Musical discourse

 One of "those" adult spoof Ladybird books we've had for a good few years like people can't treasure  a series but try to take it into areas it doesn't belong but there's a bit of truth in this covers mash up.

Like anything, take a passion to the extreme and house can get filled up while are savings consumed by with everything to do with it whither it's fashion, sowing or music so it makes sense to say "do I really need that?"and "what does it exactly give me?"

It's like while the Now People have reissued the LP (and cd bookform) 1983 and 1984 Yearbooks, I'm not buying which may feel like collector "oh my goodness you're not getting a complete set that might be worth more money" but simply there's nothing I don't already have and no, owning them doesn't mean anything to me.

When it comes to the umpteenth issue of some individual albums I'm very selective so there's only three issues of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on lp, the 2014 mono, a mid 70's analogue stereo and the 2017 Digital stereo remaster and when one Doobie Brothers album recently came my way that was a one on one replacement after doing a comparison

One private forum that sometimes acted as a enabling place for such things recently closed which was kind of sad given I'd been there since 2007 when having been given the boot by the management of a bigger site we set up our own place.

Thing is many of them drifted towards Facebook making groups where I point blank refused especially when being partially pushed to go to the no longer with us Google Plus social network by them only to see them move back to Facebook for free coffee at Costa and the like and it that point slowly over time it just drifted apart.

It's like be on Facebook or be cast out.

Sorry I'm not prepared to jump through the hoops and privacy issues that site has just to keep in touch with people who just left me.

Everything links back

It hasn't been the best of weeks with both the weather and being quite ill so I haven't been about as much as I would of loved to had been but have had time to reflect a little on things.

Off and on, this life has always been me, purge or not having been there in the past usually wrapped rather more in a littles form.

Being pushed into wearing a pretty dress by a dominant mommy type, hair and make up all done up.

There always was an uber feminine side of me, willing or not that would go with this whole scene, playing with dollies getting off on non sexual "humiliation".

It can be hard to accept the real you but often the bigger problem is being able to tell others as it's not about wanting to be or seeing yourself as a female but rather you like being a sissy not a man, not a woman but this "gurl" with all the other bits in it.

I know I can be amazing, I have many skills and qualities but they all come from the whole me so trying to shut down anything but the "normal" adversely affects me in everyday life so I need to live and be more open as the whole me.

The whole me is a sissy gurl, not necessarily the one you are but the one that takes in what I relate and get off on so I need to focus more on being less "normal" and more sissy gurl me.

Cleaning records

One thing you cannot avoid when it comes to buying and playing records is cleaning them as finger prints can leave oily deposits and dirt and dust can get into the groove causing varying degrees of crackle or "rustling" in the background.

In vinyl's heyday at the record store counter you'd find various impregnated anti static cloths that worked rather like the cloths you use to clean your glasses with and if hifi was your thing you may of read and seen various fluids and record cleaning systems such as those by Keith Monks which some stores for a fee would clean your discs quite deeply.

Around two thousand sixteen as my record playing system started to improve I found myself needing something to clean some of my oldest records and oddly enough clean and take the static from brand new ones as some record plants aren't as clean as they should be.

This is what I used at the time with a pair of microfibre cloths to apply a cleaning fluid and remove it and any debris from them which worked rather well for a small amount of elbow grease doing it by hand.

Trying to get hold of some recently lead to the discovery it appeared to be no longer available, indeed the last lot I had was only in a small capacity and so some seven years on I was back to exploring cleaners which were.

I settled on this "Deep Track Cleansing" fluid with some cleaning cloths and stylus cleaner as actually from time to time you should clean that on your cartridge to remove and build up of dirt and dust by the company Vinyl Clear.

Interestingly this product is endorsed and used by Abbey Road Studios for cleaning reference records they use when working on newly mastered versions for comparisons using a tiny amount of clean ipa alcohol dissolved in distilled pure water (tap water is inpure containing lime amongst other things).

It came with a plastic record holder for allowing the cleaned disc to dry for a few minutes before putting in the inner sleeve ready for playing.

I might add if the sleeve is an old paper only one I'd resleeve it in either a polylined one or those japanese style rice paper ones so you don't reintroduce any dirt or paper acid you've just spent time removing.

This is available in various capacities - mine was 150 ml - and it does work well

Lessons learned along the tracks

 This blog has, and was always different from the point of view that it was whole life, whole interests centred and not focused narrowly around gender and identity issues as much as I may go on about them as they apply in my life.

Part of that is about going away as much as in the last eighteen or so months it has been fraught with issues but I did get away this weekend but in a lot ways the bigger thing wasn't to be found in the ultimate destination but more what was learned along the way.

Travel, especially by train can be subject to change and that change might be really quite rapid.

With me I had arrived in very good time and checked the overhead screens for the latest travel information as it was becoming apparent an earlier Manchester train was running rather late  and so it was with just under two minutes before our train was due as that train arrived that message you dread came over the public address speakers

"Will passenger on platform 6 for the London Northwestern Service to Birmingham New Street please standby for an announcement".

Sure enough we we told our train now was coming in on Platform 11 and in the process of moving at speed I almost fell over and fell my case at which point an Afro-Carribean woman comes along and picks it up and says she'll help me.

So we form a partnership getting to this platform - me feeling progressive more like the child in this relationship of sorts - very much the little gurl lost - and one missed direction we do get about about and I thanked her most profusely.

Getting off at the other end a bit shaken up still, a white guy with strong Black Country accent sees I'm a bit shaken and not only offers to take my case for me down the stairs but sees me into station concourse

We often read of the worst of people and it can be easy to buy into it but certainly I felt I had met some of the best examples of humanity you could for in the most ordinary of situations and really that's the point here.

We care for each other and those people cared for me.