeks ago shot my system a bit. Oh well, it's getting better. I always get stuff that hangs around for ages after having a cold, flue or any virus.

marmiteboy said...

Pete is what as known as in my household as sixpence short of a shilling LOL.

I still find myself being stared at for using 'bob's' instead of pence in conversation. I am really far too young to have used bob's, despite what young Peter says, but my Dad has never fully come to grips with decimalisation, even after all these years, and it's rubbed off on me!! My favourite of his is his insistance of referring to 99p as 19 and 11 pence 3 farthings. Fantastic.