“If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.”

“If you find a pair of shoes that fits, buy it in every colour.”

“One biscuit is never enough.”

All three of those phrases is in some way related to the way I spent yesterday evening.  You see, a couple of years or so ago I was mulling over which electric guitar to buy, and when my wife eventually stepped in and told me which one I’d chosen (she knows my mind better than I do most of the time) I ordered a shiny new Line 6 Variax 300.  What’s special about that guitar (and all the others that Line 6 do, in fairness) is electronically model a whole load of real guitars and pack them all into one all-singing-all-dancing guitar, with each guitar selectable from a handy volume-type knob.  The result is that I effectively have 25 guitars instead of just one.

Thankfully, restringing only needs doing once, and it takes regular strings too despite its complicated wizardry.  I did a little research and found which strings the guitar had from the factory, and ordered a set on the internet a couple of days ago.  Now, this is where I hang my head in shame and hope there are no ‘proper’ guitarists reading – this is the first time I’ve replaced the strings since I bought the guitar, almost two years ago.  Ouch.  Sure, I’ve not been playing it every day since then, but even so the strings were sure to be corroded and mucky and dead-sounding by now.  And they were.

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H is for “Hello stranger”

Second Life.  Remember that?  It was all the rage a few years back, when it pioneered the idea of a virtual reality platform for online community and economy, and if I recall correctly there was a lot of hype around at the time.  Of course, I’m no sheep, so I steered clear of it at the time.  After all, I wasn’t a loner with no ‘real’ friends, so I had no need for an additional life to maintain.

So why is it that I downloaded the software last week?  Why have I been wandering around the Second Life worlds, exploring interesting locations, listening to music, chatting to people, dancing…?  I guess part of the cause is how cut off I’m feeling at the moment, having moved away from my circle of friends.  Sure, we’re living in a land of bliss, surrounded by beautiful countryside, the smell of cow dung floating on the breeze, and glorious hills to gaze at.  But we don’t know anyone.  Well, not many, and not as well as our ‘old’ friends.  I miss AM and Sarah, and the Phil(l)s, and my youth group at church, and my badminton partner, and all those other ex-uni folks who dropped in all the time.

Which leads me to an interesting muse.  What makes a friend?  And why is it important?

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G is for Guitar and “Get a life”

Many of you will know that I am a keen musician.  I blame this partly on my parents, who insisted on taking me to a brass band concert before I was even born.  I didn’t stand a chance.  Church helps too, there’s always music there.  And so it was that I started taking up musical instruments left right and centre, starting with the piano, moving on to cello, and not stopping thereafter.  The list isn’t exactly endless, but it’s fairly sizeable.  The main problem with this, though, is being able to afford the instruments themselves, which don’t come cheap, especially if you want something decent.  So for many years I have had to get by without certain things, in some cases just the accessories, but in some cases the instruments themselves.  I’ve never owned a saxophone, for instance, much as I’d love to.

My first bass guitar was a pink (probably used to be red, but faded in the sun) Squier with a warped neck, which made playing anything but open strings uncomfortable and bone-jarringly out of tune.  Still, for £100 it wasn’t bad, considering it came with a whopping 80 watt amp.  The bass was replaced several years ago, thankfully, with a wood body Aria (I’d give the actual model, but since it’s a “Research and Development” model I think it’s more of a one-off, so comparing it to the mass-produced model that resulted from it might not actually be particularly useful).  The Aria is a dream to play, and has a lovely warm tone to it.  The amp, however, was always pretty ropey, so it wasn’t a huge tragedy when it stopped working.  It was something electric, I know that much, and it just played a very loud humming noise while it was turned on.  So I left it turned off, gathering dust in the garage.  Until just before we moved, when I took it to the dump.  Sad, but somehow very therapeutic at the same time.

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