I haven't felt like going out for a while so have missed out on rather a lot of gigs, but every now and again I tend to take time out in order to give Mark 'literally' Del a chance to catch up with me. Last night Gary invited me to see The Golden Troubadours at Nottingham Contemporary, which I am glad I accepted because it is their last gig for a while as they work on a long awaited new album. With no support act (apart from a DJ to fill in the gaps) they played two sets as if to the manor born and showed Nottingham musicians how it is done, which made it a shame that Nottingham musicians largely stayed away although to be fair they probably (one would hope) have gigs of their own on a Saturday night. The mention of their last EP reminded Gary that it was at a previous Troubadours gig that we first met a few years ago, prompting him into selfie mode.

Brings back memories of first meeting my #bestie @SteveOliver76 at @TheGoldenTroubs EP launch a few years ago. pic.twitter.com/ByePxdWu2O

— Gary Barwell (@GaryBarwell) June 13, 2015

Selfies in public is still a concept I find slightly uncomfortable in a way. Before we hit the Contemporary we travelled into the back of beyond to a charity event that our friend Cibele was playing at. Cibele is one of the most delightful people I know and although I have only known her a little while, I wish I had known her twenty years ago. The only reason being that twenty years ago there were no cameras on phones.

It's Gary's phone so it is only right that he is the only one looking at the camera.

We had a great night which ended in McDonald's surrounded by the dregs of society, not at our table of course, a reminder of why Saturday night isn't the best time to go to town. This is the last Sunday without a podcast and I hope to keep it going every week without interruption, until the next interruption that is. To end on a happy note, Nana is out of hospital and joined us for Sunday lunch as usual.

The Sunday Alternative will return soon.

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June housekeeping

The audio book of Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol) will be released on August 31st. In the meantime the book can be downloaded to your Kindle from here.

All donations made using the PayPal button will go towards making podcasts, comedy sketches, live video sessions, documentaries, short films and more that will be made available online for free.

The Sunday Alternative bag and t-shirt (and other products) can be purchased from my shop page. All money raised will go into the fund to create free content.

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76

Picture from Snip View

We watched Iron Man 2 and Thor last night which I assume almost finishes my introduction to Marvel superheroes in film, (I can't wait for Bananaman) although we stopped Thor as I was too preoccupied to concentrate properly. My Nana was taken to hospital yesterday and at the age of 91 this can't be anything other than worrying. It was actually thanks to the fact that my dad watches Holby City (where soap stars disappear to now that The Bill isn't on any more) and recognised her symptoms that she is safe and sound in hospital when things could have been worse. 

My nana is a fairly resilient woman who compared to the other people who live in her complex hasn't allowed getting old to become an obstacle. Up until recently she was still going to town on her own and doing her shopping, whereas most of her fellow residents have simply given up on life and stopped bothering to even get dressed in the morning. It is only in recent weeks that she hasn't had the motivation to go out as often, although she is still going to my dad's house for Sunday lunch. Today however we didn't have our usual lunch at dad's, as we were all in the hospital. 

This wasn't our conventional Sunday but at least we spent it together I suppose. Last night I went through the usual feelings of guilt associated with not having made the most of grandparents, my nana only lives down the road but I only see her on Sunday. We used to all go round on Wednesdays but it was when I started presenting NottinghamLIVE and didn't have time anymore that this weekly meeting tailed off and by the time I finish work and get home for tea or have to go to a gig then one week becomes two and before you know it weeks have passed. 

I felt better once I had seen her and although she will be in hospital for a few days I can tell that she will be leaving of her own accord. We had dinner and watched Calamity Jane this evening, I haven't seen it before but we went to watch a stage production of it at the Theatre Royal last year. This is the second time (off the top of my head) that I have seen the film version of a musical after watching it on stage (Hello Dolly being the other one that springs to mind) and it is the preferable way round to do it. Had I seen the film first with its huge set and location then I would spend all the time I should have been enjoying the show picking holes but at least this way round I appreciate the ingenuity of the directors who manage to get an entire musical performed in one setting. 

The Sunday Alternative will return soon.

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June housekeeping

The audio book of Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol) will be released on August 31st. In the meantime the book can be downloaded to your Kindle from here.

All donations made using the PayPal button will go towards making podcasts, comedy sketches, live video sessions, documentaries, short films and more that will be made available online for free.

The Sunday Alternative bag and t-shirt (and other products) can be purchased from my shop page. All money raised will go into the fund to create free content.

