Musical Squares

Yet another great idea stolen from Last Year’s Girl, you owe me an hour of my life back from doing this

1. What’s your favorite song? “Cold Roses” – Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
2. Favorite genre of music? This is a difficult one, but I’d have to say New Wave at present.
3. Favorite musician/band/singer? For some time it has been Frank Zappa.
4. What was the last song you listened to/are currently listening to? “She Sells Sanctuary” – The Cult.
5. What type of music do you dislike? Rap.
6. What instrument do you like to listen to the most? Lead guitar.
7. What instrument do you most like to play (or would like to learn)? Piano. I had lessons for many years and then rebelled once I discovered alcohol and girls when I was 15/16.
8. Where do you go or what do you listen to when you’re sad? “The End” – The Doors
9. What was the last concert or musical event you attended? Buena Vista Social Club, last month in London.
10. What concert or musical event do you wish you could have attended? Or a performer you would have loved to have seen live? The Cranberries. (It is a long story that involves a girl), otherwise it’d be Frank Zappa.
11. You and your sweetie, what’s your ’song’? If you aren’t paired off, what song do you think it might be? I’d like to think it would be “Come back to bed” by John Mayer.
12. What song gets stuck in your head the most? (For good or for bad) – “Fantastic Day” by Haircut 100, don’t ask…

1. Bizarre Schönheit, 2. Sea Power Glass Wall Wave, 3. Frank Zappa Press Conference, 4. She Sells Sanctuary, 5. LIL WAYNE LIVE, 6. David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, 7. Lee Plaza Piano, 8. End of the day, 9. Buena Vista Social Club, 10. Cranberry Lake, 11. Come Back To Bed, 12. A Sunset in a perfect mirror

Pleasant phone call

Ring ring…

Perpetual “Hello, this is Perpetual.”

AM “Hi this is Aston Martin, would you like to come test drive some of our cars next week at Millbrook proving ground? We’ll have a range of cars there, including the N24 Vantage which we understand you might be thinking of racing next year.”

Perpetual “That would be great, thank you very much.”

AM “We’ll provide you lunch as well.”

Perpetual “Brilliant, I look forward to seeing you then.”

AM “Someone will contact your PA in the next few days to arrange the details, remember to bring your race overalls and helmet.”

Perpetual “I am packing my bags already.”

I suspect the rest of the day will be somewhat anticlimactic now.

Shorn

I feel naked.

In the space of two days I have cut off four weeks worth of beard and then this morning I have had my mountain man like hair cut so that it resembles hair from the western hemisphere rather than someone who’s been on a desert island for three years.

As a general word of advice though, I would always suggest that when you are using your beard trimmer to trim your beard close enough to shave it off, you should ensure that your beard trimmer is fully charged. Otherwise you’ll find yourself having to wait half an hour for it to charge up, whilst you still have 2/3 of your face covered in beard. That is not cool in the slightest.

Thank you Shell…

…for the bounty that I know have in my house.

I went with the somewhat popular option of blowing the money on things, rather than sensible stuff for the new en-suite bathroom.

So, I started with a new DAB clock radio. I’ve wanted one of these for ages, but was quite picky (surprise, surprise) as to what I wanted.

Not only doe this have two speakers (essential), but it also has a CD player meaning I can get rid of the old stereo in the bedroom, it also has four different alarms meaning that I can have my R4 Today wake up during the week and then Planet Rock on the weekends. The DAB reception is really good and Evan Davies sounded resplendent in stereo DAB this morning.

Then I bought a new DVD player for the bedroom. I’d previously used a PS2 and it was fiddly to say the least.

So now I can watch a DVD without having to fiddle on the stupid PS2 controller for ages first. It is only a cheap player, but that is all I need for upstairs.

Finally, I got a wireless Audio/Video sender kit that allows me to see the Sky TV channel from downstairs on the bedroom TV and change the Sky+ box by way of the remote control so that I can browse all the channels from upstairs. Much cheaper than Sky Multiroom and at £38 a month I do think I am giving Mr Murdoch enough of my money anyway.

So now when feeling like watching a film or TV show in bed, I can

Expensively free money

For many years I have been diligently collecting Shell Plus Points every time I have filled up with petrol. I started using Shell because my cars have usually preferred the higher octane Shell fuels so it made sense to collect the points at the same time.

Over a few years I found that I had amassed almost 30,000 points, so it was with some trepidation that I logged onto their rewards site to see what magical bounty awaited me. Being inquisitive I furiously bashed a calculator to work out that my points had cost approximately £18,000 in fuel. I knew that over the years it was a fair chunk of change, but it still shocked me seeing a figure like that.

Now there are a myriad of different types of award available from carbon offsetting donations (I don’t think so), charitable donations (I prefer to donate to friends doing such things as Race for Life etc), Air Miles (I don’t collect them) and Ferrari merchandise (um, no thanks). I eventually settled for money off vouchers at B&Q / Comet / Woolworths. My 30,000 points, lovingly collected over the past few years are worth a grand total of £150 of vouchers.

I couldn’t believe it, all that money for so little return. So I claimed my vouchers and then cut up my reward card in disgust. I knew you had to spend a lot of money to get anything, but it suddenly seemed so fruitless after so long earning points.

I’m not sure whether to be sensible and use the money in B&Q towards the bits I need to refit my en suite bathroom, or whether t go blow it in Comet on something I don’t need.