It's What Your Left Arm's For

In a belated attempt to gain some strength in my arms, the left one at least, I spend a good part of my trip to and from work channel hopping on the radio. No fancy steering wheel mounted controls for me, so my poor weedy arm sometimes start to cramp up by the time I find a couple of minutes of respite in amongst the usual drivetime dross.

What a delight then, when you get a few songs worth listening to, concertinaed together like buses. Last night saw me home with Oasis's 'Whatever', 'Knowing Me Knowing You' and 'That's Way I Like It'. This rich vein was carried into this morning with Blur's 'Song 2', before we hit the mother lode with The Jacksons colossal 'Can You Feel It'; I defy anyone not to turn the radio up when it comes on. At the end of it, the idiot DJ piped up that the song 'goes on a bit at the end', probably as justification for talking all over it, but admitted that it was a 'good song' nonetheless. Talk about being damned with faint praise! Later on, there was The Killers 'Human', which seems to be one of those that everyone likes, and that was about it.

I wonder if the technology exists where the radio has a setting to scan for music as soon as a lone voice interrupts. This would have the dual purpose of blanking out DJs and cutting off songs with ridiculous talking bits in the middle. I think I'd pay a bit extra for that. After that, maybe there could be some sort of filter that slings out songs that nobody likes! I know everyone has different tastes but we all know which songs I'm talking about here. Whaddya mean 'see those above'?!

A propos of not very much, I'm reading John Peel's autobiography, Margrave Of The Marshes, at the moment and enjoying it very much. I probably wouldn't say anything different from the numerous reviews already out there, but his death caused me one of two (as far as I can remember) instances of in-work tears during my career, as I like to refer to it when I want to give myself a good laugh. Just a droplet or two, you understand, nothing too disgraceful.

The same cannot be said, unfortunately, about the first occasion. In my defence, this was many years ago and revolved around the news of the death of a dog. Mercifully, it was only witnessed by one person, who had the grace to leave me in peace and never mention the matter again. At this point, and to quash any misconception that I’m some sort of serial cry baby, I’d like to make it clear that I don’t think it does anyone any favours to blub in work and usually try to avoid it!

Thank goodness we’ve cleared that up. Can anyone remember what 'It's what your right arm's for' was advertising?