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76

Mandi volunteered to go into work for a bit today and I made the mistake of going back to bed without setting an alarm yet woke up with plenty of time to get ready and go to my dad's for lunch. With each passing Sunday I remember that I should be releasing a podcast as this hiatus is starting to get me down. Creatively I have hit a bit of a cul-de-sac just lately, I can't find the motivation required to get me writing or recording yet I look at the to-do list and wonder if I will be able to complete it. I've put a couple of the more ambitious projects in next year's list which just really leaves audio book recording and a couple of pilots to film for Kickstarter funding (hopefully). 

My resolution to do something creative every day has gone a little off-road again due to my ever changing moods. I don't feel too bad about this though as I was beginning to resent myself for being under pressure to do something. At the risk of sounding a little bit of a tosser, being creative isn't something you can just turn on with a switch and is very difficult to fulfil if you don't feel in the right mood. Once I get the recording gear sorted I will be able to kick-start the podcast back into life and concentrate on audio books and possibly a couple of episodes of Moonage Daydream.

I waited at my dad's house for Mandi after lunch and we walked home along the path that runs between the tram line and the allotments, it was chilly but not unpleasant and this is a walk that Jack really seems to enjoy. He's been back to the park a few times since his fight and seems to be quite happy but I feel on edge. Most of the park users know the system but it only takes one irresponsible idiot to go against that and ruin it. 

No podcast this week.

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May housekeeping 

Please consider making either a one-off or regular donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to fund creative projects that will be made available for free.

The Sunday Alternative is a free weekly podcast. I am aiming to start making this podcast in a studio with live bands in session. This will cost at least £50 per episode so please give whatever you can.

52 podcasts and 365 blogs a year must be worth something to you?

The Sunday Alternative bag is on sale now. All you need to do is click on the PayPal button and donate £6 (or more if you're feeling generous), then email me at the address below with 'BAG' in the subject line and your name and address in the email.

(All money from the bags goes into the fund to create free online entertainment)

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76 

I uploaded the podcast this morning and did the usual drum banging on social media before getting dressed ready for lunch at my dad’s. Once the upload was finished and the page ready I copied the podcast onto a CD to archive and then switched off the computer thinking no more about it.

After lunch I went into town to lend a hand at the Sue Ryder charity shop with sorting out the records (didn’t come across any more James Last I am sad to report) and didn’t return home until just after six o’clock. Checking the listening figures I saw that although they were fairly healthy for the first six hours, they were down on the usual numbers for this sort of time of day. Sunday is the peak day for hits so today’s figures make up the majority of the weekly total. I opened the page to see that the player wasn’t there and a grey box with a sad face was in its place. This wasn’t a huge disaster as all I had to do was go back to the Internet Archive and embed the player again as I have occasionally done before. However, the Internet Archive couldn’t be accessed and all I had was the screen you get when there’s no Internet connection. I knew that my Internet was working so I assumed it to be a fault on their end, having checked that I could access other websites. (Incidentally, am I the only person who finds it annoying when Internet access is broken and you open a tab and get Google with a collection of squares representing most visited websites? It’s a bit of a red herring because it makes you think you’re back online when you are not).

With no way of accessing the Internet Archive I knew I should come up with a plan B just in case the website had closed forever. The Internet Archive gives access and storage to podcasts, radio shows, films, scripts, out of print books, and various other treasures, so it would be terrible if they closed down. A quick Google search directed me to a workable free podcast hosting site that allowed registration with minimum fuss and more importantly allowed me to embed the player to the podcast blog. There are only 30 editions of The Sunday Alternative so although inconvenient it wouldn’t have been a huge problem to have had to upload them to a new site.

Announcements were made on the show’s Facebook and Twitter accounts that normal service would be resumed as soon as possible, while I dug out all 30 editions of the podcast in readiness for having my Sunday evening ruined with an impromptu uploading session. In an unusual display of good luck coming my way, (it’s about time I had some return on all of the ‘lucky’ pennies I pick up and put in my special tin), the Internet Archive returned to normal and with it all of the podcasts were back where they belonged on the blog. The Internet Archive must have been either having problems or undergoing maintenance, choosing to do so on a Sunday as it’s a quiet day online. Somehow it has stopped being a quiet day for me though.

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Details on my audio books and other work for sale and how your donations can help me to create free entertainment can be found on my Shop & Donations page.

This week’s edition of The Sunday Alternative is here.

I pulled another shift as a volunteer at the Sue Ryder shop in Hockley this afternoon, sorting my way through the mountains of vinyl records to try and categorise them ready for sale. As much as I am enjoying this and hate the idea of someone else taking over from me and doing it wrong, I doubt I’ll be able to give this too much attention after next week. On Monday (5^th) the world returns to normal and everybody goes back to work, so my days will be spent in court and then I have a lot of writing commitments on top of the weekly podcast, combined with my sometimes broken promise to Mandi that I won’t do anything work related on Saturday as that is our only day together. Finding the time for something else, even something that is both therapeutic and charitable is going to be difficult as spare time and I just aren’t acquainted.

