When I say that car journeys aren’t the same when you get big, I quite specifically mean too big to lie down across the back seat and go to sleep.  When we were kids we lived in Vienna, and used to regularly drive back to Manchester, via the Dover ferry, to visit my mum’s family, who are all from there. In one of those turquoise things in the picture.  In the words of Princess Leia: “You came in that thing?  You’re braver than I thought.”

It was roughly a twenty-five to thirty-hour journey, I do believe, and something we never really questioned, as kids.  It was kind of exciting, honestly, although even as a child you know full well that boredom, frustration and irritability would inevitably kick in at some point and that exhasperated “I don’t bloody well CARE who started it!” would be wearily barked from the front seat.

Nevertheless, what interests me about long drives these days – the scenery, the tranquility (no, seriously), the chance to either turn things over in your brain for a while or chatter aimlessly to someone – didn’t figure at all back then.

I am not really sure what made these journeys exciting when we were kids, but there was definitely something mysterious about curling up to sleep on the back seat, when it was pitch black all around, with the hypnotic effects of the street lights and the subtle changes in engine noise depending on the surface we happened to be driving over at the time.

My parents had a couple of musical strategies for us on these journeys.  They copied albums onto C90s and took the chance to listen to stuff borrowed from friends and stuff like that, but when we really needed pacifying then the story tapes would have to go on, including the Kenneth Williams version of The Wind in the Willows which led to me giving this blog its name.

To this day I still really strongly associate Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s Live in Budapest, Alf by Alison Moyet and pretty much anything by Bronski Beat and even Willie Nelson’s Willie and Family Live with sitting in that turquoise tin can up there and slowly chugging our way across Europe.  At that age, even in that daft wee car, there was just something quite thrilling about it.  Even that grey, wan light which awaited us as we left the ferry and is so characteristic of England had a certain mystique.

Beats the shit out of Ryanair anyway.

Alison Moyet – Steal Me Blind

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Willie Nelson – Good Hearted Woman

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Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Davey’s on the Road Again

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Sorry this one’s a bit late, but that gorgeous graphic above didn’t just draw itself y’know. That is, as the more perceptive of you will have already surmised, the official announcement of our next Song, by Toad house gig.  Avital Raz is touring the UK and Alex Cornish is friend of mine since back in the earliest days of the blog, and has a new album on the way.

It will be the usual score, a fiver each, all of which goes directly to the artists, and you can either bring your own booze or chip in toward the keg of Stewart’s somethingorother which Mrs. Toad and I will provide. Tickets can be bought here, and please do buy them in advance, because it really helps us to have some idea of numbers, and the last two house gigs did sell out:

Now, time to waste what little remains of Friday afternoon before sauntering off down the pub to get battered, get in a fight, and wake up on a container ship bound for the Philippines with no idea how you got there.

1. If you were to wake up in the bowels of a container ship with no idea how you got there, at which port would you prefer to be moored?
2. What exotic animal would become your faithful chum on the long journey home.
3. And what name would this faithful chum be given?
4. What would be your chief mode of transport?
5. Which foreign language do you most wish you could speak?

And five songs, in this case from my childhood in Vienna.  These are mostly songs my mum would approve of (that’s not me trying to deflect the guilt in a guilty pleasure – I like them too).

Culture Club – Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

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Huey Lewis & the News – The Power of Love

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Kim Carnes – Mistaken Identity

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Alison Moyet – Steal Me Blind

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Billy Joel – Piano Man

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Yes, the whole family is currently here at Toad Hall, inspecting the place and making sure that we are running our relationship in a satisfactory manner.  I have had advice on everything from which chores to do in order to make Mrs. Toad happy when she gets back from God Bless America (about an hour ago) to how to order my working day now I am a gentleman of leisure.  Oh what jolly fun it’s been.

