Can I just say, my boss is the bestest boss ever? Here I am at work with possibly the coolest looking accessory I could possibly imagine.

Yep, it’s a radio headset for the phone system. Often I’m at work by myself for days on end and there’s noone but me to answer the phones. It’s just me, and a room full of empty desks. The amount of times I’ve been off in the kitchen halfway making myself some tea and toast, and the phone rings, forcing me to abandon my toast in mid condiment-spread… It upsets me to come back five minutes later to cold toast.

But no more, baby! Now, with this gizmo attached to my head, the office phone rings while I’m pouring the milk, and with the merest touch of a button against my ear, I can answer the phone wherever I am! And not only that, now I have the same hands-free as I would do using a skype headset. No more shoulder crunching or single hand typing for ME, baby! I’ve entered the 21st century, thanks to my awesome boss who agreed to invest in one of these as we were upgrading the phone system last week. I think she just wanted to shut me up, but that’s cool!

So now I swan around the office, feeling ridiculously cool, like someone out of 24. Other folk in the office have different ideas though. One even had the NERVE to suggest that I looked LESS than stylish with my new headwear.

So I put the question out to you, my dear readership – is it the inimitably trendy Geek-Chic, or am I really just Terminally Nerdy?

Postscript: also Hippy-Geek – note the scarf in my hair that I “borrowed” from my mother, the scarf that she used in the 60s… I love that scarf.

It’s raining. It’s been raining all day. I fear it’s time to put the sandals away for another few months, and get me a new pair of waterproof boots…

It’s raining so hard, that I had to close the windows, it was so loud. I usually like the sound of rain when I’m warm and dry, but this was just distracting.

I think it’s going to stay like this until April next year. That’s the end of the nice weather, time to knuckle down for Winter now.

*sigh*

It’s 11.35pm. I’m curled up in bed, and my phone rings. It’s Ubiquitous Jessie calling, and my first thoughts are, she’s either out in London, has had a few glasses of wine, and playing with her phone and wants to chat, or some sort of catastrope has happened.

Turns out, I’m half right – she’s out in London, but the first thing she says to me is, “Charlotte, Charlotte, listen to this!!”

I hear the sounds of music, familiar music, and some lyrics which are as dear to me as any lyrcs can be:

“Here’s me, here’s you,
Draw a line between the two,
This is cartography for beginners,
On a map the gap’s three fingers,
but it’s more than that,
it’s more than that…”

The song is called Guess How Much I Love You, and it’s my very favorite song by Aussie indy band, The Lucksmiths, who are playing London this very evening.

I sat here in my room, three fingers away on a map from my best friend (Jess lives in London) listening to one of my top ten songs of all time, and feeling so very happy that Jessie would think of me just then and share that seminal Lucksmiths moment with me.

I’ve not seen this band since that roasting hot day in Melbourne, oh, years ago. I went to see them with some mates at a sell out gig at the now defunct Punters Club (well known as being one of the homes of independant live music in Melbourne). That day was SO hot, and the Punters must have had about 200 people jammed into it. We were crammed in like sardines, and we were roasting from the heat of it, but we all wanted to see this band so very much.

Well, the boys in the band go onstage, and do something which went down in the annals of the Melbourne music scene as being one of the most humane acts of compassion that any band has ever bestowed upon their audience.

They drag on an esky (icebox) full of icypoles (Ice pops? Popsicles? Trying to translate for my largest readership, which seems to be based in the states, which is surprising) and THROW them out to the crowd. They’d brough enough for everyone, we all got an icypole, and in return we gave them our undying devotion.

So for Jessie to call me and share a little piece of home this evening… Absolutely priceless!

Thankyou Jessie darling!

I believe I may have mentioned the running theme of Van Halen which weaved its way throughout the tour this year. I kept promising to explain it, and the great extent to which it has coloured our journeys (for the better!), but never quite got around to it. Well, if there was ever to be a soundtrack to a tour, it would be Van Halen’s “Jump” for ours…
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I’d been meaning to share this tragic little photo for ages. Remember when we were in Italy, and Dave and Jamie wanted to stop off in the town of Modena, on the way home from the Montelago Celtic Festival? Modena, of course, being the home of Ferrari, and Dave and Jamie being massive Ferrari fans, it would have been like driving past Universal Studios in late 2004 for me (Browncoats know what I mean…)

Gigi was just keen to get us back home, so he could get home himself. He’d done a good 17 hours on the road in the past 36 hours, and he just wanted to get it over and done with. We came within just a few miles of Modena on the motorway, Dave and Jamie were practically frothing at the mouth, but Gigi wouldn’t have it.
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We hear lots these days about how certain kinds of dogs are too dangerous to be owned, about how they should be “bred out of existence”. Pet owners of those dogs invariably defend their babies, saying how misunderstood they are, and how really, they’d not hurt a fly.
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Right, where did we leave off last? Thaaat’s right, the computer starting up hassle free the morning after Solfest.

Fast forwarding 5 or 6 hours will see us arriving in Shrewsbury.

What’s that? You want stories from the ROAD!?

OK, so the conversation in the back of the van consisted mostly of “zzzZZZZZzzzZzZzzz”, and in the front Mark was driving and I was navigating, and playing DJ on the iPod.

Long time readers will know that I lurve my Nano. It stores everything I need for my own personal music requirements. BUT it’s hard to cater to everyone’s desires when you just have 1000 songs to play with. Mark and I, being the only ones in the car with really any appreciation of traditional folk music, were working our way through my recordings of Solas, Lunasa, Trouble in the Kitchen, and some old 1968 recordings of Andy Irvine & Paul Brady.
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