Even if I don’t commit to a regular volunteering post with the shop, I still want to go in enough times to get this collection of records under control. This might add to an already worrying obsession with James Last, a man I had never heard of until I first started digging through and now want to do something about. I was only half joking the other day with my plan to turn Last into a hipster favourite, but a part of me wants to come up with a way to promote an old man who probably doesn’t want promoting. I’m sure he made plenty of money in his working days as he travelled the world as a band leader and released around two hundred albums, and according to @Gailsman on Twitter (who fed me several follow up bits of information about the photos I tweeted) sold 200 million. Two hundred million LP records. That’s in the days when record sales meant something, and this rolled through punk and every other movement and came out of the other side unscathed. There are other people who made an inexplicable amount of albums too and I may turn to them at another time but I am chiefly bothering with James Last for the simple reason that I don’t have the first clue who he is, or at least I didn’t until last week/year. I was thinking of asking a pub that does Sunday lunch if I could DJ in there during food serving hours to offer a background ambiance of James Last’s sounds. It would mean buying all the James Last stock from Sue Ryder (and there’s a lot of it) and some vinyl decks, and transporting all of this to the pub, but it would be worth it.

If you see a James Last themed ANYTHING happening, especially in Nottingham, and if I haven’t mentioned it on Twitter or Facebook, then my idea has been stolen.

It would give me a warm glow to think of an old man in the autumn years of his life being alerted to the fact that he had somehow been gifted with a last wave of popularity before the final curtain came down. Maybe he could be coaxed out of retirement to do one last concert performance? Wouldn’t that be something?

Just so you know, I know it may look as though I just shit silly ideas all day, but I have got quite a bit of work done and only think of James Last while I’m giving myself a tea/cigarette break.

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Details on my audio books and other work for sale and how your donations can help me to create free entertainment can be found on my Shop & Donations page.

This week’s edition of The Sunday Alternative is here.

picture taken by my dad, here's his design page on Facebook

I recorded the podcast yesterday so I had none of the pressure that usually grabs me on a Sunday morning to get it recorded before I head out. Mandi took Jack out to the park while I uploaded this week’s effort and did the usual tweeting and Facebook shouting, and we were ready for lunch. This week saw probably our smoothest move from the bed to the door ever, as we wanted to get to my dad’s early because my sister and her sons were coming down to visit for the day. Mary came down with her two youngest boys Harrison and Arthur, James couldn’t be arsed getting out of bed apparently. This was a shame as he recently turned eighteen and I was quite looking forward to taking him to the pub for grown up booze. Dominic, my brother-in-law was working away so couldn’t make it so it was just the two little ones. We had a lovely family Sunday lunch with Mary and the kids, dad, and Nana, and had decided not to bring Jack along as usual because he tends to get a bit excitable around too many people, (he got very amorous with Harrison’s leg last time, and thankfully Harrison is too young to know what he was actually trying to do).

It was nice to spend some time with my nephews because I didn’t spend a lot of time with James as we was growing up so this is a chance to be a proper uncle to the two youngest boys. After lunch Mandi went shopping and my dad and I went for a walk around the Forest with Mary and the boys. Although Arthur doesn’t usually go to anyone other than his mum he did eventually let me pick him up from the swings, and Harrison enjoyed a good go on the see-saw with me. It is ages since I was on this play area, a place Emily used to enjoy when she was little. My sister and I transported ourselves back to our childhood with a highly competitive go on the swings in which we tried to get the highest and gauged our height by calling out what we could see over the bar.

Even better than a family Sunday with my two brilliant nephews was the news that greeted me when I arrived home, ITV3+1 were screening On The Buses*, the first film spin-off of the 1970s sitcom I have already declared my love for on this blog. Although parts of the film were familiar to me, I can’t remember seeing the whole film so probably recognised certain sequences from one of those comedy compilations that ITV used to put on when it was raining. Mandi went into the other room while it was on as she can’t stand it, despite my trying to convince her to watch it with me. My story about it being totally different in tone to the TV series and directed by George Lucas wasn’t believed so I was left to watch it on my own.

*I was joking about the film being better than my nephews are by the way.

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here

My Sherwood Radio archive is here, why not listen and donate?

All donations received via the PayPal button above will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the pot.

Spare a thought for me, I was up early this morning and at work; I have the hardest job in the world. It was time to pay the price for my laziness in not recording The Sunday Alternative earlier in the week, and my punishment was being awake before noon on a Sunday. After taking Jack to the park for a run around my head was cleared for the job in hand. Recording went smoothly and the show was available before the metaphorical ink had dried. Half an hour later there had been 100 hits, which is fantastic news as it shows that the podcast audience is growing without the need to have an outlet on radio. I do miss live radio though.

