Edmund Lester

It's an odd question and one with the inevitable answer as far as I'm concerned of YES.... and NO. I found labels immensely useful when I was kid learning about the entertainment I liked. I fluked my first love in both these forms. In music it was a BBC programme showing the Who smashing their instruments. In reading it was seeing a cover I liked on a carousel of books inside a kiosk shop on Great Yarmouth seafront during one of the many times we ducked inside one building or another to escape the rain. I seem to remember that summer holiday being something of a washout. So there I was in 1977 encountering music and reading for the first time; really encountering it anyway. I'd obviously done both before. I'd heard music on TV shows. I'd read books because school kind of makes you. But with the Who and Asimov I found myself wanting to do both; just for the enjoyment of it. And so to labels. You see I wanted more. And I wanted more that I would like. You see m...

I am a man of habit; in the short term at least. I tend to do and redo things. Some of them last a long time - I'm still a fan of the Who four decades after first listening to their music and of Asimov's fiction the same length of time after first reading one of his short story collections (Through a Glass Clearly). But others are habits that come, stick around for a while and then disappear. Well the one I am about to blog about is both. I keep a stack of CDs on my desk that are the core of my listening at any one time. They are not the only things I listen to - far from it. I will stand up and walk across to the shelves on the wall to my right and pick CDs off quite often as the mood strikes. But the ones on my desk are the ones that when I play them I don't want to put back - at least not for a while. Well having just added one to the pile (and taken one off it which I will not name as its removal is my fault not its - I have heard it a few times recently so it can ...

I've realised, despite all my good intentions another month has gone by since I last blogged. It is very remiss of me. I'm not sure why but I seem to have just got out of the habit. I will work on it. I'm not going to make it a New Year's Resolution or anything like that. I don't make Resolutions. They are only made to be broken. But I am going to try to change my ways Okay, so it has been 29 days since I last even logged into this website. An absolute age. But not logging in here and blogging doesn't mean I've been inactive. Since my last blog entry, on the occasion of completing my novel "How to Run a Business", I have written another Ben Williamson novella, clocking in at a fraction under 30K. It's called "Were It Was So" in case you are interested and features a number of devices I remember from the 1970s. It's another weird tale and was very enjoyable to write. Of course the news on the Ben Williamsons isn't as rosy ...