Don't start, I never said I was going to be super-dilligent at blogging. It's not a case of an overactive social life, or having nothing to write about - more general apathy and forgetfulness. I'm forgetting a lot - usually words in the middle of sentences at work, it's unlikely my tongue-tied ramblings are doing much for the face of the company. Two weeks ago I accidentally opened a call with "Good Afternoon" at 9am, the caller got so irate that I didn't laugh uproariously at his "Ooh, that's early!" riposte and tried to carry on with the call in a professinal manner that he refused to speak to me, demanded to be transferred and when there was no one available, told me that I had no sense of humour, threatened to complain to his company, then hung up. You can only laugh in those situations, albet tinged with a nagging feeling of 'but what if he does complain?' (It's been a fortnight; he hasn't).
It's an easy enough mistake to make when you're having variations on the same conversation every six minutes for seven hours five days a week, sometimes your brain goes on autopilot and forgets it's past noon - and honestly, Between 12 and 8 I always open with 'Good Afternoon' and no one's once gone off in a huff because it was 6.45pm and I should have said 'Evening'. (This is largely because pople do not start listening to you until they've been on the phone for around three seconds, which also explains why people never register that they've called the wrong number, despite the fact that the company details are the first words that leave my mouth.)
This inability of mine to rub along adequately with repetition and constraint is the reason I don't much care for studio albums by one group, or artist. I very rarely want to listen to the same genre of music consecutively, even less so the same singer, possibly a product of the pre-ipod generation - a doyenne of the compilation tape.
I have a notebook in my kitchen with four pages of painstakingly created playlists for the last foreign summer holiday I took with my parents - day music, and evening music, every cd and cassette I, my parents or brother had in the house was scrutinised, and a handful of my dad's vinyl for good measure. The result is largely of it's time - 2003, I was still in my Ska and Soul phase, hadn't really got on board with appropriating many albums of my own so there was a lot of Less than Jake, mopey tracks from the Grease soundtrack and bookended by The Drifters.
Beyond the oesoteric musical choices though, the painstakingly created lists that had to be in my clearest, neatest handwriting otherwise it would sod the whole thing up (which is not so clear and neat by anyone else's standards) are an exercise in control at a time when I was fairly certain most of my peers thought I was a little too peculiar (occasionally saying it to my face, like it was a piece of coursework I'd forgotten to complete and they were only being helpful) and hung onto my questionable taste in aural poison as a comforter. Even with friends and family, I will get inwardly distressed if they choose to play one album or one artist when I'm around. It feels like I'm not in control. It feels bad. But it's not like you can explain that to someone without coming off like a self-important mental case, so I keep quiet.