To refer back to yesterday’s blog; I didn’t really bite the shop assistant in That’s Entertainment. I was simply employing a punch line in light of the subject of my dog. It was a genuinely nice thing to have happened as I have never been recognised by a member of the public before. At gigs I often get asked if I’m Steve Oliver but that is mostly from musicians I haven’t met but have supported in some way. I suppose my default profile picture helps (it’s even used as my newspaper byline) as I am mainly known for radio, podcasts, and audio books. Having said that, nobody has heard my voice and recognised me so maybe that theory doesn’t hold water. It’s pretty cool that my name means something to some people though, perhaps more so in Nottingham.

It wasn’t all work today, we went to my dad’s for Sunday lunch and spent the rest of the day doing nothing apart from a bit of catch up with my emails as Sunday is a good day to do this as nobody checks on a Sunday so you should be top of the inboxes on Monday morning.

Jack enjoyed his Sunday lunch

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here

All donations received via the PayPal button above will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the pot.

This weekend has been brilliant, just lots and lots of doing nothing. Every now and again it is nice to just turn your brain off, in fact it’s a shame you can’t remove it and put it in a glass of water by your bed as people do with false teeth. Maybe there’s a Dragon’s Den idea in here somewhere; as we devote too much time to work and leisure time becomes more valuable, we should have two brains that are interchangeable, one for work and one that only allows relaxation. On Friday afternoon you remove your work brain and put in your leisure brain so that your weekends and holidays aren’t ruined by thinking about work. You don’t receive work related emails or phone calls on Saturday or Sunday and this idea works on the same principal. The important thing would be to remember to make sure you changed brains back around, I would say that making it part of your Sunday evening routine would be the best way; iron clothes, arrange keys, wallet, and phone on the kitchen table, set your alarm, change brains. If you went to bed with your weekend brain still in you wouldn’t wake up until lunchtime and that wouldn’t go down well at work.

Yesterday was your average Sunday; I didn’t wake up until noon which meant I missed Just a Minute on Radio 4, assuming it is still on that is. A cup of tea and a shower was all I needed to wake myself up before going to my dad’s for lunch. We had a roast dinner followed by coffee and newspapers, (I know I shouldn’t eat newspapers). Jack had a mini-lunch made up of leftover meat, veg and gravy. In the evening we did another handful of episodes of Frasier on DVD, currently on the second series of the four we have so we’ll soon need to stock up. Without checking I don’t know how many episodes were made but I am keen to see it through.

Today I decided to ease myself in gently to the working week by doing nothing but catching up with my emails, but only got halfway through my inbox before realising it wasn’t going to be a one day job and giving up to write my blog up to date instead. The weekend entries were saved in draft so I just needed to edit them properly before I published them. While I was doing this I listened to a load of new music for the next Sunday Alternative podcast that I will be recording on Friday. Unfortunately, a heavy workload doesn’t make for very good daily blogs so hopefully readers will take the rough with the smooth and put up with a few boring blogs until the next time I write to a customer service department to complain about crisps.

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative and plenty more including documentaries, short films and podcasts.

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here.

Today was quite an important day for myself and all the people who have been deprived of real music, as The Sunday Alternative returned after a break. I’m going to keep the name intact but to distinguish it from the forthcoming video series, a slight change of title is in order. It will still be the show I pictured, but called The Sunday Alternative Visual Aid. That title would have been the name of the video highlights package that accompanied the radio show on Trent Sound, had it actually happened.

To save myself from potential mishaps on the day, I had uploaded the podcast in the early hours of this morning as sometimes this can go wrong, especially when I have a lot riding on it. The whole thing was posted on The Sunday Alternative blog with links to the artists, a good twelve hours before lunchtime when it officially dropped. Really keen listeners could, if they wanted to, keep a sneaky eye on the blog and grab bragging rights on being the first person to listen to it.

Back to lunchtime however, and at midday I started the social media advertising on Twitter, and to a lesser extent Facebook. It isn’t really worth using Facebook as the site is pretty much dead these days. Ever since Sherwood Radio my Facebook friends list have had trouble with the concept of interaction. You’re sitting at a computer to listen so openening another window or tab to log in to Facebook shouldn’t be a massive problem, (apart from the buffering you encounter while Facebook takes a month to load). I advertised it on Facebook and gained a few shares and ‘likes’ so it wasn’t a total waste of time. 

