So there I was, just ten minutes ago, standing by the sandwiches and wraps stand in the Marks and Spencers shop in the Trowell service station just outside Nottingham about to purchase a Hoisin Duck wrap when
I had the comedy equivalent of the Eureka moment. There’s just no telling when genius will strike – in the bath or in the Marks and Spensers sandwiches and Wraps isle. So here’s my joke:

I have a friend who is totally blind and totally deaf. He has very poor orientation with no sense of direction; he’s always crashing into stuff and falling over. However, he has this uncanny ability to locate checkout tills. As soon as we’re in a shop he moves at great speed and with complete ease in the direction of the checkout till. I asked him “how do you do it?” to which he replied, “Well, I suppose it’s because I’m counter intuitive”.

I’m currently in a car with my fellow
Young’uns,
heading back home after a gig in Surrey. Gardeners questions is on radio 4, and so we’re driving through the streets with the windows down, Gardeners Questions on full volume,
blasting out conversations about Couch grass, Pine weed and the best way to propagate Delphiniums. That’s the way we roll, o yeah!

The Hartlepool tall ships podcast is coming even sooner than it was when I mentioned that it was “coming soon” the last time. I’ll be back with it in the next few days.

I dedicate this blog post to Jamey the security guard at Gateshead bus Station who reads the blog. The strange thing about writing a blog is that I get really surprised and taken aback when someone says they read it, even though the whole point of writing it is for people to read, as well as to satisfy my ego obviously. Also, people at work have now discovered the blog and my Youtube videos; This has led to a few interesting encounters where people come up to me and make references to things in my videos and posts. So rather than just saying “hey I watched your
Bleating Love Parody on Youtube”,
they will come up to me and say something like “I can’t believe he shot the poor sheep”. As I’m in work mode, living under my work-based Alta ego Davis Eagles
(see this post if you’re confused)
I’m not really expecting this and I find the whole thing a bit baffling especially when I’m in a group of people who are completely oblivious as to why a colleague has come up to me and said “I can’t believe he shot the poor sheep”. Jamy the security guard at Gateshead bus station walked up to me a few days ago and greeted me by saying rather loudly in front of a group of very bemused passengers, “I love your Mongol Sex post mate”. People started quickly inching away from us, a bit fearful, unsure of what he could possibly mean by “my Mongol Sex Post”.
I then had to explain to the frightened crowd that he was referring to
a blog post I’d written which was perfectly innocent,
but I don’t think this really placated anyone. So hello to you Jamey and to anyone else associated with Gateshead bus station.

Thanks for reading, bye!

In Google webmaster tools, you can see what searches people do in order to find and click on your website. The most common search terms are things like “David Eagle” and
“the Young’uns”
but down near the bottom of the list is the search term “Mongol sex”.
Presumably this is due to
this blog post,
where I wrote (on the subject of Shortwave radio):
“you’re on the shortwave band and that slight touch can tune you into a completely different station and into a completely different world. One moment you’re listening to an enraged American evangelist damning you to hell unless you send him money, then you touch the dial ever so slightly and you’re listening to a French radio drama with Lesbian sex scenes; then the sound of a Mongolian throat singer, belting out the popular Mongolian hits of the day. …”

I can just imagine some sweaty pervert (o god, I hope no one finds me by searching for “sweaty pervert”) breathing heavily over his laptop, anticipating some hot Mongolian porn, finding my website in Google search with the following words shown:
“… Lesbian sex scene .. Mongolian throat …”.
then clicking to see what this Lesbian sex scene Mongolian throat website is all about, only to see a picture of my face and a blog post about Vick Reeves and smelly pirates with hairy knees. O well, you never know, perhaps there are people out there with a sexual interest in Vick Reaves, smelly pirates and hairy knees. I look forward to more revelations from Google in the near future.

Hartlepool’s Tall Ships Young’uns Podcast coming soon!

“Pirates”, “pilgrims”, “pub” and “philosophy” are four words that begin with the same consonant and so I suppose is an example of alliteration; however the word philosophy does not begin with a hardened P sound and so is it really alliteration in the true sense? Thank god for the Internet; I could probably find this out relatively quickly. In the olden days we’d have to sit and watch hundreds of
QI
episodes in the vain hope of finding the answer. I may do an Internet search to get some information about this and include my findings at the end of this post. You’ll have to read on though to find out. Now I’ve got you interested.

I’m writing this post from a bus. I know this will be great news to you all; I tried writing my last blog post from a different location to the bus but I’m sure you’ll all agree that I write much better when I’m blogging from a bus. There’s a certain poetry about my bus posts; a certain je ne sais quoi maybe – I don’t know. Before I actually write about what I’d planned to write about, I should probably set the scene a little bit; it might explain why this post might turn out to be a bit rubbish.

