Cross Words

Fairly recently a new Christopher Cross compilation entitled Cross words - The Best of was issued by Music Club a label of Demon Music Group Ltd in the UK.
What is interesting about this release is it is a double cd and a very inexpensive one at that which, wait for it, holds 36 of his songs spread across the discs covering his commercially successful period at Warner Bros.
The tracks cover a wider view of his work and whilst being all properly licensed there is no mention of who did the cd mastering amongst the booklet that has a short biography of the man and pictures of the album covers from which the tracks have been taken
I have to say whoever did the job did a very good job as the sound just expands beautifully on the louder passages as if you bought the records back then you'll know just how engineered the originals were and I'd consider it demonstration worthy.
On cd I only had his first album which is responsible for four singles "Say You'll Be There", " Sailing", "Ride Like The Wind" and Never Be The Same" that all always on the radio in late '79 and 1980 and remain popular.
He was responsible for the song "Arthur's Theme" from the 1981 movie which was a massive seller on the singles chart back then and yes another song still popular with many.
The second album "Another Page" was released in January 1983 and featured "All Right" which was if I can recall correctly the 'lead off' single and "Think of Laura which was popularized in some American Soap - might of been General Hospital - and was a top twenty smash in the late fall of '83.
The original cd of this was not good sounding at all so I tossed mine across the sidewalk and stuck with the lp and 8 track tape which added "Arthur" for programming reasons.
The good news with this set is actually it has every single track from "Another Page" and boy does it sound good and indeed you can having copied the disc to your computer/music server create a playlist for it so it all runs in the right order!
No Time To talk - disc 1 tk5
Baby Says no - disc 2 tk9
What am I supposed to do? - disc2 tk10
Deal 'em again disc2 - tk11
Think of Laura - disc1 tk6
All right - disc2 tk2
Talking in my sleep - disc2 tk12
Nature of the game- disc2 tk13
Long world - disc2 tk14
Words of wisdom disc2 tk 15

For an incredible £4.99 shipped from Amazon UK this a bargain as well as a great introduction to this singer songwriter.

The park is open!

Yes folks our park is indeed open!
Well actually it's been over ten years in the making covering a period when I was a Councillor when the old local authority having been give some money as part of planning permission to build some houses for the Communities benefit and this was earmarked for the upgrading of our local play area which was at the time meant for 4 through 13+ year old children.
It was grotty: The children knew it and as I often did the council paperwork sat there also know it!
For a load of reasons financial and because the Council itself was to be abolished and replaced by another this lead to delay after delay something that in my groan up role at the time really upset me.
You see I and several others had this crazy idea of of talking with children and seeing what they'd really like in the park rather than having these groan ups just plonk any old thing down and to that end spent a lot of time on it.
Equally a number of us for differing reasons were keen on the idea of this area being usable by people over the chronological age of 13+ for exercise as they are getting less fit.
Well last Saturday the local Coalition Member of Parliament, together with the Chairperson of the small local Council officially opened it as a PARK!
Yes the play area was indeed officially a Park for all and to that effect many events like games and a performance by the local Silver Band blowing their instruments was given.
Here's a couple of pictures:

New colourful swings to attract your attention. Maybe I should use them?

Whee! Colourful slides that I'm sure we'd all want to use with safety surfaces to minimize hurting yourself

Panda Go Panda!

Originally released back in May 2009 I missed getting this dvd until prompted buy discussion in chat and a too good to be true offer by Amazon.
This is the acclaimed produced Hayao Miyazaki first ever production from 1972 which wasn't seen outside of Japan .
Cheerful Mimiko has a very strange family for a little girl - a Panda for her Papa, and his son, Panny, calls her Mom! Join this happy family and their many adventures! When Panny follows Mimiko to school, he must pretend to be a teddy bear so Mimiko won't get into trouble, but everyone wants a cute Panda! Despite his efforts to behave, Panny causes trouble in the school kitchen, and now the whole school is after Panny! Then, Panny makes a new friend, Tiny, a baby tiger who's wandered off from the circus. Getting Tiny back to his mom becomes the first adventure, but after a hard rain, the whole town is flooded and Mimiko, Papa Panda and Panny must rescue Tiny and other animals from the trapped circus train
I think the panda's awful cute.

School Lessons

Sometimes even talking about lingerie can lead to all manner of assumptions such as do you have a knicker fetish or other kind of a kink.
Nobody ever really  talked to me about uniforms never mind that whole list that a school prospectus had of all your kit such as day uniform, PE kit, shoe colours never mind that some schools dictated what kinds of underwear you had so I'd never really given it a thought.
Given that the little girl has coming out and now wearing uniform - see Joanne's Uniform pt 1 - I ditched some well worn pairs and had some traditional Japanese  plain but cutely cut cotton ones  from Minky.com (they had an Ebay store but the paypal is messed up there) which are quite in keeping the the LG schoolgirl I am.
These would work with white PE type shorts too.