My main reason for embedding the podcast into the blog was so that I was able to monitor how many people clicked on it. Going on the assumption that a blog read counted as a listen, (otherwise it is a pretty pointless visit to the page), it was satisfying to see that in the hour between the first advertising blitz and turning off the computer to go to my dad’s for lunch, there had been fifty hits. Fifty hits in an hour isn’t too bad, especially as the podcast can be downloaded at any time of the day or night, as opposed to previously when people had to listen when it was broadcast. Sunday is a pretty good day to have a radio show as more people are at home; I saw an increase in listeners when the show moved to Sunday lunchtimes, but now there’s the advantage of people who are working can download the podcast to listen to on the journey. A quality podcast and double pay, some people are just so lucky. The same is true for tomorrow as it’s a Bank Holiday so it will feel like a Sunday.

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative and plenty more including documentaries, short films and podcasts.

Listen to The Sunday Alternative here.

There was only really one job to do today and that was record the first of the brand new run of The Sunday Alternative. I couldn’t really leave it any longer as I want it to drop tomorrow lunchtime so that perhaps people can listen to it with their Sunday lunch, although it is only going to be about half an hour long. Maybe families can gather round to listen to it during their starter? Although I can tell that I am going to miss the immediacy of live radio, the plans that I have for the name are very exciting so I will try to put those feelings aside and look forward to the next stage. It’s funny to think that the video version of The Sunday Alternative is basically an idea that I had in 2007, but nobody really understood what I was trying to do. Anyway, for now it’s all about the audio version which I have advertised as fortnightly but am tempted to go weekly until the video version is ready to roll out.

A radio hour is actually only 58 minutes, and it isn’t easy to make a show last exactly that amount of time. Even in live radio it isn’t always easy to get it right, as I have often started playing a four minute song when I have one minute left, or the other way round which is worse. A luxury of recording a podcast is that it doesn’t matter how long it goes on for. I’ll be trying to keep the podcast down to about half an hour so that they can be listened to on an MP3 player on the way to work, (if you save it for Monday that is, or are pulling in some overtime). The video version will be about the same length as nobody in the world will go over the half hour time limit when it comes to watching an online video. If I was to start a business making adverts to put on YouTube before the main video starts, I would provide every bit of important information in the first five seconds so that as soon as the option to skip the advert comes up on the screen it will be too late as you have seen the advert.

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative and plenty more including documentaries, short films and podcasts.

The Sunday Alternative returns as a fortnightly podcast on Sunday May 4^th (anyone doing Star Wars Day jokes will be taken out and beaten up).

Today was one that I could have quite happily slept through, but I was up just before twelve and went downstairs to listen to The Unbelievable Truth on the radio while Mandi (who was already up) was getting ready. It’s been a while since I was able to listen to the midday comedy slot on Radio 4 on a Sunday, either by being asleep or on the radio (make your own jokes there if you see fit). We take Jack to my dad’s on Sunday lunchtime now so he doesn’t need taking for a walk before we go out; this saves a bit of time in the long run although he does tend to dawdle.

Lunch was a roast beef dinner with everything, and although I didn’t feel up to plating up another meal afterwards I did eat a bowl of cold sprouts. It was perhaps for the best that I spent some time in the office away from Mandi’s disapproving nose for the evening.

Although I really don’t want to be working over the weekend, (apart from the radio show which I would do again in a heartbeat), I spent a few hours in my office trying to get through my emails. They were mostly work related, music for The Sunday Alternative when it returns as a podcast. I was only going to make the podcast version half an hour long, but with the amount of music I have ready I could go longer. What I may do is just maintain a level of flexibility when it comes to the ending of the show, around the half hour-forty minutes area. There’s enough music coming in to be able to do the podcast weekly, but I am trying to alleviate pressure rather than add to it.

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative and plenty more including documentaries, short films and podcasts.

The Sunday Alternative returns as a fortnightly podcast on Sunday May 4^th (anyone doing Star Wars Day jokes will be taken out and beaten up).

Today was the day that I rediscovered Sunday and I have to report that I rather enjoyed it. It was almost as if I had forgotten what it was like to enjoy the day of rest, having worked harder on a Sunday than the other six days of the week for quite a while. As I said last week, The Sunday Alternative isn’t dead and buried by any means, but it probably won’t be appearing on Trent Sound again. Then again, never say never. On the other hand, the show has always been a BBC 6Music show at heart, so maybe the network will finally wake up and allow the show to appear in its natural and spiritual home.

When the show switched to lunchtimes I was really pleased because it meant a slight change of direction, only a slight one. As much as I enjoyed the idea of people listening to a radio show while sitting around the family dinner table, on the other side of that is someone who is working on a Sunday (and not getting double time for it like everyone else) and arrives at the family Sunday dinner when everyone else is on the coffee and newspapers stage. Today was the first time in weeks that I was able to join in and it was lovely to have that back. Of course if another radio opportunity came along I’d snap it up in a flash, Sunday lunch or no Sunday lunch, but for the time being it is nice to be able to join in again round at my dad’s at the same time as everyone else.