As regular readers will know, I usually write from the x9 bus. Each morning I get the 36 bus from Hartlepool to Bilingham and then the x9 from Billingham to Gateshead. I usually set off from my house at 7:30 and arrive in Gateshead (where I work) at about 9:15.
I have managed to inadvertently train my brain to associate work with blessed relief. Invariably, by the time I get to work, I am utterly desperate for the toilet; I run into the building with a wide grin on my face, race across to my office, throw down my bags and coat and rush down the corridor in the direction of the toilet, panting and shouting “thank god, I’m here!” Most of the staff probably think I’m a crazed workaholic and this is probably why they avoid me, but in actuality I’m just a man with a very full bladder, exulted by the fact that I can finally relieve my liquid burden – which is a very poetic way of saying “have a piss”; I’m so poetic.

The first reason this blog post might be rubbish (although it’s going pretty well so far I’m sure you’ll agree) is because I am even more desperate for the toilet than usual. The reason for this is because I’m running late. I set off from my house at the same time that I usually do; in fact it was slightly earlier than normal. Either the 36 bus didn’t turn up or it had come early. I was not late. Nevertheless, the bus didn’t come and I had to get the next one, meaning I had missed my connecting bus. Because I’d been stood at a bus stop for 30 minutes as opposed to the usual two minutes, the cold had gone to my bladder and I started to need the toilet. Unfortunately, because I’d missed the x9 bus from Billing ham, I would now have to travel even further on the 36 to Norton to catch the x10. Unfortunately again, I have another 20 minute wait in Norton before the x10 comes, meaning another 20 minutes for the cold to effect my bladder, increasing my need for the toilet. What makes the situation even more frustrating is that Norton is in the opposite direction to Gateshead, so I’ve had to travel further away from the place I want to be and then come back again in the opposite direction. I set off from my house at 7:30; I was stood at a bus stop, desperate for the toilet, in the cold about 50 minutes later from leaving my house, further away from the place I wanted to get to than I was when I was lying in bed this morning. I’m eventually starting to head in the right direction again after one hour and 15 minutes of setting off from my house.

Phew! Glad I got that off my chest. I hope you managed to follow all that. I imagine that in the future, perhaps when I’m dead, there will be throngs of David Eagle worshipers making pilgrimages, setting off early in the mornings to travel the famed route as detailed in this blog post. Congregations from all over the world will set off from my house – which has now been turned into a David Eagle themed place of worship – and stand at the relevant bus stops – which are still standing exactly as they did in my day because they have been deemed as buildings of historic interest and are protected under heritage law. The congregation will drink a special potion that makes the drinker desperate for the toilet – to be honest drinking lots of water would have had just the same effect but the potion makers got in on the act and started profiting on the back
Of my name; this makes me very angry, as I specifically wrote in an authoritative and widely quoted blog post about the evils of false profits (you see what I did there?) The pilgrims will eventually – after a large amount of tedious bus travel – arrive at my place of work which has also been turned into a place of worship. They will run into the building with broad grins on their faces, race through the corridors towards the toilets shrieking ecstatically “thank god, we’re here!” They then all pile into the toilet and what happens after that is probably best left to your imagination, but this is something else about the whole affair that upsets me, and I do not condone that sort of behaviour in my name.

Anyway, last Tuesday we, is in
The Young’uns
recorded our duet with
Vick Reeves
about smelly pirates with hairy knees. It went very well. I feel really sorry for the studio staff: the producers and technicians working on the project had to spend a whole day in a recording studio, recording different musicians and actors and the Young’uns doing take after take, singing the same one minute song: “I’m a smelly pirate, with hairy knees” etc etc, over and over again.

I suppose I better explain a bit more about this song and the film since all I’ve mentioned so far is that my folk group are singing a song with Vick Reeves about smelly pirates with hairy knees. The project is a film animation that has a budget of £3’0000000 – I’m sure that at least a third of that money was spent on the smelly pirate song. I think that the story and the songs are all written by children. The film is animated and produced by the film company who are responsible for Wallace and Grommet – not responsible for them in terms of their welfare, making sure they’ve got enough cheese; I suppose you knew what I meant. They also have celebrities doing various voices, such as
David Walliams,
Harry Hill,
Miranda Hart,
Catherine Tate
and of course Vick Reeves.
O, and, of course, The young’uns.
The project isn’t complete yet and so I’ve not heard the finished smelly Pirate song but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

