tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-203527712024-02-07T18:55:29.282+00:00John Parkes - blog and moreNews, views, moans, comments and music stuff from singer / songwriter John Parkes.John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.comBlogger622125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-28327984699286944692023-10-14T10:54:00.001+00:002023-10-14T10:54:29.228+00:00How many servings?<p>4 people for tea, that’ll be a full packet of fish fingers. My memory tells me that there’s 12 in a packet. Always been 12 in that size box. But now it’s 10. What a useless number. 12 divides by 1,2,3 and 4 – so that’s quite a good spread of the number of people you might be feeding. Or 4 meals for 1. Or 2 meals for 2. 10 divides by 1 and er 2. So assuming that most people will have 3 fish fingers it’s a shit number. I’m intrigued as to how many ‘servings’ they say that is. Turns out it’s ‘approximately 3’ – it says so on the packet. Without a ‘I mean, I know, right? What are we like?!’</p><p>So it’s 2 ½ fish fingers each. Shrinkflation.</p><p>On a similar theme I think the 1 Kg tubs of chocolates they’ve been shrinking down for years have finally reached the 500g I’ve been predicting. </p><p><br /></p>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-65916752015351724692023-10-14T10:43:00.000+00:002023-10-14T10:43:07.552+00:00Transformational!<p> Look out folks – “Your station gateway is transforming”. This is a sign at Leeds railway station. What can it mean? Building work is what it means. Accompanied by fences, cones, temporary walkways, barriers, kerbs and all sorts of general mayhem making it pretty impossible not to walk in front of cars. Of the 5 words in that sign 2 seem to be useable in the sense of er, sense. ‘Station’. Yes, OK, you can have that one. ‘Is’, OK, yes, OK in context that too. But what can ‘your station gateway’ mean? Do I have a station? Do you have a station? Do we as a collective have a station? I suppose we kind of do. The station maybe. I’d say ‘railway station’ though ‘train station‘ seems to have taken over. But what is a ‘station gateway’? Is it different to a station? Is it a thing in itself or does it mean the gateway to the station? But wouldn’t that be the entrance to the station? Is it a ticket barrier (have they stopped using the phrase ‘revenue protection barrier’? For the sake of taking the piss I hope not, for the sake of sanity I hope so). </p><p><br /></p><p>I fear that a ‘station gateway’ is indeed a concept. A ‘destination’ as they say. Translated as a ghastly shopping centre you have to endure on your way to a train. The way the railways are ‘invested in’ by adding cafes and food places rather than actual trains. </p><p><br /></p><p>It's also ‘transforming’. Do we stand and watch? Is it doing it without help (as in transforming rather than being transformed) – and why is that different to ‘being changed’. It seems that nothing can be changed or adjusted these days, it has to be ‘transformed’. Hence the CEO or head of a charity or college or whatever who joins, has a massively expensive re-structure, decides on a hugely expensive vanity project then moves upwards before the shit hits the fan having ‘transformed the organisation into a basket case. Maybe the station will transform into a big monstery truck or something? </p><p><br /></p><p>In the case of what will surely amount to adding some shops to the station making the trains really difficult to get to (I expect they think the modern St Pancras is a good thing) I guess the folly will lie in the modern buildings that will look smart for 3 or 4 years before the rust stains and damp patches appear and they get demolished 25 years later to make way for a similar building a few hireable floors higher. And God help us if they still that fashion of putting some plant pots in the walls so they can use the word ‘green’, or even worse ‘sustainable’, in the publicity. Gets it past the Council maybe until the plants all go in the bin 18 months later when the initial maintenance budget runs out. For the moment it’s just a mess… </p><div><br /></div>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-61258890269765535562023-01-25T12:30:00.001+00:002023-01-25T12:30:24.179+00:00Just give us yer money and **** off<p> Why do companies act like they’re doing you a big favour by you giving them money? And why do we have to do their work for them?</p><p><br /></p><p>I’ve been filling in a form so that Royal Mail can swap my stamps to the new version with a barcode on – and hey, they’re much bigger so they’ll use more paper – great! I have to Google what NVI stands for, find out how much the stamps currently cost (the answer is between 2 and 3 times what you’d expect), tot it all up, fill in a form, post it off and wait for replacements. They give ‘examples’ of the kind of stamps that you can ‘swap out’ which, aside from the fact that they should provide a proper list not some examples doesn’t mention large letter stamps (surely quite common ones?) unless you search about. All for their convenience it seems. So they can provide innovative new products apparently and ‘improve security’. Having used up a lot of my time. Mm…</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">And while I’m on if you can be bothered check out the tangle about whether they’ve extended the deadline for ‘swapping out’ and using old stamps. It’s something to do with the fact that they’re giving you more time but not extending the deadline. By the way, are there other products you buy and are then forced to use by a certain date by the company that provided them? Perhaps their management is a bit rubbish now half of them are in jail after the Horizon scandal. Oh hang on…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Similarly, I do a big shop in Morrisons and how many tills do they have open? The answer is none. That’s Zero, not even a tobacco kiosk with a queue of 25 people. When asked most people will guess that they only had one or two and that there was a massive queue while the supermarket has several staff floating round the self-service bit to sort out all the times it goes wrong and generally to make sure we’re not trying to rip them off in retaliation for ripping us off (we’ve all been wondering how increased energy costs doubles the cost of a particular product over a few months – I particularly notice the price of tinned grapefruit nearly doubling – presumably because of the closure of the Ukrainian grapefruit farms or something?) So it’s zero and I have to do it all myself with a massive queue behind me. When the machine says I need a member of staff (to check I’m over 18 it seems) I have to walk round half the shop looking for someone. Similarly I key in ‘bananas’ (why am I going through menus on a screen just so I can give them my money?) and it says to place them in ‘the weighing area’. I turn around to ask the queue if they know what that means. No-one does though one bloke says ‘I think there might be on over there mate’. Finally the single member of staff who’s looking after the entirety of the checkouts comes over and plonks the bananas down in what you or I might know as ‘the bagging area’. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">In other areas (let’s say gig and event tickets) the people selling you the tickets think it’s OK to insist that you have a working / charged phone that you must use (and no, you’re not allowed to print anything out) and in order to buy a ticket (for someone else in this case) you must sign up and have a ‘digital wallet’ in their app. If you want to give someone a ticket as a present in some physical form just forget it – have a smartphone, have it charged, have reception, pay to use it, sign up to them, give them your money and **** right off, OK? I mean everyone has a phone right? And no-one would ever need a back up in case they had no power or reception or their phone was lost or stolen would they? That never happens. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">So…here I am resentful again about the set of so and sos who just want my money and seem to think I should do half their job for them, be grateful and just sod off. </span></p><div><br /></div>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-37971464576090726712022-10-13T16:02:00.003+00:002022-10-13T16:02:57.572+00:00It's still kicking off but not so much on here...<p></p><p><span style="color: white; font-size: 13.5pt;"> If anyone was wondering, I
am still getting wound up by the petty (and larger) madnesses of the world but
they all seem so widespread and obvious that I don't think you need me to point
them out. I'm tending to put my blistering and eloquent ripostes to nonsense
on Facebook replying to posts mostly on the following subjects:<br />
<br />
1. Conspiracy loons. Especially re the moon landings.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="color: white; font-size: 13.5pt;">2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Related to this are the 'here's a picture of
a UFO, re-write history, ancient aliens, this is obvious proof of [insert
nut-job theory here]' people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
freely use the term UFO without realising that the U means ‘unidentified’ as
they’ve always identified them (as spaceships piloted by ‘aliens’ of a particular
narrow type they assume exists).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ‘UFOs’
can be ‘thousands of miles across’ and yet they’re the only people who have
spotted them – just before ‘NASA cut the feed’… This soon bleeds into the
religious nutcases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I actually usually
manage to not engage with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
2. Anti-sciencers and anti-vaxxers - though they seem a bit quieter at
the moment in my 'recommended for you' feed.<br />
<br />
3. Related to 2 are the people being oppressed / having their civil
liberties being taken away from them by being politely asked if they'd wear a
mask in the shop please. You'd have thought the whinging crybabies were
being shot at or something. They’re all heroes to themselves too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh yes and they were all about to be carted
off to 're-education centres' they couldn't locate or identify in any way too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also they have no idea that George Orwell was
a Socialist..<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="color: white; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
4. Strangely there were also HS2 people - and I'm not even particularly
against HS2. But it was the people who couldn't believe that anyone
had any points against it people that pissed me off. And the fact that
they wouldn't actually admit that the Leeds bit of the route had been cancelled.
In fact they were so obtuse that I suspected that they were either bots or
Putin's IT monkeys monkeying about.<br />
<br />
5. Oh and there are the 'right meets left and you can't tell the
difference' people - generally the Jewish / capitalist conspiracy and 'all
Israeli's are evil militaristic racists because of the Palestinians' people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the paedophile elite people too. I'm
talking about the ‘millions of children being murdered by Hillary Clinton’
types.<br />
<br />
6. The people who post pictures of diesel trucks rescuing electric cars
as if this shows that electricity is an inherently rubbish power source while
diesel (and coal of course) are great.<br />
<br />
7. Finally, (this is mainly on YouTube from what I've seen) - the 'Paul
is dead and was replaced' people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite
it being so obviously and blindingly clear that you can't just replace someone
like that, believe it or not there are still people claiming that the Paul
we know and love today is 'Faul' (Fake Paul y'see).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They appear to be genuine in their beliefs -
all that 'his ear looks a bit weird in that picture and the obvious implication
is that it's not him at all but the winner of a (unspecified) look-alike
competition’ or something. This is the one that's so mad that you'd think
anyone could resist commenting. But not me. I'm trying not
to. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="color: white; font-size: 13.5pt;">8.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Almost forgot the ‘make up your own reality /
I just took some pictures of inter-dimensional beings that I decided I’d
believe in because I like the idea’ people’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One showed me some pictures of ‘orbs’ (that look just like dust lit up
by a flash’) as proof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="color: white; font-size: 13.5pt;">10.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh yes – then there’s the seemingly clever
memes that don’t mean anything or that appear to show that something that’s
demonstrably not true is true. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="color: white; font-size: 13.5pt;">So…my conclusions are:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: white;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Facebook feeds you stuff that it thinks
