planet impiazzi

I have to confess I've been hanging out over on MySpace a bit recently. But I haven't quite forgotten blogger.

Have a read of Carfree Times, which has some great articles, and tempting photos of Portuguese towns that make me want to run away from this mucky traffic-clogged city.

And allow me a little pre-birthday self-indulgence by sharing some llamas.

Don't know if it's a Friday thing, or just a grey winter's day but getting up this morning was really hard.

Last night I went to the West Yorkshire Playhouse to see The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was absolutely hilarious. Performed by 3-man troupe Peepolykus the show moves on to Liverpool next week, then to Winchester, Watford and finally Oxford. Go and see it if you can - I laughed so much I ached.

Anyway, today's random toons:

Johnny Cash - Desperado
Radiohead - Planet Telex
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - 15ft of Pure White Snow
Kaiser Chiefs - Everyday I Love You Less & Less
Lemon Jelly - Closer
David Bowie - Sweet Thing

Today's random playlist:

Blondie - Sunday Girl
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dead Man in My Bed
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Spellbound
Radiohead - Street Spirit
Damien Rice - Cheers Darlin' (which I skipped because it's a quiet song and I was walking by a busy road so I couldn't really hear it properly!)
Radiohead - Blackstar
T Rex - Cosmic Dancer
The Streets - Such a Twat

Most days I don't plug in to my music until I'm 10 minutes away from work, as I walk most of the way with my lad and think it would be rude to cut myself off from his cheery morning banter (that's a joke really, because he rarely says anything). After our paths diverge I fish out my earphones and listen to a couple of songs. But it's half-term this week so no college; hence I get half an hour of solo walking. Anyway, yesterday I got hold of an Italian language learning CD, which I'm going to put on my MP3 player (hopefully!), so I shall probably be listening to that more than music, for a while at least. I'm in the middle of a GCSE Italian course and feel I need more listening practice. So no sooner have I decided on a new reason-to-blog, then my routine changes and takes away my material! I could, of course, continue with music in the morning and save language for the journey home, but my brain is much more likely to benefit from the learning opportunity early in the day than after a day at work. We shall see.

My blogging habit seems to have flagged considerably of late. So has my reading. My life has been taken over by knitting!

But walking to work this morning it occurred to me that I really needed to resurrect this page before it completely withers and dies. But what to write?

Well, I recently got caught up in the world of MP3 players so I reckon I'll share with you the morning's random track selection; ease myself gently back into the blogosphere with the wonder that is digital music. So here goes. These are the songs that accompanied me on the morning walk:

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Nature Boy
The Kooks - Naive
John Denver - Country Roads
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Get Ready for Love
Ian Dury & The Blockheads - What a Waste
The Undertones - When Saturday Comes
Kate Bush - The Man with the Child in his Eyes

As you can see, it's not a very long walk!