An accurate barometer of the Young’uns’ success and popularity is the amount of paperwork we have to sign. When we first started out doing this folk music lark, we would just do gigs in pubs in front of who ever would listen. As time has gone on, we’ve had to sign contracts for performances, appearances and recordings; these contracts have grown exponentially both in frequency and content. We did a gig recently at the Sage theatre in Gateshead. We were one of a number of acts on the bill that night, which was a folk against fascism event. The folk against fascism concept derives from the comments made by
British National Party
leader
Nick Griffin
who suggested that bnp members should go to folk clubs because they might be a good place for recruiting members. This inference that folk clubs and folk music was in anyway associated with the beliefs of the bnp was met with outrage by the folk fraternity including many folk musicians and many high-profiled singers who made anti-fascists speeches and countered the idea that British folk music was fascist simply because it was British, celebrating tradition and history. Anyway, we were only on stage at the sage for about 15 minutes and it took us longer than that to read and sign the various contracts: the health and safety contract, image rights, copyright etc. The copyright document was interesting. You have to write the names of all the songs you’re going to perform that night – which is a bit of an issue since we normally don’t decide this until we’re on stage. You then have to write down the name of the song writer for each of the songs so that they can get the money from
PRS.
This is a bit of a fruitless exercise as the majority of the songs we sing are either written by people, who have been dead for centuries, are people who aren’t on prs, or the songs are traditional folk songs
and the writer is unknown. If this trend continues and we have to sign even longer and more ludicrously convoluted contracts before we can actually do a gig then we might have to start increasing our fee to compensate for the large amount of time taken up by the contracts.

After the recording, we went to the pub to celebrate the success of this soon to be historic song. Just before we left the pub, there was a group of people who started filing in. One of them approached us and asked: “here for the philosophy in pubs night lads?” He was disappointed when we informed him that we had no idea what a philosophy in pubs night was and that unfortunately we had to scoot off and would not be joining in; apparently they want new blood in the group. I asked what philosophy in pubs was all about and apparently it’s a group of people who meet each fortnight in the pub, take a vote about what subject to talk about, then philosophise. I decided to do an interview with the group which we’ll feature on a future
Young’uns podcast
episode along with the pirate song.

Anyway, this brings me to the final paragraph and now you know the reason for the four p words in the blog post title. According to my Internet searching, words still count as being alliterated even if the consonants don’t sound the same, so “Pirates with pneumonia in pubs philosophising” is alliteration even if they don’t all start with hardened P sounds. Anyway, the bus has finally arrived at Gateshead and so I can finally go to work and enjoy making a P sound of my very own – or should that be “pee” sound (o I’m so poetic!)

All of my blog posts this year have been composed from busses. I’ve decided to write this post somewhere different than a bus to see if it alters the way I write at all. See what you think. I am writing this post at the Sage theatre in Gateshead, in the cafe area, about to do a rehearsal.
The Young’uns
got an invitation to be on the soundtrack of a film that apparently features
David Walliams,
Vick Reeves,
Catherine Tate,
Miranda Hart
and
Harry Hill.
Apparently we’re singing a duet with Vick Reeves about stinky pirates with hairy knees; as you do.
I don’t think we’ll actually be meeting Vick Reeves; I think he’s recording his bit in London. I’m sure he’ll be very disappointed when he finds out that we’ll be recording our parts in the North East,.

So that’s the “Vick Reeves, hairy knees” part of the title explained. The weakest link” part is to do with a radio link that I heard while in a taxi last Friday afternoon. It was the link just before the news, and the presenter obviously wanted to try and do a clever segway between the last song (the Scissor Sisters and I don’t Feel like Dancing) into the news bulletin where the main story was the overthrowing of president Mubarak in Egypt. I don’t have a recording of the actual broadcast and so I’ve re-enacted it for you with just a tiny bit of extemporisation and exageration.

On a “weakest link” theme, my friend Ben went to Anne Robinson’s house on New Year eve as part of his band who were asked to perform for the guests. Unfortunately they didn’t use “the weakest link” theme as a riff throughout their songs which is what I would have done.

And you thought I was just an ordinary bloke. O no, I’ve got friends who play gigs at Anne Robinson’s house, and my band are singing a song with Vick Reeves about Stinky pirates with hairy knees.

We record the song for this film on Tuesday so I’ll tell you more about it in my next post.

It was around this time last year when myself and
fellow Young’un Sean Cooney
were working on a community arts project, going into some of Hartlepool’s primary schools to teach children about the history of Hartlepool. Regular listeners to the
Young’uns podcast
Will be aware that Sean works as a community artist, going into schools to teach sea Shanties and traditional folk songs.

The Young’uns
have been involved in a number of educational projects, teaching children about the history of Hartlepool and working with the children to create songs about what they have learned. We also take the children to visit old people’s homes and local churches to meet with Hartlepool’s older residents. The children ask questions about how their home town used to be and what has changed. This is obviously a valuable experience for the children and a tremendously rewarding one for the older residents, who relish the opportunity to impart stories about their own childhood.

