ADAM AT HOME UK

This whole episode is audio only, but it will help to look through the photos below while listening. Click  HERE  to start...

As usual, if you'd like to hear this in audio, please press   HERE But please do look at the photos and listen to the links!  I am going to open this post with a link to a stunningly sung version of the old Swedish carol 'Jul, Jul, stralande Jul'   (yule, Yule, glorious yule, Shine over white forests...etc etc) Back in September, I felt an overwhelming desire to keep in contact with people come Christmastime. I think the 'insularity' of this peculiar year must be responsible. I have not sent out seasonal cards SINCE 2015, so a) I thought it would be nice to surprise people and b) it would keep me busy - not that I don't have other things to do of course! Wonderful place that the internet can be, I just didn't seem to be able to find anything commercially available that appealed to me - and the cost - some of the nicer ones were £5 each....!! Being a staunch atheist, I have tended to shy away from the overtly religeous and have generally mad...

Should you prefer the audio version, please click   HERE As I said in my last post, I was somewhat  dissappointed when it turned out Manny needed a few extra pounds on him  <sigh>. However, once I finally got around to sorting things out, I realised it meant making him a padded waistcoat (a gambezon, basically). This involved first of all making a double-layed calico waistcoat to his current size - double layered so that I could glue the wadding in place without the danger of the glue seeping through... That in itself was quite a challenge.  Then the padding: mainly a layer of foam carpet under-felt. Very useful stuff incidentally - it is pretty good at deadening sound and formed a major part of the sound-deadening I installed between myself and my neighbours several years back. This was followed by several layers of thin wadding, with a final layer of calico to smooth everything down and make it look presentable. A certain amount...

If you'd like to listen to the spoken version of this post, you'd better click   HERE Oh dear... I see it's well over two weeks since my last entry... Well, I suppose I've been frightfully, frightfully  busy doing huge amounts of Notalot , which is always very tiring. In reality, it was something of a dissappointment that the mannequin I'd thrown myself into with such vigour turned out to be  somewhat  more svelte than he should have been. My general reaction to such things is to put them aside for a while; trouble being, that I do not want to get started on the Banyan Project till I have a viable mannequin. Time has not in fact been standing still, in that I have made myself two pairs of 'experimental' boxer shorts - very loosely based on C18th braies - with another one in the pipeline. Then I have been making myself several hats, starting with a calico mock-up out of which has come a sort of skullcap and a couple of pork pies, plus a pork pie for a go...

As usual, if you would like to listen to this blog rather than read it, please press   HERE I was going to write a little pre-amble to all this, but felt it would spoil the flow.  So it’s been stuck at the end as a… post-ramble… I suppose. Anyway, to business:- Music has always played a big part in my life, both as performer and listener - more the latter as I get older.  My very earliest memories, going back to when I was very  young indeed, were of Danny Kaye singing 'Tubby the Tuba', played from a '45' (remember them?!) on my parents' portable record player.  This was quickly followed by a Vivaldi concerto for two trumpets, which was generally played as 'getting-up' music of a Sunday morning… In the late '60s my brother gave me a wonderful LP: Tanzmusik der Paetorius-zeit - an Archiv production - which opened my eyes (and ears) to the joys of early music.  At around the same time we had a ground-breaking recording of the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, ...

In the current circumstances, I don't feel inclined to work up a proper, written blogpost, so I am afraid you will just have to make do with an off-the-cuff ramble, by clicking   HERE Azerbaijan family Andong prawn crackers As usual, feel free to comment, subscribe, whatever... [:-)

Should you feel inclined to listen to this blog rather than read it, please click   HERE Yes indeedy, as of yesterday there is a body in my hall - going by the unconfirmed name of Manny Bootstrap... He arrived after a long weekend of creativity, culminating in 3 1/2 hours of hard labour - stuffing him with about 5kg of shredded paper bedding. Handsome guy tho he is, I really DO NOT KNOW where his living quarters will be! Back-tracking a few days, it's a very well thought-out pattern with a central panel hidden inside, supporting the basic outline. The shape of things to come, so-to-speak! I had an odd bit of foam for the neck lying around, just waiting for this kind of project... After a certain amount of slightly mind-bending 'inside-out-ness' everything came out the right way round. But it was the ned of the day and I was, frankly, bushed. Inserting the stuffinginvolved first of all fluffing-up the paper offcuts after their ...