Latitude 88 North

ELO - Monday sees the release of the the final two ELO CD remasters 'Balance Of Power' and their masterpiece 'Out Of The Blue'. It's taken seven years but all the albums are now available on CD in remastered form!

I read a review of the album in The Sun yesterday in which the reviewer gave the album 2.5 out of 5, and said that the album consisted of three or four good songs "and 12 cheesy fillers". I'm afraid my response to this review was unprintable. Some people just have no taste!

Have to say I really like the new track "Latitude 88 North" which is one of the best things Jeff has done in ages.

Quote of the week: "Live up to the standard of epicness!"

Cathy

In the mid-eighties John Carder Bush published a book called 'Cathy' full of childhood photographs of his younger sister - Kate Bush.

The book was a limited edition and now sells for squillions of pounds on eBay, but fortunately there is an online version here:

http://home.att.net/~james51453/

Also here is a lovely little site of Kate's formative compositions including some that have never (officially) seen the light of day. Grab 'em now before the Music Industry Fun Police come and remove them...

http://www.norbry.net/kate-bush/mp3/

Here's Kremmen!!

As requested, here's the link to the website with the downloadable episodes of Captain Kremmen!

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/steve.goskie/

Anna Nicole Smith 1967-2007

I was shocked and deeply saddened yesterday to hear of the death of Anna Nicole Smith, aged just 39.

Anna Nicole was born on 28th November 1967 - making her exactly one year and one week younger than me. I have always liked Anna Nicole and to me she was absolutely gorgeous.

Anna Nicole was, like all of us, a flawed human being. Some of the things she said and did were cringeworthy sometimes - and others were quite indefensible – but I have to speak as I find and I always thought that Anna Nicole was a good-natured person. I sent her a message on her 39th birthday last year– and got a reply! If you scroll through some of the past entries on this site you'll find an entry headed "Into The Blue"; right at the foot of that entry there is a quote “I just love the England man!”. That was Anna Nicole, taken from her website, talking about me!!

I’m just happy that I made her smile and feel happy a couple of times whilst she was still alive. Despite the way that she was portrayed in the media, Anna Nicole had a rough ride in this life and didn’t have too much to smile about. I just hope that she has found some peace from it all.

R.I.P Anna Nicole – from someone who holds a good thought for you...

Heavy Traffic

I'm sorry it’s been absolutely ages since my last update but I'm afraid that’s entirely down to the good people at Orange Broadband, who kindly decided to perform an “upgrade” to my phoneline which resulted in me having no internet or email access from 22nd January-10th February! 19 days and 15 phone calls later I'm back online and that's only thanks to a wonderful Indian lady on their helpline, who actually took the time to help me rather than just going through the motions.

Prior to that somebody had hacked into my credit card details and used it to try and purchase £1500 pounds worth of clothes from an Italian clothing store (“The Swine!”) and for an encore a bookcase in our dining room, which had been groaning under the weight of too many books for some time finally collapsed (quite literally) a week last Friday.

We tried to order replacemant bookcases from Argos; the store had them in stock but couldn’t deliver them, their central store could deliver them but didn’t have them in stock! “Why can’t they pick up the delivery from the local store as they have to drive this way anyway” we asked.
“That’s not the way it works”, they replied.

It’s been that kind of month!

Anyway, must go. I’ve got 256 unread emails to get through!