But really I thought the best thing would be get some regulation elasticated legged gym knickers which are hard wearing, comfortable, modest and just the kind of knickers you had at a girls boarding school.
These also would be bottle green which would go with my uniform well and being uniformed seems to agree with me. Maybe it's the comformist in me or just finding too many choices too much?


One thing I can recall about school apart from dinner and games is that sadly we'd have some emotional moments that tended to linger especially if like me you were in a boarding school.
Usually these things would start with a group of girls undertaking some activity together but every so often one would somehow do something that the others felt uncomfortable with  and before you knew it we were at "If she stays, we go" which wasn't very nice although sometimes you felt the girl in question was kinda asking for it.
Now I don't care much for people I consider friends making me chose between them even if sadly for one activity one of them  might need to be not in on it for everyone's well-being (we do have to learn to compromise a little) as a group and in our school there was no chance of running away from it all.
I guess we learned to get by because in a sense we had no other choice and sometimes we'd offer our personal support to another privately and try to avoid making a scene because we know we'd only hurt each other that way  regarding each other as sisters and even siblings have their fallings out.
There are times I think we need to consider how deal with these disagreements so we can contain them while being able to be friends chatting to each other and nobody feels they are being forced to chose between friends.
Let's think about it, eh?

Meadowside 2

Having spoken a little last week about being in the meadow here's the second part of my reflections.

I think I'll begin the entry by expressing my sadness of the death on June 21st of Kirsty Chibi Moon artist and member of GT  as  well as an internet presence I first encountered when trying to understand more about LG's like me.
Her blog was the first I saw that made a connection to me which lead to my own exploration of this whole side of my life.It may not be much compared with other peoples experiences of her especially 'in the flesh' but it made a big difference to me.
Naturally my sympathies go out to Karen, her s.o at this sad time.

I do feel somewhat indebted to Lausie whose pleasure we had in Chat this week for remarking on her experiences of IK and being in chat for the first time.
She wrote elsewhere about how much she enjoyed the sense in which it's all about the experience of the innocent of the little child, how safe that environment felt compared to others and the positive nature of the experience.
I think she hit the proverbial nail on the head.
One of things I find hard dealing with is the gap between where much of the rest of the world sees my expected interests that may take a more 'adult' take on love in it's fullest expression and how in reality I do because most of the emotional side of me is still around 12.
It can be a problem in face to face encounters as well as in forums and chat rooms where I may not see where a persons comments or interest may be going and there's those who having spotted this try to exploit it.
This can apply to places that endeavour to include LGs like me as as AB's because some of them seem to attract those with strongly sexual interests that are just (emotional) age inappropriate for us because we just don't have them.The resulting atmosphere isn't one you feel comfortable in and I'm glad to be happier places.

Meadowside

I had several ideas running through my head this week about what this past was going to be all about and what if any images I was going to use for it.
Welcome to a bit of The Meadow where I live in a picture I took a short while back and for the photographically knowledgeable I made exposure corrections electronically to deal with the high contrast on the original.
I'm near woodland  and that was left as bowling green flat grass dead land where I walk often that was taken over by locals and made into a bit of roadside meadow.
If you look toward the bottom you'll see the Bluebells were out together with other vegetation because they made a space for them, tending to their needs.
There's a metaphor in that picture: You created a meadow to which I landed tendering to my needs so I grew and blossoming as the Little Girl you know, gaining strength.
Like that Meadow you too can find all manner of things down in it, things you may have forgotten and much that you need to get by in this world.
Thanks everyone.

Evangelion2.22 You Can (NOT) Advance

Arriving shortly through my mailbox is this Neon Genesis Evangelion 2.22 which is the second part of the re-visualization using contemporary CGI of the original series made in long movie form.

The explosive new story sees brutal action and primal emotion clash as a group of young pilots manoeuvre their towering, cyborg Eva Units into combat against a deadly and disturbing enemy.

In the battle to prevent the apocalyptic Third Impact, Shinji and Rei were forced to carry humanity's hopes on their shoulders as through the onslaught of the bizarre, monstrous Angels escalates, both find their burden shared by two new Eva pilots, the fiery Asuka and the mysterious Mari. In this thrilling new experience for fans of giant robot destruction, the young pilots fight desperately to save mankind - and struggle to save themselves.