Music, words and parrots.

Have I told you how much I like my ipod? (That was a rhetorical question, you moron, I am going to tell you anyway). It is lovely.

One of the many advantages is that it cuts out external sound. Let me be specific. If there are good earphones, and you put the appropriate end in your ears, and attach the other end to an ipodic device, having taken care to switch it on and play some sounds on it, it means that the telephone conversation of the vile old ratbag 7 rows of seats away in the railway carriage will no longer be audible. You may consider that not knowing how long it will be before he/she reaches home, how well the presentations went and what Anthea said to her in the office might be detrimental to the completeness of your collected knowledge, and I would defend your right to this view, however misguided, but, so far, I have managed to get through the day furnished with ignorance.

I have two thousand nine hundred and eight tracks of music on my ipod. That will get me to my office and back about a thousand times before I need to start again. I use the shuffle feature, which means I never know what is coming next. It is always very exciting, because I have chosen all of the music and know that whatever comes next is something that I like. (User tip – don’t add any music that you don’t like.) So far I have avoided singing along. I wouldn’t mind singing along, but amongst the many traits stored in my genes is a mild form of tone deafness, which means I will never be a professional singer and, unlike Barry Manilow, choose not to inflict my vocal talents on the rest of humanity. (Most of my mother’s family possess/possessed this defect. My mother was profoundly tone deaf and dumb. She could not recognise any piece of music. I had an uncle who was a minister, and he had to hold his hand over the microphone while hymns were being sung in case the congregation took flight.) I also suppressed, today, the desire to get up and do an idiot dance on the 12:53 to West Byfleet when Hawkwind suddenly began to play one of their charming ballads.

However, I recognise a slowing down in my desire to collect the latest boy’s toys. This is a welcome relief. It would be awful to have as one’s last regret the lack of the latest entertainment device among one’s possessions. As it is, I look forward to spending many years at the “Sunny Catheter” retirement home with only my ipod, the complete “One Foot in the Grave” DVD series and a slow internet connection allowing me to keep abreast with the latest news of the health of the Rev. Dave.

Rol has been naughty of late, trying to provoke me by mentioning “Morse” among his top ten UK television series. Not only did I not join in, I even fought away the temptation of doing my own top ten. I have to confess this was not only due to my declining number of “bloke” cells, but also because I realised I would have to list at least 25, and would never have managed to put them in a satisfactory ranked order. Anyway, Rol has a little competition that requires only six words, so most of you will be able to join in with that. (Tom, the aim of this is to sum up your life in six words. I can lend you four if you are struggling.) Please go and join in.

Finally, this highly reliable news source has an amusing little tale. I urge caution in believing everything here, though, because they have got the caption wrong in the first picture. The parrot is on the left.