Spooky edition

 As I'm feeling a bit yukky from my Covid booster, thoughts turn to this weekend as the season of spooky fun comes before us as much as how we did things in the past was a bit different not just for us being more focused on things connected more with All Hallows but for being more private.

In 1974 few of us would of expected to see such huge displays outside each others houses that needed ladders to be put up safely nor would we of had the vast array of them available to buy ready made.

Back then most things would of been hand made from scraps or other repurposed items and events were more about games we'd play, taking turns.

Still in an uncertain and at least over here somewhat chaotic adult world, boy and girls are puching that to one side and having fun and that is the main thing.

Structure: the challenge

 Another week after the last ten days of grown up turbulance and general crazyness as I spin a copy of the HITS 3 compilation with hits from Summer and mid Autumn of 1985 with a few relective bits.

I'm a lively subject hopping sort who could introduce a talk about one thing and divert a couple of times as that interests me more or go to do one thing, start two others and finally do the fourth.

I've always been this way probably with having the combination of autism and adhd, concentration isn't one of my strong points, getting bored and antsy quickly so people mithering about structure are likely to be ignored or reacted against strongly.

Yet it is the case that sometimes at least you need a modicum of it just to see you cover all your needs in the course of a week, such as buying domestic things, responding to communications and seeing people such as doctors.

Running a forum isn't easy for some of us, and with that from time to time we can have struggles with things being posted anywhere or new threads started where they really is little need and just a different entry on a common topic would be better served within an existing thread than another.

That's apart from people who get themselves banned which is rare and try to reinvent themselves with new back stories but their past just seeps out like a leaking jug and the cycle continues.

18 plus and....

Prompted a bit from conversations elsewhere, there are a number things I do feel like talking about this week.

Firstly the tendency in age regression communities to have Do Not Interact (if) limits based on age such as "Do not interact if over 21" or in some instances 18 even which given everybody is being more like a child seems very birth age discriminatory given such groups are strictly safe for work if not "child safe" as your inner child has its vulnerbilities.

The other is the presumption every over 18 is not vulnerable and may be a threat to under 18's when a number of us have in real life diagnosed conditions that do mean we can be taken advantage of when it comes to financial, sexual or other forms of abuse.

It isn't even unknown for some adults to be taken advantage of by what in Law are Minors and yet all too often they are believe from the get go and we struggle to get it into "Plod's" head there frankly is little difference between ourselves and them.

In reality we're only over eighteen on the basis of birth date  and everything else is off.

Audiophile vs Analogphiles

 After last weeks more introspective blog entry I am looking at a different topic this week as the rumbles of a great unmasking in July continue to make themselves heard.

The casual music fan who visits a record stores cannot help but notice the resergence of the vinyl record, specifically the twelve inch "long player" in recent years from when it was almost phased out with perhaps a few bins in a dark corner where a very limited promotional copy of a couple of thousand world wide might reside to where a sizable amount of the store has been devoted to it complete with seperate artist and genres per rack.

For some that's where it ends.

You see a record by your favourite artist, you look the cover over before taking it to the sales desk, hand over your credit card and there it is in a bag to play when you get home.

That's if you haven't ordered it online from Diverse Vinyl, HMV or Amazon in which instance it arrives to your door.

For some there are other things especially when it comes to re-issues of older, "classic" titles such as what source did they use cut the record from, was it the actual assembled stereo mixes mixed down from multitrack session tapes, a copy of them a generation or so removed, a digital copy of that and how does anyone know what they are getting is from a good sounding source?

One thing complicates it some record labels such as Sony seldom if ever now allow the actual tape to leave their own vaults either making a tape copy or sending a digital file to use the team mastering cutting the new version of the record.

This at at the core of dispute in the audio community where generally most people saw themselves as more "Audiophiles" - people who like to hear a recording sound the best it can and spend time setting their own systems to enable that in their homes.

For them the only thing that matters is when comparing them is which sounds the best.

Increasingly a subset of them appear to formed a view that when a recording was made on analogue tape only a tape should be used to cut it even if may be a copy and if it might benefit from some work that can only happen in the digital demain.

