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Those of you who are parents will remember how, as small children, your sons and daughters made new discoveries: eyes wide as saucers as they learnt how Lego could produce whatever shapes they wanted; or the joy of discovering how numbers worked, as they added and subtracted (one that passed me by). As adults though, we seem to lose that joy sometime around late middle age, so it was great to watch our aged hospital-incarcerated relative open their birthday present - the MP3 player and combined DAB radio.
There is a lesson about old dogs and new tricks here: if the trick is of sufficient benefit the old dog will gladly adapt to it, just so long as there is a younger dog to thrust headphones over their ears oblivious to their protests. So, after the first gruff rebuff at being faced with this foreign gadget his expression changed as he heard Black Dyke Mills in crystal digital quality; and the years fell away and, with re-found enthusiasm, he was suddenly eager to learn the secrets of MP3 and DAB; especially when he realised that he would be able to listen to live football commentary on Radio 5 instead of being forced to listen to the extortionate crap hospital service. Though I hesitate to call it a service, blatant profiteering more like.
Finally, you may have noticed a slight reduction in my usual rate of blog posts. This is not unrelated to hospital visiting and I will do my best to maintain a skeleton service during our time of nightly trails to the grim Victorian edifice that is North Manchester General Hospital.
And finally, finally, I borrowed the picture of the dog from Lisa, check out her excellent Flickr site where there are loads more. This dog isn't particularly old but is scared of new things.
I guess when I received my MP3 player as a gift this Christmas I was a little behind the rest of you in that it is my first ever player of this type. Formerly I had been wedded to my Mini Disc player never to be parted but men are fickle and I have spurned my trusty disc player for my new musical best friend.
The best bit for me has been blowing the dust from some CDs I've not played for ages, picking the best bits and loading them on to the player. With the rate at which new music is published it is easy to forget how good some of the stuff you already have is. But then the fun really starts when you push the shuffle button: it's like having your own radio station when you know that whatever comes on next you will like but you don't know what it will be. And how weird is it when you get strange coincidences that link tracks together. For instance walking the dog this morning I set off and one of Daniel Barenboin's fabulous pieces from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier Book 1 came on, it was interspersed by much else and then the last track as I stepped through the door was an organ piece by Dieterich Buxtehude the 17th century composer who Bach loved so much he walked a vast distance just to hear him play.
One of the CDs I blew the dust off was Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill. What a stunningly good album that is; and if you (this is for the men) were ever wavering on the verge of unfaithfulness, having Alanis creep up and mug you from your MP3 player is more than enough to put you back on the straight and narrow - who needs Fatal Attraction!
An ageing relative of ours is having an MP3 player for his birthday to help while away hours in hospital. He doesn't have a computer so it will be Mrs C and I who load it with his favourites that include Black Dyke Mills brass band, Nana Mouskouri and Jim Reeves. It might perk him up a bit if I pepper it with the odd track from Alanis or Billy Bragg perhaps. On second thoughts Billy Bragg might send a Daily Mail reader like him into apoplexy - best not eh?.
