Fifty? And other pauses for thought...

I haven't been blogging much of late but I can't let this pass: Kylie Minogue turned 50 on Monday.

I'll just that let sink in. It doesn't seem possible, does it? Mainly because if you're about my age, i.e. you were at secondary school in the era of peak Neighbours, you probably feel, as I do, that you've sort of grown up with Kylie. Okay, so she's wearing better than most of us, and has achieved more than most of us too, but you get what I'm saying, right? And so to acknowledge that she, the perennial sweetheart, the eternal fantasy girl next door, is not just a woman but a middle-aged woman now embarking on her sixth decade, well, that is also to acknowledge that we (by which I mean I) am getting old too.

Time is short, and I've wasted a lot of it lately, not least on lazy blog posts (a bit like this one) that amounted to little more than a couple of trite paragraphs and a YouTube embed. Yet at the same time, I would tell anyone who cared to ask (and ask they still do, though decreasingly) that my fiction writing would be going great guns if only I had more time. Hence a bit of a rethink all round at New Amusements Towers... time to get busy livin'. And, for what it's worth, I have been writing, these past few weeks.

But back to Kylie. I'm no great fan of her music, aside from one or two tracks, and am fairly ambivalent about her acting, I've just always been a fan of her. At various times in my life she has been a poster on my wall (this one, seemingly now quite rare), an early mobile phone wallpaper (this pic), and a memorable gig in a now sadly defunct venue, tickets bought by an ex who got tired of me referring to Kylie as "the future wife". The ex is long, long gone... but Kylie, she's always been around. And now she's 50 and promoting an album that I won't buy called Golden (presumably because that's what a 50th anniversary is). As ever, I found the singles to be inoffensive but not something I would choose to listen to, ordinarily. But then, one evening, I heard Jo Whiley play this album track, and I rather liked it. You might too.

And check out the changes with this GIFfy Instagram post which, if nothing else, keeps the blog ticking over...

Throwback Thursday

The best Walkman I ever owned. And still own. The Sony WM-DD33 is brilliant, not only in terms of sound but also for keeping the blog ticking over...

More street art - disconnected and awake

More street art/graffiti spotted on the walls of my adopted home town.

More in the occasional Street Art series...

About royals and weddings

The picture quality isn't the best but, regardless, I'll just leave this here.

Wordless Wednesday

Around all our necks

Look, I know I'm taking a bit of time off active blogging at the moment, but I saw this today and had to share it. I'll be brief.

The perils of our plastic planet are finally, and rightly, big news at the moment. People are waking up to the fact that, if we carry on like we are, we'll all be literally swimming in the stuff before we know it. Last weekend, a leading (if awful) national newspaper had Kirsty Allsopp on the front page of their colour supplement, launching a campaign to get us all to reduce our consumption of plastics. And that's fine, as far as it goes. I've nothing against Kirsty Allsopp (apart from her taste in newspapers). But this is much harder hitting than a picture of Kirsty tearing a hole in a plastic bag.

Sorry if it's hard to watch in places, but we all need to see this. Besides, it's less than four minutes long, so humour me.

Ticking over

Another staple from my childhood, always watched however often repeated. This is the episode I remember in adulthood, 40-odd years later, so I was delighted to find it on YouTube. It's like M.C. Escher took a temp job with DePatie-Freleng. And so many sight gags - oh, the bit where he falls down the stairs... Plus that incidental music (unlike the main theme, not the work of Henry Mancini but one Walter Greene)...

Seldom does anything I post here get read or commented on unless it's music-related but humour me, this is worth six minutes of anyone's time. Plus it keeps the blog ticking over, so...

As good as a rest

When the familiar is unfamiliar...

Here's Vicario en un Tutú by the unexpectedly excellent Mexrrissey. It took a bit of getting used to, not just for this boy but the whole crowd, I'd say. But by halfway through their La Raina esta muerta set everyone was won over and the crowd were singing along, albeit in English rather than Spanish.

The band rotated instruments quite a bit (can't think of many bands where the lead guitarist also plays the drums), and shared vocal duties. Here, keyboard player Ceci Bastida took to the mic.

Mexrrissey: the -rrissey it's still uncontroversial to like. See them if you get the chance.

Some May Day serendipity

Surprising what you find when you're looking for something else... for instance, this YouTube clip, which nicely illustrates three things:

1. Why a good proportion of people took against its host
2. That, because of or despite Evans, TFI was a unique piece of television, and is much missed
3. And mostly, that Louise Wener was, is and ever shall be lovely, and an indie boy's dream

Happy May Day to you.