will annoy you so you’ll engage<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: white;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">It seems likely that a lot of the posters
aren’t really real (have a look at their profiles and notice the lack of
friends / posts on other subjects and the like<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: white;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">A lot of this stuff is just clickbait and
not an actual person with an actual opinion. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p><span style="color: white; font-size: 13.5pt;">I’m an idiot for taking the bait
and arguing with bots and idiots and idiot bots…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="color: white;"> </span></o:p></p><br /><p></p>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-78894555237231201432021-12-07T20:22:00.001+00:002021-12-07T20:22:36.219+00:00Harry Bennett!<p> </p><p>I’ve been listening to Alan Bennett (Untold Stories) on an old CD-R someone copied for us. If you find some faux Bennett er, thingies in this (never having quite got the measure of parody or, more accurately never quite having found a style of my own) er, that’ll be the reason. My ‘partner’ (following AB, I hereby explain that I’ve never been comfortable with this description - AB would have a more accurate word there and the punctuation would also be better. Not married and being a couple of decades past the word ‘girlfriend’ I use it, but it smacks of what feels like part of the modern trend towards the inaccurate use of words). Not being AB I have to repeat so as not to get lost…ahem, my partner goes to a local community café place to find it closed as one of the royal princes has come to shake hands with the goats that they have in the yard or something. I expect that if the question occurs as to whether the café serves curried goat (if he’s ever heard of such a thing) he won’t ask it. I guess it’ll be William and not Harry. Their ubiquity in the news ensuring that my ignorance of which was who which I carried as a badge of republican honour for years means that I’m pretty sure that Harry is in America suing Oprah Winfrey or selling candles or something.</p><p>This makes me ponder one of those questions that are sometimes posed by columnists in right-wing newspapers. Or were anyway. A random memory from a long time back along the lines of ‘if we don’t have a monarchy who could we possibly have as a president? President Hattersley?!’ (the now very veteran Labour politician) being the guffawing riposte which doesn’t sound so stupid now. I was wondering who would be good as a ceremonial head of state and if say 15 years ago President Attenborough had been suggested wouldn’t he have done? Shirley Williams (another veteran labour person) would have worked too I think. Or president Ken Clarke? The point is that you can actually find these people and surely it’d be better than having people who are there simply via having a tenuous connection to some warlord from a thousand years ago. </p><p>I say tenuous. When ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ did comedian Josh Widdecombe they found a connection to ‘the royal family’ and as you might expect went on about it at some length. A quick calculation (by me, not them, I guess it’s the kind of thing that either didn’t occur or would have seemed churlish to mention, royal connections still being positive things in the modern world) quickly revealed that there were nearly 1,000 other people he was descended from (working this out by going 2 parents, 4 grand parents, 8 grand-grand parents and so on). I guess royal families are more in-bred but it does seem weird that we get someone who is ‘royal’ due to them having a very vague connection to the thieves, tyrants and warmongers of yesteryear round to fondle our good clean Northern goats. We are very backwards and old fashioned – bring on the eighteenth century! </p><div><br /></div>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-28501973850620282072021-12-07T20:11:00.002+00:002021-12-07T20:11:58.427+00:00A Sadness of Wasps<p> Wasps eh? Never liked them much. In fact I’ve always been one of those people jumping and flailing and running when one appears. ‘Just keep still’ never cut it with me and I still want someone else to deal with one if it appears. So over last summer we saw dozens of the little blighters flying into a hole in the side of the house – seemingly into the space between a skylight and the (relatively) new ceiling in the downstairs toilet. So what to do? And what does it reveal about oneself?</p><p>First thought – ‘I’ve got some anti wasps nest power somewhere’ – ‘you flick it about like you’re about to do an old fashioned lady armpit shave and they er, go away’. ‘Or die or something’. </p><p>The second thought is something like ‘but what would Chris Packham say?’ This backed up by a recently memory of him on the telly talking about wasps being really useful and amazing and all that mixed in with a bit of ‘who are we to kill them?’</p><p>So we decide that since they aren’t really bothering us (apart from a reported buzzing in the ceiling which leads me to abandon downstairs toilet use amid visions of huge wasps nests crashing through the ceiling and being engulphed in 100 million angry toilet wasps) we can probably just leave them and they’ll er, go away. They buzz about and in the autumn they’ll die off and go away and apparently they don’t come back to the same place. OK, we’ll do that. </p><p>The plan seems to work. Weeks pass and one day we find a small dead wasp on the stair carpet. No idea where it’s come from except that it’s unlikely to have come from outside as we don’t generally have windows open when it’s not high summer (don’t get me started on those people who leave their radiators on just below open windows on cold days). For about 2 months we find 2 or 3 small, not quite dead wasps in the hall and on the stairs. We assume there’s a small hole in the cupboard that the odd one gets through from the space over the toilet (maybe this is how evolution works, except in this case the brave adventurous squeezy hole-y wasps find the carpet and not a new and productive place to fly to to breed the next generation). But it’s been a mild Autumn, they’ll be gone soon surely? November comes around and the number of small, drowsy wasps on the floor (or on the window initially followed a few hours or a day