Catching up
Aug. 17th, 2010 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorsetgirlI don't get much time to post during school holidays, so just a few things I want to record as diary entries, sort of...
(1) I've been gradually buying up older material by Green Day, and I got Nimrod last week. It has a number of tracks which are very well known from their stage shows, including Good Riddance (Time of Your Life). On Saturday I finally got a chance to listen to some of it, in the car coming home from dropping the oldest at his library volunteering. I started listening to Time of Your Life and just burst into tears, which surprised me slightly. I can only think it was because that's always the last song at a concert, so when Billie strikes up those distinctive first few notes you know your time's up. The stage version is basically a celebration of a fantastic concert, but the original album version, I discover, has strings and a generally more poignant arrangement. I played it through about five times on my way home.
(2) The whole family went to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard yesterday. I was looking forward to it anyway, because I've been on the Victory before and enjoyed it, but I was interested to discover how completely comfortable I felt on board. I have a slight tendency to claustrophobia - I prefer not to go in lifts on my own, and I could never go pot-holing for example, but I had no problem whatsoever in going down into the lower decks of the ship and down to the hold. They had a tape playing down there, of the sounds you would hear - the water swooshing and rushing, the rudder creaking, etc - and I just stood there for ages, leaning on a warm wooden beam and listening. I was vaguely aware that it was quite warm down there, but I was quite happy. By contrast, the moment we got back into the car at the end of the day (car park under a building, so no sun to make it hot) I immediately felt ... something. Just an awareness of my surroundings amounting to a slight, I don't know, itchiness or something. Strange.
As a by the way, and not the reason we went, two of my ancestors had links to Portsmouth - one of my ggg-grandfathers on my father's side was a Royal Marine in the Portsmouth Division in the early 1850's, and one of my gg-grandfathers on my mother's side was a Blacksmith at the Dockyard itself on the early 1860's. I'm guessing he went there for a couple of years as part of the move towards iron working in shipbuilding. (Portsmouth Dockyard built the world's first iron-hulled warship, HMS Warrior).
(1) I've been gradually buying up older material by Green Day, and I got Nimrod last week. It has a number of tracks which are very well known from their stage shows, including Good Riddance (Time of Your Life). On Saturday I finally got a chance to listen to some of it, in the car coming home from dropping the oldest at his library volunteering. I started listening to Time of Your Life and just burst into tears, which surprised me slightly. I can only think it was because that's always the last song at a concert, so when Billie strikes up those distinctive first few notes you know your time's up. The stage version is basically a celebration of a fantastic concert, but the original album version, I discover, has strings and a generally more poignant arrangement. I played it through about five times on my way home.
(2) The whole family went to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard yesterday. I was looking forward to it anyway, because I've been on the Victory before and enjoyed it, but I was interested to discover how completely comfortable I felt on board. I have a slight tendency to claustrophobia - I prefer not to go in lifts on my own, and I could never go pot-holing for example, but I had no problem whatsoever in going down into the lower decks of the ship and down to the hold. They had a tape playing down there, of the sounds you would hear - the water swooshing and rushing, the rudder creaking, etc - and I just stood there for ages, leaning on a warm wooden beam and listening. I was vaguely aware that it was quite warm down there, but I was quite happy. By contrast, the moment we got back into the car at the end of the day (car park under a building, so no sun to make it hot) I immediately felt ... something. Just an awareness of my surroundings amounting to a slight, I don't know, itchiness or something. Strange.
As a by the way, and not the reason we went, two of my ancestors had links to Portsmouth - one of my ggg-grandfathers on my father's side was a Royal Marine in the Portsmouth Division in the early 1850's, and one of my gg-grandfathers on my mother's side was a Blacksmith at the Dockyard itself on the early 1860's. I'm guessing he went there for a couple of years as part of the move towards iron working in shipbuilding. (Portsmouth Dockyard built the world's first iron-hulled warship, HMS Warrior).
