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Clearing up around the house, I found an air quality monitor. So I’ve put it up, on’t wall. I took the opportunity to also wall-mount the thermostat controller.

On my way home from my second and final delivery shift of the day, I stopped to admire St Mary The Virgin. I’ve often passed her. And she always turns my head. But this is the first time I stopped to investigate.

Sadly she was shut.

Passing through Melbourn en-route home, I saw this picturesque cottage being re-thatched. Took a quick snap. The Old Ways live on.

Back to St. Mary… I knocked at the door of the large house (former vicarage?) next to the church. But answer came there none.

The gorgeous hedgerow arch above looks amazing. It’s even more magical to take shelter under it in a downpour. As I was doing when I took these pics.

When I got home, utterly spent, it was feet up on’t couch time. But I spotted that the sky was unusually pink. So we popped out to have a look.

Kind of accentuates the cherry blossom.

These photos are nice. But they fall a long way short of capturing the actual colours, or the powerful impact of the light as we saw and experienced it. Magical!

I finally got around to moving the filing cabinet out of the corner, in my drum room, where I could’nae get at it. And I put a new lampshade on an old lamp, making it look fresh n’ new. The colour once again coordinates well with the feature wall.

There’s still vast amounts of stuff floating around without a proper home. But I’m chipping away at it all the time. Now… time for some serious bedtime reading:

Today I fitted the new light fixture and lampshade, in the drum room. The colour rather neatly, and completely by lucky chance – or serendipulosity – is colour coordinated with the new feature

I bought the lampshade yesterday (or was it Monday?). And trimmed the short length of ‘hang’ cable to make it even shorter. The ceiling is low in the drum room!

That was yesterday. Today I’m putting the damn thing up. Hope it won’t prove too tricky?

Sone time later…

Antonio popped out to have a run. So I thought I’d try and do this job whilst it was just me at home. But it took ages in the end. As I was busy doing other small chores as well: washing the breakfast dishes, hoovering the lunge, and taking the old fridge to the municipal dump. There’s always so much to do!

Having, naturally, to switch off the lighting circuitry fuses, I had to work by lamplight. And the awkward overhead angle, accessing the ceiling fixture = sore neck!

When it was just a naked bulb, the light was just above my head. Having to have a little bit of cable length, to allow for the desired flexiness, means the lampshade is now below noggin level. Hey-ho… compromises!

The observant viewer may note the weird black gooseneck doodad, to the left. That’s for an ‘over the kit’ phone-camera set up, as and whenI’m either recording drumming vids, or teaching via Zoom or Teams, etc.

I’m still chuffed with this small but noticeable improvement. Each little chip away at the ol’ block gets one that little bit closer.

‘Twas lovely out, this evening. I saw this beauty of a church, and stopped to take a snap or two.

Well, it leads up to… a funky little room, over the porch. That’d be a nice place to sit and read or write, methinks.

All told, a pleasant time was had, out n’ about.

Ah, the simple pleasures. Our old butter dish, a porcelain jobbie, got broken. That was ages ago. We’ve been using an ugly old takeaway tub, ever since.

But takeaway that takeaway tub. Plastic ugliness begone! This is rather lovely. All glass. All see through. Nice and simple.

Woohoo! Our new cooker arrived today.

The main element of the old oven went, again. It did so once before; I ordered a new one and fixed it. But this old stinky dirty broken down thing needed to be replaced.

Whereas for the gas hobs I need a ‘gas safe’ certified engineer, to sort us out, with the electric oven it’s a pretty easy DIY job. You just have to be safe, methodical and accurate.

Getting the old cooker out wasn’t too hard. Awkward and heavy, yes. But a one man job, nevertheless. What this revealed though, was pretty grotesque.

I gave the internal space a good clean. And then got the new cooker in position to be wired in. It is of course hard-wired to the mains, as it draws a lot more power than your standard three-pin plug socket outlets. This is fiddly, but pretty easy.

Done. Took a bit of sweat, some huffing and puffing. But it’s sorted now.

Rather foolishly I orders this oven – actually the same brand as our previous one (Russell & Hobbs) – without checking the dimensions! Could’ve gone horribly wrong!