or so later by an unseen slump to the floor) remains consistent. They’re small and, partly due to them not flying, and partly I think being only a bit bigger and slightly more curvy than hover flies (which I don’t mind – why is the curve of a wasp so disturbing?!) I don’t find this too bad. And someone else is clearing them up and dumping them in the bin, though I shudder on the odd occasion I’ve had to do it myself using a dustpan and brush for distance, the use of a piece of kitchen roll being far too close a contact for me. </p><p><br /></p><p>One of the worst parts of this whole thing is the musing on life and death and what it teachers you about yourself. I don’t learn that I don’t like wasps or don’t like clearing up dead things (or worse, nearly dead things) but I do realise that I’d much rather let them die than kill them. Somewhere there’s a voice telling me to ‘finish them off it’s the kindest thing to do’. But I’m happier letting them writhe, buzz, expire, buzz a bit more and then actually expire than I am intervening with a shoe or fly swat or spray (that we don’t actually have) or newspaper (that we also don’t really have) or whatever. Who am I to kill them? But who am I to rescue them? That seems to be what I should do – get them outside where they can quickly die in the cold? These particular wasps seem more sympathetic than most. They’re small, they not flying, they’re not landing on you and stinging you when you brush them off not realising that they’re there. And Chris Packham has explained that they’re not the bad guys that we may have been led to believe. Wood pigeons good, pigeons in town ‘flying rats’, red squirrels good, grey ones bad, bees good wasps bad, rats bad, hamsters good, roses good, nettles bad, slugs bad, ladybirds good – who can keep up with the value judgements of the householder or gardener? </p><p>The last week in November comes and I come in late at night to find a big, scary, curvy wasp flying round the light bulb I’ve just switched on. I shiver, turn the light off and run away upstairs. It’s found in a similar state to the smaller ones in the morning – but this bigger one takes longer to die and even when it is apparently dead it might not be. So it gets left and eventually gets cleared away by someone else after I’ve jumped around the hall or up 2 stairs at a time to ignore it. </p><p>Then as if to some sort of schedule another lone, large wasp appears bouncing round the window with what appears to be loads of energy which soon dissipates and it ends up on the floor. Then another and another. One or two a day (don’t panic there is no dramatic climax to come here – so far anyway). It’s now a week into December and still they come. Today there’s one on the bedroom window which I bravely try to steer out with a magazine though it won’t stay on it and I fail. Last seem crawling across the bedroom carpet heading for the landing. I’ve taken to looking in my shoes before putting them on now. I hear that these big wasps might be ‘queens’ or something – but how many does a wasps nest have? On the way out of the house I occasionally have a look round to the hole they’ve been going in and out of. Quiet. Until next time when there are a dozen wasps flying around. Kind of hoping for a hard frost over a few days. At some point maybe in February when I’m more confident that they’re dead I’ll gum up the hole. Might even peer through the top of the toilet skylight expecting to see an intricate nightmare world of (hopefully) abandoned wasps’ nest. Which will be left as far too scary to move. The skylight hasn’t been opened for decades so it’d probably break if it were opened. Honest. </p><p>But nowadays when I see one on the floor I take to musing on life and death and thinking ‘poor little bastard’ (not quite reaching as far as ‘poor little thing’, though they do seem a bit pathetic) and I think that gently expiring on a carpet in a warmish house just running out of energy probably isn’t that bad a way to die.</p><div><br /></div>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-34026381539047202592021-10-23T14:47:00.001+00:002021-10-23T14:47:36.770+00:00Is the power still connected?<p>A bit of post in the hall and the pot plants need a water but the old blog / website seems to be still here after not updating for a while. Mainly here due to having a gig coming up - Saturday 30th October at the Thunderbolt in Bristol supporting the Cud band. Tempted to drone on about the government, anti-vaxxers, people parking on all the footpaths and other assorted nonsense but maybe on another occasion...</p>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-31734841508401862572020-07-28T19:52:00.002+00:002020-07-28T19:52:49.027+00:00It's a bit dusty in here...Looks like there's not been much posting round here recently. Partly this is because I think I've moaned about most of the things I most obviously want to moan about - and perhaps partly being worn out and worn down by all the on-line nonsense where you have to pick a side and a party line and if you get it wrong even down to a tiny slice of inexactitude everyone piles in and it tires you out. Not that I've suffered from a lot of that myself I guess though I am sick of that internet thing 'you'll never guess what this person said, click here'. I'm still pissed off by people parking on the footpath and all the rest but fed up with 'engagement' i.e. being wound up. <br />
<br />
Anyway...I guess it just hasn't felt like I've had the time to come on here and go on about stuff. I've written and partly recorded a load of songs with my mates Simon Smith and Alaric Lewis as The Sunny Smiles Three and so some effort will be re-directed there. We're at <a href="https://thesunnysmilesthree.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">www.thesunnysmilesthree.com</a><br />
<br />
There may well be some updates on there otherwise you can find me on Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/johnparkesacoustic/" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/johnparkesacoustic/ </a>- You can also find the Sunny Smiles Three there <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thesunnysmilesthree/" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/thesunnysmilesthree/</a><br />
<br />
And there are loads of videos either already up or on their way to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdJzSuYkM7jwbiZbtT4wmbw" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdJzSuYkM7jwbiZbtT4wmbw </a><br />
