Now that’s what I call music! - of a sorts.

In the 60’s and 70’s I bought lots of vinyl LPs and recall exchanging many of them because of flaws. Typically I would check the disc for scratches then listen for pressing faults. Most often this was evident from periodic hiss on the first track and high frequency distortion on the last track. If this was okay then I’d look at how far off-centre the hole was or how warped the disc was to judge how much ‘wow’ this would cause. (Wow is the pitch variation created by the stylus moving from side-to-side or up-and-down as it follows the groove). Altogether I was a pretty disappointed by the product quality and rarely got a perfect copy but had to accept the least worst. But now I hear music pundits talking fondly about vinyl records, waxing on about the ‘warmth’ and ‘depth’ of the tone compared with ‘cold, flat’ CDs. I find this somewhat difficult to comprehend; listening to a piece of music with clicks, hiss, wow and flutter, poor high and low frequency definition, does not make me feel warm or deep but just makes me feel irritable. I have thought there must be a market for some expensively priced electronic circuitry which emulates the effects of vinyl and introduces clicks, hiss, wow and flutter for those souls who insist on a true pre-HiFi experience.

All this got me thinking and I have a decided to hold onto our last remaining Cathode Ray Tube television as I’m guessing in a few years’ time video pundits will be wistfully recalling the days of analogue television and use terms such as ‘warm’ and ‘deep’ to describe the picture quality. There could be some cash in it people!   

On Yer Bike Sunshine

You may recall my observations about cyclists last year. My particular gripe is that many of them seem to believe that they are some sort of hybrid, enjoying the benefits of being both a pedestrian and a motorist. With that belief they can progress the wrong way down a one way streets, use the pavement as cycle tracks, pedal across pelican crossings, ignore traffic lights and weave across traffic flows at will.

Last week returning home from an evening in Edinburgh, a cyclist was hit by the bus we were on. Now it’s not for me to apportion blame as I didn’t see the incident as we were on the top deck but the comments passed by the cyclist give an insight into the attitude of these urban menaces. He had no lights on his bike which, when I pointed this out, prompted the cyclist to retort that he had a 'HiVis' jacket and that his lights had been stolen days earlier so ‘what was he supposed to do?’ My friend (a cyclist of some endurance himself) then continued the dialogue by saying “You should have got some more lights then Sunshine”. It may have been the shock of being challenged but he then became very abusive, threatened to larrup my 75 year old friend and let it be known, loudly and in no uncertain terms, that he did not wish to be called ‘Sunshine’. (Regrettably I was giving my details to the bus driver so missed the once in a lifetime opportunity to say "Leave it alone Dave, he's not worth it"). I must say that I thought the name "Sunshine" particularly apposite given that he clearly imagined that it radiated from his 'HiVis' jacket.

In our final conversation he claimed the bus driver had deliberately swerved to knock him off his bike and that he had nearly been killed earlier that week in a similar incident. Now I’m no expert in cyclist psychology but I would have thought that following that previous incident he might have redoubled his efforts to be visible at night.

We decanted from the bus and a posse of investigators arrived to sort things out. Normally I apply the Darwin Principle to this sort of incident – anyone so willfully stupid as to cycle around a busy city centre, in the dark without any lights deserves whatever he gets. My problem is that as a society we can't be certain that he won't breed and pass his selfish, stupid genes onto another generation.