At the start of 2010, Sean was commissioned to work on a project that taught primary school children about the history of Old Hartlepool; They were then helped to write songs, poems and stories about what they had learned. The children also interviewed Hartlepool’s older residents. Sean also got them to act in a traditional folk play known as a Mummers’ play. I was commissioned to record the whole thing and compile it all on to a cd.

We will be recording new Young’uns podcasts soon but I thought that since we’ve got loads of material we haven’t released yet, it would be sensible
To release these podcasts first before recording new episodes. Next week, we release a podcast that covers the Hartlepool Tall ships festival that occurred last summer, but this week we release the cd that covers 2010’s community arts project: Hild’s Tales: stories of old Hartlepool through music, drama and oral history.

This wasn’t originally intended as a Young’uns podcast but as a cd which was sent to the funding body who supported the project as evidence that we were doing our job; so you’ll hear a much more serious David Eagle than you normally would.
Click here to listen,
click here to download.

Well, you can’t say that this blog doesn’t have variety;
My last post was a DJ mix
and this week it’s a community arts project featuring primary school children. What will the next post bring? Will I be on a bus? Find out, soon!

So here it is, the first ever David Eagle’s Pick and Mix, just in time for the new Chinese year – the year of the rabbit, which should be manner from heaven for the promotions team at Ann Summers.

56 songs in a 40 minute mix. A DJ set that is designed to celebrate the universality of music: no genre dictations or restriction about the time period of the music. This is not a DJ
Set for the club; this is a DJ set for your ears, for your soul. I’m not trying to impassion you to char char slide to my beats, or wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care, or “oo oo” to the rhythm. I’ve just realised that I’m probably coming across as a pretentious snob, but the point I’m trying to make is that this is a mix designed for the music fan: someone who doesn’t bass their music preferences purely on a cultural identity – because a certain group of people say that a certain song or artist is “cool” or “the latest thing”.
My last blog post
was a fairly extensive explanation of why I wanted to release this project, so I think the best thing to do now is to just give you the links to listen and download and hopefully enjoy what I’ve put together.

I’ve provided a full tracklist of the music featured in the mix. There is also a link to a free Spotify playlist that contains most of the tracks in the mix. Not all the tracks are hosted on Spotify but I thought it would be good to provide a playlist with those songs that Spotify does have because a lot of the tracks are only featured in the mix for short periods of time and are generally mixed with other songs. Plus if you don’t enjoy my mixing, you can hopefully at least hear some quality music that you might have not heard before.

So then, here it is: David Eagle’s Pick and Mix: Episode 1.
Click here to listen
Click here to download.

And now on to the tracklist:

Eastenders theme
Sergei Prokofiev – Montagues and Capulets
Xzibit – X
J-Kwon – Tipsy
nina simone – feeling good
Bentley rhythm ace – bentley’s gonna sort you out
James Brown – I Feel Good
Chemical Brothers – Music Response
Flanders and Swann – The Wompom
Pendulum – Slam
Queen – We will Rock You
C. C. S – Whole Lotta Love (Top of the Pops theme)
Faith No More – Epic
Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out
Missy Elliott – Get Ur Freak On
Jimi Hendrix – Voodoo Child
Negativland – Moments to Remember Raining Hard etc
Dream Theater – Home
The Flashbulb – Kirlian Shores
System of a Down – Arto
The Offspring – Pay the Man
Bjork – It’s Oh So Quiet
Venetian Snares – Boarded Up Swan Entrance
The Flashbulb – My Life of Loving Ghosts
House of Pain – Jump Around
Bubba Sparxxx – Ugly
Kid Carpet – Jump
OPM – Heaven is a Halfpipe
CKY – Quite Bitter Beings
Papa Roach – Last Resort
Daft Punk – Oh Yeah
Soulwax – Too Many Djs
Aquabats – I fell Asleep on my Arm
Korn – Freak on a Leash
dizzee rascal – Fix up, Look Sharp
RUN-DMC – Walk This Way
Justin Timberlake – Like I Love You
Focus – Sylvia
Max Tundra – Labial
The Beatles – A Day in the Life
Dusty Springfield – Son of a preacher man
Buffalo Springfield – For What Its Worth
Skee-lo- I Wish
The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
Kelis – Milkshake
High Rankin – Dont Carry On Like A Rude Boy when Daddy’s got a Yacht
Pendulum – Set me on Fire
BT – Every Other Way
Crosby Stills and Nash – Carry On”
Gorillaz – 5/4
Canned Heat – On the Road Again
Booker T & The MGS – Green Onions
The Mojo Men – She’s My Baby
Kansas – Carry on Wayward son
Muse – Knights of Cydonia
Wolfmother – Woman

————

You can hear a free Spotify playlist
Featuring many of the tracks in the mix
Here.

That’s all for now. I already have the next mix entirely planned out in my head, but I think the next project might be the first
Youngun’s Podcast
of 2011. I’ll be back with a blog post (probably written from a bus) very soon.