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You never know, I may get a renewed enthusiasm for posting but I'm guessing that there won't be much...John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-15415458230792198182019-02-22T17:09:00.000+00:002019-02-22T17:09:26.308+00:00Coming soon...<a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2265765037003512" target="_blank">Coming soon...</a>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-60312997151233540432018-12-04T21:05:00.000+00:002018-12-04T21:05:50.889+00:00Domain thing that happened today roundabout here...I just bought some new domain names (hence 'domain thing' today - gedditt??) - one is a band name and one is for film-making. The band is the one where top bass player Alaric Lewis and top drummer Simon Smith play along with me and it all sounds great. We're got a fair few songs 'in the can' as they say and some of it will get released (as they say) when I get myself together and get the money (as I say). When I say 'film making' I mean music videos really. Mostly the sort of thing that I've put on YouTube relatively recently - but thought I might set something up that's a bit more standaloney.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Am I going to tell you what they are? No, not for now. It's for the exciting stuff happening 'soon' - which in my world means sometime in the next 5 years probably if I'm not dead by then...Which has been predicted - more on that anon... </div>
John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-72997496015472745482018-12-02T16:26:00.002+00:002018-12-02T16:26:45.484+00:00Definitely worth the rusk...If you were wondering what happened to www.johnparkes.com I sold it. I was offered money, I wasn't using it directly as it were (its been redirected to this blog for a while now) so I sold it to another John Parkes in the United States who really wanted it. In return for money. <br />
<br />
I'm hoping that people can still find me via Bandcamp or here or by Googling 'John Parkes music' or some-such so I thought it worth the risk. Or rusk as I initially typed...<br />
<br />
I'm going to buy some more domain names for 'other projects' as they say. More on that soonish.<br />
<br />
John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-46805608179515079222018-12-02T16:20:00.000+00:002018-12-02T16:20:18.466+00:00It's definitely not paaayyyydddaaaayyy!Why do Premier Inn (and others) keep emailing me telling me that ‘it’s pay day’ when it’s not. Not only is it apparently payday but in Premier Inn world “It’s paaayyyddddaaaayyy!” and “That all-important payday before Christmas is finally here!”<br />
<br />
Presumably some people have jobs when they get paid at the end of the month but I’ve never had one. It’s not something I’ve questioned people on much but when I have found out when someone is paid it’s never so far as I can remember at the end of the month. Do all hotel chains or marketing firms pay their staff at the end of the month? Whatever, it just makes marketing people even more idiotic in my eyes (if that’s possible). It's not payday...<br />
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<br /></div>
John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-31685367856591965802018-10-18T21:40:00.002+00:002018-10-18T21:40:20.082+00:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtAuKjcnwjkuOYKFOwMEIccsJKKb-2BA6kwwHx9lWuN2K58rZYQfvnNkYPlbBfOCebFsRiuQ1FMyzkm37_WTzeOwrZ2R9j6dvZZwvPj82YPycOV6QneoFIUl0aOSyD0fPquZ5C/s1600/Cloth+Cat+CD+launch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="781" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtAuKjcnwjkuOYKFOwMEIccsJKKb-2BA6kwwHx9lWuN2K58rZYQfvnNkYPlbBfOCebFsRiuQ1FMyzkm37_WTzeOwrZ2R9j6dvZZwvPj82YPycOV6QneoFIUl0aOSyD0fPquZ5C/s320/Cloth+Cat+CD+launch.jpg" width="260" /></a></div>
<br />John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-71278611473352865842018-09-14T14:17:00.001+00:002018-09-14T14:22:55.459+00:00T'Northern Powerhouse?<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 13.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">A bod who was captioned as ‘Minister for the Northern Powerhouse’
appeared on a local TV programme the other day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps the BBC were having a laugh or maybe it was some sort of prank
where someone wins a bet by pretending to be someone that doesn’t exist in
order to get on the telly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The brief was
simple enough in this case it seems – being a bloke with nothing to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Might try it myself at some point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The subject might have been railways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the place where there are hardly any
trains and hardly anyone can afford to use them but it’s OK because they’re
about to spend x pounds on station improvements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mm…at least there’ll be a tram running down
the bottom of my road by 2007.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though
that’ll be in the same world as the one where they have a Minister for the Northern
Powerhouse…</span></div>
John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-19009263271708334892018-01-21T20:10:00.001+00:002018-01-21T20:10:53.391+00:00A review...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipdpF_3D2ULHfHvn_YVVeQAbO4IVRZ1JKNFH44O8Dw3pmxt3tzg51qATowIFYJpV5zlGCHjozZWQqiNAAiWf7M4s4fK-Mpg7027Ps87CcArj8ZPCnanopswj8bVBJ0ErZjsqR1/s1600/From+RnR+Jan++Feb+2018.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipdpF_3D2ULHfHvn_YVVeQAbO4IVRZ1JKNFH44O8Dw3pmxt3tzg51qATowIFYJpV5zlGCHjozZWQqiNAAiWf7M4s4fK-Mpg7027Ps87CcArj8ZPCnanopswj8bVBJ0ErZjsqR1/s320/From+RnR+Jan++Feb+2018.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
A review from the excellent RnR magazine...John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-17385682401261032762018-01-06T21:22:00.001+00:002018-01-08T02:38:46.335+00:00The sad end of Izzy the cat<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The death of
our cat Izzy last night (I’m writing on 5<sup>th</sup> Jan 2018) has turned me
into a 7 year old. I lie awake in the
middle of the night with tears in my eyes asking God if he would please look
after our little cat. I worry about her
padding into heaven in her presumably rejuvenated little furry body and her wondering
what’s happened and where she is. She
might need someone to feed her, find her somewhere warm and cosy to sleep (in
fact all manner of places as her favourite places only last (lasted) a week or
two before somewhere else would be favoured).
