So, not a complete waste of time

What have I been doing? Well, I have been busy, though not with what I felt I should have been doing. Tomorrow is the January deadline day for the Deadlines For Writers prompt and this month I didn’t as sometimes happens forget about it. In fact, I’ve known about it pretty much since the beginning for the month.

The prompt is ‘Jewel’, but can I think of anything? Can I come up with a story? The obvious ones — a jewel, a gemstones or a gem and, perhaps discovery someone’s worth ‘as a friend’ or as ‘a parent’ blah, blah didn’t excite me. Then it occurred to me I could try a little lateral thinking and write something along the lines of ‘duel’ and ‘dual’. (I have two identities so submit two stories.

But still nothing sparked: I did think of one story, a ‘duel’ between two ultra-rich and snobby families in an exclusive ultra-rich ‘community’ in Vermont as to who was ‘top dog’ (that kind of thing is important to some people’ (and I have quote-marked ‘community’ because there is bugger all ‘community spirit’ there at all). But I just couldn’t get it off the ground.

Thought of this, thought of that, but nothing really convinced me, and so earlier today I decided I wasn’t going to force anything. It would probably been crap if I did. The trouble is that I was and am still feeling guilty about passing this month. It’s as though begging off will be the thin end of the wedge, and I’m proud that I have supplied two stories a month for over two years. But I had to be honest: I didn’t want to force anything and finally ‘gave myself permission’ to cop out this month.

That has helped a little, although not completely, but then life is too short. However . . .

I sat down around noon and started pissing around with Garageband and came up with this. I was trying to recreate a tune I cobbled together quite a few years ago, but in the event it turned out to be something different. I rather like it.

When I say cobbled together, that is precise: the guitar is an acoustic sent through a cheap portable amp (just €25 from Amazon) and the sound recorded through my Macbook’s pretty cheap and crappy ‘internal microphone’. Then I duplicated the guitar track twice and used a different setting for each of the three tracks. Here it is:

And here is the original, recorded as I say about 20 years ago. You can spot the similar bassline:

And I might as well post this one, what with that nice Mr Putin sabre-rattling and hoping to make a name for himself as a strong man. Not quite, Vlad, more of a prize dick, though I doubt I’ll get the chance to tell you to your face.