Another thing that we haven’t done for ages, in fact I can’t remember the last time we did it even though I could quite easily go through my blog and say for sure but that would be cheating, is go for afternoon tea in Lee Rosy’s on a Sunday afternoon. The thing about Lee Rosy’s is that it is always freakishly full and it is therefore difficult to get a table. It used to be a place for creative people to hang out but they have started letting ordinary members of the public in, or Nottingham has more writers, filmmakers, artists, and musicians than it used to. We couldn’t get a table, even me with my Sunday afternoon radio, oh. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get in? Maybe in Lee Rosy’s manifesto, a radio show in America doesn’t count, it has to be in this country and by dumping my two English shows in one week I have been blacklisted. Or maybe we couldn’t get a table simply because it was full and we should have got there sooner.

When Hartley’s opened just up the road from Lee Rosy’s, it was only ever used as a place to go when Lee Rosy’s was full. I even suggested it as an advertising slogan along the same lines as Pepsi; when they don’t have Coke. We started going straight to Hartley’s after a while and not even bothering to check Lee Rosy’s seating availability, and grew to love the place. The owners are a lovely couple of people who care a great deal about the Hockley community, and so deserve for Hartley’s to be recognised on its own merits and not just as an annex of a shop up the road. As time wore on we forgot about Lee Rosy’s altogether, safe in the knowledge that after so long away we would have to sit in the basement now that we had slipped far enough down the ladder to never be able to sit in the window again. Mandi and I became full time members of Team Hartley’s, slightly cosier than Lee Rosy’s with less of the hipster element, and with bacon cobs.

I’m not sure who suggested it, but the idea of going to Lee Rosy’s was on the table today. I picked it up off the table with my wallet, phone, keys, and fags, and away we went.

It was full, so we went to Hartley’s.

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans underway for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative, and plenty more including documentaries, short films, and podcasts.

Send a blank email to blogcastmonthly@gmail.com to receive my exclusive new podcast, only available by email. The first edition of BlogCast will land in your inbox on the last Friday in April.

The Sunday Alternative returns as a fortnightly podcast on Sunday May 4^th (anyone doing Star Wars Day jokes will be taken out and beaten up).

As much as I like to monitor the amount of Christmas decorations on display until January 6^th, I find it a bit grim when you spot traces of the festive season once Christmas is over and done with. The occasional little trace is perhaps acceptable, as you can give the benefit of the doubt and assume it to be an oversight. However, the above picture displays more than a little trace, more of a crashing blunder.

Bulwell on Sunday is almost like how Sundays used to be, apart from the fact that most of the shops are open. To give a younger person a history lesson on how a town centre used to look on a Sunday, you could take them to see what Bulwell looks like. The weather didn’t really help the grim emptiness of the place this afternoon, (I assume that a large part of the town were at home listening to their proudest boast – that their town is the home of Nottingham’s only independent local radio station – and enjoying an eclectic blend of music (music you don’t hear on the radio, on the radio) and of course an excellent live session from City Of Kites) but it really was a ghost town today. That is aside from the people who appeared out of nowhere every time I attempted to take a picture of the Christmas tree, (I was aware that people might think me strange for wanting to do such a thing on the 19^th of January, and if Bulwell thinks you’re strange you have got problems). To be walking along that precinct on a wet Sunday afternoon with the wind whistling its way towards you is bad enough, but the addition of an out of date Christmas tree gives the town a look of desperation and decay.

As I took the tram to my dad’s house for Sunday lunch, I started throwing around my head the basis for a song titled ‘Christmas in Bulwell’. Unlike the usual Christmas song though, it is set in the middle of January when things have returned to normal; you know what day it is, you get your bills in, you are in the midst of a ‘five week month’ because you get paid early before breaking up for the Christmas holiday, you have been back at work long enough so that Christmas seems a distant memory, and you are generally feeling fucked off with life. Tomorrow is apparently the most depressing day of the year; Blue Monday, good idea for a song title!

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Sunday 8th December

I’m really getting to grips with the idea of being a daytime radio presenter; The Sunday Alternative suits the time slot in a way that I could never have imagined when I started doing it in 2011. I was of the opinion that the late night slot was the one for me as it suited the romantic notion of the Play Misty For Me style of presenting. Of course there’s the fact that the show is still not bound by any rules and I can still play whatever the hell I like, although as I now visualise the show as one for the family I am a lot more careful about the content and won’t play songs with swearing in. It would upset me to think that a family consisting of mum and dad, a grandparent or two, and some children were enjoying the show while sitting around the Sunday lunch table, reminiscent of the time of Billy Cotton’s Band Show, and the mood of the moment suddenly getting ruined by an errant ‘fuck’ polluting the airwaves.