I think that maybe God will ask my lovely grandma (who as I remember
ticks all the ‘lovely grandma’ boxes from story books) to look after her – to
give her little furry head and ears a rub and talk gently and reassuringly to
her and take her in. My grandma used to
buy proper cream. Perhaps Izzy can have
some now, she wasn’t allowed it when she was alive, not that we buy it much. She loved yoghurt too. I wonder how we can let Grandma know that
Izzy really likes yoghurt and if she’ll understand because you didn’t really
get yoghurt in this country when grandma was alive. And as a 7 year old I don’t think much
further than that, I just want someone to look after our lovely friendly old
cat. I want to think that if she can’t
be in our good hands then she can be in someone else’s until we can all see her
again and like she did in real life she can pad down the road to meet us as we
come home, seek us out for company and pad across the pillows as we try to
sleep before curling up on the bed.
She’s the first pet I’ve had (though not just mine of course) and when I
get to heaven myself I think I’ll be met by Izzy first with my dad and grandma
somewhere close behind… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then I wake
up a bit more and it all falls apart. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In real life
her stiffening body lies in the corner of the vets in a plastic box waiting
presumably to be picked up by someone in a van, maybe refrigerated but probably
not – a van that’s probably a bit stainy and smelly, to be taken away to be
dumped into a big incinerator with all the other cats that have died in the
city over the last few days – the fat old over-indulged ones fed on virtually
fished to extinction tuna (actually they’ll probably be disposed of in other
ways), the neglected ones, the kittens found in a sack in the canal, the feral
ones found at the side of the road and all the others. Some will never have had a person to look
after them, some will have been suffocated with attention. But soon they’ll be dust on a mound somewhere
no-one knows and no-one talks about. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We could
have had her stuffed. This seems morbid
and weird (and expensive). We could have
had her individually cremated and received her ashes back to scatter in her
favourite places. But where? Under a radiator? Next to the tumble drier or in the cupboard
under the boiler where she crawled off to (presumably) feel safe when she was
ill and, as it turned out in the end, dying?
In some randomly chosen ‘favourite place’ where we imagine she (or somehow
her ashes) can watch the trees and the birds?
All seems a bit pointless and still just a tiny bit weird and
morbid. We could have had her remains
put into some sort of souvenir casket or turned into some sort of memento. That also seems a bit weird. And what happens to that when we go? Does it get passed lovingly down the
generations – the remains of a random dead cat that no-one alive knows or cares
anything about being passed down the years, added to the growing pile left by the
previous generations? To be quietly
tossed in a bin when the house is cleared I guess. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We could
have buried her in the garden. But I reckon
the garden will be full of 1960s rubble a couple of feet down or near the edge
there’ll be endless tree roots - and there are stories of cats buried 6 feet
deep being dug up by foxes months later.
And no-one fancies seeing the remains of some black and white fur stuck
to some thin bones being dragged across the garden in future months. And I don’t think we have a decent spade so
that’s a few quid too. And it’s raining
heavily. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We found her
not moving in the morning as we got ready to leave for work. We have a quick look round and are worried
she’s gone off somewhere either to die or maybe just in a confused state. Last night she didn’t seem very with it. After a suggestion I have a look and see a
sort of cat shape at the side of the tumble drier towards the back - but ‘sort
of cat shapes’ abound in half light and I can’t count the number of times I’ve
nearly spoken to a small pile of clothes or a bag or whatever thinking it’s a
cat. We get a torch and can see she’s
lying curled up with her paws out with her head pointing towards the back
wall. We can see a little ear sticking
up perkily as it should. We can’t see
her eyes but we shine a torch at her looking for the slightest movement
convinced that the light will wake her if she is asleep. We’re grateful for the fact that she’s not died
in the litter tray where she was the night before seemingly not wanting to be
moved and showing the first sign of pain as we tried to move her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One of us
quietly turns the central heating down as we leave. During the day we read the ‘death bit’ of the
cat book and / or look on line for various cat death information - how
sometimes wee and poo comes out after death and the body might need cleaning up
a bit. We know now that decay and rigor
mortis can set in quite quickly. When we
get home she’s clearly not moved so there’s little chance of it being some sort
of deep sleep. So after arranging a time
with the vets we move the table and tumble drier, litter tray and everything
else and she’s picked up with gardening gloves to be put in a box – which
somehow seems more suitable than a bag of whatever kind. We know we’re handling a corpse and the gloves
seem a good idea. We talk about what we
need to do and quietly ask each other who wants to do what. We decide to put her in the box and go to the
vets in one go so we don’t have her sat in a box while we contemplate what’s
happened.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We don’t
talk to her body and our daughter doesn’t want to see it at all. Before we move everything we talk about
taking a last picture of her where she lies.
She looks peaceful and asleep next to the back of the tumble drier. We decide we will and it’s quickly done. Just one.
