4 October 2026
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The Ultimate Voyage

Last night I was dressed in my concert blacks as the Charnwood Symphonic Wind Orchestra played a gig at Kegworth Village Hall in support of LOROS. One of our members, Mhairi, is doing a trek to Machu Picchu with them early next year and this was to support her wider fundraising for the local palliative care organisation. As an aside, we found the hall to be an excellent venue with a clear sound and less reverberation than you sometimes suffer in such places.

Since Mhairi is going on her travels, our conductor Catherine picked a set themed around modes of transport, covering land, sea and air. Some were fairly easy pieces we’ve played plenty of times before, like Take the A Train, Beyond the Sea and Come Fly with Me but others were new to us, quite challenging or both. That includes a couple of pieces that have been in the pad a long time but possibly never played out before, including Stephenson’s Rocket (Nigel Hess) and Tall Ships (Ron Goodwin).

We finished the evening with an out-of-this-world mode of transportation in Robert Buckley’s arrangement Doctor Who: Through Time and Space. All three bands have played this before (even the Training Band, despite it having some quite technically challenging moments) but this is the first time we’ve done it with the theremin part included, albeit played on an iPad app than an actual theremin.

The next concerts currently scheduled are 21 November (Charnwood Training Band at Hathern Baptist Church), 27 November (Charnwood Concert Band at All Saints Thorpe Acre – and at East Leake for the lights switch on the following afternoon) and 11 December (CSWO at Oaks in Charnwood).

3 October 2026
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Sing Around Songs – Saturday 3 October

Today I decided to take a regular guitar along to the sing around at All Saints Thorpe Acre church hall in Loughborough. I planned to make an early getaway, due to a gig this evening but I ended up staying for most of it.

I led a couple of songs. The first was You Wreck Me by Tom Petty. When I take it down to D, the chords suit the guitar and the range of the melody suits my voice although the original, for Tom’s slightly higher range, was done in F. My second contribution was I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash. I introduced it by remarking that, when I first heard it, I wondered what Lorraine had done that was so bad (if you know the lyrics, that will make sense). After I’d finished, another wit observed that they thought it was “I can see Clare Lee now Lorraine has gone!”. I did that one in G although I wonder if I need to take it down a notch or two. Most of it sits quite well but, if I want to take the last line up an octave, I might need to be starting a tone or so lower!

The main reason I stayed longer than originally planned was that John Hunter asked if I could back him up on a medley he was doing (Sweet Georgia Brown / Ain’t She Sweet / Five Foot Two). That was a fun opportunity although I had to bring out quite a few of the “expensive” jazz chords to keep up.

2 October 2026
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The Game That Keeps on Giving

Unfortunately I didn’t blog about when I started playing Minecraft. It was after the official formal release date in November 2011 but before Microsoft bought it in 2014 (I remember having to shift my account across to the Microsoft servers). That means I’ve been playing it, on and off, for well over a decade. The starting experience (quickly gather some resources, build a shelter and get inside it before the first night falls and the scary things comes out) remains similar but every update brings new things to explore and those updates are starting to come more frequently.

In many ways this is a good thing. I enjoyed tracking down the sulphur caves in the previous update and the dappled forest environment that was added in the most recent one. However, it does mean that there’s an increasing amount of options to keep track of. I suspect that, like me, many players seize on a few of them, have a quick go on a few more and barely even consider many more. I’ve still not done things like track down “Sniffer eggs” or even venture to the End dimension and attempt to pass the finish line (after which you keep playing but with access to a couple more things to help explore further and faster).

I do wonder if there will come a point when the decision is made not to continue adding updates or if they decide that I need to pay a monthly subscription to maintain access? Either of those would be all I need to put down my pixelated pickaxe for good. Even as it is, I can go for months without dipping a toe in until something (often one of those newly released features) piques my interest. We’ll see but I hope I can continue to enjoy the occasional mining and crafting for now.

1 October 2026
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Squash

I harvested the last of my ‘Jumbo Pink Banana’ squash today – the huge one on the right, which is almost 2kg on its own and the tiny one in the middle, which comes in at only a fraction of that.

The one on the left was a volunteer that came up in my polytunnel and got replanted out at the allotment. I’m not entirely sure what it is but it looks a lot like a butternut squash except for the colour. It probably came from seeds scraped out of the middle of a squash I bought last year. I’ll have to be a little cautious as curcubits, while promiscuous at interbreeding, can often produce offspring that can be mildly toxic. However, assuming it isn’t bitter (apparently the key giveaway) I’m set for some decent soups and other meals.

30 September 2026
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Tidying Always Required

I was adding another site to the chord sheets site I’ve been developing for my church and spotted a couple of little details that need tidying up. In this case, it was some songs not rendering and others having chords at the start of a line dropped down level to the text. Both were simple fixes (drop tab characters that had snuck into JSON text strings for the first, insert an invisible character for chords without a corresponding bit of text underneath for the second) but reminded me that there are always little things to be found that could do with fixing.

