24. 24th January 2025. The Gift

 It was there. 

The album I was talking about yesterday? The Church's Heyday album. From 1985. The album I didn't buy at the time because there'd been a couple of slightly lesser albums that followed on from The Blurred Crusade and I'd lost a bit of faith, but was overjoyed to pick up a CD copy of in the Florida mall in 1992 (also bought on the same visit, Neil Young's Decade, which cost about £50 in the UK at the time - this being the trip where we headed to the mall mid-afternoon in blazing sunshine so I was wearing prescription shades, and came out in darkness with no change of glasses - "It's 20 miles to Clearwater, it's dark and I'm wearing sunglasses, let's go."

It was exactly where I left it on Wednesday. In the jazz section. "So you hid it?" said J. No, I put it back where I found it. It's not my fault they put it under jazz. £35. 50% off. £17.50. Also picked up Violent Femmes 4th album for £6. In that rack there, in the sale, £19. In this rack, six quid. You don't put that back down. Yes, I do have the CD, no I can't remember the last time I listened to it. 

But, spotting their 75% off rack (which I hadn't seen on Wednesday) meany I didn't go straight to the counter. Which meant I looked up from my flicking to realise I was standing right opposite Fitzy. So I convinced him he needed the Bernard Butler Jessie Buckley album for a tenner, pointed him in the direction of further temptation and headed to Spider. 

Three prompts. Five minutes on 'an object and what it means to you', five on 'Angry' (supplied by one of the room, with reason), fifteen on 'The Peaceful Hour' in tribute to the fact that Gerry used to run the group. Not that anybody currently in it ever met him. 

All of which delays me saying, I haven't listened to the Church album yet because the album that is now cover art declared as being by Michael Head & The Strands but was originally Michael Head Introducing The Strands when J got me it on CD for Xmas 97, back when Tom was 18 months old and money wasn't there to just buy anything you felt like when you felt like, has turned up in the post. It's another album, like Waterpistol by Shack, that gets to an audience in Liverpool because the buyer/team leader/assistant manager of the biggest record shop in town (and the best on the planet, let's make no bones about this)  has a vested interest in having it in the shop. That is, it's stocked because I wanted to buy it. We built this. That's fact. 

The original CD is still a prized possession. Now the vinyl is as well. Gold leaf lettering (don't think it's real gold like), gatefold sleeve. And sounds gorgeous. Barer than it did back then, more sumptuous, still as thoroughly magical. Even though I'm now aware that it's not finished, that it's assembled from various sessions, that some is mixed, some isn't (that's the claim anyway) it still sounds like perfection to me. 

On the outside world, yesterday afternoon was the sentencing of Axel Rudukabana (and if I've misspelt that I don't care). The early evening was harrowing news reports. The stuff you have to watch despite how much it hurts, because the victims deserve that you know the story. 

And that's all the you can say on that. Horror. 

Oh and. On the unimportant stuff again - awake at 6am, Storm Eowyn howling outside. Didn't like the idea of Daisy being outside, scared of the wind, and wasn't going back to sleep anyway, so got up. It's 1040am, feels like mid afternoon. Going to crash at some point. But not yet. 

A PS - messaged Mikee to get details of theatre contact, see if it's somewhere we can put MIH, messaged Lee to see if we can sort a meeting re Vicks, replied to Stephen to say 'don't bother reading that draft, I changed my mind'. Now heading back in to MIH editing. 20 pages to shave off.