But it didn’t. She fits the space like the proverbial glove. And once all the fuses and switches were turned back on, she powered up first time. Fab!

Very satisfying. Thanks again, Dan Ellis.

The old combo is actually two separates; a fridge and a freezer. Hence the extra height of the ol’ stack.

So I’ve plugged the new gal in, and she’s humming contentedly. I’ll give it a few hours, to reach operating temperature, and then start transferring the perishables.

What will I (we) do with the old units? I’d like to just bun them both. We already have a decent second fridge-freezer upstairs. Mind, the latter is in the guest room. For tenant’s use, as a d when we have guests or lodgers.

We have to thank our friend and brother, Dan Ellis, for this (and other kindnesses). Despite Teresa and I both working we’re right on the knife edge of survival.

This is quite largely due to my circumstances of the last fourteen months. Which hopefully, now that they’re resolved, will improve. What can we do in return, I wonder?

Recent listening to Charles Kynard has prompted me to recall a period, some years back, when there was a huge surge in folk online posting rips from vinyl, of obscure records not then available on CD (or even streaming).

This period saw huge amounts of less well known music being made available. It was a temporary boom, as there are obviously potential copyright issues. But it gave a small window of opportunity for those with eager ears to discover new and unknown material.

One of the sites I particularly dug back then was this one, or rather, this one, on Mainsteam Records’…

I hoovered up as much of it as I could. So I have a good deal of the classic Mainstream 300 series as MP3s. But it’s even better getting this stuff on CD. The three Kynard albums are absolute gold. Love ‘em.

When funds allow I’ll be getting more of the Jap’ reissues. I already have all the much vaunted Alice Clark stuff (that was released in the UK on CD, some while back). But it’d be great to get some Roy Haynes, Hal Galper, Pete Yellin, Hadley Caliman, Mike Longo, etc.

I hadn’t realised that Caliman is on Santana’s Caravanserai, an all time favourite album of mine, from Devadip’s purplest of patches. He plays sax on track one, ‘Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation’, and flute on track ten, ‘Every Step of The Way’, opening and closing proceedings.

To read more about The Shad-Meister, try this link.

Listening to my recently acquired trilogy of Mainstream albums by organist Charles Kynard, I’m overwhelmed by the general grooviness. From Kynard’s playing, which obviously gets star billing, to the supporting cast.

Arranger Richard Fritz deserves kudos, for his excellent compositions and arrangements. I read, on dougpayne.com, that he and Kynard were school chums! And then the musicians, who make this superb gumbo, really ought to be remembered and celebrated.

And it’s great to see that, in the instance of bassist Chuck Rainey, they are:

I put Kynard’s rendering of Joe Quarterman & Free Soul’s ‘So Much Trouble’ front and centre for three reasons: one, it’s a totally ace slab of funky fabulosity (and that’d be reason enough); two, Rainey’s bass is superb throughout… but three is the clincher; he gets to take a solo. Quite rare. His recording contributions are usually more ‘supporting’ than ‘featured’, if you know what I mean?

If I were choosing bassists that have made a great impression on me, and who I aim to emulate when I pick up an electric bass, he’d probably be right at the top of my picks. I particularly like his lightly bubbling finger style sixteenths, in his right hand. Along, of course, with his choices of notes (a favourite Ron Carter theme) with his south-paw.

What a great musician! Love you forever, Chuck!

Most nights nowadays I listen to a video such as the one above, which helped me sleep last night.

I have the volume fairly low. And I might place the phone face down, so the light from the screen doesn’t undo the good work the audio is doing.

I started listening to these things at night during a period of appalling insomnia, probably about a year ago. These days, or rather nights, I’m sleeping like the proverbial baby.

And videos of this sort have played a part. I like ones in which one can discern the ‘plop’ of individual drops. As opposed to the ‘frying bacon’ effect of some. I guess that could be described as ‘slow heavy’ rain, as opposed to ‘light fast’ rain?

There are loads of such videos, and channels devoted to them. One hopes they are benign!? The good ones – and most I’ve tried seem pretty good – are 8-10 hours or longer, in duration. And, crucially, are not interrupted by the evil blight of advertising.