When I was around six years old, my nana worked in a news agents. My brothers and I would often go there when she was working. She probably harboured the grossly inaccurate illusion that we went there to see her, whereas the reality was that we went for the free sweets. Working in the news agents, she got a sweet allowance – these were decadent times. My brothers would always have a systematic approach to sweet picking; they had specific preferences, but I would always go for the Pick and Mix option and select sweets at random. Being blind, I was able to put my hand into a jar and put a sweet into the bag without having much of an idea as to what it was. I loved the surprise element: putting my hand into my random bag of sweets, unaware of what I was about to receive. Would it be
chocolate, candy, something liquoricey, fruity or an explosion of fizz? I loved the variety, the contrasts of taste, texture, shape and size.

Nowadays I don’t really eat sweets, but I do listen to a lot of music. Music today is what sweets were to me when I was six.
Often my approach to listening to music is the same as my approach was for making a Pick and Mix. I have a large music library: thousands of tracks in every genre from any period of time. By pressing the shuffle button on the player, I get a randomized selection from my library. I also use Napster which sometimes adds tracks to the playlist that it thinks I might like, based on the kind of music I have in my library. As I have every type of music in my library, Napster usually gets very confused and starts playing any old rubbish, assuming that just because I happen to like one specific NSYNC track for its production, that I will inevitably like to listen to a Westlife hit. Now and again however it does present me with an undiscovered gem. The experience is the same one that I used to get from pick and mixes when I was younger, only now it’s with music.

When I was about ten, my dad discovered this local record shop that sold old second hand vinyl and cassettes. He would sometimes go in their and brows to see what they had. This was in my opinion the perfect opportunity for me to spend my pocket money. I had no idea what I was looking for. I taped all the songs I wanted which were in the charts from the radio, (along with a few of my favourite time checks of course). There was a section of the shop that sold records and tapes for
£1 or less. I would immediately head to this part of the store and select a handful of records. I had no idea what was on the records, I would just choose randomly. I would then take them straight to the counter, without letting dad see, and buy them. The reason I didn’t want dad to see was because I didn’t want him to know what I’d got before I did. It had to be a total surprise.
I wouldn’t know what the record was until it was playing.

I loved the whole experience: sitting cross legged on my bedroom floor with a pile of records, taking the record out of the sleeve, putting it on the player and then dropping down the arm to reveal …

Rolf Harris, singing about Jake the Peg with his extra leg. I’d never heard that song or of Rolf Harris before that moment. I remember hearing it and instantly falling in love with it. It felt as if I’d had a kind of epiphany. One minute earlier, I was a stupid, naive ten year old boy. Then this happened. I was now truly a man. I loved that record: Rolf Harris’s greatest hits. I thought Rolf Harris was a genius. The first track was Jake the Peg, and as Rolf Diddleiddlummed, I laughed loud and heartily all the way through the song. The second track was Two Little Boys. I remember being very moved by this song; I might have even cried. I was astounded by the brilliance of this man, whose name I didn’t even know yet because I hadn’t found out what was written on the record sleeve. One moment I had been laughing raucously to Jake the Peg, and then, a couple of minutes later, I was wiping the tears away as the sounds of Two Little Boys entered my ears for the first time and moved my soul. I’m sure you all remember where you were when you first heard Rolf Harris. I certainly do. It was a magical moment, one of many magical moments that my random record purchasing gave me. I wouldn’t say I’m a massive Rolf Harris fan now, but at that moment, sitting on my bedroom floor at the record player, I was spellbound.

I mentioned in a
previous blog post
that I used to love listening to the radio at nights for the same kind of reason. I used to switch over to the shortwave band and start moving the dial to see what I would find. Shortwave is nothing like
FM; you don’t know what you’re going to get. There’s about ten stations on FM and hundreds on shortwave. YOU rotate the dial on the FM band and you get the same old recognised stations, but rotating the dial when you’re tuned to shortwave is a very different experience, a magical experience. The sound that the radio makes as its tuning is a sequence of beeps and crackles, as opposed to the fairly prosaic hiss of FM. You only have to touch the dial when you’re on the shortwave band and that slight touch can tune you into a completely different station and into a completely different world. One moment you’re listening to an enraged American evangelist damning you to hell unless you send him money, then you touch the dial ever so slightly and you’re listening to a French radio drama with Lesbian sex scenes; then the sound of a Mongolian throat singer, belting out the popular Mongolian hits of the day. Again, it’s the randomness of it all, the surprise element that I loved. I got that same feeling with my random record selections,
Although disappointingly I never managed to procure a record with a Lesbian sex drama on it.

