55 From 55 - 2008

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

Mum showed remarkable resilience after losing Dad in 2007. Her broken hip recovered well and she kept herself very busy. She'd always been the outgoing one and now threw herself into voluntary work in the WRVS cafe at the local hospital and at a couple of charity shops in town. She also built on strong friendships with several near neighbours. I kept Dad's car and drove down to stay with her at every opportunity, taking her shopping once a week and to the hospital once a month, for a consultation with a Myeloma specialist. Outwardly she was coping well with being alone after over 50 years of marriage, though an Aunt let it slip that Mum had mentioned that she found the deafening silence in the house very difficult to adjust to. Dad had always been a very noisy man! He sang, whistled, drummed and generally crash, bashed and walloped his way through life. Mrs S will be happy to vouchsafe that his son is following in his Father's noisy footsteps!

Unshaven scruff. 2008.

I was busy too. I'd been given yet another coffee shop branch to open (this one on a trading estate) with another newly recruited team. On my many drives to and from Ipswich to visit Mum, I listened to a lot of spoken word - audio books, comedy, Radio 4. On the rare occasions that I actually played music, it was usually a Minimal Techno compilation. 'Enfants' by Ricardo Villalobos is minimalism taken to the Nth degree and the perfect tune to take out on the road when your brain is full to overflowing. The looped sample is taken from Christian Vander's 1995 choral reworking of Magma's 1973 prog-rock classic, 'Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh'. This one won't be for everybody.