www.ianedmundson.co.uk

January 1st 2025:
A new year... Meh. Up late after last night's exertions, feeling rather tired and slightly muzzy. I did some accounting work for our books (and the taxman) and the sales over the last couple of months have been really good. I am finally getting to remember some basic formulas in Excel without having to look them up.

The 'Slade In Flame At 50' book sold more than what I expected it to do in the first couple of weeks.... and it is still selling. It has made the sales of some of our other older books pick up as well.

I started work on our next Slade book a while ago, but I am feeling slightly burned out with book work at the moment. It's a lot of work and I do tend to throw myself into it, working at all hours - even in the middle of the night, if I am having a bit trouble sleeping - when I am writing or compiling. Next week I will dip back in and do a bit. While the band is down until the 11th, I want to spend some (more) time being lazy and doing nothing.

That said, Graham has given me some more new lyric ideas and I will probably get some drum pattern going in the studio and mess around with those and see what comes out.

January 3rd:
A lovely visit from my daughter. We went into Bolton and had a good walk around. The February issue of Classic Rock Magazine with the Slade In Flame At 50 review is in the shops.

January 8th:
I was really pleased earlier in the week when my son visited us. Lots of book work going on. I'm building up my collection of Japanese Slade CD's - the excuse being that they will be good in a book. It was nice having a weekend without gigging. Lynda and I were laughing about what I would be doing at various times on Sunday.

January 9th:
Graham gave me some more song lyrics to work on before the band started its break and I was a little bit dubious about putting the time and effort into them at present, as we are not even playing the songs from the current album onstage. The album just feels to have been still-born after all of the effort that I put into it, which has just deflated me, plus the reaction from some people to the idea of parting with money for it has really been a downer, so why should I knock myself out and go to the trouble of doing it all over again? However, I decided to have a muck around this morning and managed to pull a reasonably decent rough demo of a song called 'Just A Pub Rock Band'. The few people who have heard it so far quite like it.

January 12th:
I ordered a copy of the Slade In Flame At 50 book for a reviewer. Last night's gig in Garstang was a little bit of an early trek - setting off at 5pm for a 7pm start. I looked at the stage space and wondered if we'd fit in it, but we did. We had a nice crowd for our gig and a chap asked about booking us for a rock festival in the summer. That would depend on what we have in the diary. Home at around 10.30pm.

I was knackered this morning. The day was spent doing some book work and dicking around on the internet a little. No jam night this week.

January 15th:
I re-recorded the vocals for the new song and put the new mix up for listening. I am looking to move my main websites back to my ISP webspace over the next few months.

Lynda got a letter from her consultant saying her heart function has reduced significantly (it's now at a quite worrying level) and they are going to get on with putting a pacemaker in. We went for a meal with friends in the evening and Lynda was crying off 15 minutes before meeting them as she was struggling a bit. We got to park up across the road from the restaurant and nearly had to turn around and go home because Lynda was struggling to walk the 50 yards to the restaurant. We did make it inside, but Lynda looked particularly shaken.

January 16th:
I got up at 9.15, fed the pets, had a coffee and then took Tom for a walk to pick up Lynda's prescription, followed by the ordeal of giving Oscar a bath.

January 17th:
My late first wife Julie's birthday. She would have been 63 today. I went to meet some of the Union reps from Bolton DWP in the afternoon.

January 18th:
Website update work in the morning, moving the websites back into my ISP webspace. I have given notice to members on the Slade forum that I am going to have a go at moving it to some where other than my web host some time in the next year, or closing it down if I can't. In the evening, the band played a good local (for me, anyway) gig at Hogarths in Bolton. We will be back in September. That's all of our available Saturdays booked up now.

January 19th:
A restful day, followed by the first jam night of the year in the evening. I actually quite enjoyed the jam night this week. It was nice to have a break from doing it.

January 22nd:
I caught up with recent blog entries and did a little web work this morning. Our gig on Saturday night has been cancelled as the guest of honour is in hospital. Can't be helped.

January 24th:
The guy from the venue that jerked us around on December 24th is making a pest of himself. I used a photo of the band from that show for our Facebook banner image. He put a sarky comment on it about using his photo from his venue, so I amended the photo slightly.

The band played our 'ninth anniversary' gig in Leigh this evening. I hated the first half as I kept getting a burnt lip off my microphone, due to what was probably a faulty four way cable provided. The bottom end on the bass was getting a bit over-powering too. I swapped the power supply out between sets and cured the zapping problem. There's not much room for the band there and it wasn't an entirely comfortable gig, but once the power issue was sorted out I played better.

January 26th:
A night off from gigging last night, due to a cancellation. Our dates don't work for a return to The Musketeer this year, as we were offered a choice of five dates and we were out on the first three. I am determined to have a nice long break over Christmas and the first two weeks of next year, so the 26th or 27th don't work for me either.

I woke up this morning with the visual disturbances of a migraine and took 4 tablets and tried to go back to sleep. Rachel has just posted an announcement about her new daughter Lyra, so I can now follow suit. I got a message from a venue that has a new FB page, asking me to shift any mentions to include the new page, rather than the old one. FB wasn't letting me find the new page in drop down menus and the effort just made my migraine flare up again. Fabulous.

We did the jam night in the evening - again enjoyable. I forgot my phone and spent the evening actually talking to people instead. Humanizing. My migraine hadn't completely worn off and my head was muzzy throughout and our opening slot sounded a bit bad to me, as I didn't feel like I could play properly and my bass sound felt horrible. It got better later on.

January 27th:
Boring fact of the year: Our cardboard bin was emptied this morning, for the first time in quite a while. The bin men missed it last time, so I have had to do tip runs with cardboard. Sales of our Slade book THE NOIZE have picked up slightly again, which is nice.

January 28th:
Off to the hospital to have bloods taken for my PSA test. I get the results on Feb 6th. I then went into town to meet my friend Mike. I had a chat with another of my friends while I was in the old Market Hall.

January 29th:
I have started to put a lot of items on Ebay. Books that I am not going to read ever again, some CD's that I don't want. It's currently free to advertise them, so I might as well. I spent an amount of the day doing that.

January 30th:
Sparks have announced a tour and new album. They are playing two nights in Manchester and I will have to duck out of a jam night to attend one of them. In the afternoon we went over to meet our new grandchild Lyra. Beautiful.

January 31st:
Woke up with a bit of a headache after coming to bed very late last night. My fault. I saw a post on Facebook and as a direct result, I did some serious consideration of my musical future. I'm not quite cancelling everything yet, but I'm not looking at doing next year with the band now. I do feel like I am too old for this shit, as they say.

February 2nd:
Last night's gig was a rather terse affair. An advert for a guitar player was briefly and rather heatedly placed on Facebook this morning, then pulled. We've had offers of assistance at gigs, so we could keep going. Two of the band went off to talk about it before we played. As usual, I am not sure what good it actually did. But we have bigger concerns now and all that two of us want to do is simply get on with it while we can.

The gig itself was streamed live and I checked the youtube stream out and the live sound is unfortunately that not great. The mics simply couldn't cope with a rock band's volume. I managed to get a couple of decent images from it.

We did our jam night this evening and discussions were had about our recent problems. We will see what good those discussions did. I cancelled an audition for tomorrow afternoon as I can't be arsed doing it. I can see the end of my playing career in plain sight now. I will not opt to carry on with the jam night next year and if the band are still going then, it will have slowed down considerably.

February 8th:
The week has gone by in a blur of book work and tiredness. I've been going to bed at stupid times for a while now, and it is catching up with me. The updates, additions and and re-writes to the book I am working on are endless and have expanded the book by about 50 pages. I got a phone call from Oncology on Thursday that my cancer reading has gone down to 0.03, which is a bit of a relief. I've seemingly changed from being a hoarder to an Ebay trader, putting a large number of books and CD's up for sale, as well as a couple of guitars. I've done well this last week, but let's see if that continues. I can't see any significant space on my bookshelves yet.

I had a good long phone catch up with one of my friends yesterday, after my cancer result came through. He's been through it a bit over Christmas and January and has been keeping himself to himself. He seems to have come out the other side of his woes. If I had known, I would have gone over to see him.

Last night's gig in Burnley was ok, and we played fairly well but...... I was tired.... and I didn't really get much of a lift from playing. On the way home, I heard on Radio 4 that Donald Trump is saying that, for the UK to avoid crippling tarriffs, the Government has to give unfair tax breaks and exemptions to Amazon and a couple of other companies. The man is clinically insane if he thinks that's going to happen. Time to mend fences with Europe.

February 11th:
I've sold a few more things on Ebay. A lovely Gibson SG guitar went on Sunday. I felt a slight pang at letting it go, but it's hardly been played and I sometimes wondered why I bought it. It's mainly books and CD's that are going. Plus a couple of quite valuable vinyl EP's.

I went to the hospital this morning and had an interesting and very rewarding appointment with the Audiology department. It's sorted a couple of problems out quite noticeably.

February 15th:
I had to back out of going to see my grandchildren today as I am full of a cold. We are gigging tonight and I am slightly worried about singing. Quite a few more things went on Ebay over the last few days. The gig went quite well but my voice was beginning to become a bit of a problem towards the end.

February 16th:
I woke up early feeling quite appalling, went to the loo and then went back to be until lunchtime. I only awoke when our dog Tom decided to play rough with his sleeping Dad who was snug under the covers. I was not impressed. A late afternoon bath helped to stop me feeling like a total corpse, though my nose was running like a tap all day. I cancelled and rescheduled a Zoom chat I was due to be doing on Monday, as my voice is an issue.

I got through the jam night, just about - though Lynda kept telling me during the day that I shouldn't go. It would have caused chaos as I have part of the PA and the relevant cabling and also, I was on stage just about all of the evening. The good part of the evening was finally getting another song from the band's album stage-ready. We played it twice and it went very well both times. I played with some young people whose bassist was on holiday. I got a really dirty look from the guitarist when I dropped a slight bum note during Sweet Child Of Mine, as he had tuned the guitar he was using down. Not that he bothered to tell me - or to retune the guitar properly afterwards, which caused the next act up some issues. I mentioned to Graham that I don't want to do the jam night next year. This actually wasn't inspired by the kid shooting me the dirty look. I have been saying this to a few people recently anyway. I have just made it official now. I have no problem with them getting someone else to play at the jam night. I'm utterly bored with it, backing people who are not very good and nobody bothering to tell me what song is next..... Next year will be a slower pace - maybe 40 - 50 gigs at the most, and I want my Sundays back.

February 17th:
Up at about 10 after far too few hours sleep. Feeling pretty grim.

February 18th:
I have been sweating about what I am going to be fit for at the weekend. The sore burning feeling when I swallow convinced me to bite the bullet and to cancel Friday night's gig. The venue took it well, as they know I won't muck them about and I tried to fix them up with another band. A CD I ordered from Japan turned up this morning and another is on the way.

We have apparently got a five star review for our recent Flame book in Record Collector (Feb 2025 issue). And this one from The Beat's Feb 2025 issue......

February 23rd:
A couple of days of resting, sleeping in late, not gigging and taking it easy, so I start getting better. I still have a runny nose and tickly throat and I have to do do the jam night this evening. Not overly looking forward to it, but what the hell. I will try to take it easy, but it always depends on who turns up. Quite often when I need to lie down and avoid it, I end up standing up playing all evening.

I listened to a couple of the 10cc Consequences podcasts this morning. Interviews with Kevin Godley, a man who thankfully doesn't have his head up his own arse about the fact that he has made some great records and has done very well from music some years ago. Some other people from the same era think that they are practically some sort of Gods of music, when what they have done is put a beat and a tune under some lyrics of varying quality. We all have an ego, but I think realising your real place in the scheme of things is important. Musicians come a long way behind doctors in my humble opinion.

The jam night in the evening was quite enjoyable. Our drummer Graham's lovely wife laid on some food for his birthday, but I was stuck on stage working until the vultures had picked it clean. Oh well.... He's got a tough week this week. Thinking of him. We ran through the album track a couple of times and I think we are doing a reasonable job on it.

February 24th:
Lynda and I were just getting ready to set off for the hospital for her cardiac nurse appointment at 11.30am, when they rang up and did it by phone to save her the stress of traveling to the hospital, parking and getting her to J block.

I went to bed for a few hours in the afternoon. I seem to be tired a lot these days. Plans for tomorrow have been abandoned, due to other prior commitments at the other end. Unable to reschedule this week or next week.

February 26th:
Booked Oscar in to see the Vet this afternoon. Antibiotics and painkillers for our little chap who has a sore and swollen throat.

February 27th:
I've been putting some items on eBay. One thing I put on that finished today was a Queen Works tour tank top type piece of clothing from 1984. It's basically been unworn all of these years, as they sent me a small sized one in error and couldn't supply a medium. I didn't return it at the time and it's been at the bottom of various drawers since 1984. They didn't actually sell them on the tour. I thought I would be cheeky and put it on with a starting bid of £75. I was amazed when I got a bid for that amount, but didn't keep an eye on the item. I had some messages from someone who told me repeatedly that I should stop the auction and sell it to him for $125, as he's been looking for one ever since. It's a good job I didn't listen to him, as it went for £1020.00. I couldn't quite believe it. I got rather stressed about whether the buyer would pay for it or not, but she did. I sent the item fully insured via UPS to America. The postage cost me a packet, but hey ho.... It's fuly tracked and there will be a signature for it when it arrives, so hopefully there will be no issues from that.

I also parceled up a 1977 German XTC single, that I've possibly never ever played, very carefully, as that went for £102.00. Things I haven't looked at for years, books I'm not really going to read again, guitars I don't play. Better off in new loving homes.

February 28th:
I uploaded this demo recording of one of our album tracks to YouTube. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I recorded it, as it goes on for 8 minutes and is painfully slow. It's the very first working version of the song and the sound quality is a bit scratchy. I went over the mulitrack of this recording to do the re-make that ended up on the album, so unfortunately, I can't get a better mix of it. I do find it interesting to listen to, as the song moved on quite a bit in later versions. I like the guitar solo that I put together for this version. I'm not sure why I moved away from the melody I used, though I do prefer the eventual finished result.