I love the concept of DJing for the same reason: mixing different tracks into each other to create a musical collage. But I often get board of a lot of DJs because they generally play only a certain type of music: They’re either a drum and bass DJ or a dance DJ or a Hip Hop DJ etc. Their DJ sets are usually designed for clubs, for people to dance to. This dictates the style of the DJ set. The tracks are often 4/4 and have a similar tempo. I want a DJ to create mixes that take on all genres and provide constant surprises for the listener. Notice I wrote listener, not clubber; I want a DJ set to be like hitting the shuffle button on a massive, diverse music library and playing the randomized selection as a continuing, structured mix. This brings me to the point of this blog post – we got their in the end.

David Eagle’s Pick and Mix is a DJ set that features all types of music, embracing anything from any period of time. I’m putting the finishing touches to my first mix and I’ll release it in just a few days. I’m slightly wary of this project because it’s unlike anything I’ve released before, but it’s an experiment I’m excited to try and I hope that we’ll go on this musical adventure together. I’m not a professional DJ, but I wanted to really try and mix the songs together, rather than just segway from one song to another. This isn’t just me playing my favourite records. I am not just picking and playing songs. O no. I am mixing them into a crazy, multifascited, all encompassing thirty minute mix. That’s my plan anyway. Wish me luck! Standby!

O well, I tried, but its back to the usual, standard, boring titles again I’m afraid; But at least I’m still blogging from the exciting locations, as I write once again from the x9 bus. I’D like to make a personal plea to Father Christmas: Can you please, next year, deliver pairs of ear phones to all the kids in the northeast of England? Please! there’s a whole orchestra of kids with mobile phones blurring out generic dance music. The vehicle is awash with hi hat and bass drum – without the bass element because the phone speakers don’t actually bother with bass. What’s going on? I assume that what’s going on is quite simply that a load of ignorant teenage tossers (Nice bit of alliteration there, I hope you appreciate the poetry) think it more than appropriate to play their music to the rest of the bus. But perhaps I’m doing these people a huge disservice. There could be a more enlightening explanation. FOR all I know, the experimental composer
John Cage
might have got on the bus a couple of stops earlier than me and initiated a group of teenagers to take part in one of his new masterpieces. Perhaps I am the odd one out here. Being blind, I could be totally oblivious to the scene around me:
john Cage, stood purposefully at the front of the bus, waving his arms, conducting his teenage entourage to choose a generic pop song stored on their phones, then start, stop, change tracks, turn volume up and down in accordance with Cage’s arm movements. There could be a whole film crew recording the event for BBC 4, and in the background there’ll see me – the odd one out – sitting there looking annoyed about it all, ruining the subtle nuances of Cage’s experimental musical epic with my typing noises as I write this post. Then, after the piece has ended, John will walk up and down the bus, signing autographs for excited teenage fans who babble enthusiastically to John about the dubstep remix of
4’33” …
But I doubt it.

So, There’s a group of kids at the back of the bus, all with phones. One of them is playing some hip hop loudly, another one is joining in, trying to get some MCing he recorded himself doing earlier to fit to the beat of the other kid’s music. Then there’s another kid, using his phone to provide visuals. He’s showing a video of him and his mates doing “wicked, ollies” and various other stunts on their skateboards.

My annoyance is heightened by the fact that I’m running late today, thanks to radio 4. My dad listens to The Today Program on Radio 4 in the mornings. I personally wouldn’t choose to do this; I find it upsetting enough to have to get out of a nice warm bed each morning, without having to listen to half an hour of doom, death and destruction while I’m getting ready to leave the house to go to my job that The Today Program informs me I’m unlikely to have for much longer. But, Radio 4 is what’s on around the house and so that’s what I hear when I potter around. The redeeming feature of The Today Program however is that it does give frequent time checks. My particular favourite is “quarter past seven” as said by Sarah Montague: very arousing! I know I’ve gone on about how I hate radio that comprises mainly of time checks, weather and travel, but I was referring then to the commercial radio format. Radio 4 is different; their time checks are highbrow.
Normally, the time checks are a useful aid to me leaving the house on time – what an ingenious strategy: using the time checks to keep me running on time. Actually, its not really the time checks, its more the various items like the sport, Thought For the Day or a trail that helps me orientate how long I’ve got before I leave the house. Unfortunately, Radio 4 failed me today, as the Today Program seemed to be running behind schedule. The sport and the trail must have happened at a later time and I was probably pottering too loudly to hear the time checks. So I missed the bus, and now I’m late. I have no idea why Radio 4 was running behind schedule; I only switched on at 7. Anything could have happened. Perhaps Thought for the Day was hosted by a rabbi with a severe stutter problem, and the presenter – afraid to offend – didn’t have the heart to cut across him.

I thought that seeing as I’m sitting here on the bus, just twiddling my thumbs – I better stop doing that actually because it’s making it a great deal more difficult to type- – I’d write a post about a strange, coincidental scenario that happened to me a couple of nights ago. Its only a very short story, so I’m quite glad that I am running late and that the teenagers on the bus are so annoying because it’s given me something extra to write about.

