lollyplanet tossaway by Simon Aulman

Blimey - two albums in a row that are a tiny tiny bit "pop" ....... well, with attempts at steady beats and maybe even rhythms - has that old beardy-bloke gone and got some proper software or instruments .... is the old git making a bid for pop stardom ? - rest assured dear non-audiencees of this still mercifully non-audienced and unfrequented corner of Bandcamp, things are the same as ever and will never change - because they can't, they are beyond me - this is still all made on just a mic and my lovely battery-powered keyboard and then cunningly manipulated (ie bits put on "repeat" forever) in Audacity.

And that's not me saying "oh just think how fab this would be if I really did have proper instruments and posh software and knew proper musicians to suck up to and network with blah blah" - because if any of that happened everything would be even worse.

Our limitations aren't the things outside us, they are the thing inside us, and that is something I cannot change - my life would not be "better" or happier if I had a washing machine or TV or smartphone, and my next release will be some unpredictable stumbled-into droning thing that's reassuringly safe and predictable.

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Yesterday I was geared up to catch the ferry to Hythe and then whizz off on the open-top bus tour of the New Forest - almost literally a busman's holiday seeing as I know the New Forest better than I know the layout of my new house. But as so often happens nowadays, when the time came, I didn't - I stayed here and made this album instead.

Yes I missed out on the joy of meeting friends and others who I maybe don't like as much or at all, I missed out on random shopping, I missed out on eating stuff I got tempted into and which makes me feel ill the next day, I missed out on upsetting people - I do get exasperated in my old age - it'll happen to you too - and I missed out on getting upset by other people - though old age makes that stuff less and less upsetting and almost immediately forgotten.

And it's like today - I could leave home in about an hour and walk up the Itchen Way to Shawford to meet people and walk together to Twyford for the open day at some old waterworks or something and then have lunch together and then go on alone and walk to Petersfield, sleeping rough overnight on the way.

But that too will probably be another adventure that I'll pass on at the last moment. It maybe sounds like I'm succumbing to time and allowing my life to shrink in on itself until it's just the house then just the bed and then just my death. But I don't know. These sunny days make anything feel wonderful and I'm doing what I want to do and whenever I do anything else it's always with a feeling that I want to get back here and do this.

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All tracks recorded Saturday 6th August 2022, photo cover art what-you-will by me