I held off from watching the news during the day, as I was worried about what would happen when Trump met with Zelenskyy. It turns out that I was absolutely correct to avoid the news for as long as possible. Driving to the evening's gig, I was told by Radio 4 exactly what transpired at their meeting. At a pre-arranged point, Vance laid into the Ukrainian President about his apparent 'ingratitude' to the USA for all that had been done for them. Trump is trying to reclaim the US assistance by raping and pillaging Ukraine's natural resources (precious minerals and metals etc) to the tune of what they say the have paid up so far. Zelenskyy acted with considerable dignity and restraint while trump and Vance rounded on him like a pair of rabid attack dogs. It was hideous to watch. Trump won't even admit that Putin was the initial aggressor in the war.He talks about 'getting the deal signed' but shows no interest in the actual peacekeeping that will be necessary.

Our gig that evening was to a really packed pub and we struggled manfully to get any reaction at all from the assembled masses, who had turned up in works vans, shorts, and with identikit Barbie girlfriends. Their priority was getting pissed. We might as well have not been there, apart from us coming home with money in our pockets. Some songs (let's be honest, most of them) ended to total silence from the audience. Some of the girls had a dance to us but we knocked off slightly early, leaving our usual closer out.

The radio was full of the Trump debacle on the drive home. It's too awful to think about.

Europe is going to have to get behind backing Ukraine without the USA being involved. That effectively turns Europe and the UK into a battleground. If Putin gets Ukraine, then other coutries bordering it will follow and like Hitler, he will come for the UK. Once Putin knows for sure that Trump won't go with the NATO countries, he will start using nuclear weapons and then it will be a slow crawl to GAME OVER. I'm not cancelling the milk yet, but Jeez, it's just depressing.

March 1st:
The feeling of impending doom after the Trump debacle hasn't calmed down yet. The news and media is full of it. It's too awful to watch. The evening's gig was much better than last night, though not quite as well attended as I would have hoped for. We were on our last song and the village druggie kid walked in, was refused service at the bar as he looked totally spaced out. The girls who had been dancing to us all evening fled the dance floor bit of the pub and the moron was forcibly ejected and all of the impact of our last song went fzzzzzt. Oh well.

March 2nd:
A quiet day. I relaxed a lot, walked the dogs round the nearby park with Lynda to get her confidence at going out up a little bit and did quite an amount of spreadsheet work for the taxman. Recent cumulative Ebay sales have triggered the need to do a set of exactly itemised accounts for every single sale, as well as for books and the band. If you list everything exactly as it says on Bay when you finally get paid, it's no hassle. So I sat there with Excel open - I love Excel, before you ask. It absolutely fascinates me - every formula is a triumph - for a couple of hours this afternoon until I got a headache. I remain one of those stereotypical British males who can't resist filling in a form. I spent some time talking to my co-author about the BFI premiere for the re-issued Slade film. I couldn't get to either of the two screenings at the BFI that are taking place last week and this week. The evening's jam night was fun and we managed to get through a number of songs from our album, played quite decently, which cheered me up quite a bit. I got off the stage for a lot of the evening as there were other people in who could play bass. Home for 11.30pm and out went the grey bin. This amazing pop star existence, eh?

March 3rd:
I spent the day sorting a few Ebay things out, walking dogs and so on... I got sent a video from Slade's Jim Lea to do a little editing on. I got to bed at 2.30am, as I got stuck into some book work.

March 4th:
Up at nearly noon as my head was killing me. I did some book work, walked the dogs, did a bit of shopping, and got some stuff ready for putting the band's album on Spotify.

March 5th:
Up at a sensible time. Some book work. I took myself off up to the hospital on foot. Exercise is good for you - laziness is not. Let's talk about the important stuff. I'm going to restrict my blog to REAL issues in future.... Married At First Sight Australia is back on TV. One of the grooms has walked out on the most delectable lady and it's been obvious all along that he was a time waster (as well as a fool). You can quote me on that.

March 6th:
Where do the days go? March already... Apart from dog walking and watching TV, not much to report.

March 7th:
More of the same. Lynda's a bit tired out today. I did a run out to the Post Office to send some parcels from Ebay sales, Tesco for pet food and some essentials, dropped of prescriptions and finally called into Asda as a book about The Bangles book that arrived yesterday was damaged, so I returned it, unexamined. The replacement comes tomorrow. I spent a while listening to music and doing a little book work, and faffing about on the net .

The band's gigs went fairly well this weekend, though I wasn't really very much in the mood for doing them. I'm tired out. The jam night was ok. We found out that there's a music festival on in Tyldesley in May and for the second year running, we - the band who have done more to encourage and foster live music in the area for the last 9 years - haven't got on the bill at our own venue, as the landlady seemingly didn't think we'd want to do it. I had to laugh. I contacted a venue that have been trying to book us for a while and have put in a date there on the day of the music festival at a lot more than we get for doing the jam night. I am fed up of the jam night and would be more than happy to take it somewhere else or even stop doing it altogether, but I appear to be outvoted at the moment. Our full album is going on Spotify shortly.

I got a phone call during the day and had a chat about joining a band that has had some chart success years ago. I have done some recent session recording work with them. This probably means learning a lot of songs and breaking my own vow not to have a passport. God knows when we are going to fit in any activity.

I've been having fun with a couple of Ebay buyers and deliveries. But I / they seem to have sorted the issues now. I was getting a bit stressed out and ill because of the issues, which was a bit pointless. I have a sick wife and a sick dog to worry about and will stick to worrying about them instead.

Two rather nice Slade CD's arrived from Japan and South Korea this morning. I did a brisk walk to the post office to post a DVD and there was this shouty and sweary bloke in there ranting about his GP. Fabulous. I kept my head down as I queued at the counter. There are too many loonies around.

March 11th:
Up at a sensible time. Our lovely little dog Oscar seems to be on the mend after a few days of being unwell, touch wood, I went into Bolton to do a couple of things and, incredibly, on a chance visit to my local record store came across these two Japanese CD's at fantastic prices. Card out. Home.

March 13th:
Up at a sensible time. Sorted some eBay stuff out, I fought with our local pharmacy and GP surgery over missing items from Lynda's prescription. Sorted some more eBay stuff out. I am getting slightly fed up of eBay.

March 17th:
Dear Solitary Reader.... No entries for a short while. I've been a bit busy with more important things. No gig on Friday. Saturday's gig was notable for the bald village loony with his belly hanging out from under his t-shirt, running round, circling the pub at very high speed with his arms out like an aeroplane while we were playing. He decided to stop and lecture me about the lack of Marc Bolan on our PA playlist. He also grabbed my arm at one point in quite a bit of a grip while he pontificated at me and was right in my face. He was obviously a bit 'disadvantaged', so I kept it all polite. I simply said we wouldn't be playing anything else if he broke my arm. I spent the rest of the break effectively hiding from him. He kept coming up saying exactly the same things. Even when we were playing.

I started working on a new song about The Orange Menace on Sunday morning. I found a nice drum beat and jammed over that until I had a decent backing track. Sunday's jam night was ok. We have a group of younger people come down and they have started to try to take the night over a bit by asking to get up with people during sets. It throws things and some of the songs turn to crap, but it gets me off the stage, so I sit away from the stage and listen to the carnage. I want to be there less and less. I told their bass player that I had given my notice in and that he could probably have my job when I went. He beamed at me. He doesn't realise that it is mainly stunting musically and the Groundhog Day-ness of it will make him want to stop playing and go train spotting instead.

Lynda's got some sort of stomach bug. It started in the early hours of the morning and she was up very early feeling really unwell. She won't let me ring an ambulance or a doctor (bearing in mind her heart problems), so she's just going to have to wait for it to settle down. As I type, she is sleeping herself better. I was a bit sleep deprived this morning, but hey ho. I started moving some furniture round in my studio room last night. I don't know exactly what I have achieved, except for a ruined audio cable. It's mass of power and audio cables. I just ordered a replacement from Amazon, then found a suitable one that I got recently and cancelled the order. A circular series of chats with customer services at UPS and eBay.

I've spent a few days now, cutting down my social media presence. The internet is not a museum. I've already given in my notice to step back from doing jam nights next year and a few other things will go along with that. Facebook is going to be just for close friends and family only. This website will probably be reduced to just a single info page until the domain expires. I'm not going to renew my web hosting when it comes up again next year, so the Slade site and forum will go. I will keep the band domain for another year, all depending on if we are still working then, of course.

MAFS has already lost its most stupid man and now its most ignorant and self-possessed one has gone. The way he tried to manipulate people (including her) into thinking that she was in any way to blame for his disinterest was pretty bad. Katie was lovely.

Maybe not his type, but to be honest who would be??? He had no excuse for his utterly shabby treatment of her.

March 18th:
Lynda seems to be in better shape than yesterday, but she is still having trouble with the idea of eating. I have put off leaving the house at all until tomorrow. I finished off the new song today.

March 21st:
It seems to be the current fashionable thing to do, to pare down websites to the bare minimum and to cut out the excess fat. While I was in the process of doing some trimming, I happened across my ISP's webstats page, which I haven't actually looked at for a few years.

It seems this page is getting a lot of views. I have no idea at all why. I can see to a degree which IP addresses are visiting which pages on the site in some detail and how many times. A couple of the individual IP addresses are not much of a surprise. The Slade site is attracting a fair amount of traffic, as is the forum. I'm glad to see that my prostate cancer information page is getting some views and I really do hope that it's helping and reassuring some people. That's what it's there for.

Kicking Melica out of the process on The Apprentice for trying to voice her opinion on how a task was going That's mistaking involvement for disruptiveness. Sir Alan Sugar's lost quite a bit of his judgement since the time back in the day when Lynda knew him.

March 22nd:
Our gig in the evening was at a venue that I have only given two dates to this year. I was reminded why. A lot of the guys in there were pretty much lunkheads and most of the women were identikit barbies with bad eyebrows, who spent most of their time running round from room to room taking selfies. Our music meant little or nothing to them. It was definitely one for the money.

March 23rd:
Our jam night was the usual. Some of it I enjoyed, some of it I loved, some of it I hated. I'm hating a bit too much of it recently. Soon be April...

March 25th:
Into Bolton during the day to do a couple of things. I'm quite hopeful of tracking a couple of CD's down that I have been chasing.

March 26th:
I recently got roped into thinking about a top 40 for XTC. Here's my list. My #1 was voted to #160 by everyone else, because it only appeared as a download single with a box set and is therefore quite an obscure track to most.. I'm not wrong.

March 28th:
I'm reading a nicely-detailed officially approved biography of The Bangles. I love the Bangles.

Bands... Dreadful things, hotbeds of jealousy and such. In the case of The Bangles, one of the band got picked up on by press and TV, so the others constantly obsessed over who had the most time in the spotlight, who got most seconds onscreen, who wrote or sang the songs, etc. The others then all seem to have insisted on making each other as miserable as possible, hating their biggest hit, instead of simply celebrating their success and being thankful that they actually had something working in their favour.

Bands get people in for what they can do and then it always seems to be the case that the person who is brought in is then resented because they get some attention for what they do. It's childish and sad that people fell out with someone who the record company felt had a more commercial-sounding voice, or who maybe looked better at the front of the band, because they felt they were then unfairly overlooked or pushed into the background.

I used to be in a band where I did the website (being the only one who understood electricity and computers) and the utterly OCD drummer counted everyone's images and then frequently reported loudly back to me, about various things like the sizes of them and which order they were in. In the end I snapped and took it down to one photo each. Later on, I did something even better, namely reducing the number of drummers and guitarists in that band that I was working with to zero.

March 31st:
No gig Friday. All good. My son came round on Saturday and came to our evening's gig, which was nice. I did the tetris thing and managed to get three of us plus my gear in the car. Off we went to our gig in Horwich. We brought the crowd in the main. A good job, too. There was some tension when one of the songs fell apart. Fortunately not my fault. Sunday we went to my daughter's house in the morning and later on it was the jam night. Business as usual. Some songs went for the usual crap because of people not knowing what they are doing. There were some strange things happening on stage. When people can't play a 12 bar, but insisting that they get up and play - that's just weird. I was glad to get out of the venue this evening. I'm really looking forward to the end of June when I get three consecutive jam nights off. I have tickets for a gig on the 22nd and had made the band not available for the next two weeks. I just don't want to do the jam night if I can get out of it.

I had a chat with the drummer out of the other band that I am going to be playing with about some of the cover material that has been chosen. I've not been consulted at all about those choice of songs, as they had been working on them before I was asked. I am loath to venture any opinion to the guy who asked me to join, as if I do, I will probably end up withdrawing from the project. And we haven't even rehearsed yet. I have said I don't want a microphone in front of me.

Up at about 10.15am. I got to bed at around 3am. I got stuck into adding some stuff to a book. Once I put something on a page, it moves things on the following pages. We are taking THE NOIZE out of print in late June until the third and final edition arrives in December. It's currently at about 350 pages.

April 1st:
I woke up with an idea for a re-work of one of our Slade books and had a quick chat to Chris about it. It seems like a goer and will make the book a lot more complete. I also finally managed to sort out an order for two CD's that I had been trying to track down to complete a set. I caught the bus into Bolton and met my former workmates Mike Sreve and Mark at lunchtime. They had gone out to lunch a bit early and had neglected to tell me, so I had waited outside their office for them for a few minutes. I got home as quickly as I could after concluding all of the business in town.

April 2nd:
I went through part of the book re-work 'til about just after 2am. I can see the content increasing really well and the page count is now not the burning issue that it was. I took Lynda to our GP surgery mid-morning and we walked the dogs later on.

April 5th:
Graham came round on Thursday and we managed to get my music down on demo recordings to two of his lyrics. I have also been listening to / playing along with the song material that was selected for the other band project. Some of the original band's song arrangements are a bit complicated, but I have written them out. It's just a case of getting them into my head. At least I don't have to sing any of those songs. I have played music that I don't particularly like that much before. It's all about having the self discipline to just stick in and play it, regardless. There are a couple of songs on the list of covers that I normally sing. Hopefully I won't be expected to sing those as they have officially announced the new singer, but not me. Things appear to be moving at a glacial pace, but now there's a complete band, that pace should step up. Apart from the inevitable jam night, it's a weekend off for the band.