It also reminded me of the need to check carefully over adjustments made by AI tools, which have been used in recent developments on the site and led to both situations as other things were fixed (Cursor in this case). It isn’t that AI makes more mistakes than humans – I’m quite capable of fouling things up on my own! However, because it can help move forward at a rapid pace there is more chance of unexpected side effects piling up to become tangled, knotty problems. At least it was able to help me identify the cause of the problems when I asked it to look although, for the tabs one (a handful of lines in 3 song files), I opted to fix it manually to keep me close to the code.

29 September 2026
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A little addition to the gig bag…

With a recent offer from Thomann.de, I decided to pick up an HX Stomp. It is a less capable device than my tried and tested Helix LT but it is also substantially smaller. For the large number of settings where I’m playing my bass and only have one or two FX that I’m likely to want to turn on or off (plus a background set to give a baseline to the sound) I think it is going to do well. It got its first outing at the concert band rehearsal tonight and I think it is going to work out well.

Did I mention it was small? I’d assumed it was about twice the size it actually is so that is an extra bonus. I do need to work out what I can trim from my standard LT set up as I don’t have so many blocks to play with and I do need to figure out how to control what I need via the reduced interface but it is early days. I’m not getting rid of the LT but that will be for gigs where I need extra levels of control and connection and where I can be sure of the floor space to fit it in.

28 September 2026
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Catching Up

The reason we had two trips over the Dartford Crossing this weekend was that we were attending an event at the church we used to attend in Lewisham, Hither Green Baptist Church. HGBC was celebrating with Rev Richard Blyth who helped restart the church after it had closed in the late 1980s. He was still there when Jane and I arrived and, by the time he moved on in 2006, I was serving as an elder and was involved in the process that led to the calling of the present minister, Rev Honesty Kachidza.

My contribution to the service was playing bass and I had the privilege of leading a couple of worship songs. I picked one that I’d brought to the church (There is a Voice That Must Be Heard by Paul Oakley) and one I learned there (The Love of God by Frederick Lehman). I’m not sure how much they’ve sung them in the 18 years since I moved on but the congregation joined in with enthusiasm and passion. HGBC has had plenty of challenges over the years, and I think the view of history on Saturday afternoon was somewhat rose-tinted, but they are still a fellowship which loves to worship God and lift Jesus up in sung praises.

We also took the opportunity to do some other visits: one of Jane’s sisters, a school friend of mine that I’ve not seen for a decade or more and a school friend of Jane’s who she hasn’t seen in the flesh for significantly longer. It was a lot of driving to get there and back but certainly worth it.

27 September 2026
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Flash Mob

I’m not sure if this afternoon’s Charnwood Concert Band gig in Queen’s Park (Loughborough) really counts as a “Flashmob” because we were on the bill and some of us were on the stage. However, many of the band started around the edges of the audience so listeners would have heard sound from the front and then unexpected additions around them coalescing into a fuller band lining up in front of the stage.

It certainly seemed to work quite well. I was on tuba for this as my morning engagement at St Theo’s meant I couldn’t guarantee getting back much before the 1:30pm “kick off”, so not time to set up even a small bass rig but it is nice to get that instrument out with bands other than the training band from time to time.

26 September 2026
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Blinding Lights

The worst thing about motorway driving at night is the blinding lights of other cars. Perhaps it isn’t quite true to say they are blinding but a combination of people driving with their headlights on (I imagine so they can see) and the high brightness bulbs many cars have fitted make it very tiring on the eye. Still, at least we made it safely home after our trip back from the south east.

25 September 2026
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The Fender Debacle

Earlier this year, the Fender music company dropped a bombshell. On the basis of a small court case in Germany where the defendant didn’t bother to show up, granting them an undefended win, they slapped cease and desist notices on a number of guitar builders and suppliers. The claim was that the Stratocaster guitar has a unique shape that should be protected by law as a work of art and that the recipients should stop manufacture of similar instruments, destroy their stock, turn over their customer records and, as the cherry on top, pay Fender’s legal costs.

Given that the defendant in the original case was a company based in China and, more importantly, that the strat type design is a beautiful but functional response to the ergonomics of guitar playing which has been widely used for around 75 years without the status of protected art, the widespread response of the guitar community has amounted to “what are they smokin’?”. However, that doesn’t stop the fact that Fender still haven’t called off the dogs or issued anything like an apology and the issue is still ongoing.

When I picked up a five string bass this year, Fender and their subsidiary Squier were off the cards for me. My experience of Fenders is that most of the high price tag is for the name, not the quality, so they were never a contender but I think Squier do good stuff and I still regularly play the Jaguar bass I picked up a few years ago. One person whose decisions are more influential than mine who has also sworn off Fenders is guitarist Tim Pierce. Here is his recent video, talking about the latest update and also giving a perspective from one of his guitar builder friends who is still under the burden of Fender’s bullying tactics:

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