The only problem I am having is the availability of bands and musicians to come in and perform on Sunday lunchtime to play live. I had originally intended to have live music in every week when The Sunday Alternative first started, but I have had large periods of time without a guest. When I did the show with Erik Petersen we fell into a bit of a trap of turning into a comedy act, (although to be fair we did work well together but the show wasn’t meant to have taken that direction) and so I brought music back in an attempt to make the show a serious music show once again. If I can, then I want to have a live session every week. I’m not necessarily chasing Nottingham bands for this show as I do enough for the Nottingham music scene on my other radio shows, and it is cool to be able to introduce other acts from around the country on the show. The Sunday Alternative isn’t a Nottingham show essentially, in the same way that NottinghamLIVE and The Sound of Nottingham UK is, as we have a much larger range. That was my beef with Fiona Sturgess from The Independent and her refusal to write about the show in her column, she dismissed it because it wasn’t national. She missed the point totally as just because we broadcast from a local station we do have a good national following and listeners abroad. On the other hand, it is logistically easier to get a Nottingham band in.

As an eleventh hour booking, my friend and former radio colleague Bainy offered his services on Friday with his band Blue Vulture. The two of us have taken the piss out of each other for a long time now, playfully dissing each other’s work in some form or another. My current thing is to keep referring to his band’s music as “quite good” in an attempt to have it quoted on their CD sleeve (it already appears on their Reverbnation page). The story of how the band came to be is an interesting one, as Bainy came up with a band name, set up the social media pages, and then set about actually recruiting the band. The end result is really brilliant quite good.

It wasn’t the full band that appeared today though, just Bainy singing and Dave on guitar to perform four of their songs acoustically. A lot of the time I get frustrated at how little a band have to say, both in interviews and in between songs during live radio sessions, but thankfully Bainy’s radio experience helped a great deal as he not only introduced the songs with ease but also provided something of a back story thus making it interesting for the listeners.

I dropped a bollock right at the end of their set when I switched the microphones back on and turned to Gary and said “absolutely brilliant”, which I immediately retracted into “quite good” but it was too late as Bainy heard it and said he now had a new quote.

The show is especially enjoyable with Gary as co-presenter, so I hope he is able to make it a more regular thing. He is a school teacher during the week and has a lot of work to do in his own time, which is why he stopped doing the show in the evenings. This week he brought his guitar into the studio as it was in his car, but I couldn’t persuade him to perform on the show. I will keep at him, especially as I have invited a very special guest in next week and said that I will let him sing with Gary on guitar.

If the very special guest turns up, it will be quite good.

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I had a Sunday off this week just like normal people, which is something I shouldn’t get too used to as I’ll have to get up early very soon when The Sunday Alternative becomes a lunchtime show. There was once a series about various entertainment types; theatre, sitcom, and those kind of things. One edition was about radio which went back to the golden age of variety shows on radio that the whole family would gather round and listen to. The talking heads in the programme all commented on how they only have to hear the theme music and they can immediately taste roast beef as it reminded them of their old fashioned family Sundays. On the flip side of this, I remember reading a comedian’s autobiography (I wish I could remember who) and he said how people would always approach him to say how much they enjoyed listening to those old shows. His response was to lament the fact that although these radio shows represent Sunday leisure, those performers missed out on a proper Sunday because they were working. Eric Sykes wrote in his autobiography that he once agreed to appear in a live pantomime on Christmas Day afternoon, and as a result missed the whole day due to last rehearsals and broadcast and ended up having Christmas dinner in the BBC canteen. This is what is going to happen to me I suppose, while people are listening (during the peak ‘sat around the table having the family roast’ time of 1pm-3pm) I will be at work. It’s the emergency services, nurses, and radio presenters that you should all spare a thought for on the day of rest.

There was a little bit of work related activity today though, as after lunch I went to town and did a bit of fly-posting for my new club night next Saturday. I walked into town with Jack to give him some exercise. He behaved all the way there, but let me down at the bus stop by barking at a man who wanted to ask me a question. There was another woman at the stop who looked a bit shocked, so I came up with a story about how Jack once witnessed me being attacked and has been protective ever since. This drew sympathy and let Jack off the hook despite it being quick thinking bollocks.