April 7th:
Saturday night saw Lynda and I go to watch the first set by a friend's band. Not bad at all. Nice to hear people sticking in and learning the songs to play them accurately and sounding right. Last night's jam night was 'more of the usual'. Stage-hogging (I heard some people complaining about one act who was doing about 7 songs, meaning some people missed out on playing) and insisting on getting up and playing stuff that they can't really play. A little effort to learn what you're going to get up and do might be good. That's what YouTube is for, kids, not just for your porn and clapped out 70's TV crap. All I watch on Youtube these days is guitar repair stuff.

I spoke with my co-conspirator about the remit and reach of our side project - what availability we actually have, the songs we will be doing, what we actually intend to do with it. Then we have to consider the logistics of touring (hiring gear etc). Whether I need to apply for a passport yet or not. There are connections for some decent placings on tours and some theatre gigs, but there are also some issues. On Thursday we will see if it really hangs together musically.

I have been talking at length to one of our venues who have recently had a change of management. They insist on the band using a system called C247 for invoicing and payments. The old management tried to get us to use it. That was a dog's breakfast. I registered and supplied all the ID and tax info as requested and it never ever worked for me and the venue ended up paying us cash on the night. That's not an option now, so if the venue can't get this sorted, they will lose 90% of their bands. The upshot of the day's conversations is that I will send the pub invoices and they will get us paid.

I've noticed that The Bootleg Beatles are in Manchester on Sept 7th (a Sunday). I've just booked a ticket for that.
Graham was talking about also taking time off when I am off at the end of June and getting the jam night covered for 3 weeks.

Saddened to hear that we have lost Blondie's Clem Burke. A consumate musician taken too soon by cancer.

April 8th:
A flurry of sudden activity on the additional music front. I have been provided with the dots for songs I have already worked out, 4 more songs on mp3 that I have not been told we were doing - too late for this Thursday - and (finally) an address to go to on Thursday. I went into Bolton and on the way back to the car park, I ran into a friend who invited me to do some gigs with him. I sort of went a bit pale at the thought of so many more songs to think about for a very very occasional gig and invited him to call round and chat to me about it.

On this day in 1979, I started work for DWP (or the DHSS as it was back then). I started work as a Clerical Assistant working on the National Insurance Contributions team. I later worked on Sickness Benefits and Pensions, then the brand-new benefit Income Support. I wasn't paying people then, I was linking and filing post in casepapers. Later on, I worked on Computer Support and finally on Jobseekers Allowance and finished my career working on the brand-new Universal Credit. It has been erroneously reported by an utter imbecile that I was a Fraud officer, specialising in taking steps off my own bat to deprive single parents of their money and to starve their babies. That's utter slanderous garbage. I never spent a single hour working on the Fraud team. I didn't even work in the correct grade for the job. The accuracy teams are probably still finding emergency payments that I made to people who had been crying on the phones to me, whose suspensions I had lifted in the run up to my leaving. But never let the truth get in the way of some internet nutjob's character assassination.

I left DWP in October 2015 after thirty-seven and a half years, partially because as a Trade Union Rep I was a management target, walking around with a hypothetical bullseye on my back. After having half of my thyroid gland removed and having been given strict recovery conditions, my immediate line manager tried to discipline me, on my return to work, for following the Doctor's instructions, saying that the DWP guidance that actually protected me 'was for me, not her'. That guidance vertainly was 'for me' as it stated quite clearly that I WAS covered, but she was determined to get me disciplined under Managing Attendance. Probably at the insistent bidding of her HEO, who once distinguished herself at a staff gathering by saying it was 'not her job to speak to staff', when asked to do so by the site manager. Once I had won that particularly simple-to-win battle, I checked out what my pension position was and gave 6 months notice to quit and to take my pension early. I took a hit on my future income and left my job, entirely because of one woman's gross stupidity. After I put my notice in, they totally left me alone. She was later rewarded with a promotion. I think she's still using crayons and plastic cutlery.

There's always a plus: Leaving DWP inadvertently saved my life, as Lynda spotted the tell-tale signs of my prostate cancer and urged me to get myself checked out.

I had so many songs listed to learn for tomorrow's rehearsal that when I was sent even more song titles to look at I wigged out a bit and decided to just go out for a while riding on some buses, trains and trams instead for a couple of hours. A quiet evening in. Involving NO musical instruments.

April 10th:
I rehearsed with the other band project today. Annoyingly, the batteries on my Fender Precision Deluxe bass died (after I had been using it yesterday to record, which I found out totally unexpectedly on plugging it in), but at least the active bass had a 'switch to passive' option, so I could carry on, once I had worked out what it was that had actually happened. An auspicious and embarrassing start. I had put in a hell of a lot of prep work for the project, maybe too much, as the list of covers I had sat down and worked out were not even touched. It went better than I expected, was a very comfortable gathering, and some related business hassles were discussed and seem to be partly resolved. There are a couple of thingsto resolve, but they can be discussed later on. It's just a case of when we can get together again, now, as we all have demands on our time.

April 11th:
A lovely sunny warm day. My old mate Tony turned up to buy a Boss tuner pedal from me in the morning. Off to Tesco to buy a pair of new batteries for my bass, which is now 100% again. It takes two batteries as it runs on an 18v circuit. Now working perfectly. Dogs walked. I spent some time chopping some web content and some Ebay admin. I was quite tired in the afternoon.

April 13th:
People do send me some rubbish. It has come to my attention that my writing (above) about my DWP career history is being disputed by someone who more than a bit sad and pathetic who seems to take issue with everything I say, do, or write. He is quoting the late Dave Graham (a Slade fan of some repute and renown, sadly deceased) as saying that I had talked to him about my illustrious career on a DWP Fraud team. I was not employed in the correct grade to work as a Fraud Officer and so I never did. I don't think I ever spoke to Dave Graham in any great detail about my Civil Service career. I was working on Computer Support at the time when I did speak to him and may have mentioned that. I have not said anything at all about Dave Graham, despite him misrepresenting his actual conversation with me. The internet nutjob I was actually referring to lives in Birmingham.

The assertion that an Admin Officer cannot make a decision to lift a suspension on a UC claim is totally incorrect. The majority of AO grade staff do it all day every day when they are tasked to do so, or upon accepting suitable evidence that a claim can be restarted. It is regarded as a simple decision and is a normal part and parcel of the job. It's merely a case of ticking a box on a screen in the payment system, putting a note in the case notes to cover it (eg, signing not missed, or something similar - and the claimant's word CAN be accepted) and then putting the case back into payment and sorting a same day bank transfer. This can be done after speaking to a Work Coach, or simply by accepting a claimant's word about what has happened. Not everything goes to a EO grade Decision Maker. They get the far more complex decision case work and an Admin Officer can still accept regular evidence to restart a claim. I trust that this clears matters up. I don't get it... people who haven't had a job in centuries spouting off at about the working lives of other people that they have no actual clue about... I'm just baffled.

The evening was the jam night. I managed to spend an amount of time offstage again, as the kids seem to want to get up and play with everyone. I sat around bored witless by the goings on and was wishing that I was at home. Our guitarist is going to get some helpers in for the jam nights that I am not doing at the end of June.

Like most of the world, I have been so bored that I have fallen prey to chatGPT's AI silliness. It actually looks like me to a degree. Weird. On sale at shows, a limited edition for certain geographically removed internet halfwits to stick pins in.

Book review: Flowers In The Rain: The Untold Story of The Move by Jim McCarthy

April 15th:
I stayed in bed all morning as I have an awful cold. My meet at lunchtime with Mike got cancelled as we are both unwell. I rang the dentists and moved my appointments that were booked with them for later on this week. I'm trying to stop my throat from giving up so we can play on Friday.

So.... Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend have fired Zak Starkey from The Who after this recent performance.....

I find it absolutely staggering that some of my favourite musicians could go out and play like that, being so badly under-rehearsed, and then turn round and blame the drummer for it all. To be honest, Roger Daltrey's voice stopped being great years ago and Pete Townshend did very well to stand through that show, following his recent complete knee replacement surgery. He soldiered bravely on through the pain, but his best years as a guitarist have also long gone. If I were them, I would have taken the band back into a rehearsal room for a week or two and have looked honestly at what, if anything, is lacking. 'Go To The Mirror Boy' - to quote Pete Townshend. It really pains me to say that The Who are nothing like they used to be at all.

A man's got to know his limitations.
Lesser mortals like myself have set sensible end dates. Quit while you're ahead, I always say.

Still full of a cold. I'm told I have offended one of our jam night regulars by calling him 'listenable' on a poster image. That was his one word 'review' of our album. I have sent a message apologising. That appears to have resolved the issue. I am speaking with the person concerned.

April 17th:
One of the things that's part and parcel being a musician is all of the chat and socialising that goes with it, week-in week out. I will talk to anyone, but as some of you will know, since COVID kicked off, it has become plain that, having dealt with cancer and now being blessed with the gift of little or no immune system and having a wife who is classed as rather vulnerable (it's no joke taking her to A&E), I have tended to keep myself to myself a bit, especially at packed jam nights. This may probably make me look aloof and stand-offish, but throat infections etc lead to cancelled gigs and I have a 'show must go on' ethic.

It's not you. It's me.
Unless of course, it's you.

April 19th:
I woke up very early, went to the bathroom and then back to bed until almost noon. I did a bit of eBay stuff then went back to bed. I'm utterly wiped out after last night's gig in Todmorden. Graham rang me because he'd left his hat there at the back of the stage. We do an idiot check before we leave and Graham didn't remember to pick up his hat. For some reason, he asked me for the venue phone number - which I got for him. Our youngest cat, Baby, decided to go into our top bedroom, which has a net barrier on the door to keep the pets outside (so if anyone with allergies stays, it's a pet-free area). He got under the net three times and howled for attention.

April 21st:
The jam night last night went pretty much as usual. I sat with some friends for a large part of the jam for a change, because I wasn't required onstage.

I was woken up quite early this morning (at the ungodly hour of 8am) by Lynda, asking me to put our cardboard bin out, as she couldn't manage it. I missed it out last night. I then went back to bed as I was feeling decidedly unwell - this cold is hanging on and doing its worst. I woke up a few times during the morning and gave up each time and went back to sleep. It was a little bit after noon when I finally came downstairs. Still feeling rough. I gave it a short while, then I unloaded my gear from the car.

I have made the executive decision not to go to the Flame premiere in London next month, simply because of the cost involved and because I have been absolutely lazy and have done nothing at all about booking the necessary rail transport. Hotels are really expensive down there and then you have to travel to the venue and back. It's just not really worth the expense. The advance train fares to London and back have also crept up. I have been (last week) asked about doing a Northern event at a cinema in Liverpool the next day and I am currently also a bit unsure about that. I don't have a stock of our Slade In Flame At 50 book - I probably wouldn't get them in time if I ordered them now, either - and I just don't want to lay out money on something that probably will not sell on the day, leaving me stuck with a bunch of surplus copies. It's sold quite well through Amazon, so it's probable that a lot of fans have it.

An evening of TV. We are getting towards the end of The Following. The main villain in the story was executed in the episode that we just watched. The death penalty - I can only think of a couple of people that I have ever met that I can say for sure deserve to die. One occasionally threatens to die, but fails. I wish he'd just stop farting around and get on with it. I will be on the train with a mate to go to the nearest pub to fill up and then piss on his grave.

April 24th:
Lo and behold, the invite to the Flame premiere came this morning from the British Film Institute. We had been given the word that we'd definitely be invited, but were wary of booking rail and hotels without the invite. So it has dragged on for the last couple of months with us waiting to hear. It has all been done on a very last minute basis by them and it was with a heavy heart that I passed on the opportunity to attend. Plus, I have seen Flame so many times now....

April 25th:
On this day 9 years ago (April 25th 2016), I was up and ready to set off for The Christie Hospital in Manchester at 6am. There was no traffic, so I was there by 6.30am and was sat in a dark restaurant area, alone with my dark thoughts until 7am until things started to open up.

I checked in at the admissions Department and went through a list of questions that had been covered in my pre-op meeting a few days before. I was also given one of those awful gowns that your backside hangs out of to wear and a pillow to hold onto. The staff could obviously see that I was in some sort of anxiety state and sat one of the porters with me, to make sure I didn't bolt off at speed down Wilmslow Road with one of their pillows and my backside hanging out of the gown.

At about 10am, I was put on a trolley and wheeled into the operating theatre. They checked my identity was correct and stuck a canulla in my arm. I waited for the countdown. They merely said 'let's get started'.
I woke up about 8 hours later, on a ward, with the throat from hell and I was having trouble swallowing, because I'd had a pipe down my throat. I was flat on my back and really uncomfortable. I soon managed to get the attention of a nurse and she came over and slowly raised the top end of the bed and sat me up a little.

Everything in my mid-section that had been moved aside during my surgery then slid back into place. I felt like a sliding block puzzle and I never want to feel anything like that ever again. I managed to make a couple of calls to tell my closest family that I wasn't dead.

I didn't try walking immediately. I had a set of bandages around my swollen middle (they pump gas in to inflate the area to give them more room) and 5 new holes had been made in me that I didn't have before. One of them had a tube coming out of it to drain stuff off into a bag. I also had a catheter inserted.

My throat was utterly ragged after the pipe had been taken out and I was in such discomfort in the middle of the night to have an X-Ray. I was fed with rocket lollies to soothe my throat.

It would be the next day when I was asked to try walking. I just slowly shambled around, feeling quite pathetic. Due to some complications evident after my surgery, I stayed in for nearly two weeks instead of the usual two days.

Eating was an adventure. I was starving, had a painful throat and was practically terrified of eating anything. That wore off. More awkward was that the major surgery I had had had switched my bowel off. It started to recover after about 10 days.

