'Can someone please explain the reason for this strange behaviour'

Posted 31st May (3.57 am)

Excuse the waffle, just trying to stay awake. That banging Friday Playlist from 2007 has now finished - played it twice - and Spotify being Spotify has decided to kick into a new playlist determined by songs previously played. That explains why Duran Duran's 'Skin Trade' immediately popped up.

I've always loved 'Skin Trade'. This isn't me Monday Morning Quarterbacking. I always thought it was one of their best singles. In fact, I remember at the time being surprised by how good it was. By 1987 they'd been on the creative dip for a few years. I always thought their material from Seven and the Ragged Tiger onwards was decidedly sub-par. Laughable lyrics coupled with ponderous, plodding pop music so beloved from the mid-80s when 'New Pop' had bolted and all that was left was ever increasingly bloated music videos, big hair and post-Live Aid save the world messiah complexes. 

The weird thing is that I have another distinct memory of 'Skin Trade' from 1987 itself. Sitting in the back row of a General Studies lesson at Longdean School, wishing I was somewhere else, and I hear James Adkin (I think that's the spelling of his surname) from the other side of the classroom expressing the opinion that it's a great single. Why would I remember something so passing, and seemingly so inconsequential, from someone I hardly interacted with at the time forty years on? I can only attribute it to the fact that by 1987 Duran Duran were seen as passe, something from yesteryear. They'd had their moment in the sun, and now it was the turn of  . . . who, exactly? I can't actually remember. Had SAW taken over our musical world at that point or was it six months later? Those bastards were definitely on the horizon. In that moment, James Adkin was someone I recognised as a fellow pop kid, someone who could spot a brilliant tune . . . even when it came from the 'wrong place', He definitely went up in my opinion on that day, and that why I think I still remember his pronouncement after all these years.

I should be sleeping.

76/50

It turns out 61 is a prime number

Apparently the theme for a 61st wedding anniversary is a plane wood tree, but I couldn't come up with an appropriate title incorporating that fact, so I settled with the wee fact - hitherto unknown to me - that 61 is a prime number.

Have I previously mentioned on the blog that I was for about 15 minutes in my youth a 'Mathlete'? Yep, I represented the school and everything. We got to the quarter final one year, before getting knocked out by Watford Grammar School. Funnily enough, one of the reasons for my early aptitude for Maths was Darts. It really did help with my numeracy. However, my primary thanks for actually being half-decent at Maths as a kid was my teacher in my final year at primary school. That teacher's name was Mr Lowde. It was also his final year of teaching after a lifetime in the classroom. (He served in the RAF during World War Two as a young man.) It would be fair to say that he was the most important teacher in my life during all my years in education. If I wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't have gone to university. Funny the stuff you remember when you're trying to come up with blurb to accompany your 180s.

With regards to this 180, I love the grouping, and there was only an 18 minute gap between this 180 and number 60 ('Diamond Life'). For those 18 minutes I was actually on fire, and I had one of those moments of (darting) clarity where I realised this is how I should throw all the time. The problem is that it never lasts. I can actually walk you through - or more importantly - talk you through how I can get the best out of my game but I can't sustain it for any half-decent length of time. It' something I should work on. Maybe muscle memory will eventually lock in. If it does, my game will definitely improve by 3 or 4 points, and those 3 or 4 points can make all the difference at the level I'm playing at.

61/50