So this blog has been sort of active again this year, now and then, after a fashion. Sporadically, shall we say. I’m still digging through my boxes and still buying records, which in turn are throwing up plenty of tracks which are worth sharing. Quite often, mostly in the middle of the night or in the morning before I get up, I can formulate a post in my head. I think to myself – yes that sounds good – although sometimes, like a slippery eel, the words subsequently escape me (rather like the memory of dreams do). Usually, though, it is simply that somehow the actual physical act of writing a few words and formulating a post is a step too far.
I’ve been asking myself why this feeling of mañana surrounding this blog pervades nowadays.
I’m not sure I have an answer. I guess I started to miss a beat here about six years ago, which coincided with me retiring from work. In theory then I now have more time on my hands now so that shouldn’t be the issue. But maybe it is. I think the act of publishing this blog was a way of switching off from work, marry that to the fact I have always worked better to a deadline (working meant less free time which effectively limited the time I could dedicate to the blogging lark). Now I’m retired there are holidays, days out, afternoon visits to the pub, gardening, chasing butterflies around a field, fishing, DIY (lots of that when our daughter bought a flat a few years ago, and possibly more on the horizon soon as our son has bought a small house); and this year a rekindled and growing obsession with catching and recording moths (the collector instinct again, I let them go of course). In between all that I could easily choose to dedicate some time to writing a blog post but, crucially perhaps, I can’t invent deadlines because all the time now is my own and all those activities are enjoyable so I find there is nothing to switch off from and writing this blog, certainly when I was working, was I think a sort of escape mechanism.
The other thing I have noticed in retirement, and as I get older, is my increasing desire to be outdoors, amongst nature. If the weather’s good, which it certainly has been this year, that could mean I’m simply lounging in the garden reading or listening to music. (It’s a hard life! Whilst I’m sitting there sunning myself I could write a blog, I hear you say? But actually for me that would be impossible. I need to type on a laptop, or at a pinch on a tablet, and reading the screen on such devices - at least the ones I own - is impossible).
Perhaps all my musings on the subject is just a lot of hot air though and it is simply that retirement is just one endless mañana moment! (Apologies, and sympathy, to all those that are slaving at the coal face).
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I have just read that Leslie Wilson passed away a few days ago. He was a lead member, and singer, with The New Birth in the seventies. I had a real soft spot for them back in the day. Their single It’s Been A Long Time was one of the first few soul singles I owned, and I have a couple of their albums. I saw someone describe them as Rotary Connection meets Earth Wind & Fire which sums up their sound pretty well I think. Their output has been plundered many times by the hip-hop world and the samplers.
It’s Been A Long Time has featured here before – back in 2008! – and I notice then I was bleating on about not having posted for a while so perhaps it has been forever thus here! The “while” was measured as only a couple of weeks back then though.
The New Birth – It’s Been A Long Time 1973
RIP Leslie Wilson (born June 17th 1953, died October 27th 2025).