The surgery was generally a success, though the cancer that had cost me my prostate gland decided to flare up again in the fat that surrounds where my prostate gland was and I had a course of hormone treatment then 20 doses of radiotherapy in March 2018 at the Christie in Salford.

My PSA levels stayed low for a good while, but in 2023 I ended up having another course - this time of targeted stereotactic ablative radiotherapy at the Christie in Manchester. The cancer had decided to move to a lymph node in my groin and my levels had started to rise worryingly. That was only 5 sessions and I was left exhausted by them.

9 years after my operation, thanks to The Christie, I'm still here. I get my blood checked every 6 months to see if anything at all is amiss. At the moment, all seems good, but I don't want to jinx anything by getting overconfident.

I have to thank Lynda for making me go get checked out, because she spotted that I went to the loo a lot. I put it down to drinking too much coffee. She started me off on the process that saved my life.

I also have to thank my surgeon Mr Lau for his wonderful work and the extremely kind and patient staff who have looked after me throughout. Without them, I probably wouldn't be here now.

I have told my story on my website at http://www.crazeeworld.plus.com/ian/cancer/index.htm and, as I always do on this day every year, I urge men of a certain age to go get themselves checked out if they think anything at all is wrong. It's a quick blood test and it can save your life.

April 27th:
My ears are not behaving this morning. Last night was one of those gigs where our guitarist decided that his amp had to be painfully louder than everything else. I tend to carefully pick my battles with him, so I just put some earplugs in. I don't get on with earplugs, as I can hardly hear myself sing, so it affects the vocal balance and distracts me. We went down really well and played a couple of songs we don't usually touch as requests. I had a talk about the side band project and it was suggested that if I'm unhappy about various things that are going on, that I don't do it. I was hoping that that would take over from the band next year, as personality issues in the band are just getting me down.

With some gratefully recieved help from another band, I seem to have finally sorted this C247 payment system mystery out, so it looks like our gigs in Whalley will still be on.

I sold a Tascam recording unit this morning. I wasn't using it (it's never been used, so it was just sitting there). A Boss distortion pedal went to a new home tonight.

Listening to Paper Doll, the new album from Samantha Fish. It's really good. My CD (with bonus track) should land tomorrow.

April 30th:
CUSTOMER SERVICE OFFICIALLY PRONOUNCED DEAD.
I'm the guy who walked out of a city centre Indian cafe (I wouldn't call it a restaurant) in Manchester today, after waiting five minutes second in the queue, while the chap serving had a very very long conversation with a woman who was before me. I counted to ten and walked out and he only noticed that I was there when I was leaving. I didn't want to interrupt his conversation for something so trivial as food. I got a sandwich from Sainsburys.

I was at a loose end today and decided to travel from Bolton into Manchester, eat at This & That and do a couple of guitar shops. Oh well, never mind.

May 1st:
Up around 10am. Scorchio. Building work is going on next door to me and my drive is full of the builders scaffolding, making gigging at weekends difficult as I can't park my car full of gear safely out of sight overnight. This means I have to completely unload it into the house. Because it's so hot, the builders are having a few days siesta and I can't see this taking less than a few weeks. I have to be fairly zen about this, because there is no point at all about getting all wound up about it. That will achieve nothing at all. Yesterday, 'Dave Hill's Slade' advertised 'their final tour'. Except it ISN'T their final tour. It's a final Christmas tour. Deceptive.

May 2nd:
This dropped through my letterbox today. I now have an amount of watching and writing to do over the next couple of days.

That write-up is now on the front page of www.slayed.co.uk. It is my final piece of writing on Slade. The Noize is ready for its final version to be issued (possibly a little earlier than we originally planned), and then my work here is done. The site and its current forum will close down at the end of the year, though I have set up a new forum that doesn't cost me anything). The Internet is not, and shouldn't ever be, a museum.

May 7th:
What a few days it's been.... On the morning of May 5th, I messaged our guitarist and he replied quitting the band. He did not respond to our query as to whether he would help us out until we are able replace him. We have ended up cancelling nearly all of the next couple of months worth of work, except for the jam night, which we have got guitar cover arranged for. I feel a whole lot lighter, though, and we will have to see how the next couple of weeks go, while we try to find a new player. We've had some people apply, so we shall see what we can work out with them.

May 10th:
So... we have advertised for a new guitar player and have had some good responses. We're hopefully going to see someone on Sunday. Another has put meeting us back a week. My voice is getting more and more shot as Sunday nears, thanks to a cold messing up my throat, and Graham is in pain due to the effects of some treatment he's having. This isn't great.

May 12th:
The excellent weather and people being away affected the turnout at our jam night. With my voice problems and due to feeling generally rubbish, I had been worried about how the night was going to go, but I needn't have worried. I ran the thing successfully, giving everyone a decent length slot. We didn't see the guitarist that we planned to, as Graham wasn't well enough to play and my voice was shot, so we called him off for this week. A couple of people said some very nice and really supportive things to me about my part in the jam night. The next few weeks are going to be really important, as we are seeing a couple of guitar players. One or two of whom there are some doubts about. I'm in half a mind to just cancel the rest of the year's work and take some time out. But I have Graham to consider. Maybe I just need to start putting myself first. I've been asked about my availability to help another band out on bass (and it so happens I have some availability this next month or so), so I looked into that. The setlist that was provided to me put me off a bit. It would be REALLY nice to let someone else do all of the singing, but the material sadly wasn't my thing. It wasn't what I would listen to, which makes it too much like hard work, especially to cover for just a short period.

May 15th:
I spoke to Graham yesterday and he seems to be feeling a bit better than he was. My throat is still a bit of a mess because of this cold and I want it right for Sunday. The weather is currently quite lovely, but Lynda's not up to going anywhere. A bit of me feels like doing an hour or two out on the bus and travelling round, and part of me can't be bothered.

May 17th:
Supergrass were great last night. I managed to film all but the very final encore at their show. It was nice to be able to take my son along to see them again. We did their farewell our and a reunion tour and then this second reunion tour. All of their fans want a new album, but apparently they get stressed in the studio, so won't do it. Their drummer was calling another band member a tw*t last night, semi-jokingly I hope..

My new mobile SIM card came this morning. It was far from fun getting my mobile number moved across to it, which involved a call to my ISP who didn't recognise the number I was calling from and they think our landline is still my main contact number. Our landline is now dead, seeing as they offered me a good discount to lose it. I have to sort Lynda a Pay As You Go SIM, now that we have no landline, for safety's sake.

May 20th:
I checked sales of the Flame At 50 book this morning. It's doing quite well so far, probably due to the nice fuss that is being made about the DVD and BluRay reissue. The response has been really great, exceeding our expectations by quite a long way and we've had some brilliant comments about it. Chris Selby and I are the ones who coined the phrase SLADE IN FLAME AT 50 early last year and the Slade officialdom appears to have picked up on it.

May 22nd:
Oscar wasn't at all well yesterday, so I put off my train journey to Manchester until today. He's looking much better than he was. I didn't find what I wanted and didn't hang around in the city for that long. I managed to order it online instead to save another journey next week.

Nearly time to bin off this month's entries to the vault. The band is still no nearer to finding a new guitarist. However this doesnt mean that we will be so desperate as to consider approaching our former member. That is THE PAST and I have no intention of revisiting it.

May 24th:
We played at a pub in Rochdale last night and the crowd surpassed their usual level of ignorance. Practically no reaction to anything at all - until the last few songs, then they went completely wally and shouted for 'one more song' at the end, which we didn't do, as it's a strict and exact 11.30pm stop at that venue and we had played up to that time. A disappointing gig, all in all, quite sad to think it might be my next to last. We played really well, our stand-in guitarist in particular, but I felt weird setting off for it. I have got used to not playing and didn't feel much like going out. The nice weather broke and we loaded out in the rain.

The BFI sent me a couple of promo stickers for the new Slade BluRay release. Filed away with the set.

In other news. the Status Quo 8CD Live set from 1977 arrived. It contains a remastered album on two discs and then three live shows split over two discs each. The outer packaging is disappointing and it's hard to get the discs out to play them from the fold-out booklets that they are in. However, I ripped them to my computer, so that's not going to be an issue. The inner contents were great, but they really could have done with coming in a clamshell box.

May 26th:
We tried out two guitar players at last night's jam night session. Getting the right person for us is going to be difficult. On top of the stress of trying new players my two year old mixing desk decided it didn't want to work on the right output anymore, so I had to run the PA in mono by bridging across from the left side with a very long guitar cable, which worked fine. The right hand PA speaker was tested again this morning with a microphone at home and worked fine, which was a big relief. The desk is going in the bin. It's not even economical to try to repair it. I was on Amazon until 2am looking for a replacement, but reading reviews, most of the desks weighing in at £200 or under are crap. I put my old desk back in my studio setup and linked it up to a good reverb unit. Fortunately, we have Graham's desk for live work, but I will have to look to see if I can find a decent studio desk with built-in reverb at a reasonable price.

May 31st: I went to Liverpool to spend some time with my friend Mark and that evening we went to see Samantha fish at the Arts Club in Liverpool. A good venue and a fabulous show.

June 1st:
The Three played an outdoor gig at the Northumberland Arms in Marple Bridge near Stockport. It was a bit of an occasion for two reasons: The route to the venue made me drive past my late wife's house, the places where we held our wedding reception, the mill where she worked and a number of pubs we used to meet in, plus several other places that hold a great many fond memories. The weather was wet and windy (enough to blow the large pagoda we were playing under before we arrived into the road, leading to some frantic anchoring down), then we got blazing sunshine. It couldn't make its mind up. When we had finished packing up and were about to leave, a chap came up to me, who said he liked what we did, but weren't we a bit loud? How do you respond to that? Graham got through the gig, but was struggling. He's having some aggressive treatment at the moment. There was also a percentage chance at this point that this could have been the last gig by The Three, dependent on how our search for a guitar player goes.

The scaffolding has now been on my drive for a month and I have let the contractor know that I want it gone in the next few days and that they have no right of access to our property at all from now on for any other work being done. I have also let the brewery know this.

No reaction from anyone yet to my departure from the Whatsapp chat group related to the exhumation of 70's band Shabby Tiger. I'm not very surprised. Seeing as nobody is able to talk about actually doing anything and the chat group has become a platform for the new singer's erratic rants and swipes at other, senior members and some devious plans which make me uncomfortable, I have decided to exit. I can't be doing with people who have to resort to subterfuge and trickery. A bit of a waste of my time....

June 2nd:
Our jam night saw us audition four guitarists in a row, one of whom seems to be the right one for us. We have offered him the job and he's accepted. Phew. We now need to knock a set together to be able to play in July.

Funnily enough, our former guitarist got in touch asking me for his delayed payment from a gig that I've just been paid for, so I sent that on to him. Before he left the band, we had arranged that he would get two friends to cover the jam night, while I was supposed to be away at the end of this month. I think he lost any rights to expect to take part in running our jam night ever again when he left the band and didn't even respond to us when we asked if he would help us out until we got a replacement guitarist in, leading us to cancel a hell of a lot of our work in May and June. Perhaps I should have invoiced him for our lost earnings. Talk about being hard-faced, asking if he was still running the jam..... Or just plain not understanding what leaving a band actually means.

Graham found the opening 'Hope all is well' in the message he sent rather amusing. I now have a band to get together in time for July, so I now won't be taking ANY time off. I also will not be giving my jam night over to him at any point in the future. Ever. I contacted the two guys who were supposed to be helping him out with the jam. They'd understood that they wouldn't be doing it, even if the ex-guitarist hadn't.

June 3rd:
I met my friend Mike for lunch and on the way I took a detour and fortunately found a reasonable solution to the problem of my dead studio mixing desk which is currently residing in our waste bin, waiting to be taken away. I returned home to find that I have been bribed with wine and beer to apologise regarding the scaffolding on our drive.

June 4th:
It looks like the scaffolding will be leaving our drive on Monday. I live in hope.

June 5th:
I went to the dentists at 2.35 and we held a very productive band meeting at 8pm.

June 6th:
My step-sister Joanne's funeral today. I'd never been that close to my step-family over the years, even though they are nice enough people, there always seemed to be some sort of awkwardness as I wasn't 'one of them', but instead the 'other' son... and on top of that, my Dad had left my Mum for their Mum. I never pushed it, as I had lived long enough without them.My fault as much as anyone else's. Joanne and her husband Jim lived across the road from me at one point and we got on well enough. Our daughters have remained good friends since childhood. When my Dad passed away, Joanne was there with my Dad's second wife and myself at the end. After that, we drifted apart. They didn't feel the need to keep in touch and I certainly wasn't going to force anything. I was back among them today and a couple of ladies - presumably my two step brothers wives - enquired (in effect) to see if I was Ian, the stepbrother. Yup. One brother came up and spoke to me, one didn't. A hard day for them and I really felt for them all. Fortunately, I had Rachel and Lyra to be with. Rachel took our granddaughter home after the service had finished and we'd hung around for half an hour afterwards, so I passed on going to the wake. Maybe I should still have gone, but I felt rather awkward and a bit like an intruder.

Joanne Ian and Lyra

June 9th:
Last night's jam night was good fun. Our new guitarist, Paul, played a good number of songs with us and they all went quite well. This looking promising. We are rehearsing on Thursday evening. We've had to cancel a couple of things because of pre-booked holidays, but the sense of relief is overwhelming.

In other news, the scaffolding next door has FINALLY come down, to my complete and utter joy. There's a load of crap on our car port, which will need getting off. I swept up the devastation that they left on our drive. The scaffolders stupidly left their long ladders lying in the road for absolutely ages and while I was sweeping all of the remaining debris and bits off my drive, some random bloke passing in his car gave me an angry and rather loud mouthful about it. 'Nothing to do with me mate,' I said, then returned to my sweeping up. I can now get my car back on my drive again. It's the small things in life that give me the most pleasure. A cardiac nurse came and checked Lynda over. We weren't expecting her. It didn't interfere with our day at all and was very positive and productive.

