Anyone remember cassette head cleaners fondly? or is it just me? I’ve not seen one for about 80 years, give or take, but I remember being really taken by their little brushes and pads of chemical dampness which soothed your aching heads restoring them to their former pristine state. Which is a round about metaphor-ish type thing for the fact that I’ve been away on holiday for a week now, up in a cottage in Northumberland with no internet and a rigorously-enforced family-wide ban on all electronic devices. No music, no net. The theory was to wipe the brain clean and start again afresh after lots of tramping around on beautiful windswept beaches, doing a ton of reading* and playing card games, it’s worked too.
First off, I have been there before, but Northumberland is such a beautiful part of our green and pleasant land; some of my favourite coastline ever, it was just great to walk those huge empty, clean beaches under those achingly big, blue skies. The weather was great and I got to play huge amounts of Frisbee (I am a black belt at Frisbee; true story). Best of all though, due to the threat of Vikings and those insanely violent Scottish hordes** there are stunning castles and exquisite walled towns all over the place, which makes for a really beautiful, uplifting scenery.
Not listening to a note of music wasn’t difficult at all, surprisingly. In fact I really rather enjoyed it, I’ve been home since yesterday and I still haven’t put a record on yet. Maybe I’ll just give it up totally – sell the collection for recycling (loads of good reusable cardboard there) and ride off into the distance.
On the other hand I did treat myself to a copy of The Pretenders^ that I found for £1.50 in a charity shop in Alnwick and bought two books about music, so maybe I’m not quite ready to hand in my (Queen) badge and my (love) gun yet. Okay, so I’ll focus my, now fully cleaned, head back on the job in hand.
377 Down (still).
*my fave read this holiday was Dimitry Glukhovsky’s Metro 2034, can’t get enough of post-apocalyptic Russian public transport novels! (seriously, it was good, maybe not quite as good as Metro 2033 – but I just love the setting so much)
**note to self, make really sure nothing auto-corrects the word ‘hordes’!
^those gloves do it for me every time, I’m yours Chrissie Hynde.