The weekly, and sometimes biweekly, trips to work from home
are perhaps the most difficult times in my week. The leaving of one place where I am happy and
content with friends around me, to go to another where I find my job rewarding
but am always aware I am alone and new to the area and living a kind of half-life, is not easy. Equally, having settled in
at the cottage and found myself a rhythm and peace, to go back home and fit in
with a life I have missed for a few days isn’t straight forward either. When I was with the Last Man it was thrilling
to have these two facets to my life, but now much of what I found so exciting
about the city is no longer here, and it is looking at how I manage the
transition that has occupied my thoughts for the blog today.
It takes something about an hour and a half to complete the
journey and mostly I listen to podcasts or the radio. Four Extra is my station of choice, and I select serials and plays that catch my eye. I’m
quite keen on Les Miserables at the moment, and always enjoy a good murder mystery. Equally the Paul Temple stories are something of a guilty pleasure. With the archaic social assumptions and biases, I relish the impossibility of Paul's amazing ability to solve any crime in 6 episodes, with the irritating Steve (his wife) at his side. For the podcasts I’m a big fan of
the Five Live Film review programme with Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo. It’s like a club, and once you get the
references, which takes two or three weeks, it feels like you have two friends
grumbling at each other in the car with you, whilst they get on with their
jobs, something they both do extremely well,
However, this morning I didn't feel like all the talking, I
wanted music. Early morning radio
stations are full of people being “cheerful” and I wasn’t quite ready for
that. So I turned to my trusty ipod and
dug out the playlists I made many years ago.
I got through the aftermath of the break-up of my marriage in a number of
ways, and one of them was listening to music a great deal. I would build up playlists with appropriate
titles and then after a few months of fairly relentless playing, I would move
onto other songs. I tried recently to
build a ‘Norfolk Now’ playlist, but it hasn’t quite come together yet. This is probably because I still rather like
the existing lists. The tracks are
very different from each other, and I revelled in the change of speed, mood,
tone and style of tune. What
started out as just listening broke into singing along at some points, and by
The Dandy Warhols I was car dancing. If
you’ve never car danced, you’ve missed a treat. It’s when the joy and pleasure of the tune
just overwhelms and you have to boogie – but not taking your hands off the
wheel, of course.
I’ve listed the songs below, just in case you’re wondering
about what brought on the smile that spread across my face. You should try
car dancing, marvellous way to start the day.
Playlist name - Alone Now
Personal
Jesus – Johnny Cash
Dead End
Road - J J Cale and Eric Clapton
Strength,
Courage and Wisdom – India Arie
Mozart
Requiem – Rex Tremendae – Hadleigh Choral Society
Can’t Get
Used to Losing You – Andy Williams – I hummed along
Cry Me a
River – Alison Moyet
Windmills of
Your Mind – Alison Moyet
Puppy Love –
Donny Osmond – ok I admit it, I sang most
of it, I do know ALL the words
I’ve Got a
Crush on You – Carly Simon
The Last
Resort – The Eagles- and I sang quite a lot of this too
Singin’ In
the Rain – Gene Kelly – couldn’t stop grinning
Playlist - Autumn
How Can You
Mend a Broken Heart – Al Green
Hurt –
Johnny Cash
No-one Ever
Tells You – Frank Sinatra
Chasing Cars
– Snow Patrol – of course I sang ….
Corrente
from JS Back Sonatas and Partitas – played by John Holloway. Fabulous
but music to be alone
Bohemian
Like You – The Dandy Warhols – I started
car dancing, and a bit of singing
From playlist Norfolk Now
You Make Loving Fun – Fleetwood Mac – the car dancing continued despite this song
reminding me so much of the Last Man and that wonderful look he had when he was
dancing ......
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