When your a high flying, high-profile role model like myself, it’s important to maintain one’s physical prowess, so I make sure I regularly exercise. On this night, I started off my exercise with some star jumps. My dad came into the room while I was star jumping and switched on the TV. He then made a sound of exclamation – I’ll leave you to imagine what kind of sound that might be: a gasp, a shout, a sharp inhalation … I don’t have a specific memory about it; I hope that doesn’t ruin your enjoyment of the story. The reason for this non-specific sound of exclamation was to do with the highly unlikely correlation between
me and the TV. Apparently, the picture that came on the television at that moment was of a man in y Fronts doing star jumps. I wasn’t wearing y-fronts but I was doing star jumps. “What a coincidence”, I’m sure that’s what your all thinking. I’m not an expert in the field of probability and even if I was I doubt a credible answer could be given to indicate the probability of this situation happening. If there are any maths geniuses reading – perhaps taking a light, refreshing break from a calculus conundrum – maybe they’d like to investigate this question. I suppose you’d have to work out (on average) how many TV programs at that given time of day are likely to be showing men in y-fronts doing star jumps. Then you’d have to calculate the likelihood of people, oblivious to what is about to greet them on their televisions, while they partake in a spot of star jumping. in front of their televisions. Is there a famous film that has a man star jumping in y-fronts? Maybe I’m missing something obvious. There’s all sorts of random TV channels on cable and sky nowadays, there’s probably a station dedicated to men star jumping in y-fronts. Don’t worry feminists, I’m sure they’ll commission a similar service with star jumping women soon; its only a matter of time, surely. If any maths geniuses do get in touch, I’ll be sure to upload their thesis on the subject to the blog, so watch this space.

Well, there you go. End of story. I’m not sure what the moral is. I’ll leave you to decide that. Perhaps it’s: “I should really stop wasting my time reading this blog”.

Anyway, I’ll be back very soon with the first episode in a new audio series: David Eagle’s Pick and Mix! All will be revealed in my next blog post, coming soon!

so then, here I am, back in 2011, with new, improved and even more original blog post titles. In addition to the innovative blog titles, you can also expect posts in 2011 to be written from a number of exciting locations, thanks to the fact that i now have a netbook as well as a portable writing device tailored for blind people which writes in Braille. In case you are a new comer to my blog (one of the newly converted – now that I’ve become the latest fashion -) i am blind; I’m not just some weirdo who likes to use blind technology because i get a strange kick out of it, although admittedly, Braille is rather arousing.

currently, the exciting location I am writing from is the x9 bus, travelling from Gateshead to billingham. But that’s not the end of the adventure, o no. I will then be getting on the 36 bus at billingham and travelling to Hartlepool, where I live. In fact, it is very probable that the majority of my blog posts will be written from the x9 and the 36, so you’ll definitely be wanting to save this site to your favourites list.

i am currently travelling to and from Gateshead five days a week, in fact, shockingly, i spend nearly 24 hours each week travelling on busses. Are you shocked? Thought so. A whole day a week travelling on busses. When i made the calculation, I was … well … shocked. I decided that i couldn’t afford to waist all that time doing nothing and that i should really do something valuable with my time on the bus. So I’ll be writing lots of blog posts; what could be a more valuable use of my time than that? its a good job I don’t have comments enabled for this blog, isn’t it? O yes, of course, you can’t respond. But if you could comment then I know you would all be writing, begging me to enlighten you as to why I am spending such a large amount of my life on busses.

In addition to doing the odd bout of freelance work, i had been looking for other work, unrelated to broadcasting and production. Until a few months ago, my attempts to procure such employment had been fairly fruitless; I seemed to have an uncanny knack of ballsing up job interviews. I once got an interview for a job in Wales. For the benefit of any blind people reading this post with a screen reader, or for those people listening to the audio book version – there isn’t one yet, but it’s only a matter of time– I’ll point out that this is “Wales” the country, not “whales” the mammal. I wasn’t applying to play the lead role in a crazy production of Jonah, alongside a director with a frighteningly overzealous passion for method acting. I wouldn’t want you to be thinking that. I thought I better clarify that, in order to avoid being attacked by blind animal rights activists
(that’s blind people who are animal rights activists, not animal rights activists who only feel duty bound to kick up a fuss about the treatment of bats, voles and suchlike). O, have I drifted off the point a bit?

Anyway, I attended a job interview in Wales. I was only in the room for less than a minute before I realised that my fate was already sealed. I didn’t do anything wrong, apart from not being welsh. As i opened the door and stepped into the room, I was received by a woman who greeted me in welsh. I was slightly flummoxed by this but thought it appropriate to extend to her a greeting in the English tongue. Alas, she did not share my sentiments. She muttered something which sounded rather derogatory in what I assume to be Welsh – It might have been Klingon for all I know – and tutted.