They even feel there is no benefit at all in making a record from a digital recording.

No form of preserving through copying produces an exact perfect copy this may be tape or it may be high resolution digital which if even regarded as perfect enough can only store what the playback from the tape produced.

I regard the position of these analog-philes really extreme as really what does matter is which system for each recording delivers the best possible results.

Facing reality

However I may look at it, the events of 2006/7 were very much where much of this whole realization of who I was and where things had began to unravel at a rate of knots came from.

From my early teens (so-called) I had felt pushed in to appearing to be mature not so much in behaviour which was and is still is very much less than but more by taking an interest in adult things that gave people the impression I had that sophistication that when matched by a more preppy look, allowed me to mask the real me.

In a lot of ways I was role playing, actually, pretending to be this urbane font of philosophical and political knowledge to the point of studying subjects around it because it seemed to gave me a place the grown up world could accept to the point I joined their organizations and adapted of sorts to their structures.

In time that would lead me to being directly involved in current affairs, even taking a central role within one organization so while other aspects of my life were not going so well on the face of it this seemed okay.

What started off as a great idea turned very much into a monster very quickly because in all of this, the masking lead me to ignore who I was and the very thing that I was discourage from accepting, that I lacked the one necessary thing to do it: An adult sense of self.

Chunks of what ended up as a severe nervous breakdown were rooted in areas such as being given roles to perform by people while wanting them to be filled and to be seen as an authority of fulfilling them  but without their own involvement. 

Critical meetings were missed due to too many other events and having no proper cover, not only had they not been attended and from that having lost our say, when I did attend I was left to defend why when we said someone was, nobody did.

The bigger thing in all this was for all that outward sophistication, I lacked the abilities of a adult to cope emotionally in this environment, not having the resilience, I struggled to read agendas with notes and follow meetings and could not relate to the others as adults simply because I wasn't one. 

I might as well as been a 13 year old in debating society, looking for the adults to oversee it.

It didn't take long before I was on leave because my nerves had gone, I struggled to get through a day even at work without crying and if I did attend a meeting I just froze over like an ice block.

That's when it really hit home about being me.

I AM A CHILD WHO'S AGE IS JUST OLDER BY THE CALENDAR, THAT'S ALL.

This was the point here I had to slowly put away that masked version and learn to live again as the child I am rediscovering play, dressing and acting more like my real younger self, finding out more about others who do similar things.

Going forward

 Funny week in a lot of ways as we come out of Mourning and thoughts turn to happier things.

B-B-Q's and camp fires are amongst mine, from helping out as much as you can to toasting your marshmallows over a camp fire in person as you sing songs together.

Of course there can be that battle with our galliant competitors, the Wasp and the neighbouring dog who has plans for your sausages but to me that always was a great magical moment from childhood and a pick me up of that sort is something I certainly use.

A reflection on events around Her Majesty Elizabeth IInd death

 It goes without saying there is only one thing on my mind right now.

This is a series of reflections I wrote elsewhere, tidied up a bit, that I wish to share more openly.

The day had began as one would normally of expected but getting up and putting on the television it became apparent all was not well with Her Majesty with troubling reports that seemed to go beyond her sadly not unfamilar walking difficulties.

The first I realized the potential gravity of her announced missing of a Zoom Privy Council meeting due to being unwell was when I saw on the news, her grandchildren had paid a visit as, if you've ever been in such a situation this only tends to happen if you may not survive any treatments, being seen as slowly dying.

Some people get wrapped up in all that constitutional stuff and as Head of State she has some important roles in the same way in the Anglican Church she does as its head but at heart of all of this is a remarkable woman who is the head of a family.

A family we grew up with in our lives, cutting out pictures, following their lives that you may of met.

They were the Nations family and as the constitutional things pan out with our new King, Charles III on the Proclaimed on Saturday with a Coronation due at some point it is time to give thanks for what she did, the causes and organizations like scouting she supported so well.

In taking his Oath and the Vows, I feel King Charles III has undertaken to follow along the same lines as his mother although naturally he will add his own touches to it and so the cycle continues.