Category: General

I’m very distracted writing this essay today, and it’s not just because my copy of Light and Magic arrived today (the whole tactile vinyl LP experience is still just as good, sliding the record out and checking it over, then placing it on the turntable, gently lowering the stilus onto the record deck, hearing that click-crackle and then the gentle quiet of the run in on the record. It’s all about the feel of listening)… No, the distraction comes from my vague anger at being so abandoned to an essay I don’t understand.

My mind keeps leaping back to “You have your comments”, and railing mentally against the uselessness of that remark. I’ve gone from 70% average to 30% and 35% – at least the woman who marked the 30% one is willing to help.

What gets me more is the entire folder full of stuff which doesn’t help; the module that lead up to this assignment, I’ve got pages marked ‘Assignment related’ and they’re not, not even slightly. The whole essay is related to the module in the same way that global warming is to the weather yesterday. They’re linked, but in a big, distant way. The module is a big floaty management concepts thing, and the essay is a down-and-dirty thing which, is desparately attempting to make a management concept seem like it’s useful in the workplace. It’s not. The problem is, I suppose, that as newly qualified, or pre-qualification nurses our links with management processes are pretty slim. I did some stuff down on MSSU, but frankly it’s the same as running a business and something I have no desire to be involved in, not really. So the links between what they’ve taught and what we do are like slender pieces of spider’s web, heading off into the far distance.

And frankly, by the time we need them, whatever management fad came up with the stuff we’ve been taught, well, it won’t be the in thing when we get to management. I think I’m gonna prod lunch and try and get myself more in the mood. But it’s really frustrating, the guidelines are so vague, the comments so useless, the whole thing is really, really depressing.

When I was tiny-wee, and all this was nothing but fields (actually, that might be true ;-) ), we had records shops. Not the bright modern edifices dedicated to the consumer arts that we have now, oh no. These were dark dank places. Our-price and Star-Records and obscure little shops in obscure brown colours with obscure people working in them. And in them you’d find rack upon rack of records. 12″ of black vinyl engraved with the vibrations of the music.

My sister used to take me there on my way home, and she’d pick through the records selecting Michelle Shocked’s new album, or Billy Bragg or…. whatever she was into that week.

And she’d take home said vinyl disk and listen to it, dragging a small piece of diamond across the spinning disk. I didn’t get my records there though, ‘cos I was only tiny-wee. Instead my dad took me to the second hand record shop, and in these days before records were re-glam, re-cool, and re-funky, they were 10p. I’d normally get a pound to spend and my little fingers would randomly select 10 records from the smoke stained racks… the store was packed from floor to ceiling with records seemingly in no order at all. Sometimes the owner – because he knew me – would throw in an extra one or two. My italian dictionary, that was a freebie from there.

I’d take my random selection home and listen to it on my 1970’s valve record player, which actually ran slightly at the wrong speed – and which had the wonderful multiplay thing – where it’d drop the records one on top of each other, thus damaging them wonderfully.

I wasn’t allowed to play my parents records on that player :-)

It imprinted deeply on me, that whole experience. And now, when I saw that Ladytron have a couple of their releases on gatefold LPs… well… Err, so, yeah, I ordered them. And they’re winging their way towards me. So, um, bad Kate. Bad, bad, bad Kate. But hey, it’s music, what can I do?

…if you want the password, mail me [kate

at

pyoor [dot] org] and I’ll mail you back with the password