We celebrated a couple of landmarks over the past week or so. Firstly, Verity reached six months old and it seems a lifetime away that I spent all those hours waiting for her to be delivered in September. Having a child changes everything, it makes somethings easier, and some other things more difficult. For me and my own childhood, the arrival of Lock Jnr has made me take my responsibility as a father very seriously. I also have less of an understanding of how any father could abandon his child or how a single parent can cope raising a baby on their own. It changes your perspective. Of course, I wouldn’t want it any other way and I am blessed. I’ve always said I am the luckiest man on the planet and this self-imposed title seems even more justified now. Even though it has only been six months, it feels like Verity has been with us forever.
Today, we have had the shop for six months too. While I don’t regret buying the shop and moving on from the old life, there are things here that I don’t like and issues that need to be addressed. But this is all down to experience and buying a business for the first time. I am glad I bought this particular business because I have learnt so much in such a short amount of time. I feel that the next time I move on, I’ll know exactly what to look for and to avoid certain pitfalls and shortcomings of future purchases.
For example, although we have a sizable four-bedroom property above the shop, two of the rooms down the far end of the house are totally unsuitable for us as Verity’s room (which was the plan). The noise from the shop below would be too much for a small baby to bear. So I’ll have to give up my office room for her (not a problem), but I won’t be moving to the far end of the house, because I won’t be able to hear anyone calling up for me whenever there’s a bill query to rectify or sales rep to deal with. That’s one of the main shortcomings, the layout of the home is a bit wrong and not working for us.
I could write a book about the do’s and dont’s of shop-keeping. I’d love to write more on this blog, but when you live in a small village, people talk. Mind you, I’m the second Darren Lock in this village – so god help us all! 🙂
Category: Diary
Managed to get my fingers working again today. The pains in the fingers of my left hand are still there but have eased off slightly. I don’t think it is arthritis or anything like that, but probably the strain of lugging all those bundles of newspapers. I had a similar experience when I was a hack journalist mining the rockface in teletext for five years. Back in the day, I used to type a lot…and I mean a lot. My word count is up there with the professional touch typists (I think I scored 80 wpm when I was a student) and we used to do a lot of near-live stuff. Recipes on the screen for “This Morning” – yup that was us. Get the recipe faxed through from production at about 10.30, the item is on air at 11.05 with a mention five minutes later, so it has to be edited down, typed up, laid out on the screen and zap – on air within seconds across the various TV network regions of the UK. It was exciting stuff, but it takes its toll on the fingers. And so this familiar ache in my left hand reminds me of a different time when I was paid an awful lot of money to write with light.
Anyhoo, I rerecorded the “Super” track and gave it a new title – “The Sun Even Shines…” as in “the sun even shines on the dog’s arse once in a while”…
Oh look, a juggernaut…
Here’s the new Supergrass video:
You don’t want to have any Bad Blood, do ya?
Like every proud parent, I like to show off my baby. However, the BabyLockTM is a furtive creature who absolutely hates the video. Today, I managed to snaffle some secret shots of Verity during feedtime using my webcam on the PC. She was completely unaware that she was being filmed…
Direct download: CLICK HERE
OK, so it isn’t your birthday, it is mine and we only have the things we can give away, so I give to you the entire “God Pays Debts Without Money…” boxset. Sprawling over 59 songs and a good four hours of music, it is the last body of work I’ve recorded (and to the cheer of some, probably the last body of music I’ll record for a while).
The following links are for the ZIP files containing the MP3 files. Just so that the GoogleBot knows what’s going on, I feel obliged to say “free MP3 download progressive instrumental rock Darren Lock”. Hopefully that’ll get some folks this way! 🙂
Disc One
Disc Two
Disc Three
Disc Four
The Artwork
Enjoy! And if you really like it, pass it around…
Barry Morse
Oh no…another icon from my childhood has passed on. This time it is British actor, Barry Morse who flew off on 2 February 2008 aged 89, and was most famous to us folks of a certain age as professor Victor Bergman from cult sci-fi series “Space 1999”. Of course, he’s appeared in loads of other TV series and films such as “The Fugitive”, “The Twilight Zone” and most importantly, “The Littlest Hobo”. Of course, another cult show that he appeared in was “Whoops Apocalypse” which had him playing the American president and was another show that I wangled my way to watch on Sunday nights when I stayed over at my grandparents’ place.
Anyway, here’s the rousing opening titles of “Space 1999” as a tribute and I think you’ll agree this is the funkiest sci-fi theme…ever!
I was saddened to hear that TV and radio presenter Jeremy Beadle had passed away from pneumonia. It was shocking as a serious chest infection almost took my own mother over Christmas and it seems that there’s an awful lot of this stuff about at the moment. I remember Beadle from my childhood not via the show “Game for a Laugh” but from his radio presenting on London’s LBC radio station and his Beadlebum show. He was a very clever guy and such was his effect on my life that I’m often heard to exclaim in moments of exasperation: “By Beadle’s withered hand…” (Of course, you have to know that he suffered Poland syndrome that left one of Beadle’s hands shrunken.
Now I only know one Jeremy Beadle joke and it might fly over your head, but as a tribute I will post it here. It goes something like this:
I hear that on one hand Jeremy Beadle’s penis is small…but on his other hand it looks rather large…
A truly awful gag, I think you’ll agree.