I did a trip to the tip in Bolton and then to Tesco for some shopping and after a very brief stop at home to drop the swag off, I was at the local dentists prompt for my appointment at 4pm and home by 4.30pm, slightly brutalised, but there you go. She was pleased with my brushing.

June 12th:
A band rehearsal pleasingly saw us get through about two sets worth of songs, played to what I hope was a surprisingly good standard. Here's a bit of footage.

It's really interesting to note that some songs where I sometimes previously had issues with my timing before, now suddenly work absolutely perfectly with our new guitarist, who plays the guitar parts clearly and properly. Thank God we have made the change.

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June 14th:
Lynda wasn't feeling well enough to go out for a curry this evening. Her throat's a bit swollen, so we will see what we are like on Tuesday. We watched Diane Morgan's episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' and it was nice to see some of our mutual hometown, Farnworth, during the programme. She seems really nice. I haven't watched any of her own shows, but will probably give them a go.

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June 15th:
After our rehearsal on Thursday, we were all feeling pretty good about things, band-wise. Paul and his good lady turned up at the jam night and the band got up and did about half a dozen songs, including a version of Highway Star by Deep Purple, which I had written out a few days before and sweated over ever since. We got that just about right. Everyone's saying that our new guitarist is a really good fit for us. I'm so relieved. It was nice that my wife pulled herself up to her full height and had a rare night out and came along with me. It's a long evening, away from the dogs, as I get there to set up at 5.45 and we got home after 11pm. She did really well. Bed at about 2am.

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June 16th:
Up at about 8.30am. So... I have had an EP by a Rochdale band on Ebay for a while and some chap in France was desperate to get it. Since I had some issues with lost stolen or strayed items going abroad, I have stopped selling things abroad. But this guy was quite insistent. I ended up re-listing the thing a few times as he couldn't pay for it. I got customer services at Ebay invloved a couple of times and they finally suggested he buy it through ebay.fr and that worked. Result.

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June 17th:
Into Bolton to meet Mike for lunch (two pasties from Walshes (Ye Olde Pastie Shoppe) on Churchgate. A suitable repast was followed by a quick snifter in the beer garden to the rear of Hogarths. In the evening Lynda and I went to meet our friends Ken and Maureen at The Achari in Bolton for a curry. A lovely evening, as usual.

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June 18th:
Having parted company with our old guitarist and feeling a lot better for it, I'm told there is a possibility that he may be asked to run the jam night on the alternate weeks when we are not running it, as we are talking about going down to doeing it on a fortnightly basis, as I don't enjoy it anymore, Graham could do with the rest and Paul isn't keen on all of the sitting around doing nothing that it can involve. While the venue owner (and the soon-to-be-owner, who we have not even spoken to yet) doesn't know any of the goings on that led to our ex-guitarist's sudden departure, I'm absolutely mortified that we may be forced to communicate with him in any way in the furure. I'd rather pull out of the jam night entirely and immediately than be made to have any dealings at all with him. He went for a very good reason and that very good reason has not gone away.

June 19th:
I felt like doing a bit of home recording for the first time in a short while, today, so I messed about re-writing a song which Graham had given our ex guitarist some lyrics, to to get him to do a tune. We did work the song up to be able to be played live, but it was - frustratingly - very sloppy and so it never got into our set... and a home studio recording of it was just as bad, so that has not surfaced, either. We're obviously not going to use his tune now, so I decided not to waste the lyrics.

I recorded a basic demo, adding guitar and bass over an existing drum track and here's a very quick snippet of it:

The band rehearsed this evening and came up with some further easy crowd-pleasers. It's not exactly 'tight-as' yet, that will take a little while. But we have made remarkable progress and we have enough songs to play a show.

June 21st:
It's too hot to do anything much at the moment. I can't record, as building work next door is too loud for me to do vocals at the moment. The dogs are getting quick walks on the local park, so they don't burn their feet on the pavement. I had a quick visit from my son, over from Wales today, which was really good.

Here's a photo of Mary.

Mary
"I don't remember ordering one of those..."

June 22nd:
No jam night tonight. Off to see Sparks in Manchester. What a gig. I felt a bit ill when I was setting off for Manchester and nearly turned around to go back home and go to bed. I'm so glad I didn't. Review here.

June 23/24:
Not much to talk about. I posted some parcels that I had sold on eBay. I'm trying to declutter a little. I'm quite tired a lot of the time at the moment. I need to get out walking. My body clock is a bit out of whack and I try not to sleep in the day, but don't always manage. Late nights up 'til 2am doing stuff doesn't help.

June 27th:
Earlier on today, I watched Supergrass do a really good set and struggle for any reaction from the masses in front of the Pyramid stage. What appears to be wrong with festivals like this now is that there is a mad scramble for tickets months and months before the acts are announced, because there is this huge things about being seen there and saying you've been. It's hardly about the actual music anymore and fans of the bands concerned rarely get tickets to see the acts who are playing. The only bands guaranteed to go down well are 'the legends' and any with suitable hype behind them. The 'emperor's new clothes effect' is massive at these events. The photo is mine from their recent Manchester gig, where they deservedly went down like heroes.

Supergrass, Manchester.

So, while I am watching Supergrass play Glastonbury on the BBC, the super grass that we ordered via Amazon shows as 'delivered'. Except it is not at our house. A phone call to the company that supplied it got them to contact their courier. It's gone to another address about a mile and a half away and the hapless and probably dyslexic driver now has to go back and get it and shame-facedly bring it to us.... It must be the proximity to a cattery next to the wrong location that so confused him.

Also Earlier on today, to add to the stress of our missing grass, my Instagram account (that I don't really use very much at all) got hacked. My son alerted me to some rather rude stuff appearing on the page and I finally managed to change my password and log out all those who were logged in and get two step authenticator in place, so now I can't get in without using a code that I get by text or email. The alternative to this was deleting the account that I hardly use, but I'm not going to be forced out of using something by some internet numpty.

Squid Game 3 has appeared on Netflix.

June 28th:
'Suprprise guests' Pulp did a great spot at Glastonbury. Jarvis Cocker has the manner of a 1970's OU lecturer and had the crowd in the palm of his hand. I'm not sure about the validity of Charli XCX rolling about on the floor to her knickers to backing tracks. One to watch with the sound turned down. We did a binge watch of several episodes of Squid Game 3.

June 29th:
I spent an amount of the day with my head totally in bits, worrying because of our drummer Graham's ongoing treatment, which is wiping him out. I got so stressed that I had a couple of hours sleep in the afternoon. The jam night, with Paul on guitar and mainly Nigel on drums, went very well. Graham came down and got up for one song, but it wore him out.

June 30th:
Up and about unusually early today.

July 1st:
Well, here we go with another new month. It's all stress in my world at the moment. I'm worried about the band, because our drummer isn't too well at the moment, because of some treatment he's having, which is really wiping him out. We are supposed to start gigging on July 11th. We do get to rehearse on the 10th.

I got a few emails that showed purchases on our Amazon account for xbox vouchers, this afternoon. Straight away I disputed these with Amazon. The last couple of days have seen me have to change my Facebook password a couple of times, after some spam images appeared on my Instagram page, but today I got the message that an Instagram account that I use is breaking rules and has to be suspended. Meta also closed down my Facebook account, as it was linked to that page. Fortunately, I had a safety backdoor set up in case of something like this happening, with admin rights granted on the few pages that I run. It's a good job that I had set it up. I have opened a new Facebook account (which I will not be linking to anything else) and am adding most of the people back in. It's a good chance to get rid of a few people and to make my own rather unimportant web presence a lot more low key. I've got nearly all of my admin rights back in place, just a group and a page to sort out with other established admins.

July 2nd:
The two-step authentication on my Amazon account isn't working properly, stopping us from getting into Amazon (more stress), so I had a few phone calls with Amazon in India to get them to remove it. The password change will have to do as protection. Slowly getting Facebook friends back. I am keeping my new Facebook profile as low key as possible.

July 5th:
A couple of days of fixing and replacing things. The vinyl LP version of The Three's album has turned up. I've started compiling a 'best of' of my own stuff to get pressed up as I have a £30 credit voucher..

I gave the vinyl LP a quick listen. It sounds really good. I have mixed feelings about it though, as not all three of the band were interested in recording an album. Or learning the new songs, so that we could sell the album at our shows. As albums go it's good but it got a premature burial rather than any sort of launch. I ended up playing all the guitars on five of the nine songs on the album, or they would never have been finished. I revised the rear cover art to reflect my own efforts on the album.

July 6th:
Today would have been my 40th wedding anniversary with my first wife Julie, had she not passed away in 1986.

Back in the present day, Facebook is not behaving as it should. I can't send friend requests. My tactic to deal with this problem is not to particularly care about it. I have much bigger things to worry about.

July 7th:
Last night's jam night went very well. Our friend Stu played guitar for us. I spoke to Graham today about how it all went. We discussed the way forward. He is going to put the suggestion to the venue owner of 1 week The Three / 1 week us with Stu / 1 week a.n. other jam band. It was put to us that our old guitarist alternated weeks with us. Graham contacted him about this, but he never respoinded, so he's not having alternate weeks, even though it's been leaked from his end that he is doing the other weeks, he absolutely isn't. We are busy sorting out the line-up for this weekend. It looks like our friend Nigel will be helping on drums on Friday as Graham needs to rest up a bit. Rather than cancel Saturday, Graham says he will play. Nigel will be helping on drums on Sunday

July 10th:
It's been a difficult few days. I've been fending off cyber attacks, with various accounts getting hacked. I've spent a lot of time and some money getting things back to normal. Ferdous, if you're reading this - sorry to reclaim my Netflix account and deprive you of it. I know you'll be missing it.

The band take to the stage again this weekend for the first time in what seems like an age. We have help with drums on both nights as Graham went into hospital yesterday. He says he might be out of the game for a few months. We couldn't rehearse on Wednesday, so I have to admit to being very slightly nervous about this weekend (naturally). Not worried enough to cancel anything though, as we do have to start up again. I spoke to Graham in the evening. He's having surgery tomorrow in Salford.

July 13th:
The jam night. I gave the jam night venue owner a list of the dates we want to do, sort of week-on, week off, with a blip in September during our availability, so we lose a week here and there, not that I am at all bothered.

July 19th:
My first update for a little while. Graham's surgery apparently went very well and he's walking around. I've had various issues on the internet that have been a bit stressful and it's caused me to tighten up all of my security, change all of my passwords and set up new email addresses. I have also invested in a new web domain for this site, plus new email addresses. The band continues to play well at shows, though we have had to cancel a couple, due to the shortage of a drummer.

20th July:
Last night's gig was sadly cancelled as we didn't have a drummer, but at least Friday's gig was a good one. We aren't doing the jam night this week. Last week I gave the jam night venue owner our list of dates to the end of the year. We are alternating the jam night with our old guitarist and whoever he can cobble together.

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August 1st - 3rd:
This year is flying by. The band played two more gigs over the weekend. Our friend Ryan was on drums. We played really well, which is very encouraging. Also what else is encouraging is that I got all of my band gear into the new car (packed very carefully). Friday night was one of those crowds that don't know anything about clapping until you play your final song and then they decide to get involved and try to keep you onstage. The gig was a good payer, so we did a couple more songs. Saturday saw us playing to a rather small audience who really enjoyed what we did. We played a fiery set and really enjoyed it. The venue tried to knock our fee down a little, but some former committee members wouldn't have it. We are back there later in the year on a Friday night, apparently much better than Saturdays there.

My writing partner Chris sent me a set of photographs from a secret event that he attended and we are going to make it into a very limited edition book. He also sent a couple of videos and I extracted some stills from those to bump up the number of photographs. I pretty much assembled the book and its cover artwork in an afternoon and ordered three proof copies which went off to Chris..There is a possibility of a handful of vinyl 45's related to this, but at present, that is totally subject to approval. The two volumes of the very very final edition of THE NOIZE are ready to be uploaded for release in November.

No jam night this week! The announcement has just been made that the jam night venue is being sold and will be taken over in January. Our final jam will be on December 14th. The band can now take some far more lucrative Sunday gigs instead, though they will be few and far between as I have vowed not to overwork the band.

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August 4th:
I woke up late this morning, feeling rather rubbish after what turned out to be a very late night last night. I get stuck into the Super Challenge Freecell and some music and suddenly it's 2.15am.

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August 8th:
A week of not that much to talk about. The high point being a meet with a couple of friends in Manchester on Thursday afternoon. While I was out, I got the call while I was out to let me know that Lynda is having her pacemaker fitted next week. Today involved me going back to the pharmacy to ask for the 6 items for Lynda that they didn't bother to give to me. They told me they would be ready on Monday and so I said they were already two days late (so she's been without a couple of her tablets for two days) and they are keeping her alive, so they couldn't really wait. Ten minutes later I had them in my hands. Rowlands Pharmacy blamed the doctors for not sending all of the items together, which I don't quite believe. They do totally take the piss and I am going to see if I can work around using them.

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August 9th:
My evil plans to do less jam nights are not going quite as easily as I hoped. I asked a friend to get one of his bands to cover August 10th a while ago and he suddenly can't find a bass player. So I step in, rather than cause chaos. Along the way, he asks me who is playing drums? So I sorted Nigel out to cover. I remind him that it was supposed to be his band doing it. I gave him the night to sort out. You can't get the staff.

Our gig in Whalley, Lancashire went really nicely, apart from the two clowns who insisted on rolling around wrestling on the floor in front of us and interrupting us with idiotic comments to the point where we nearly stopped playing. They were making themselves 'the attraction' instead of us and it was irritating. At the end of the gig, one of them insisted I give him a band card as he is the secretary of a local Conservative club. Now their nonsense all makes sense. They have pretty much zero chance of getting us to play for them. It was a relief to get offstage at 11pm and head home (with a quick pit stop at MacDonalds in Haslingden).