Mrs. Toad got back to a demand from a debt collection agency for the sum of forty pounds, which included the statement “this amount includes an adminisration fee of forty pounds”.  What a great business to be in!  You send people letters claiming that the very act of sending them a letter obliges them to reimburse you for sending it.  I am in the wrong fucking business.

I sat and played my folks some old Smithsonian Folkways stuff the other night actually, which was rather fun.  I played them some Sam Amidon as well, and some Alela Diane and some Jackson C. Frank and some stuff from the gorgeous FOUND Toad Session.  I am not sure that being sat down and told to listen to a series of songs I am convinced they Must Like is quite what they came here for, but hey.  If they’re going to lecture me about domestic duties, I am going to force them to listen to music all night.

And once again it is Friday, de-lurking day and King’s Wark for our tea day, so all is well with the universe.  Oh, and Mrs. Toad is home as well, which is very good news.  I do miss the bad tempered old bag when she goes away.  So please come out of hiding and answer five silly questions before wasting the rest of your Friday afternoon talking shit, when you really should be at work being productive.

1. Biggest pretence about your life you still maintain in front of your folks.
2. Most unreasonable thing you make them tolerate when they visit you.
3. Time before the novelty wears off.
4. Most preposterous debt collection conversation you’ve had.
5. Who do you write like?

Five songs from when I lived at home:

Kim Carnes – Mistaken Identity

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Culture Club – It’s a Miracle

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Alison Moyet – Love Resurrection

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Hazel O’Connor – Will You

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Cyndi Lauper – Time After Time

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I know I hammer on about guilty pleasure on this blog a lot mostly, I would imagine, because I am an incredible snob and so some of the things I used to listen to horrify me.  If you think I judge you by the shit you listen to, just think how twisted and confused that mockery must become when turned inward upon the giant Hydra of Hypocrisy which dwells inside me.

Fuck it though, I am not going on about that today, but that is the reason for the songs I have chosen, so before you start sniggering just think how hard this has been for me and try and show some compassion, you horrible people.

Recently I have been getting into a lot of software trouble with Final Cut Pro and various web streaming technologies, which is most, most frustrating.  I fixed everything by doing what you are supposed to do in these situations: head to the internet and read forums where someone, somewhere has almost certainly had the same problem in the past and see how they themselves fixed it.

I still find that kind of daunting though, I have to confess.  The idea of all the poking about in config files, which they tend to recommend, scares me just a little bit, as if deleting the wrong file would suddenly make the whole fucking computer go on fire or something.  It reminds me of my parents and their increasing disconnect with technology, actually. They simply do not have any of the instincts to fix simple things in ‘preferences’ or to go and find a file which their internet browser may have downloaded to a strange location or something like that.  I fear, in my wariness of getting too deep into config and system files, that I too may be just on the verge of letting technology escape me just a little.  Not that I was ever a computer whizz to begin with of course.

Anyhow, this site has a number of regular commenters, for whom I am deeply grateful because it gives the place an aura of authority which I myself would never achieve on my own.  However, for those of you thinking about making your first comment (and I know there are a lot of you) it must seem a bit cliquey, so on Friday I open my arms to the lurkers out there and suggest you take this chance to say hello for the first time.  It’s the perfect opportunity of course, because not one lick of sense will be talked on this site all day, so no matter how silly your contribution, you can guarantee it won’t be the silliest.

That will be Bart.

1. Technology which is getting away from you a bit.
2. How techie are your parents?
3. Favourite low-tech item in regular use in your house.
4. Best really fucking complicated invention.
5. Best really fucking simple and extremely bloody obvious invention.

Cyndi Lauper – Time After Time

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Alison Moyet – Steal Me Blind

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Elton John – I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues

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Meat Loaf – Dead Ringer For Love

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Huey Lewis & the News – The Power of Love It is a simple and unarguable truth that anyone worth their salt loves Back to the Future.  And anyone who loves Back to the Future must have at least a sneaking soft spot for this song.

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