I was supposed to be going to a gig at Glee tonight to do a review for The Nottingham Evening Post (as I still call it), but it was cancelled a couple of days ago so I had a Sunday evening free. This was a green light to resurrect one of our old Sunday teatime traditions of egg and chips for tea. As we have more Christmas DVDs than there are days of Christmas these days, we have to start a bit earlier than everybody else does. The films usually come out with the boxes of Christmas decorations, but Mandi excavated the collection a few weeks ago so that we could watch Love Actually on our anniversary. We’ve already watched Meet Me In St Louis, (not strictly a Christmas film but does contain Judy Garland’s rendition of ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’, the second best version of that song after Bert and Ernie), and tonight we settled down for A Christmas Carol: The Musical. Last Christmas I set myself the task of watching a different version of A Christmas Carol every day during Christmas and I got a little fatigued by it if I’m honest. I had wanted to write some sort of guide book to all the different film adaptations, but couldn’t motivate myself to write down my thoughts on each film and eventually didn’t bother. I’m still keen to do more stuff work-wise with the book after doing last year’s audio book version, but I’ll be maintaining a comfortable gap in between film viewings. If I can raise enough money (check out the PayPal button at the top of this blog) then there is a filming project relating to A Christmas Carol that I am keen to maybe do in time for Christmas 2014.

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)
I’m raising money to make a film about The Sunday Alternative and put on a free screening, please read my latest newsletter.

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Monday 11th November

The luxury of having Sunday evenings free is something that I’m going to enjoy getting used to from now on. As much as I love doing The Sunday Alternative, can you imagine motivating yourself when you’re full of roast dinner to go to work on a none-working day right at the time when you should be settling down for the evening? Not that I’m complaining of course. The dynamic of the day will shift for me as from the 24^th, as I’ll have to be awake enough to broadcast from one o’clock. I want to aim to be at the studio for twelve in order to get properly prepared, which probably won’t happen. As soon as the show is finished at three o’clock I’ll go to my dad’s for lunch, and from there I can have a proper Sunday.

Yesterday was a lovely day, both in terms of the weather and the day itself. After the Remembrance Day service we walked back into town along the canal, the peace only occasionally shattered by Jack getting wound up over the pigeons and ducks (he doesn’t seem to object to geese). It made me think about what Sunday means to different people; there were a few people fishing along the canal, jogging, walking the dog, feeding the ducks, and enjoying the peace and quiet of the day of rest. The day has been different things to me throughout my life; from a day of drinking in my single days, when I was younger I used to work on Sunday as I was that greedy colleague that volunteered to work for double pay. Mandi and I used to go for afternoon tea on a Sunday afternoon, something that I stopped feeling comfortable doing once I was doing the show as I was clock watching. Doing the show at lunchtime means that I can even start reading the Sunday papers properly again; I miss the afternoon calm of the Sunday papers while listening to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Maybe I’ll bring back the tradition of cooking egg and chips for Sunday tea.

We took the bus back from town and I went to take Jack home and met Mandi back at my dad’s. I was going to get changed before I left the house again but decided against it. I was quite enjoying wearing a suit to be honest. When I go out I try to look good, but wearing a proper suit like a grownup with real shoes and not Converse was a rare thing for me. Dressing for Sunday is one of those long forgotten customs that really should be brought back into normality; I might even start wearing a shirt and tie to do the radio when the show returns. In the early days of the BBC the announcers used to wear full evening dress for radio, despite the fact that nobody could see them.

While on the park with Jack I came up with an idea for a possible business idea, (writing it on this blog proves that I thought of it and will pursue anyone who acts on this idea for my share of the profits) that will cater for those people who are slaves to the latest weird trends. People who obsess over health and fitness seem to be keen to throw money at ridiculous new ideas, and these are the people I am aiming at. In the late 1990s there was a short lived concept of the oxygen bar; instead of drinking you would buy canisters of oxygen. I once heard the line “people would stick rolled up ten pound notes up their bums if you told them it was fashionable”, and there is an element of truth in that. Jack is seven years old (in real years, I don’t really understand dog years) but still has a sweet puppy-like quality. He gets such an unbelievable amount pleasure from playing fetch that I could easily envy, and it was that enthusiasm that got me thinking.

Fetch Therapy is what I’ll call it, based on the sheer joy that a dog gets from simply running after a ball that you’ve just thrown, and bringing it back to do it all again. Stressed out office workers paying twenty pounds an hour to meet a trainer in a nearby park (possibly during lunch hour) and run after a ball. I don’t mean they’re acting like dogs and bringing the ball in their mouths, this isn’t some bizarre sexual fetish club. It’s just a way of forgetting the stress of the day job and experience the joy that a dog feels. They’ll all be doing it in a month or two.

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My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)
I’m raising money to make a film about The Sunday Alternative and put on a free screening, please read my latest newsletter.

Any money donated to the PayPal account above will be used to make films, podcasts, and other content that will be made available free of charge.