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August 11th:
Last night's jam was sparsely attended. That's ok. Some people are away. Some other people are taking sides after the band split and are only going to our old guitarist's evening. That's up to them. One or two of those I won't miss, like the rather competitive jammer who glares dangerously at anyone who plays something he might want to play. Play a blues track and he will give you a look that can kill. He's been a lot of trouble in the past with a sometimes / often stinky attitude and I was getting sick of being nice to him. His playing was really iffy and getting steadily worse and I started resented backing him. Ten years of playing the same handful of songs really badly. He moaned at having to follow on from one of the jam night guitarists, despite pretty much insisting on always having the first spot after the house band. His extremely theatrical flounces and departures when he realised he wasn't always going to close the evening struck me as really hysterical. I found his very visible sense of utter entitlement either amusing or annoying, depending on my mood on the day. He was one of the main reasons that we went down to a fortnightly jam. Stu kindly brought his PA system, so it was a much easier evening for me. I had spoken to an old drummer friend of mine this morning and he invited us out for a curry this evening. That would have been my plan for last night, had the jam night not intervened. We had to pass, as Lynda isn't feeling too great at present.

August 14th:
Up at an ungodly hour in preparation for having to be at the hospital for 8am tomorrow. I sold a bass yesterday and the funds came through today. Gigs for next year are trickling in slowly.

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August 15th:
I managed to get Lynda to the hospital and onto the Coronary Care Unit for 8am. Her anxiety at the idea of going out (not about the actual pacemaker procedure) had practically rendered her silent. The staff were quite shocked at how bad her anxiety was at something maybe going wrong when she's out for a short walk and how it gets such a hold on her. We were home again at lunchtime, with the procedure done and Lynda dosed up on Fentanyl - which she didn't find at all interesting or addictive. In the evening she went for a sleep, as she was beginning to get quite sore, especially with cats deciding to climb all over her.

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August 17th:
Lynda's been taking it a bit easy for the last couple of days, following her procedure. Getting a good amount of sleep and lying down and avoiding it. One of our friends is sitting with her this evening while I go out to work at the jam night. The jam night went well. Some of the regulars are missing. One appears to have defected to every other jam night available as he is too much of a star to come to ours anymore. What a crying shame. Not. Everyone noticed his attitude and his defective playing. The real people were there.

People don't think of me as a lead guitarist, as I play bass 99% of the time.
Posted by Ian A Edmundson on Monday 18 August 2025

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August 18th:
I'm thinking about a possible new home for the Sunday jam night for next year, with the intention of still keeping it fortnightly. Our Sunday jam at Tilwalds probably ends with the sale of the venue. The new owner hasn't said what's going on yet, apart from a refurbishment, so we can't really rely on our continuing there. We need a drummer for two gigs later in the year as our normal reserves aren't available. I'm casting the net.... Lynda still feels like she has been trampled by a horse.

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August 24th:
Someone left a sarky comment on our band's Faceache page, saying that the band won't be as good without our old guitarist. Another one who has no idea why the band parted ways with him. I messaged him back to say that it was our guitarist's choice to leave and that he'll have to come and see us to see if we are better or worse and also that everyone (including our old guitarist) is happier now. We're getting on with it again, after a period of disruption and he's now doing what he wants to do. We have been quite reserved and hopefully dignified in our choice of comments and have not resorted to telling the world the ins-and-outs of what led up to his departure. There have been some rather catty, unnecessary comments from people that I would have expected to behave a lot better. I am not going to join in.

I went out early this evening to an all-day thing to watch a friend's band play. I was quite looking forward to seeing them. When I arrived, a group of five young lads were on and they sounded quite good. I spotted that someone I knew was at the side of the stage and my heart sank when I realised he was going to be responsible for the sound system. He has an unbelievable PA which he uses with his own band. However, it's an absolute trial having your sound done by him. He had a session at a venue once before us and (because they finished late and it would have taken over an hour to clear their gear out) we ended up having to do our job with their backdrop, lights and PA and practically no room on the stage. Things were going quiet all over the place, as his mate on the desk couldn't leave things alone and it was a shambles. He insisted on having a smoke machine pointed at the back of my head. I told him that they make a mess of my throat and he ignored me because it looked good with the lights. He nearly wet his pants when I finally lost my shit and unplugged it. I only got him to leave it off when I said we would stop then if he plugged it back in. I lost a weekend's work because of my throat. He avoided me for ages. Once was enough. Never again.

So, he was conducting operations, talking to someone behind the desk across the crowd, using his mobile to get settings changed. All of a sudden, the guitar doesn't work and the bass sound is feeble but horrendous and the panic-stricken bassist can't get any vocal sound or what he could actually call 'a bass sound'. I don't quite know how a five piece band who sounded fine can go off stage and a three piece using basically the same backline can get up a few minutes later and suddenly everything stops working and vocal mics are needing to be changed out, etc. Did the PA detect a change of band and reset itself to a disaster state by itself? Time marches on and I am getting REALLY bored waiting for my friend's band to come on. Watching the inept antics onstage to sort the sound out stressed me out so much that I just decided to leave. So my trip out was completely in vain. I drove past on my way home and saw that they had finally managed to get started. I can't swear to what the sound was like, though I saw a video on Facebook later on that was quite ok, but surely it is impossible to mess up guitar, bass and drums plus two vocals. But then again......

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Angust 26th:
I posted this as a response on Facebook....
"Immigration was absolutely fine and encouraged for many years and helped keep our economy and some types of work going, because for some reason (probably a dislike of getting out of bed early) Brits couldn't bring themselves to do it. People pretty much had a right to go wherever they wanted in the world to live.

Now, in the type of nasty blame culture the Tories were so very good at, with an emphasis on demonising the poor etc, the same people are seen as being a drain on the NHS (never mind that they are probably keeping it going) and on state benefits (though most won't be entitled). It's an indication of the way that the UK is going that we voted to leave Europe. We should never forget the number of Employment laws (that were put in place for our protection) that the Tories scrapped, so they could make people from abroad - and you and me - poorer.

The UK (not everyone) is slowly morphing into an intolerant, uncaring mob who don't see refugees as 'people in dire desperate need', but as a drain on our taxes. The same people still think they can go wherever they want to in the world to live. Sad times."

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August 29th:
It's 1.10am and I have just got out of bed because my little finger on my left hand is aching like a really bad tooth and it's driving me mad, keeping me awake, as it really is hurting. I went to bed with a copy of Justin Currie's brand new book The Tremolo Diaries which arrived today. I'm only part way through it, but his writing is honest and inspiring and he's getting into mentioning how he is dealing with Parkinson's Disease, which he is managing with medication. The most noticeable effect is an at-times violent tremor to his right hand, which affects his guitar playing, though his economical and straighforward bass playing style appears to be largely unaffected, though he does say that playing while singing is often difficult. It makes my aching finger seem like nothing to complain about. But I am going to.

But here I am awake and in rather a whingeing mood. I have found some Ibroprufen gel and have coated my pinky with it, waiting to see if the pain subsides. If it doesn't, I will be on the Zapains.

I quickly check my emails, before starting on this blog entry while my finger pain calms down. Typing is an amusing idea with a sore pinky. I am still watching for some more email from a ticketing company who contacted me recently after I raised a support ticket about some concert tickets that were apparently transferred to me. I got an email telling me that the 6 tickets were mine. WTF? Seeing as I would not be attending the show in question at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville USA, as I currently have no passport and no tickets (as they went to another address over there) I thought it best to let them know I wouldn't be going. I also let my bank know. They stopped the payment from being taken. I closed my account with the concert ticketing company, having printed out their ticket information. They have emailed me since about the support ticket, but seeing as they are asking mefor my name, I have not responded. They should know it.

Around the time that all of that little fiasco happened, my Netflix account got hijacked, as well as Paramount Plus. Those were very easily sorted out, though some XBox vouchers bought on my Amazon account lost me £15 and Amazon have done nothing at all about it. My PC is totally protected now. It was a little while before I slept properly. The attack was relentless.

I ended up with a new credit card with a different number on it and also a PC that was reset right back to factory settings, I had to reinstall all my software (buying a few things again). I went into any websites that I deal with and changed every password that I use a couple of times, closed various accounts down and bought a new web address and set up new emails to replace the old ones.

On one day I got over 800 spam emails. A bot was signing me up to all sorts of weird sites and I was getting floods of emails back. Luckily, my spam filtering software (Mailwasher) is excellent and just a few clicks stops me seeing any crap like that ever again. I did go and unsubscribe to an amount of stuff and that type of problem is not really an issue now, hopefully. Data breaches make people very vulnerable and it's a bad idea to use the same username and password in too many places. You live and learn. I got a number of emails which actually gave me one of my usernames and a password that I had used previously. Those emails asked me to send them some money. I didn't. Those user names and passwords are now totally obsolete.

I'm still getting One Time Passwords sent to my phone from Instagram as someone is trying to log into the accounts that I have changed the user names and passwords on, but those wll stop shortly as I have closed all of those accounts down. Someone is also trying to get into both of our Government Gateway accounts from the look of it too. But without the confirmation code, they can't get any access. Let them waste their time.

I did lose my Instagram account, because another account managed to link to it in some way and posted a load of smut. That got that account closed down and because my Facebook page that I have had for about 20 years was linked to it, I lost that too, with no Eathly way to get it back. My wife lost her Facebook account too. Hers has now got a picture of some ugly Chinese bloke on it. We have both re-started on Facebook, but we are far more circumspect in our use of it. Luckily, I had set up some back-door access to the band page and to my Slade pages, so those were safe enough.

It was all a little bit stressful. I'm only just now in a suitably calm frame of mind where I can write about it. Lynda is addicted to these Scam Interceptor programes on TV and occasionally asks me to sit down and watch them with her. I'd rather not watch them, as they freak me out a bit.

This all came on top of our old guitarist quitting the band and while my drummer and I were actually relieved to finally be rid of him, there was an amount of unwanted disruption to our gigging schedule. I had to deal with all of that unpleasantness, plus recruiting a suitable new band member, plus my drummer's health issues. I didn't need internet numpties messing me about.

Tesco just emailed me to tell me that our shopping will come between 2pm and 3pm today. Thank God it's not term time. They wouldn't be able to park up.

While I am whining... The man next door to us is having a two storey extension added to his house. He appears to be of that ilk to whom keeping to the plans that have been submitted to the Council means nothing. The extra bedroom situated in his loft is not in the submitted plans, nor is the moved driveway that he is putting in, which appears to come off a pedestrian dropped kerb right on a street corner. Because he was too cheap or stupid to hire a skip, most of his old roof is in what jokingly passes for his front garden. At the rate the work is progressing, it will be there for years to come. I am quite sure the Building Inspector will have something to say about all of this when he comes along to inspect the debacle that is occurring. I can't wait.

I spent an amount of yesterday doing book work, setting up and populating the brand new and rather spiffing book covers for the two-volume version of THE NOIZE - The Slade Discography book for later this year. You'll have to wait.

2.10am. I've had a good whinge - time for bed again.

----------------------

August 30th:
Facebook whining....

In bed early with a good book. Justin Currie's road diary, which has just come out. I was fortunate to get a signed copy. He talks quite frankly about the people and places he saw on tour in America and his career in Del Amitri. He discusses a UK tour with Simple Minds. He also muses on the effects of his diagnosis with the debilitating Parkinson's disease.

Reading this book makes me feel I should maybe do more writing. The problem with that little idea is that I have already done one book about myself (which I wrote just for my children) and to write another would certainly be a step too far. If I started writing all that stuff / guff down in book form now it would probably be therapeutic but also probably quite inadvisable, as I have kept a fairly tight lid as best I can on various recent events that have been painful to say the least, while I dealt with them as best I could.

Being cyber-attacked and hacked from all directions and on various platforms and websites, losing our Facebook accounts, rebuilding our band, various ailments and illnesses around me.... it's all been stress.

My attitude has had to be 'nobody died, so stop being a jelly and get on with it.' So I got on with it. I changed my usernames and passwords everywhere, got new email addresses, re-set my computer to the latest Windows 11 settings, installed stupid amounts of security, found a great guitarist and started gigging again. Various medical interventions. Problems solved.... hopefully....

There's a lot of gigs to do up 'til the end of the year and I have started working on next year's diary now. So it's not all grimness now.

Illegitimi non carborundum
or
Keep calm and carry on.

Take your pick.

----------------------------------

August 31st:
A bit of a nothing day, all in all. I spent most of the day really tired. I did an amount of book work, shoe-horning odds and sods into the two volumes of the updates to THE NOIZE. The new covers are done and dusted and allow for a few more pages expansion in each. I packed the car for the jam night in the morning, while I had some energy. I listened to quite a lot of music, had a long bath and read some more of Justin Curries' occasionally upsetting book.

The jam night in the evening was more of the usual. The turnout was decent enough, but we appear to have two camps emerging and people are choosing which jam night they come to, ours or our old guitarist's.... I am still annoyed that he was rewarded for his bad behaviour and given the nights we didn't want to do. I won't forget that. Reports back to me advise that the other jam night is populated by the not-so-good musicians - the type who won't follow good guitarists at our jam night. They are welcome to them. An old mate of mine came along to the jam and he played drums with me for the first time in some years. It turns out that our guitarist knows him too. He may be covering a gig for us in October if Graham isn't fit for it. The youngsters were guilty of some stage-hogging. We will have to get on top of that. I was late getting home as Paul had set off for home first as he has quite a way to travel and Nigel had an errand to run on the way back himself. Grey bin out.

And that's another month gone, just like that.

----------------------------------

September 1st:
Up at 8.30am, as Lynda was having a bit trouble moving about. I basically sleep-walked through feeding the cats and dogs and then came back up to bed. I couldn't get back to sleep, so I made a coffee and set about completing last month's blog and then archiving the month's entries.

I feel like DOING SOMETHING today, so I will drop off Lynda's prescription and then maybe have a bit of a drive out and about. I've been quite functional in my use of the car so far and haven't really done any driving for personal pleasure. Going to set off soon. Let's see what happens.

Best laid plans.... I took Lynda's prescription, bought some sandwiches for our lunch (Tesco meal deal). A short while after writing that, Lynda was complaining of feeling really unwell and I ended up ringing Cardiology and speaking to the pacemaker team who can get us in for an appointment tomorrow.