More seems tasteless. I later
think that we can show our daughter that she was peaceful and that’s maybe a
partial justification. But I don’t know if,
when or where this photo will be filed, if it’ll be labelled and kept or
quietly deleted. But we have it now if
we want it. In a similar vein I guess there’s
probably been a debate about having photos taken at people’s funerals. I think that a few discreet ones of family
and friends are taken in the corners of funeral teas these days but that not
many people have an 8 by 4 of grandad’s coffin on the mantelpiece… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We go for
the easiest, second cheapest option (after the garden burial) and take her to
the vet’s in a plastic box (not the see-through one we initially find) covered
in an old pillow case. We’re not
expecting the box or the pillowcase back.
We wonder about going in the back entrance at the vets and I also vaguely
wonder if we’ll bump into a little girl or boy in reception who might ask us
what’s in the box and want a look. The
pillowcase covers all of her apart from a bit of her tail that pokes out. This once again turns me again into the
tearful 7 year old. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So back to heaven. My 7 year old self wants God to look after
our cat and make sure she’s OK. My older
self thinks that there’s not a God at all.
My older self thinks that if there were a Heaven then my Grandma would
probably be looking after some of the cats that never had a home, or that she’s
simply beyond earthly things including cats.
My older self thinks that heaven can’t really have cat friendly places
and temperatures. Heaven can’t have
trawlers or abattoirs that mince up other animals so cats can be fed. And what would be the point in being some
sort of disembodied spectral cat? If a
cat is anything it’s a physical thing. And
unlike a person a cat might not get all this afterlife stuff at all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Christianity
doesn’t seem to think that animals go to heaven - and what religion would want a
cat heaven where birds and mice are routinely torn apart for fun? And after a few decades chasing what
presumably must be faux prey or alternatives to prey (balls of wool cut from
all the dead sheep?) even cats must get bored and long for it all to stop. Or perhaps that would be just all the
miserable dead people sick of eternity longing for it all to stop. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We tell
ourselves various things. She’d has a
good life. She was quite old, she died
in what we presume (there’s a lot of presuming) was her sleep in no particular
pain. We got her from the RSPCA in 2009
and she’d lived (with a woman who died apparently) somewhere else in Leeds for
a few years before that. She’d been ill
recently and we thought we’d lose her then.
She bounced back and was quite well for another 3 or 4 weeks so we
appreciated her in her last days. She
didn’t linger at the end, she died at home with food nearby (one of those small
posh tins – inherited from another tragic dead cat) and water and in a warm
place. She didn’t cost us a huge amount
of money in vet’s fees for fruitless operations and whatnot and we didn’t have
to feel guilty about putting down a purring cat for want of 2 grand for that
potentially (though temporary) life-saving operation. She sought out company though didn’t much
like being over-petted though would occasionally let us get her tummy (and she our
daughter do this more often). She was a
lovely friendly cat with her own personality.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So Izzy the
cat has just gone. We loved her and love
is supposed to conquer all but it’s actually just horrible irredeemable
pitiless cold death. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But I’m
still 7 and I still want someone nice to look after my lovely old cat wherever
she is. I think I will still say ‘please
look after my little pussycat’ in the middle of the night. I think she must be somewhere and I’m crying
for my little dead cat. The boy is the
father of the man I suppose…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A couple of
days later I’m wondering if she’s been cremated by now and if what’s left of
her is flying about on a hill somewhere – or just in a hole on some wet
industrial waste site. I find a clump of
her fur where she’d been sleeping a couple of days earlier. For some reason I don’t put it in the bin
where I usually would. I take it outside. It blows away in the wind in the garden. I feel silly and sentimental. I do it quickly feeling vaguely uneasy that I
might be seen by someone. But I think
I’m glad I did. And it still seems
vaguely possible that she’ll just turn up as usual any minute. My 7 year old self knows that that’s possible
and will keep a lookout. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But my adult
self knows that that’s that. That’s that
cat. No more Izzy the cat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-90216140688144917822017-11-30T20:58:00.002+00:002017-11-30T20:58:24.578+00:00Wakey Wakey!<br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlGeeEvzx7A" target="_blank">The final vid from the Virtually Alive EP...</a><br />
<br />
Filmed mainly from the top of a 110 bus to Wakey from Leeds (it's all glamour being an international artiste y'know...) When I say 'top' I clearly mean from the top deck, not from the actual top of the bus...Just so as you know...<br />
<br />
