and here's something I finished earlier...

This is the post I wrote a week ago...

I was drugged: that’s my excuse, however unconvincing. The alternative explanation is ‘I’m incompetent and ridiculous’, and who wants to say that about themselves? I won’t say where I got it but the coffee I had last night just before I did the 3CR fill in made things very strange. It would appear that the show was filled with long empty dead air spaces and me talking 19 to the dozen about everything and even repeating myself. As I drove home I could hear people cheering (not cheering me, I just thought ‘soccer hooligans’) and the lights seemed to go on every time I passed, and I got a bit fixated on things that happened around me – it was mildly trippy, I’m serious. I am not sure that that excuses anything, in fact, I don’t even have an excuse for why I didn’t stop the car and get a taxi home. But the radio show was pretty nuts. The theme was bingles (yet it was filled with bungles – crazy) and the songs played included:

B-52s – ‘Dirty Back Road’
Buzzcocks – ‘Fast Cars’ (it’s the thought that counts)
Adam and the Ants – ‘Cartrouble’ (yep, parts 1 AND 2)
John Foxx – ‘No-one Driving’ AND ‘Burning Car’
Red Crayola – ‘An Opposition Spokesman’
The Necessaries – ‘Driving and Talking at the Same Time’
Don Walker – ‘No Reason’
Paul Evans – ‘Hello this is Joannie’
Little Feat – ‘Truck Stop Gal’
James Reyne – ‘Motor’s Too Fast’ (apostrophe inserted by me)
Alice Cooper – ‘Under My Wheels’
The Specials – ‘Stereotypes’ (yep yep, parts 1 AND 2)

When I got home and Mia told me I had talked constantly I was surprised, though I admit the fact that I had only played 13 songs in an hour and a half should have indicated something (although I suppose Cartrouble and Stereotypes were and are really two songs, also I always start with a palate cleanser of classic ud music to firmly differentiate between the nostalgia show that comes before).

I did get some beautiful looking BBC animal noises records from the record fair last weekend and I had a grand plan to just interject a few grunts and whistles in the middle of various songs. Luckily I had common sense enough to concentrate just on trying to get the proper records played (also, being so vinyl-dependent it would have taken more planning to have a turntable freed up that often). But I still think some happy accidents would have been quite cool. As it was, I cued up the beginning (the trumpet intro) of ‘Stereotypes’ on air during ‘Motor’s too Fast’ thinking the turntable was set to ‘cue’, and it sounded so perfect in the song I thought ‘I’m going to have to mix that into the actual song’, which I had already done without realising it, you understand. So I did it on purpose but presumably I put it on cue when I thought it was going to air.

I was surprised by my ineptitude (at least, I made two or three mistakes and I talked far too much). I mean if I haven’t made this clear (you might be reading this from Carson City, for all I know, and I might have inadvertently given the wrong impression) it was public radio with I’m sure a very very elite – in the nicest possible way – listenership, all of whom seemed forgiving. Still it’s a bit sad when you feel you are innately really really good at something and then you do it and you’re not terrible at it but nor are you really really good.

I ran out of St Johns Wort a couple of days ago and I think I had better grab a little more. I saw on What’s Good For You last night that rosemary tea is very good for your memory. I didn’t know you were having trouble with your memory!