Question 1: “You have been asked to arrange a meeting for some of our clients based in South East Wales. Ideally the area you choose would not be too populated, yet would be easily accessable by rail and bus. As our clients might be staying for the whole week, it would be wise to book somewhere that has a range of varying attractions and leisure opportunities. Can you tell me your top 3 choices, and why you’ve chosen them? o, and it should be a place that doesn’t contain the letter y or l and yet is made up entirely of consonants. o and we want a place free from English scum, like you!”

I feel a bit ridiculous saying this, and I know its really embarrassing but: Welsh geography isn’t my strongpoint, in fact I’m more or less clueless. There, I’ve said it! I gave an unnecessarily lengthy answer for what was essentially, “i don’t have a flipping clue!” I was starting to get the niggling feeling that they might prefer someone Welsh.

question 2: “Spell the railway station Llanfairpwll­gwyngyll­gogerychwyrndrobwll­llantysilio­gogogoch, then recite it backwards to the tune of the Welsh national anthem”.

i’ve exaggerated ever so slightly for comic effect. (I hope it worked) but it was starkly apparent that they wanted someone welsh. She treated me with such distain; It was as if I’d defecated on a statue of SHIRLEY Bassey, Charlotte Church, Thom/Aled Jones, or one of her favourite and most revered Welsh icons. I didn’t get the job by the way.

So here I am, on the x9 bus, travelling back home from Gateshead after a day’s work. I may at some point expand on the full-time job I’m currently doing. At the moment I won’t go into the details about where I work and what i do, largely because you probably won’t find it interesting – although that’s never stopped me before – and because I like the idea that I’m leading a double life. I feel all mysterious and enigmatic leading this double life which has been aided by the work’s IT coordinator – clearly unaware of The Young’uns Podcast, the Southside Podcast, Davideagle.co.uk etc – registering me in the computer system as “Davis Eagles”. This means my email address is “Davis Eagles …”. I am also in the work’s phone directory as Davis Eagles, and if anyone external to work calls the main switchboard and asks for David Eagle, there’s a pause and then the caller is informed that no one of that name works here, although there is someone under the name of “Davis Eagles”. THIS error occurred on my first day. I notified the person responsible about it, but they didn’t seem to deem it important to reinstate me on the system with the correct name. So in the end, I gave up, and now everyone at work knows me as Davis Eagles. So i spend a third of my life travelling on public transport and a quarter of it existing under a different identity. I’m going mad. SOMETIMES, in a certain situation taking place outside of work, i might stop and think: “now, what would Davis Eagles do if he was here”; Well he wouldn’t be writing this drivel., that’s for sure

I’ve got a lot of exciting plans for this year. The big news is that the Young’uns podcast is set to make a return. The other big news is: so is the Southside Podcast! (no, only joking Alex.)
I’m also working on something completely different to what I’ve released on here before, but I think it will be a really fun project for this year. I intend to release the first episode in this new series next week, so all shall be revealed very soon. And now, having hopefully managed to stir at least a modicum of intrigue and excitement within you, I say goodbye.

There are two reasons for writing this blog post. The first reason is just to inform you that
“”The Young’uns’
latest album, ‘Man I Feel Like a Young’un’ is not only available to buy in CD form via our
“”online shop
but is now also available to download and stream from various digital music sights like
“”ITunes,
“”Napster
and
“”Spotify.

If you click on any of those above links, it will take you to the album page for that corresponding sight. You can even listen to the album for free if you click the Spotify link.

So that’s the first thing taken care of. But that’s by no means the main, important reason I’m writing this post. O no. As the title of this post suggests, the main purpose for writing is to update you on matters regarding “Sir Patrick Moore and lesbians”. Currently at the time of writing
“”my last blog post
ranks sixth in the Google search results for “sir Patrick Moore Lesbians”. This will not do! I want to be number one. I’m up for a fight. I won’t be taken lying down – which just so happens to be the opening line from my aforementioned erotic fantasy novel about Sir Patrick Moore and lesbians, ‘The Thighs at Night’. I can’t say much more on the book at the moment, but it’s all very exciting.

I’ll keep you abreast. … Ooo, that’s another line from the book.

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Right! That’s got to do the trick. That’s got to get me to number one for the search “Sir Patrick Moore lesbians” surely!

P.P.S. Being blind, I have a screenreader to read back what I’ve written. The sound of the speech synthesiser repeatedly saying “Sir Patrick Moore lesbians” is both hypnotic and strangely erotic, and I like it! Perhaps I’ll put some music over the top of it and release it as a download. I’ll send you the Napster, ITunes and spotify links when it’s released.