Bed early. Still reading Justin Currie's book.

September 2nd:
Up early and off to the hospital for Lynda's 10.15am appointment. She got so anxious that I ended up using a wheelchair again, once we landed at the hospital . The pacemaker is ok, working about 50% of the time as far as they could see. It has to bed in, so that's not totally unexpected. Being referred to a pacemaker optimization clinic to get the best from it. Also her consultant will be informed. They may bring the next Cardiac Nurse appointment forward.

Lynda's previous appointment was meant to be a home visit as she is classified as housebound. That was cancelled because the Cardiac Nurse had surgery on the day of the visit and didn't think to inform us. Lynda cancelled the one that was due to take place tomorrow as she was feeling too anxious about going out to the hospital. Someone did (rather sniffily) warn her at the time hwne we had to cancel that last appointment that they could discharge her back to her GP and that she could quite possibly die. The next appointment is currently set for November. She's lost about a stone since the pacemaker was put in. Lynda's answer to the hospital visit anxiety thing is to reduce the walking part of the anxiety by ordering a wheelchair from Amazon.

I went into town to meet my friend Mike for a late lunch. A phone call later on from my old drummist mate Rick. I don't have a landline now and my phone signal (AVOID EE) is poor to non-existent in the area around our house. He was nicely complimetary about my bass playing. He's a quite a disciplined and dedicated drummer and plays to a click a lot these days. He's very into precision and exact timing. We talked awhile about past work and I'm more forgiving of my past efforts than he is. he is concerned that if anyone sees his old work then they will confuse it with The Now. I tend to think whatever I did musically in the past is what it was and enjoy it as that, but he can't relax about it. He seems to always think that his drumming could have been tighter. A shame. He sent me some recordings from 1984 that he had come across a master DAT tape for. I had asked for vocal-free masters in case they ended up needing overdubs.

September 3rd:
Not much of a day. I found a couple of interesting things to put in one of our books. I went to Tesco for pet food and some bits to eat. I got an invite out in the evening but was too knackered to go and I didn't really just want to leave Lynda to it.

September 4th:
Up late, as I got to bed very late last night. Up and out to post a book.

TODAY'S QUESTION:
STING. WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE HATE THE MAN?

I've been reading a couple of topics in a forum that I frequent on the net regarding The Police this week. I have chipped in on a topic regarding whether The Police have ever made a perfect album. They didn't, as far as it goes for me, as there are tracks I always skip. Some of those instrumental jams they recorded to bring their albums up to full length were not my thing. But other people love them. They wrote a whole string of fantastic singles, but a number of their albums were patchy affairs. It's all personal taste. Not everybody can like everything. So there. Grin and bear it. Stop beating your chests about it.

Sting is also being sued by his two former partners in The Police as they seem to believe that they are due some further financial recompense from him. The Internet Experts are busy and gleefully explaining what's going on (or their guesses at what is going on, anyway).

Some seem to believe that Andy Summers is still terminally aggrieved that he doesn't get half of the money from Every Breath You Take. Maybe he is - maybe he's not. Songwriting is a fairly simple thing to apportion the correct credit for, until it's not. Someone sits in a room and comes out with a song. Other people may later play on it, but that doesn't in any way mean that they wrote the song. Andy Summers guitar riff - beyond any shadow of doubt - transforms the finished arrangement that song into something else. He still didn't write the song.

Sting's original solo demo appears on the Synchronicity Super-Deluxe box set. It's absolutely awash with keyboards. The chords and melody are all there - done and dusted. It's a finished song that would later see its arrangement be massively improved, as far as they were concerned, by the band recording it. That demo was the first recorded version and none of the band were involved in any way at all with that song until the band later came to re-record it. If they were going to come to any legal arrangement regarding their songwriting credits, they should have done it there and then.

If Andy Summers had said to Sting that his guitar part had significantly altered the song and that he deserved a co-write credit, he could maybe have got it. Of course, it may have caused the band recording to be scrapped and have also caused a massive fall-out that ended the band. Whatever... They did not come to any arramngement at the time and returning to slug it out 40 years later just seems grasping and undignified, especially when each of them is so very wealthy anyway.

Ona lesser note, I once had someone claim to someone else (after my band played a song of mine at a gig) that they had co-written a song with me, just because he had added a couple of 'woh-oh-ohs' in odd places when we recorded the song. I was told about this claim during our break and I had to go up to the singer and loudly disabuse him of that notion.

It's irritating on a tiny and insignificant level like mine, but in the case of noe of the world's most successful bands, it's a major stress and it must be hugely upsetting to be attacked by your former workmates in that way.

Andy Summers is quoted somewhere as having earned a million dollars a night from their reunion tour, so he's not exactly struggling to find money for guitar strings. Stewart Copeland isn't exactly broke either. It's a bit undignified. The Police went out while they were still very much on top, rather than fading away, left a lot of pleasant memories behind and came back years later to play for their fans again. The fans bought the concert tickets and whatever the prices were, they must have considered the tickets to be value for money.

Various forum members are saying that Sting has too much money and that the other two should 'rinse him' and 'bleed him dry'. I find it hard to believe just how horrible some people are. Little green-eyed monsters. Sting has earned his money from people buying and playing his records and from concert ticket sales. He's earned it very honestly and for people to start carping that he has too much money... It's just bizarre and mean-spirited. Is this what happens when someone works and achieves something?? if it was their favourite artist who had done well, I'd hope that they'd be clapping. But it's Sting, so maybe not. They do get a bit vicious.

OK, he may not be someone that everyone warms to these days (if he ever was). People who have never met him have their opinions on what he is like and what is wrong with him. Like they do with Paul McCartney and other highly successful musicians. None of them appear to have ever actually been in a room with him. And, yes, ok, his comments on the subject of tantric sex, made many years ago, may have been slightly risible, but he DID state quite clearly that a couple of hours of the proceedings were 'taken up with begging'. He does have a sense of humour, though he may not look like he has, sometimes.

I will mutter on here about Sting's solo records over the next few days.

September 7th:
I went to watch the Bootleg Beatles in Manchester. The gig was basically a club gig and they excel at these. They only did intimate shows at Manchester and Sheffield this year. Their accuracy was startling. My mind was blown. It doesn't come any closer to the real thing than this.

Bootleg Beatles

September 8th:
Up early this morning - unusually I was wide awake before 8am. I had Lynda to the hospital for her 10am appointment. After that, a little shopping and posted a CD that I have sold.

I've been trawling through my old songs with a view to re-recording some of them to get a vinyl album pressed up. Late on, I went into my studio and tried to locate an old recording that I might have had files for on a floppy disc. It didn't appear, even after I had trawled through all of the floppy discs, so I am a bit stuck, as while I have a nice backing track mix of the song, it's going to be a total pig to sing over. I could have changed the recording key if I had the original files. But I don't. I did, however, find another song that I did way back in 1997, identified only by the date. Great. I put it through my gear and recorded a bass part. I'll find some lyrics for it and finish it off. I also found the parts for my version of The Who's Baba O'Riley. I mixed that onto my 24 track for further work at a later date.

September 10th:
My plans for today were disrupted slightly by my friend Mike having come down with flu. I gave Oscar a bath, as he was looking a little disreputable after rolling on the grass on the park near us. He's quite good at being bathed, but gets fed up after a few minutes. It is annoying when Tom stands there barking at me non-stop because he thinks I am hurting Oscar. Once Oscar is out of the bath and dried off, he spends a good few minutes running like a mad thing around the house.

I keep trying to steel myself to write some more of my piece about Sting and his music. The problem is that I know what's coming up. I can't even name these awful later albums, never mind the songs on them.

September 11th:
Never forget. Never forgive.

September 12th:
We played at The Polished Knob in Todmorden in the evening - it was one of those nights and we really enjoyed it and fortunately, we had quite a good crowd in. I used my full bass rig, now that I am allowed to, and that made a huge difference. I realise now how badly I was affected by the bullying and sullen moodiness that used to exist in the band. I was getting to dread going out to gigs. We should have put our foot down and sorted things out much earlier. It's so much easier now.

I was told a really funny story about another band that I know. Karma's a bitch.

September 13th:
The Hindley Arms - another cracking gig. We really had the wind behind us at this one. Our guitarist Paul had to drive back to Burnley and then head straight on to Gatwick airport as he's off on holiday to the USA for a short while.

September 14th:
No jam night for me this week. I relaxed in front of the TV with Lynda and we watched a(nother) remake of Salem's Lot. It was ok and it told the story well enough. I spoke to Graham and he's talking about being back playing drums with us in a few weeks. That will be great when it happens. We will have to look after him.

September 15th:
Up at a fairly sensible time. Ordered a limited edition 12" EP of pre-Slade material from the USA and took a couple of items that I have sold on EBay to be posted. Dates for next year are starting to fill up now, as venues are getting out their diaries for next year. I'm looking at it being a sort of week-on / week-off type schedule. I bought a lifetime licensed version of Adobe Photoshop last month and it's such a relief to be able to do the band posters with it again, after I couldn't find my old install disc after I reset my PC in July. I had been working around it using Photopea, but that has some facilities missing and another program I downloaded (GIMP) was just terrible. It doesn't like layers or text. It's only really any good for messing about with photos.

September 20th:
I have not really had much time to sit down and write this blog. I have had to do some prep to learn a few songs to help host a jam night on Thursday. It would have helped if the jam night band had known one of those songs that I had been sent. I suspect slight mischief.

The jam night itself certainly taught me a lot. The jam setup was at 8 and the jam ran from 9 to 11pm, then it was pack up and go. Our jam runs from 7 to 10.30pm for the same money and a really awkward set-up . I will be SO glad to be rid of it. One woman who turned up totally blanked me, like she does, as she's one of an ex-player's women, on his team, so to speak. She complained to other peoplethat I know that I didn't speak to her.

Lynda has struggled ever since she's had her pacemaker inserted and on Friday at 1.30pm we gave up and called 999. The ambulance came at 5pm after a second call to gee them up. I saw '267' on the screen when the paramedics were seeing to her at our house. Lynda spent the night in the resus unit of A&E and I ended up going for a curry in the evening as there was no point on me spending the evening stood by Lynda's bed (they didn't give me a seat, so I was tired and hungry).

I have to admit to feeling rather guilty, going off to a nice place to eat while Lynda was stuck at the hospital, but Lynda was relieved that I had at least eaten properly when I went to see her this morning - and that she hadn't spent the night on a trolley on a corridor. I came away with a small 'shopping list' of things to take back for her. They've managed to get her heart rate down to a more acceptable rate, though it was 189 after I helped her to the loo. Her blood pressure was a wee bit lower than they would have liked, so fluids and magnesium are being given to help with that.

The house feels rather empty. I was scared that I was going to lose her yesterday, and she looked really tired today (but getting no sleep does that for you.).

I was more than a bit amused to spot one Facebook page whining about another one. That's what making demands and upsetting people in and around the band for the sole purpose of your own empire-building gets you. Claiming rather self-importantly that Jim Lea's recent 'Radio Wall Of Sound' track didn't get higher on The Heritage Chart because they didn't gather their massed troops of voters is a bit of a cheap shot. Bought bots and paid likes don't tend to vote.

September 25th:
Lynda got out of hospital yesterday. Apart from that, the biggest news is that Graham now wants to play drums on Saturday night. I'm not going to catch up on the blog for the last few days.

September 27th:
Ryan played drums for us at Saturday night's gig. Graham ended up in hospital with a swollen leg.

September 29th:
Lynda's birthday.

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October 1st:
A number of dates taken for the band for next year. Venues are now getting on with their diaries.
Into town to meet Mike at lunchtime and to do some shopping.

October 4th:
High winds from storm Amy today. I went for my flu jab this morning. Despite being immuno-compromised, I can't have the COVID jab as I'm not 75. I hate needles. I am supposed to be delivering a bass to a buyer I am meeting in Manchester in the early evening. Watching the weather closely to see if I will have to defer until tomorrow morning. According to the tracking email for the new Sparks EP, it has been delivered yesterday... to a house a couple of miles away from me. Emails sent to the supplier for a replacement CD and to Royal Mail. In the meantime, I downloaded the songs for free from the naughty INT Music page.

Good news: We possibly have a new Sunday jam night venue. We have to go look at the place and talk to the owner. We do have a band lined up to do the other weeks to us. I take a bass into manchester and meet the buyer at Piccadilly station and give him a lift to the YHA where he is staying, as it's on my way home. Nice, interesting chap.

The evening's gig in Lowton was a blinder. We had the crowd from the off. There's a new joy in the band and we played an almost 90-minute second half, carrying on after midnight.

October 5th:
Our jam night was a blast this evening. Paul had asked me (the night before) if we fancied doing some songs acoustically. We did about half an hour, even including a couple of songs that we don't usually do (Layla and Dance the Night Away), sat on high stools with acoustic instruments. It worked really well and was great fun. The acoustic thing went a bit awry at the end of the night when I had a total brain fart and forgot the words to You Give Love A Bad Name - embarrassing, but funny. I was busy trying to rearrange the song for acoustic bass and couldn't get the lyric to come to mind. The evening was greatly brightened up by our absent drummer Graham turning up and doing a number of songs with us.

As some of you will know, our drummer Graham has been out of action for a while, following back surgery. It was...
Posted by The THREE on Sunday 5 October 2025

October 11th / 12th:
No gigs this weekend. We had put ourselves down as 'not available', as Graham was down as being busy tonight. Wonder if he was busy? I feel like we are doing enough work without adding more at present. I am still messaging venues about next year. Some are getting back to us now. We appear to have a new jam night venue lined up, subject to agreement from the pub chain's area manager. It's a nicer and decent-sized room with more band space and the usual crowd will probably be more comfortable. No jam night. Feet up, watching Strictly and MAFS amongst other things.

