8 positive things

It's easy to sit here and feel a bit downhearted because it's a miserable day outside and I'm feeling very, very tired. I'm also feeling a bit unwell tonight. I've been overdoing it. Anyway, I'm not going to write a miserable blog. Instead I shall write a list of good things that have happened recently:

1. I went to the cinema today with my Mum. Some people might think that's pretty tragic, but it was good. We both wanted to see a certain film and neither of our partners wanted to see it, so we went together. It was good because with Mum's shifts I don't often get to spend a lot of time with her, so it was nice to see the film, have some lunch and catch off. She's off to Vietnam with Adam in a couple of weeks time and I hope they have a wonderful trip.

2. We went to see Mamma Mia. It was wonderfully entertaining in a pretty awful kind of way. It shouldn't have worked. It shouldn't have been so much fun, considering Pierce Brosnan can't sing (and he had to sing!), that the storyline is pretty lightweight and they have to cram in loads of ABBA songs... but it did. I thoroughly enjoyed it, laughed along with it, loved the Benny and Bjorn cameos and of course adored the music. And Meryl Streep really can sing, thank goodness.

3. The recording was good. The plays seemed a little more talky than other recent ones, so we all had to concentrate a bit more than usual. I was really impressed with Emma and Jason who are new to this and threw themselves into it was loads of enthusiasm. The plays will be a joy to hear when they're done. I'm still chuckling about what a drunk Mrs Thompson whispered in my ear just before they left! Oh my!

4. The Radiophonic Workshop has brought me much joy of late with the magnificent releases of archive material. The stuff on A Retrospective is marvellous, although as the review in Record Collector mentioned it does get less exciting in the late 80s and the 90s. Still the period between 1970 and 1983 is magnificent and wonderful and the stuff I love best. I can't describe what it is that I love most about it or indeed why I love it all so much. I don't suppose anyone else understands. The only person I've ever been able to share this with really was Dan, who set me on this course. I hope he's got it and is loving it too.

5. Many Happy Returns. Although the reaction to it was rather muted I really love it. It's somewhat big headed to champion your own work, but I'm really quite proud of it. It's silly and inconsequential in just about every way, but the fact that it was written in two days, recorded on the third and produced in less than a week and turned out as well as it did, well I'm really rather proud of that. So there!

6. I did a "turn in the road" with no prompting for the first time today. It's been a bit of a stumbling block for me the last few weeks (well since we started doing them really) and so I was feeling very proud of myself this morning. It's funny, people told me that parallel parking or the reverse round the corner were going to be the difficult things, but they seem to have come easily to me. This has been my tricky one.
In other driving related news, I've booked my test. February. Oh my.

7. Atom Heart Mother by Pink Floyd is a new discovery and I love the 23 minute title track. Rather different to their other output with the rather discordant orchestra playing on it, but I'm loving the epic qualities the track has.

8. I've lost weight since September. The belly is slowly beginning to go. Hooray.