It's the 'Sapphire Service' by the way - run by Arriva, the state-owned / nationalised company that are allowed to run (some of) our transport. Every half hour or so from Leeds to Wakey btw...John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-17468283242733525762017-11-20T20:07:00.000+00:002017-11-20T20:07:09.471+00:00Treating you once more...And here's the 5th video for the 5th song on the Virtually Alive EP for your perusal - Treatwise. Please feel free to put it abart...<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmfVn3jJIDM&t=8s" target="_blank">Treatwise on the Tube of You...</a>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-9677550275477683452017-11-11T13:20:00.000+00:002017-11-11T13:20:45.850+00:00Armistice Day...11th November...quite pleased with this song - which is still free from Bandcamp if you'd like to download it. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://johnparkes.bandcamp.com/track/the-fields" target="_blank">https://johnparkes.bandcamp.com/track/the-fields</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEittTIXrnK9bZByXsgY3IIQ8sEd3B3bNnZxpsJC5kP2TvaV498GPzcm9Xj9gLuzePPClN3Yr-wtHaRNu8M8JsQsnCo6ZoEhQ0f7l2S2fkhR4utJsesRDPLzGBOM0H3-yUFCeVMu/s1600/P1110100.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEittTIXrnK9bZByXsgY3IIQ8sEd3B3bNnZxpsJC5kP2TvaV498GPzcm9Xj9gLuzePPClN3Yr-wtHaRNu8M8JsQsnCo6ZoEhQ0f7l2S2fkhR4utJsesRDPLzGBOM0H3-yUFCeVMu/s320/P1110100.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-46821170368989132712017-11-04T18:18:00.001+00:002017-11-04T18:18:26.429+00:00And yet again...Blimey, another video - this is for Unicorns - live in the studio as they say - take 4 I believe. But it is a bit odd seeing a video of me actually playing the actual version that appears on the actual EP - because that doesn't happen very often, actually.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x51YghPEUY" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">The video for Unicorns</span></a>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-60418899255865924522017-10-16T14:52:00.003+00:002017-10-16T14:52:48.965+00:00Yes, we have got a video!And almost before you'd seen the last video 500 times here comes the new one - for 'News' from the new Virtually Alive EP. <br />
<br />
Here's the link...<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzYvwsIzFdI" target="_blank">The new video - 'News' from the Virtually Alive EP</a><br />
<br />
That's me old mate Simon Smith on the sort of looped drums...and me on swinging singing and guitar...<br />
<br />
Hope you like it - feel free to send everyone to the John Parkes 61 channel on the Tube of You to watch it and t'others.John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-29673847636768707512017-10-03T19:55:00.000+00:002017-10-03T19:55:27.753+00:00And the second video is...out now!And here's the link to the second song on the Virtually Alive EP - 'The Devil Takes'. I think this is probably the best one - starring Simon Smith and Alaric Lewis as well as me in various unflattering and disrespectful guises...<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT9Rf4tKpX0&t=8s" target="_blank">'The Devil Takes' video on YouTube</a>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-18966205128871949582017-10-03T19:47:00.002+00:002017-10-03T19:47:46.699+00:00Bookings Fees? - I'm outHere's a mad idea for you. If a ticket has a price on it how about there being a way to buy that ticket for that amount? I think it should be illegal to advertise a price for something that is actually not the price and that you can't actually buy it for. Call me a crazy muddle-headed fool but the price to me is the amount you actually pay to get the actual thing. No ifs, no buts, the price of a ticket should be the amount it says on the ticket. Totally at odds with modern business practice I know. <br />
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Here's a small example, I turned up to the 02 Academy in Leeds recently. I took a special trip to the box office. I didn't even want to pay by card (which incidentally is usually free except in the world of concert tickets) - and there was still a fee of a pound - to print the damned ticket! The man pressed a button on his computer next to the ticket window and the roll of cardboard blank tickets rolled through the machine - that's a quid then - and the possibility of paying the face value of a ticket gone.<br />
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Another example - you used to be able to turn up to the First Direct Arena booking office and not pay a booking fee. They've now introduced one - to keep them in line with others or some such we-saw-you-coming-you massive-mug nonsense. It's several quid a ticket. My back of the fag-packet calculation tells me they're adding a cool 15% and helping themselves to an extra up to about £75,000 for a sell-out concert - and the chance of buying a ticket at what is still euphemistically called (and I quote) 'the full ticket price' an impossibility. Presumably the poor sod in the booth is getting minimum wage or something close...<br />
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So...that's me done. I'm not going anywhere unless I can buy a ticket for the ticket price. The rip off set of ****s <br />
<br />John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-82271223217953259162017-09-18T11:59:00.000+00:002017-09-18T11:59:51.626+00:00Roll up Roll up etc - New videoThe Hoam Maid video for The World's End (from the Virtually Alive EP) is now 'live' / available / watchable etc on YouTube:<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecUWv4w5qPo&t=19s">The World's End video...</a>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20352771.post-65776832671134812622017-09-04T12:24:00.001+00:002017-09-04T12:34:21.898+00:00Updates, just updates...<span style="font-size: medium;">It's all about updates this week at AAZ Records (North) as we change and update stuff on here ready for the release of the Virtually Alive EP. We've discovered that Blogger isn't perfect at saving font sizes and changing colours and whatnot so you'll find the odd inconsistency on here that we may have spotted and unsuccessfully tried to fix. There may of course also be some user error. At some point we may re-design this whole thing but for now it's got stuff crammed on and it's sort of organised though you may find the odd bit of information in more than one place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">So...we're directing everyone to Bandcamp to buy stuff initially - this is certainly the best way to buy a CD rather than a download. Hopefully everything will pop up in iTunes etc. soon. Between you and me the release date is a bit flexible. It's available quicker in Bandcamp and you get a free bonus track there (though that's download only it's not on the CD) and that money comes fairly directly to those of us who need it to feed hungry studio bills and manufacturing costs etc. though the Orchard do get things around globally which is marvellous of course. They're our digital distributors, the people (or bots probably) who get things to iTunes and the rest. </span>John Parkeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11171746998424336717noreply@blogger.com0