October 15th:
Ten years ago today, I left DWP, taking early retirement. I really did like that job and did it for 37 and a half years, but after I had a necessary operation to remove part of my thyroid gland earlier that year, I was advised by my surgeon to basically keep still for two weeks afterwards. My supervisor at the time was acting into the grade and was a bit clueless about most things, so - prompted by HER manager, she decided that she had to take disciplinary action against me for my absence on my return to work.

Being an experienced Trade Union Rep of several years standing, I told her exactly which paragraphs of the DWP HR guidance protected me from any such daft action. She actually told me that "the guidance is for you, not for me."

I have to say I am STILL utterly disgusted by her total stupidity, spinelessness and maliciousness. I was nowhere near getting a warning or anything for my sick absence, but the most of the TU Reps had a target on their backs in those days and I was sick of the foolishness that went on at the Bolton office, especially after the Channel 4 Dispatches programme expose which took chunks out of the office, which we thought was utterly priceless. Another rep took my case over my dozy line management's heads and promptly got it dropped.

Within the week I had given my notice to take early retirement, and lo, the harassment of this Union Rep magically stopped. On October 15th 2015 I did a morning's work, attended a Union Branch meeting in the afternoon and then I left DWP ... and that evening I played a gig at The Black Bull in Preston with my old band Wizdom. It's odd, but leaving DWP actually saved my life. If I had still been in work, my wife Lynda wouldn't have noticed the tell-tale signs of prostate cancer, which I put down to my ridiculous coffee intake. A few months later on I was at the Christie Hospital in Manchester, having my prostate gland removed. I suppose I should thank Tixa for saving my life, but as it wasn't in any way her intention, I won't.

I'm also reminded of the copper-haired line manager who came up to me in 'suspiciously friendly mode' at a gig I was doing after I left. Our apt private rhyming-slang nickname for her at the time was Scary Gorgon. She'd also moved on to another Government Department and she was bizarrely in the mood to apologise to me for how she treated the Union Reps back in the day, saying that was 'the culture at Bolton DWP' and that 'it was so competitive'. I didn't accept her apology.

I'm also reminded of the woman who was a training officer at Farnworth, who ruled with an iron fist and people wouldn't speak in the morning until she'd spoken to them so they could decide what mood she was in. She and her husband drove past my bus stop on their way to work and if he was on his own, he'd give me a lift and I'd be in work 30 minutes earlier. If she was driving, he gave me a sad apologetic look as they sped past. She was later the manager of an office that got put temporarily into our Union Branch. Reps and managers practically spat at each other if they passed on corridors. I was Branch Secretary and we had to hold a monthly meeting with management. I ended up taking the reps from the other site out of the meeting a few times and sorting them out because they were aggressive and just couldn't behave. We got through the meeting in one piece and sorted quite a few problems out. I was at least thanked for my efforts then. Fast forward: I was stood next to her at the bar for about ten minutes at a funeral recently and she totally blanked me.

There was one particular Scottish blonde woman at Farnworth who was acting up to the next grade in preparation for the next EO promotion board. I was doing sickness benefits work under her and the two main duties were claims building and giro writing. We normally organised our own day. She had me writing giros then loudly bollocked me in front of the team - and the rest of the floor - for not doing my claims building and then later in the day vice versa. Because she could. I went to see our ineffectual HEO, Mr Farrimond, woke him up and complained about this. He did his usual nothing and advised me to sort it out with her. So I took her in a side room and told her the error of her ways and said I would contact the promotion board and complain to them about her if she persisted in nagging me. She promptly burst into tears and left me alone. Stand up to bullies with a clear plan and they leave you alone.

October 18th and 19th:
Two excellent gigs.

October 21st:
Happy birthday to me. Awake before 8am and getting on with it.

These politicians who waffle on endlessly about coming out of the European court of human rights.. I just don't get how people can support them. The ECHR holds rogue employers accountable and keeps them lawful. The employment laws in this country are all about FAIRNESS. They stop employers from crapping on their staff. Company rules ARE necessary of course and they are there to keep employees productive and any disciplinary procedures should be within the spirit of the law and enforced fairly. I never objected to them, except when a manager put their own interpretation on them and tried to work around them.

When I was a TU rep, I was regarded with suspicion by some managers who thought I was the devil incarnate because I made sure that members were treated FAIRLY. Bolton DWP had some really shitty line managers - the office had a terrible reputation in the North West, as one office manager (rhyming slang - Bike Smelly) forced a number of people to act as per his ethos of 'do it to them'.

If we separate from the ECHR, employers will be able to do whatever they Iike to staff and all of those protections that staff currently have will be gone. It would be like going back to the workhouse. Family friendly policies would be torn up and some of the things we have all taken for granted will be gone. The politicians who want to destroy workers rights are mainly company owners who can't wait to do it to their staff. Do we really want to work in workhouses again? No doubt some turkeys will vote for Christmas, no matter what. Those people will deserve what they get. Like they did when their benefits were stopped.

October 26th:
Last night we played at the Hulton Arms, Bolton and our reserve drummer arrived with his phone glued to his ear and with a stunned expression. His Mum had had a fall and he had to go sort her out. We landed up using our acoustic instruments and playing two sets in that style with no drummer. It worked out fine in the end.

October 28th:
I called into a couple of places to speak to them regarding the band and next year. Our new jam night venue has fallen through (and the utter brain-dead stump of a landlady couldn't even be arsed to tell me), so the search goes on. An elusive venue gave us one gig and the earliest we could get them in was the end of May.

October 29th:
I'm giving the new 50th anniversary 2CD edition of the Elton John album Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy - a good listen. What a truly fabulous album it was then and it still is! Recorded in the actual order that the songs appear on the album, it truly is an utter masterwork and perfectly superb set of songs. The 'concept' for the album is the early struggles in their song-writing career and to a degree, Elton's performing career. They were employed as songwriters for Dick James Music, turning out an endless stream of pap / pop songs for other people (not to mention those cheapo 'Top Of The Pops albums' that Elton sang and played piano on, before he had any hits) and being roundly ignored as artists themselves, until they started to record some demos in the publisher's studio's downtime, the quality of which couldn't be denied.

Someone Saved My Life Tonight is a song about his near-miss with a first marriage to a woman who wanted him to stop wasting his time playing music and to get a proper job. He was found with his head on a pillow in a gas oven (if you're going to do it, do it comfortably) by a fellow musician and was whisked away to safety and the woman became his disgruntled ex and he changed his name from Reginald Kenneth Dwight to Elton Hercules John. The Hercules being after Steptoe's horse. Elton describes We All Fall In Love Sometimes as maybe his finest love song. It is, in the end about his long-lasting relationship with (straight) co-writer Bernie Taupin (the Brown Dirt Cowboy) and their astonishing productiveness and that magical moment when a truly great new song is born.

The package includes a lavishly illustrated booklet and a gloriously informative essay by Daryl Easlea and a second disc of bonus tracks - work in progress demos that are really interesting and a 2005 live performance of several songs from the album. The audience for some bizarre reason don't sound as overwhelmed as they should. Heathens. They are in the presence of UTTER TRUE GREATNESS. Davey Johnson plays magical guitar parts and Elton's voice and piano are absolutely spot on.

The package is beautiful - a shame it didn't get the bigger box treatment, as I'd love to luxuriate with that superb Aldridge artwork full-size, but ho hum... The only gripe I have apart from that is that the track listing for disc two doesn't mention Someone Saved My Life Tonight. I love playing along with these songs on my instrument. They are timeless and I've been doing that for 50 years now - ever since I bought the LP on its original release - and these songs never get old.

I've just been in the presence of UTTER TRUE GREATNESS. This was back in the days well before Elton lost the plot and rang Rocket Records up to tell them to turn the heat from the sun down when he was in the South of France. One of those albums I can start again as soon as it's finished and play all the way through. No problem. It's so rare to get an album that can so accurately be described as perfect.

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November 5th:
Our jam night ends on December 14th. The venue has been sold and the new owner is not at all communicative about it. We had agreed in principle to move the jam night to Elliots in Tyldesley, subject to brewery agreement, but unfortunately they would rather have the place cold and empty on a Sunday than have the crowd come across the road. I am half-heartedly trying to find a new jam venue for Sundays, but to be honest, after 12 years or more, I think I have had enough of jam nights. They are too much work for too little money and I only do them to catch up with friends and because they are useful to run through new songs.

BMG got back to me about the missing store poster from my Who Are You super deluxe box set. They can't supply it - do I want a refund for the poster? They are still selling them on their website here. My email reply showed my utter disappointment with them.

November 10th:
A good gig on Saturday in Macclesfield, though some of the crowd were a bit meh as far as reactions went. They really enjoyed the first spot on the whole, but it seemed like the second spot with all the crowd-pleasers went over their heads a bit, or they just got into nattering to each other. Fortunately we had some nice dancers to entertain us. No jam night on Sunday. I've been contending with aches and pains in my right arm. I managed to get us a gig in Blackpool, but we can't give them a Saturday until October next year.

Today my web hosts moved the forum and its database, as well as my websites, to a new Apache server, so the content has been on and off all day. I'm trying not to care that much if the forum collapses, because I can then move my website hosting back to my ISP and save myself a fortune. It's the forum that costs me a bit of money to run and the active membership is rather small. There's no point at all in stressing about whether it works or not.

November 12th:
We celebrated our silver wedding anniversary yesterday by doing practically nothing about it. I did ask Lynda if she wanted to go out for a meal, but she didn't. I managed to sort out issues with my web hosting, after all of my websites and my forum have been migrated to a new server at a new location with new login details. The details that they sent to me did not include the full correct server credentials to enable a login. The user name looks like gibberish to me and does not relate to what I had before. Fortunately, the support team were very quick to respond with a nice clear answer that got everything up and running for me, so I can instantly update the site as required. I managed to get my FTP and web design software to connect again after raising a support query, so now things are running pretty much as they should.

November 14th:
Out with friends in the afternoon for a birthday celebration. The evening saw us play a nice gig north of Bolton.,

November 15th:
Up early-ish, thanks to the dogs barking at imagined foes on the park.

Earlier in the year I ordered a copy of Justin Currie's book 'The Tremolo Diaries' pre-signed, so when it was announced that he would be coming to Manchester as part of this year's 'Louder Than Words' book festival, I momentarily dithered before snagging a ticket. I went along and Justin did a very honest and engaging talk, followed by a book signing in the hotel bar downstairs. I got to meet him and ask him a couple of questions. I NEVER get tongue-tied by meeting people who make music, but with Justin, it meant a lot. He was absolutely charming, signing two albums for me and a ticket for a firend's wife. I passed him a copy of my version of Sleep Instead Of Teardrops' which didn't make the cut for a Del Amitri tribute CD. My voice is too shaky on it and I strained to reach some notes, plus the insistent and mechanical drum pattern under the song could have been better. At least I tried.

Later in the evening we played at The Canal Turn in Leigh and the signed ticket went down a treat. The band played what was - for us anyway - a very very enjoyable show. We chucked in a bunch of songs we had never played together before. A couple will be keepers. Friends came to see us and had a good time. All good.

A good day.

November 16th:
The next to last jam night for us. It went well. The youngsters were got up first and weren't happy to be limited to 4 songs at a time like everyone else and were asking to get up again before we had got back round to their turn. I felt like telling them to f*** off and do their homework. But I am too polite. Not too polite to get up after their 4th song and take my bass off their bass player who thought he was going to be up all night. One more jam to do on Dec 14th. That will be 4 songs and off.

November 23rd:
I haven't even thought of updating this for a little while. Things have been going on.

Car trouble.
I changed cars at the end of July and have done about a thousand miles since I got the 2022 model that I'm driving now, taking it to about 23,000 miles on the clock. It's a nice car and I was going along quite pleased until my right front indicator stopped working. It's an LED strip on the lighting unit, not a bulb and to cut a long story short, I took it in for repair and was told that the warranty on that expired at 14,000 miles. My new warranty doesn't cover it. A new lighting unit - fitted - is £1200. Result: STRESS. I rang the various people involved, trying to retain some composure. The local dealer agreed with me that it should be covered under the warranty - and I had read on a forum for the car that someone had had a full replacement under warranty, but CarCarePlan, who pay out (or not), appear to be bastards and stuck to the letter of the law. The maker's central customer service people scratched their chins and eventually came up with 35% off the bill. I was resigned to accepting this and my local dealer's service dept muttered to me that they thought it was a crap offer and something more should be done about it, when I went in to pay my £800 to them. They called me the same evening and - quite astonishingly - said they would be making me a goodwill payment out their own discretionary budget as they thought I had really been stuffed and they had fought on my behalf. I went in the next day and they put the refund on my credit card and I handed over a very nice box of chocolates to the nice lady who had done battle on my behalf.

This last weekend we did a good gig in Leigh. Our drummer Graham is off sick from the band at present and we were hoping he'd manage to get up and do a few songs, but he didn't come to the gig.

Venues.
Our gig on the 29th had been cancelled due to the venue changing hands. Our next-to-last jam night on the 30th has been cancelled because the landlady is taking all her staff to Liverpool that night. A gig in December is now in doubt because the landlady now hasn't got us in her diary. Yet she did have us in her diary and has confirmed the gig in a Whatsapp message. Hopefully this will get sorted out.

Another of our venues has booked up most of the first half of next year, which is annoying. They have worried about our set list in the past, then gushed about us afterwards when we've played. They have booked some rather shit bands for next year, but we are having trouble getting a reply about going back. It's good payer and a nice club, which some people come to see us at, or I'd say f*** them.

November 24th:
The final revision of THE NOIZE THE SLADE DISCOGRAPHY (part 1 - 64-76) has now gone live on Amazon. It will be good to be able to stop tinkering with it and call it finally finished.

November 25th:
What's going on on New Year's Eve is now fully confirmed - the gig is now sold out - and we don't have to perform DJ duties. A quick and pleasanrt visit to see my daughter while I was near her home. The issue with the Dec 6th gig might be being sorted out.

November 30th:
The December gig that was in question is now sorted. No gigs this weekend, whch lets me get a bit of a rest. The Slade book is selling, not massively, but I never expected it to. I'm hoping that the Record Collector review shortly will help move some copies.

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